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The litigation seemed interminable and had in fact been complicated; but by the decision on the appeal the judgement of the divorce-court was confirmed as to the assignment of the child. Der Rechtsstreit schien endlos und war tatsächlich kompliziert gewesen; aber durch die Berufungsentscheidung wurde das Urteil des Scheidungsgerichts über die Abtretung des Kindes bestätigt. The litigation seemed interminable and had in fact been complicated; but by the decision on the appeal the judgement of the divorce-court was confirmed as to the assignment of the child. The father, who, though bespattered from head to foot, had made good his case, was, in pursuance of this triumph, appointed to keep her: it was not so much that the mother's character had been more absolutely damaged as that the brilliancy of a lady's complexion (and this lady's, in court, was immensely remarked) might be more regarded as showing the spots. Der Vater, der, obwohl von Kopf bis Fuß befleckt, seine Sache wiedergutgemacht hatte, wurde diesem Triumph folgend dazu bestimmt, sie zu behalten: es war nicht so sehr der Charakter der Mutter, als vielmehr der Glanz der der Teint einer Dame (und der dieser Dame wurde vor Gericht immens bemerkt) könnte eher als Flecken angesehen werden. Ojciec, który, choć rozszarpany od stóp do głów, dobrze się spisał, w pogoni za tym triumfem został wyznaczony, aby ją zatrzymać: nie chodziło o to, że charakter matki został bardziej całkowicie zniszczony, co o blask cerę kobiety (a tę damy w sądzie niezmiernie zauważono) można raczej uznać za wykazującą plamy. Attached, however, to the second pronouncement was a condition that detracted, for Beale Farange, from its sweetness—an order that he should refund to his late wife the twenty-six hundred pounds put down by her, as it was called, some three years before, in the interest of the child's maintenance and precisely on a proved understanding that he would take no proceedings: a sum of which he had had the administration and of which he could render not the least account. An die zweite Verkündung war jedoch eine Bedingung geknüpft, die für Beale Farange von ihrer Süße ablenkte – eine Anweisung, seiner verstorbenen Frau die von ihr niedergelegten 2600 Pfund zurückzuerstatten, wie es genannt wurde, etwa drei Jahre zuvor im Interesse des Kindesunterhalts und gerade in der erwiesenen Einverständniserklärung, kein Verfahren einzuleiten, eine Summe, über die er die Verwaltung hatte und über die er nicht im Geringsten Rechenschaft ablegen konnte. Однако ко второму решению прилагалось условие, которое умаляло его сладость для Била Фаранджа: он должен был вернуть своей покойной жене двадцать шесть сотен фунтов, внесенных ею, как это называлось, около трех лет назад в интересах содержания ребенка и при доказанном понимании того, что он не будет предпринимать никаких действий: сумма, которой он распоряжался и о которой он не мог дать ни малейшего отчета. The obligation thus attributed to her adversary was no small balm to Ida's resentment; it drew a part of the sting from her defeat and compelled Mr. Farange perceptibly to lower his crest. Die so ihrem Gegner zugeschriebene Verpflichtung war kein kleiner Balsam für Idas Groll; es zog einen Teil des Stachels aus ihrer Niederlage und zwang Mr. Farange merklich, seinen Kamm zu senken. Obowiązek przypisany w ten sposób jej przeciwnikowi był niemałym balsamem na niechęć Idy; to wyciągnęło część żądła z jej porażki i zmusiło pana Farange do opuszczenia grzebienia. He was unable to produce the money or to raise it in any way; so that after a squabble scarcely less public and scarcely more decent than the original shock of battle his only issue from his predicament was a compromise proposed by his legal advisers and finally accepted by hers. Er war nicht in der Lage, das Geld zu produzieren oder auf irgendeine Weise aufzubringen; so daß er nach einem Streit, der kaum weniger öffentlich und kaum anständiger war als der ursprüngliche Schock des Kampfes, aus seiner misslichen Lage nur ein Kompromiss seiner Rechtsberater war, den sie schließlich akzeptierten.

His debt was by this arrangement remitted to him and the little girl disposed of in a manner worthy of the judgement-seat of Solomon. Seine Schuld wurde ihm durch diese Anordnung erlassen und das kleine Mädchen in einer des Richterstuhls Salomos würdigen Weise entsorgt. She was divided in two and the portions tossed impartially to the disputants. They would take her, in rotation, for six months at a time; she would spend half the year with each. This was odd justice in the eyes of those who still blinked in the fierce light projected from the tribunal—a light in which neither parent figured in the least as a happy example to youth and innocence. What was to have been expected on the evidence was the nomination, in loco parentis, of some proper third person, some respectable or at least some presentable friend. Apparently, however, the circle of the Faranges had been scanned in vain for any such ornament; so that the only solution finally meeting all the difficulties was, save that of sending Maisie to a Home, the partition of the tutelary office in the manner I have mentioned. There were more reasons for her parents to agree to it than there had ever been for them to agree to anything; and they now prepared with her help to enjoy the distinction that waits upon vulgarity sufficiently attested. У ее родителей было больше причин согласиться на это, чем когда-либо на что-либо, и теперь они с ее помощью готовились наслаждаться отличием, которое ожидает вульгарность, достаточно подтвержденная. Their rupture had resounded, and after being perfectly insignificant together they would be decidedly striking apart. Их разрыв прозвучал, и, будучи совершенно незначительными вместе, они будут бросаться в глаза порознь. Had they not produced an impression that warranted people in looking for appeals in the newspapers for the rescue of the little one—reverberation, amid a vociferous public, of the idea that some movement should be started or some benevolent person should come forward? A good lady came indeed a step or two: she was distantly related to Mrs. Farange, to whom she proposed that, having children and nurseries wound up and going, she should be allowed to take home the bone of contention and, by working it into her system, relieve at least one of the parents. This would make every time, for Maisie, after her inevitable six months with Beale, much more of a change.

"More of a change?" Ida cried. "Won't it be enough of a change for her to come from that low brute to the person in the world who detests him most?" "No, because you detest him so much that you'll always talk to her about him. You'll keep him before her by perpetually abusing him." Mrs. Farange stared. "Pray, then, am I to do nothing to counteract his villainous abuse of me?" The good lady, for a moment, made no reply: her silence was a grim judgement of the whole point of view. "Poor little monkey!" she at last exclaimed; and the words were an epitaph for the tomb of Maisie's childhood. She was abandoned to her fate. What was clear to any spectator was that the only link binding her to either parent was this lamentable fact of her being a ready vessel for bitterness, a deep little porcelain cup in which biting acids could be mixed. They had wanted her not for any good they could do her, but for the harm they could, with her unconscious aid, do each other. She should serve their anger and seal their revenge, for husband and wife had been alike crippled by the heavy hand of justice, which in the last resort met on neither side their indignant claim to get, as they called it, everything. If each was only to get half this seemed to concede that neither was so base as the other pretended, or, to put it differently, offered them both as bad indeed, since they were only as good as each other. The mother had wished to prevent the father from, as she said, "so much as looking" at the child; the father's plea was that the mother's lightest touch was "simply contamination." These were the opposed principles in which Maisie was to be educated—she was to fit them together as she might. Nothing could have been more touching at first than her failure to suspect the ordeal that awaited her little unspotted soul. There were persons horrified to think what those in charge of it would combine to try to make of it: no one could conceive in advance that they would be able to make nothing ill.

This was a society in which for the most part people were occupied only with chatter, but the disunited couple had at last grounds for expecting a time of high activity. They girded their loins, they felt as if the quarrel had only begun. They felt indeed more married than ever, inasmuch as what marriage had mainly suggested to them was the unbroken opportunity to quarrel. There had been "sides" before, and there were sides as much as ever; for the sider too the prospect opened out, taking the pleasant form of a superabundance of matter for desultory conversation. The many friends of the Faranges drew together to differ about them; contradiction grew young again over teacups and cigars. Everybody was always assuring everybody of something very shocking, and nobody would have been jolly if nobody had been outrageous. The pair appeared to have a social attraction which failed merely as regards each other: it was indeed a great deal to be able to say for Ida that no one but Beale desired her blood, and for Beale that if he should ever have his eyes scratched out it would be only by his wife. It was generally felt, to begin with, that they were awfully good-looking—they had really not been analysed to a deeper residuum. They made up together for instance some twelve feet three of stature, and nothing was more discussed than the apportionment of this quantity. The sole flaw in Ida's beauty was a length and reach of arm conducive perhaps to her having so often beaten her ex-husband at billiards, a game in which she showed a superiority largely accountable, as she maintained, for the resentment finding expression in his physical violence. Единственным недостатком красоты Иды была длина и размах рук, что, возможно, способствовало тому, что она так часто обыгрывала своего бывшего мужа в бильярд - игру, в которой она демонстрировала превосходство, во многом объяснявшее, как она утверждала, обиду, находившую выражение в его физическом насилии. Billiards was her great accomplishment and the distinction her name always first produced the mention of. Бильярд был ее великим достижением и отличием, при упоминании которого ее имя всегда звучало первым. Notwithstanding some very long lines everything about her that might have been large and that in many women profited by the licence was, with a single exception, admired and cited for its smallness. Несмотря на несколько очень длинных строк, все в ней, что могло бы быть большим и что во многих женщинах выигрывало от лицензии, за единственным исключением, восхищало и приводилось в пример из-за своей малости. The exception was her eyes, which might have been of mere regulation size, but which overstepped the modesty of nature; her mouth, on the other hand, was barely perceptible, and odds were freely taken as to the measurement of her waist. Исключение составляли ее глаза, которые могли бы быть обычного размера, но превышали природную скромность; рот, напротив, был едва заметен, а в отношении объема ее талии можно было смело согласиться. She was a person who, when she was out—and she was always out—produced everywhere a sense of having been seen often, the sense indeed of a kind of abuse of visibility, so that it would have been, in the usual places rather vulgar to wonder at her. Она была человеком, который, когда выходил на улицу - а она всегда выходила на улицу, - создавал ощущение, что его часто видели, ощущение некоего злоупотребления видимостью, так что в обычных местах удивляться ей было бы довольно вульгарно. Strangers only did that; but they, to the amusement of the familiar, did it very much: it was an inevitable way of betraying an alien habit. Так поступали только незнакомцы, но они, к удовольствию знакомых, делали это очень часто: это был неизбежный способ предать чужую привычку. Like her husband she carried clothes, carried them as a train carries passengers: people had been known to compare their taste and dispute about the accommodation they gave these articles, though inclining on the whole to the commendation of Ida as less overcrowded, especially with jewellery and flowers. Как и ее муж, она носила одежду, перевозила ее, как поезд перевозит пассажиров: люди, как известно, сравнивали свои вкусы и спорили о том, какое место они отводят этим предметам, хотя в целом склонялись к тому, чтобы похвалить Иду как менее переполненную, особенно украшениями и цветами. Beale Farange had natural decorations, a kind of costume in his vast fair beard, burnished like a gold breastplate, and in the eternal glitter of the teeth that his long moustache had been trained not to hide and that gave him, in every possible situation, the look of the joy of life. He had been destined in his youth for diplomacy and momentarily attached, without a salary, to a legation which enabled him often to say "In my time in the East": but contemporary history had somehow had no use for him, had hurried past him and left him in perpetual Piccadilly. В юности он был предназначен для дипломатии и на мгновение пристроен, без жалованья, в легат, что позволило ему часто говорить: "В свое время на Востоке". Но современная история как-то не нашла ему применения, пронеслась мимо и оставила его на вечной Пикадилли. Every one knew what he had—only twenty-five hundred. Все знали, что у него всего двадцать пять сотен. Poor Ida, who had run through everything, had now nothing but her carriage and her paralysed uncle. У бедной Иды, которая прошла через все, теперь не было ничего, кроме кареты и парализованного дяди. This old brute, as he was called, was supposed to have a lot put away. У этого старого грубияна, как его называли, должно было быть много вещей. The child was provided for, thanks to a crafty godmother, a defunct aunt of Beale's, who had left her something in such a manner that the parents could appropriate only the income. Ребенок был обеспечен благодаря хитроумной крестной матери, умершей тетушке Бил, которая оставила ей кое-что таким образом, что родители могли присвоить только доход.