Английский с Р. Л. Стивенсоном. Странная история доктора Джекила и мистера Хайда / Robert Louis Stevenson. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

It was by this time about nine in the morning, and the first fog of the season. A great chocolate-coloured pall lowered over heaven, but the wind was continually charging and routing these embattled vapours; so that as the cab crawled from street to street, Mr. Utterson beheld a marvellous number of degrees and hues of twilight; for here it would be dark like the back-end of evening; and there would be a glow of a rich, lurid brown, like the light of some strange conflagration; and here, for a moment, the fog would be quite broken up, and a haggard shaft of daylight would glance in between the swirling wreaths.

The dismal quarter of Soho seen under these changing glimpses (этот угрюмый район Сохо в этом переменчивом освещении; quarter – четверть; квартал; to change – менять/ся/, изменять/ся/; glimpse – проблеск, слабый свет, слабая вспышка; мелькание), with its muddy ways

(с его грязными дорогами; mud – грязь, слякоть), and slatternly passengers (неряшливыми прохожими), and its lamps, which had never been extinguished or had been kindled afresh (и его фонарями, которые то ли не были погашены, или уже были зажжены заново) to combat this mournful reinvasion of darkness

(чтобы сражаться с повторным мрачным вторжением тьмы; mournful – скорбный; угрюмый, печальный; to mourn – скорбеть, оплакивать; горевать, печалиться; invasion – вторжение; to invade – вторгаться: to invade a country – вторгнуться в страну), seemed, in the lawyer’s eyes, like a district of some city in a nightmare (казался взору нотариуса районом какого-то города из кошмара). The thoughts of his mind, besides, were of the gloomiest dye (его собственные мысли, к тому же, были самого что ни на есть мрачного цвета; dye – окраска; цвет /как результат окрашивания/

); and when he glanced at the companion of his drive (и когда он взглянул на своего попутчика; drive – езда), he was conscious of some touch of that terror of the law and the law’s officers (он осознал = почувствовал

некий приступ страха перед законом и стражами порядка; touch – прикосновение; чуточка, примесь), which may at times assail the most honest (который временами одолевает даже самых честных людей; to assail – наступать, атаковать; одолевать, мучить).

The dismal quarter of Soho seen under these changing glimpses, with its muddy ways, and slatternly passengers, and its lamps, which had never been extinguished or had been kindled afresh to combat this mournful reinvasion of darkness, seemed, in the lawyer’s eyes, like a district of some city in a nightmare. The thoughts of his mind, besides, were of the gloomiest dye; and when he glanced at the companion of his drive, he was conscious of some touch of that terror of the law and the law’s officers, which may at times assail the most honest.