Колокола

УДК 
372.8
ББК 
81.2 Англ-93
Д 45

ISBN 978-5-9925-1134-5

 
Диккенс, Чарльз.
Д45 
Колокола : книга для чтения на английском 
языке. — Санкт-Петербург : КАРО, 2016. — 
160 с. — (Classical Literature).

ISBN 978-5-9925-1134-5.

Предлагаем вниманию читателей повесть классика английской и мировой литературы Ч. Диккенса «Колокола».
Рассыльный Тоби Векк и его красавица дочь живут бедно, 
но весело. Оба они любят слушать колокольный звон близлежащей церкви. Отец различает «голоса» всех колоколов. Как-то 
под новый год, когда дочь готовилась к свадьбе, ему показалось, 
что колокола звонят как-то неправильно…
Оригинальный текст снабжен комментариями и словарем. 
Книга адресована студентам языковых вузов и всем любителям 
английской классической литературы.

УДК 372.8
ББК 81.2 Англ-93

© КАРО, 2016

FIRST QUARTER

Here are not many people — and as it is desirable that a story-teller and a story-reader should 
establish a mutual understanding as soon as possible, I beg it to be noticed that I confi ne this 
observation neither to young people nor to little 
people, but extend it to all conditions of people: 
little and big, young and old: yet growing up, or 
already growing down again — there are not, 
I say, many people who would care to sleep in a 
church. I don’t mean at sermon-time in warm 
weather (when the thing has actually been done, 
once or twice), but in the night, and alone. A great 
multitude of persons will be violently astonished, 
I know, by this position, in the broad bold Day. 
But it applies to Night. It must be argued by night, 
and I will undertake to maintain it successfully on 
any gusty winter’s night appointed for the purpose, 
with any one opponent chosen from the rest, who 
will meet me singly in an old churchyard, before an 
old church-door; and will previously empower me 

to lock him in, if needful to his satisfaction, until 
morning.
For the night-wind has a dismal trick of 
wandering round and round a building of that 
sort, and moaning as it goes; and of trying, with 
its unseen hand, the windows and the doors; and 
seeking out some crevices by which to enter. And 
when it has got in; as one not fi nding what it seeks, 
whatever that may be, it wails and howls to issue 
forth again: and not content with stalking through 
the aisles, and gliding round and round the pillars, 
and tempting the deep organ, soars up to the roof, 
and strives to rend the raft ers: then fl ings itself 
despairingly upon the stones below, and passes, 
mutter ing, into the vaults. Anon, it comes up stealthily, and creeps along the walls, seeming to read, 
in whispers, the Inscriptions sacred to the Dead. At 
some of these, it breaks out shrilly, as with laughter; 
and at others, moans and cries as if it were lamenting. It has a ghostly sound too, lingering within 
the altar; where it seems to chaunt, in its wild way, 
of Wrong and Murder done, and false Gods worshipped, in defi ance of the Tables of the Law, which 
look so fair and smooth, but are so fl awed and 
broken. Ugh! Heaven preserve us, sitting snugly 
round the fi re! It has an awful voice, that wind at 
Midnight, singing in a church!

But, high up in the steeple! Th ere the foul blast 
roars and whistles! High up in the steeple, where it 
is free to come and go through many an airy arch 
and loophole, and to twist and twine itself1 about the 
giddy stair, and twirl the groaning weathercock, and 
make the very tower shake and shiver! High up in the 
steeple, where the belfry is, and iron rails are ragged 
with rust, and sheets of lead and copper, shrivelled 
by the changing weather, crackle and heave beneath 
the unaccustomed tread; and birds stuff  shabby nests 
into corners of old oaken joists and beams; and dust 
grows old and grey; and speckled spiders, indolent 
and fat with long secu rity, swing idly to and fro in 
the vibration of the bells, and never loose their hold 
upon their thread-spun castles in the air, or climb up 
sailor-like in quick alarm, or drop upon the ground 
and ply a score of nimble legs to save one life! High up 
in the steeple of an old church, far above the light and 
murmur of the town and far below the fl ying clouds 
that shadow it, is the wild and dreary place at night: 
and high up in the steeple of an old church, dwelt the 
Chimes I tell of.
Th ey were old Chimes, trust me. Centuries ago, 
these Bells had been baptized by bishops: so many 

1 to twist and twine itself — (уст.) изгибаться и закручиваться

centuries ago, that the register of their baptism 
was lost long, long before the memory of man, 
and no one knew their names. Th ey had had their 
God fathers and Godmothers, these Bells (for my 
own part, by the way, I would rather incur the 
responsibility of being Godfather to a Bell than a 
Boy), and had their silver mugs no doubt, besides. 
But Time had mowed down their sponsors, and 
Henry the Eighth had melted down their mugs; 
and they now hung, nameless and mugless, in the 
church-tower.
Not speechless, though. Far from it. Th ey had 
clear, loud, lusty, sounding voices, had these Bells; 
and far and wide they might be heard upon the 
wind. Much too sturdy Chimes were they, to be 
dependent on the pleasure of the wind, moreover; 
for, fi ghting gallantly against it when it took an 
adverse whim, they would pour their cheerful notes 
into a listening ear right royally; and bent on being 
heard on stormy nights, by some poor mother 
watching a sick child, or some lone wife whose 
husband was at sea, they had been sometimes 
known to beat a blustering Nor’ Wester; aye, ‘all to 
fi ts,’ as Toby Veck said; — for though they chose 
to call him Trotty Veck, his name was Toby, and 
nobody could make it anything else either (except 
Tobias) without a special act of parliament; he 

having been as lawfully christened in his day as the 
Bells had been in theirs, though with not quite so 
much of solemnity or public rejoicing.
For my part, I confess myself of Toby Veck’s 
belief, for I am sure he had opportunities enough 
of forming a correct one. And whatever Toby Veck 
said, I say. And I take my stand by Toby Veck, 
although he did stand all day long (and weary work 
it was) just outside the church-door. In fact he was 
a ticket-porter, Toby Veck, and waited there for 
jobs.
And a breezy, goose-skinned, blue-nosed, redeyed, stony-toed, tooth-chattering place it was, 
to wait in, in the winter-time, as Toby Veck well 
knew. Th e wind came tearing round the corner — 
especially the east wind — as if it had sallied 
forth, express, from the confi nes of the earth, to 
have a blow at Toby. And oft entimes it seemed to 
come upon him sooner than it had expected, for 
bouncing round the corner, and passing Toby, it 
would suddenly wheel round again, as if it cried 
‘Why, here he is!’ Incontinently his little white apron 
would be caught up over his head like a naughty 
boy’s garments, and his feeble little cane would 
be seen to wrestle and struggle unavailingly in his 
hand, and his legs would undergo tremendous 
agitation, and Toby himself all aslant, and facing 

now in this direction, now in that, would be so 
banged and buff eted, and so touzled, and worried, 
and hustled, and lift ed off  his feet, as to render it 
a state of things but one degree removed from a 
positive miracle, that he wasn’t carried up bodily 
into the air as a colony of frogs or snails or other 
very portable creatures sometimes are, and rained 
down again, to the great astonishment of the 
natives, on some strange corner of the world where 
ticket-porters are unknown.
But, windy weather, in spite of its using him so 
roughly, was, aft er all, a sort of holiday for Toby. 
Th at’s the fact. He didn’t seem to wait so long for a 
sixpence in the wind, as at other times; the having 
to fi ght with that boisterous element took off  his 
attention, and quite freshened him up, when he was 
getting hungry and low-spirited. A hard frost too, 
or a fall of snow, was an Event; and it seemed to do 
him good, somehow or other — it would have been 
hard to say in what respect though, Toby! So wind 
and frost and snow, and perhaps a good stiff  storm 
of hail, were Toby Veck’s red-letter days1.
Wet weather was the worst; the cold, damp, 
clam my wet, that wrapped him up like a moist 

1 red-letter days — (разг.) счастливые (праздничные) 
дни

great-coat — the only kind of great-coat Toby 
owned, or could have added to his comfort by 
dispensing with. Wet days, when the rain came 
slowly, thickly, obstinately down; when the street’s 
throat, like his own, was choked with mist; when 
smoking umbrellas passed and re-passed, spinning 
round and round like so many teetotums, as 
they knocked against each other on the crowded 
footway, throwing off  a little whirlpool of uncomfort able sprinklings; when gutters brawled and 
waterspouts were full and noisy; when the wet from 
the projecting stones and ledges of the church fell 
drip, drip, drip, on Toby, making the wisp of straw 
on which he stood mere mud in no time; those were 
the days that tried him. Th en, indeed, you might 
see Toby looking anxiously out from his shelter in 
an angle of the church wall — such a meagre shelter 
that in summer time it never cast a shadow thicker 
than a good-sized walking stick upon the sunny 
pavement — with a disconsolate and lengthened 
face. But coming out, a minute aft erwards, to warm 
himself by exercise, and trotting up and down some 
dozen times, he would brighten even then, and go 
back more brightly to his niche.
Th ey called him Trotty from his pace, which 
meant speed if it didn’t make it. He could have 
walked faster perhaps; most likely; but rob him of 

his trot, and Toby would have taken to his bed and 
died. It bespattered him with mud in dirty weather; 
it cost him a world of trouble; he could have walked 
with infi nitely greater ease; but that was one reason 
for his clinging to it so tenaciously. A weak, small, 
spare old man, he was a very Hercules, this Toby, 
in his good intentions. He loved to earn his money. 
He delighted to believe — Toby was very poor, 
and couldn’t well aff ord to part with a delight — 
that he was worth his salt1. With a shilling or an 
eighteenpenny message or small parcel in hand, 
his courage always high, rose higher. As he trotted 
on, he would call out to fast Postmen ahead of 
him, to get out of the way; devoutly believing that 
in the natural course of things he must inevitably 
overtake and run them down; and he had perfect 
faith — not oft en tested — in his being able to carry 
anything that man could lift .
Th us, even when he came out of his nook to 
warm himself on a wet day, Toby trotted. Making, 
with his leaky shoes, a crooked line of slushy 
footprints in the mire; and blowing on his chilly 
hands and rubbing them against each other, poorly 
defended from the searching cold by threadbare 

1 he was worth his salt — (уст.) он был достойным человеком