Шло время, а он все не появлялся. Наконец присутствовавший среди гостей
лейтенант-губернатор решил позвать хозяина к столу. Он подошел к двери приемной и постучал. Но ответа не последовало. Когда затих стук, в доме царило глубокое, страшное, тяготившее душу молчание.
| should bid me do it!" "Pooh, pooh, master high sheriff!" cried the lieutenant-governor, who had overheard the foregoing discussion, and felt himself high enough in station to play a little with his dignity. "I will take the matter into my own hands. It is time that the good colonel came forth to greet his friends, else we shall be apt to suspect that he has taken a sip too much of his Canary wine, in his extreme deliberation which cask it were best to broach, in honor of the day! But since he is so much behindhand, I will give him a remembrancer myself!" Accordingly, with such a tramp of his ponderous riding-boots as might of itself have been audible in the remotest of the seven gables, he advanced to the door, which the servant pointed out, and made its new panels re-echo with a loud, free knock. Then, looking round, with a smile, to the spectators, he awaited a response. As none came, however, he knocked again, but with the same unsatisfactory result as at first. And now, being a trifle choleric in his temperament, the lieutenant-governor uplifted the heavy hilt of his sword, wherewith he so beat and banged upon the door, that, as some of the bystanders whispered, the racket might have disturbed the dead. Be that as it might, it seemed to produce no awakening effect on Colonel Pyncheon. When the sound subsided, the silence through the house was deep, dreary, and oppressive, notwithstanding that the tongues of many of the guests had already been loosened by a surreptitious cup or two of wine or spirits. | |
| "Strange, forsooth!-very strange!" cried the lieutenant-governor, whose smile was changed to a frown. | - Странно, право! Очень странно! - воскликнул лейтенант-губернатор, нахмурившись. |
| "But seeing that our host sets us the good example of forgetting ceremony, I shall likewise throw it aside, and make free to intrude on his privacy!" | - Но так как наш хозяин подает нам пример несоблюдения приличий, то и я отброшу их и без церемоний войду в его комнату! |
| He tried the door, which yielded to his hand, and was flung wide open by a sudden gust of wind that passed, as with a loud sigh, from the outermost portal, through all the passages and apartments of the new house. | Он повернул ручку, дверь уступила и вдруг отворилась настежь внезапно ворвавшимся ветром, который, подобно долгому вздоху, прошел от наружной двери через все проходы и комнаты нового дома. |