The Essential Somerset Maugham: 33 Books in One Edition. Уильям Сомерсет Моэм

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       William Somerset Maugham

      The Essential Somerset Maugham: 33 Books in One Edition

      Novels, Short Stories, Plays & Travel Sketche; Including Of Human Bondage, The Moon and Sixpence…

      Published by

      Books

      - Advanced Digital Solutions & High-Quality eBook Formatting -

       [email protected]

      2017 OK Publishing

      ISBN 978-80-272-3051-8

Table of Contents

       Novels:

       Liza of Lambeth

       The Making of a Saint

       The Hero

       Mrs Craddock

       The Merry-go-round

       The Bishop's Apron

       The Explorer (The Novel)

       The Magician

       The Canadian (The Land of Promise)

       Of Human Bondage

       The Moon and Sixpence

       Short Story Collections:

       Orientations

       The Trembling of a Leaf: Little Stories of the South Sea Islands

       Plays:

       A Man of Honour

       Lady Frederick

       The Explorer

       The Circle

       Caesar's Wife

       East of Suez

       Travel Sketches:

       The Land of the Blessed Virgin: Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia

       On A Chinese Screen

       Novels:

       Table of Contents

      Liza of Lambeth

      SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Table of Contents

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       12

      1

       Table of Contents

       It was the first Saturday afternoon in August; it had been broiling hot all day, with a cloudless sky, and the sun had been beating down on the houses, so that the top rooms were like ovens; but now with the approach of evening it was cooler, and everyone in Vere Street was out of doors.

      Vere street, Lambeth, is a short, straight street leading out of the Westminster Bridge Road; it has forty houses on one side and forty houses on the other, and these eighty houses are very much more like one another than ever peas are like peas, or young ladies like young ladies. They are newish, three-storied buildings of dingy grey brick with slate roofs, and they are perfectly flat, without a bow-window or even a projecting cornice or window-sill to break the straightness of the line from one end of the street to the other.

      This Saturday afternoon the street was full of life; no traffic came down Vere Street, and the cemented space between the pavements was given up to children. Several games of cricket were being played by wildly excited boys, using coats for wickets, an old tennis-ball or a bundle of rags tied together for a ball, and, generally, an old broomstick for bat. The wicket was so large and the bat so small that the man in was always getting bowled, when heated quarrels would arise, the batter absolutely refusing to go out and the bowler absolutely insisting on going in. The girls were more peaceable; they were chiefly employed in skipping, and only abused one another mildly when the rope was not properly turned or the skipper did not jump sufficiently high. Worst off of all were the very young children, for there had been no rain for weeks, and the street was as dry and clean as a covered court, and, in the lack of mud to wallow in, they sat about the road, disconsolate as poets. The number of babies was prodigious; they sprawled about everywhere, on the pavement, round the doors, and about their mothers' skirts. The grown-ups were gathered round the open doors; there were usually two women squatting on the doorstep, and two or three more seated on either side on chairs; they were invariably nursing babies, and most of them showed clear signs that the present object of the maternal care would be soon ousted by a new arrival. Men were less numerous but such as there were leant against the walls, smoking, or sat on the sills of the ground-floor windows. It was the dead season in Vere Street as much as in Belgravia, and really if it had not been for babies just come or just about to come, and an opportune murder in a neighbouring doss-house, there would have been nothing whatever to talk about. As it was, the little groups talked quietly, discussing the atrocity or the merits of the local midwives, comparing the circumstances of their various confinements.

      'You'll be 'avin' your little trouble soon, eh, Polly?' asked one good lady of another.

      'Oh, I reckon I've got another two months ter go yet,' answered Polly.

      'Well,' said a third. 'I wouldn't 'ave thought you'd go so long by the look of yer!'

      'I