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looked wonderfully distinguished; he had a natural dignity and the
assured air of a man who had been accustomed for many years to the
obedience of others. Rowley, rather short, rather stocky, wearing his
clothes as though they were a workman’s overalls, slouched across,
with his hands as usual in his pockets, with a kind of lazy impudence,
debonair and careless, which Mary was bound to admit, had a certain
attractiveness. With his smiling mouth and the good-humoured
mockery of his gray eyes, a person who was easy to get on with. It
suddenly occurred to Mary why notwithstanding his faults she felt so
much at ease with him you could entirely be yourself. You never had
to pretend.

***

A STRANGER

(From Angel Pavement
1
by J. B. Priestley )

This solitary passenger was a man of medium height but of
massive build, square and bulky about the shoulders, and thick-
chested. He might have been forty-five; he might have been nearly
fifty; it was difficult to tell his exact age. His face was somewhat
unusual, if only because it began by being almost bald at the top, then
threw out two very bushy eyebrows, and finally achieved a
tremendous moustache, drooping a little by reason of its very length
and thickness; a moustache in a thousand, with something rhetorical,
even theatrical, about it. He wore, carelessly, a suit of excellent grey
cloth but of a foreign cut and none too well-fitting. This passenger
had come with the ship from the Baltic state that owned her, but there
was something about his appearance, in spite of his clothes, his
moustache, that suggested he was really a native of this island. But
that is perhaps all it did suggest. He was one of those men who are
difficult to place. The sight of him did not call up any particular
background, and you could not easily imagine him either at work or

1
Текст друкується за виданням Потапова И.А., Кащеева М.А. Пособие
по переводу английского литературного текста. – Москва: Высшая Школа.
1975. С. 56.

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