Master Up. Учебное пособие по английскому языку

«Work!» Tompkins smiled. «Listen, Roger, you’ll kill yourself with work. Why don’t you bring a little balance into your life – work a little, then play a little?»

«That’s what I tell him,» said Gretchen.

«Do you know an average business man’s day?» demanded Tompkins as they went in to dinner. «Coffee in the morning, eight hours’ work interrupted by a bolted luncheon, and then home again with dyspepsia and a bad temper to give the wife a pleasant evening.»

Roger laughed shortly.

«You’ve been going to the movies too much,» he said dryly.

«What?» Tompkins looked at him with some irritation. «Movies? I’ve hardly ever been to the movies in my life. I think the movies are atrocious. My opinions on life are drawn from my own observations. I believe in a balanced life.»

«What’s that?» demanded Roger.

«Well’ – he hesitated – ’probably the best way to tell you would be to describe my own day. Would that seem horribly egotistic?»

«Oh, no!» Gretchen looked at him with interest. «I’d love to hear about it.»

«Well, in the morning I get up and go through a series of exercises. I’ve got one room fitted up as a little gymnasium, and I punch the bag and do shadow-boxing and weight-pulling for an hour. Then after a cold bath – There’s a thing now! Do you take a daily cold bath?»

«No,» admitted Roger, «I take a hot bath in the evening three or four times a week.»

A horrified silence fell. Tompkins and Gretchen exchanged a glance as if something obscene had been said.

«What’s the matter?» broke out Roger, glancing from one to the other in some irritation. «You know I don’t take a bath every day – I haven’t got the time.»

Tompkins gave a prolonged sigh.

«After my bath,» he continued, drawing a merciful veil of silence over the matter, «I have breakfast and drive to my office in New York, where I work until four. Then I lay off, and if it’s summer I hurry out here for nine holes of golf, or if it’s winter I play squash for an hour at my club. Then a good snappy game of bridge until dinner. Dinner is liable to have something to do with business, but in a pleasant way. Perhaps I’ve just finished a house for some customer, and he wants me to be on hand for his first party to see that the lighting is soft enough and all that sort of thing. Or maybe I sit down with a good book of poetry and spend the evening alone. At any rate, I do something every night to get me out of myself.»

«It must be wonderful,» said Gretchen enthusiastically. «I wish we lived like that.»

Tompkins bent forward earnestly over the table.

«You can,» he said impressively. «There’s no reason why you shouldn’t. Look here, if Roger’ll play nine holes of golf every day it’ll do wonders for him. He won’t know himself. He’ll do his work better, never get that tired, nervous feeling – What’s the matter?»

He broke off. Roger had perceptibly yawned.

«Roger,» cried Gretchen sharply, ’there’s no need to be so rude. If you did what George said, you’d be a lot better off.» She turned indignantly to their host. «The latest is that he’s going to work at night for the next six weeks. He says he’s going to pull down the blinds and shut us up like hermits in a cave. He’s been doing it every Sunday for the last year; now he’s going to do it every night for six weeks.»

Tompkins shook his head sadly.

«At the end of six weeks,» he remarked, ’he’ll be starting for the sanatorium. Let me tell you, every private hospital in New York is full of cases like yours. You just strain the human nervous system a little too far, and bang! – you’ve broken something. And in order to save sixty hours you’re laid up sixty weeks for repairs.» He broke off, changed his tone, and turned to Gretchen with a smile. «Not to mention what happens to you. It seems to me it’s the wife rather than the husband who bears the brunt of these insane periods of overwork.»

«I don’t mind,» protested Gretchen loyally.

«Yes, she does,» said Roger grimly; ’she minds like the devil. She’s a shortsighted little egg, and she thinks it’s going to be forever until I get started and she can have some new clothes. But it can’t be helped. The saddest thing about women is that, after all, their best trick is to sit down and fold their hands.»

«Your ideas on women are about twenty years out of date,» said Tompkins pityingly. «Women won’t sit down and wait any more.»

«Then they’d better marry men of forty,» insisted Roger stubbornly. «If a girl marries a young man for love she ought to be willing to make any sacrifice within reason, so long as her husband keeps going ahead.»

«Let’s not talk about it,» said Gretchen impatiently. «Please, Roger, let’s have a good time just this once.»

When Tompkins dropped them in front of their house at eleven Roger and Gretchen stood for a moment on the sidewalk looking at the winter moon. There was a fine, damp, dusty snow in the air, and Roger drew a long breath of it and put his arm around Gretchen exultantly.

«I can make more money than he can,» he said tensely. «And I’ll be doing it in just forty days.»

«Forty days,» she sighed. «It seems such a long time – when everybody else is always having fun. If I could only sleep for forty days.»

«Why don’t you, honey? Just take forty winks, and when you wake up everything’ll be fine.»

She was silent for a moment.

«Roger,» she asked thoughtfully, ’do you think George meant what he said about taking me horseback riding on Sunday?»

Roger frowned.

«I don’t know. Probably not – I hope to Heaven he didn’t.» He hesitated. «As a matter of fact, he made me sort of sore tonight – all that junk about his cold bath.»

With their arms about each other, they started up the walk to the house.

«I’ll bet he doesn’t take a cold bath every morning,» continued Roger ruminatively; ’or three times a week, either.» He fumbled in his pocket for the key and inserted it in the lock with savage precision. Then he turned around defiantly. «I’ll bet he hasn’t had a bath for a month.»

Questions and tasks

– What season is it? In what mood Roger is coming back home after work?

– Who is home when Roger came back from work? Has anyone come down to meet him?

– What is Roger’s occupation? Is he well paid and/ or satisfied with his life?

– What iss the question Roger wants to discuss with his wife? How does he feel about the conversation? How has it started?

– How has Gretchen perceived the news her husband told her?

– What is Gretchen’s forty winks about?

– Why have they decided to go out nevertheless?

– Who is Tompkings? What does he do for a living?

– What advice does Tompkings give to Roger? What has prompted him to do so?

– Do you think Roger fancied the life and work Tompkings was leading?

– How has the evening ended?

– What opinion do you think Roger had about Tompkings?