章节正文
would rather know from you just the sort of ass I was than--from
the moment you have something in your mind--not know anything."
Still, however, she hesitated. "But if you've completely ceased to
be that sort--?"
"Why I can then all the more bear to know. Besides, perhaps I
haven't."
"Perhaps. Yet if you haven't," she added, "I should suppose you'd
remember. Not indeed that I in the least connect with my
impression the invidious name you use. If I had only thought you
foolish," she explained, "the thing I speak of wouldn't so have
remained with me. It was about yourself." She waited as if it
might come to him; but as, only meeting her eyes in wonder, he gave
no sign, she burnt her ships. "Has it ever happened?"
Then it was that, while he continued to stare, a light broke for
him and the blood slowly came to his face, which began to burn with
recognition.
"Do you mean I told you--?" But he faltered, lest what came to him
shouldn't be right, lest he should only give himself away.
"It was something about yourself that it was natural one shouldn't
forget--that is if one remembered you at all. That's why I ask
you," she smiled, "if the thing you then spoke of has ever come to
pass?"
Oh then he saw, but he was lost in wonder and found himself
embarrassed. This, he also saw, made her sorry for him, as if her
allusion had been a mistake. It took him but a moment, however, to
feel it hadn't been, much as it had been a surprise. After the
first little shock of it her knowledge on the contrary began, even
if rather strangely, to taste sweet to him. She was the only other
person in the world then who would have it, and she had had it all
these years, while the fact of his having so breathed his secret
had unaccountably faded from him. No wonder they couldn't have met
as if nothing had happened. "I judge," he finally said, "that I
know what you mean. Only I had strangely enough lost any sense of
having taken you so far into my confidence."
"Is it because you've taken so many others as well?"
"I've taken nobody. Not a creature since then."
"So that I'm the only person who knows?"
"The only person in the world."
"Well," she quickly replied, "I myself have never spoken. I've
never, never repeated of you what you told me." She looked at him
so that he perfectly believed her. Their eyes met over it in such
a way that he was without a doubt. "And I never will."
She spoke with an earnestness that, as if almost excessive, put him
at ease about her possible derision. Somehow the whole question
was a new luxury to him--that is from the moment she was in
possession. If she didn't take the sarcastic view she clearly took
the sympathetic, and that was what he had had, in all the long
time, from no one whomsoever. What he felt was that he couldn't at
present have begun to tell her, and yet could profit perhaps
exquisitely by the accident of having done so of old. "Please
don't then. We're just right as it is."
"Oh I am," she laughed, "if you are!" To which she added: "Then
you do still feel in the same way?"
It was impossible he shouldn't take to himself that she was really
interested, though it all kept coining as a perfect surprise. He
had thought of himself so long as abominably alone, and lo he
wasn't alone a bit. He hadn't been, it appeared, for an hour--
since those moments on the Sorrento boat. It was she who had been,
he seemed to see as he looked at her--she who had been made so by
the graceless fact of his lapse of fidelity. To tell her what he
had told her--what had it been but to ask something of her?
something that she had given, in her charity, without his having,
by a remembrance, by a return of the spirit, failing another
encounter, so much as thanked her. What he had asked of her had
been simply at first not to laugh at him. She had beautifully not
done so for ten years, and she was not doing so now. So he had
endless gratitude to make up. Only for that he must see just how
he had figured to her. "What, exactly, was the account I gave--?"
"Of the way you did feel? Well, it was very simple. You said you
had had from your earliest time, as the deepest thing within you,
the sense of being kept for something rare and strange, possibly
prodigious and terrible, that was sooner or later to happen to you,
that you had in your bones the foreboding and the conviction of,
and that would perhaps overwhelm you."
"Do you call that very simple?" John Marcher asked.
She thought a moment. "It was perhaps because I seemed, as you
spoke, to understand it."
"You do understand it?" he eagerly asked.
Again she kept her kind eyes on him. "You still have the belief?"
"Oh!" he exclaimed helplessly. There was too much to say.
"Whatever it's to be," she clearly made out, "it hasn't yet come."
He shook his head in complete surrender now. "It hasn't yet come.
Only, you know, it isn't anything I'm to do, to achieve in the
world, to be distinguished or admired for. I'm not such an ass as
THAT. It would be much better, no doubt, if I were."
"It's to be something you're merely to suffer?"
"Well, say to wait for--to have to meet, to face, to see suddenly
break out in my life; possibly destroying all further
consciousness, possibly annihilating me; possibly, on the other
hand, only altering everything, striking at the root of all my
world and leaving me to the consequences, however they shape
themselves."
She took this in, but the light in her eyes continued for him not
to be that of mockery. "Isn't what you describe perhaps but the
expectation--or at any rate the sense of danger, familiar to so
many people--of falling in love?"
John Marcher thought. "Did you ask me that before?"
"No--I wasn't so free-and-easy then. But it's what strikes me
now."
"Of course," he said after a moment, "it strikes you. Of course it
strikes ME. Of course what's in store for me may be no more than
that. The only thing is," he went on, "that I think if it had been
that I should by this time know."
"Do you mean because you've BEEN in love?" And then as he but
looked at her in silence: "You've been in love, and it hasn't
meant such a cataclysm, hasn't proved the great affair?"
"Here I am, you see. It hasn't been overwhelming."
"Then it hasn't been love," said May Bartram.
"Well, I at least thought it was. I took it for that--I've taken
it till now. It was agreeable, it was delightful, it was
miserable," he explained. "But it wasn't strange. It wasn't what
my affair's to be."
"You want something all to yourself--something that nobody else
knows or HAS known?"
"It isn't a question of what I 'want'--God knows I don't want
anything. It's only a question of the apprehension that haunts me-
-that I live with day by day."
He said this so lucidly and consistently that he could see it
further impose itself. If she hadn't been interested before she'd
have been interested now.
"Is it a sense of coming violence?"
Evidently now too again he liked to talk of it. "I don't think of
it as--when it does come--necessarily violent. I only think of it
as natural and as of course above all unmistakeable. I think of it
simply as THE thing. THE thing will of itself appear natural."
"Then how will it appear strange?"
Marcher bethought himself. "It won't--to ME."
"To whom then?"
"Well," he replied, smiling at last, "say to you."
"Oh then I'm to be present?"
"Why you are present--since you know."
"I see." She turned it over. "But I mean at the catastrophe."
At this, for a minute, their lightness gave way to their gravity;
it was as if the long look they exchanged held them together. "It
will only depend on yourself--if you'll watch with me."
"Are you afraid?" she asked.
"Don't leave me now," he went on.
"Are you afraid?" she repeated.
"Do you think me simply out of my mind?" he pursued instead of
answering. "Do I merely strike you as a harmless lunatic?"
"No," said May Bartram. "I understand you. I believe you."
"You mean you feel how my obsession--poor old thing--may correspond
to some possible reality?"
"To some possible reality."
"Then you WILL watch with me?"
She hesitated, then for the third time put her question. "Are you
afraid?"
"Did I tell you I was--at Naples?"
"No, you said nothing about it."
"Then I don't know. And I should like to know," said John Marcher.
"You'll tell me yourself whether you think so. If you'll watch
with me you'll see."
"Very good then." They had been moving by this time across the
room, and at the door, before passing out, they paused as for the
full wind-up of their understanding. "I'll watch with you," said
May Bartram.
CHAPTER II
The fact that she "knew"--knew and yet neither chaffed him nor
betrayed him--had in a short time begun to constitute between them
a goodly bond, which became more marked when, within the year that
followed their afternoon at Weatherend, the opportunities for
meeting multiplied. The event that thus promoted these occasions
was the death of the ancient lady her great-aunt, under whose wing,
since losing her mother, she had to such an extent found shelter,
and who, though but the widowed mother of the new successor to the
property, had succeeded--thanks to a high tone and a high temper--
in not forfeiting the supreme position at the great house. The
deposition of this personage arrived but with her death, which,
followed by many changes, made in particular a difference for the
young woman in whom Marcher's expert attention had recognised from
the first a dependent with a pride that might ache though it didn't
bristle. Nothing for a long time had made him easier than the
thought that the aching must have been much soothed by Miss
Bartram's now finding herself able to set up a small home in
London. She had acquired property, to an amount that made that
luxury just possible, under her aunt's extremelycomplicated will,
and when the whole matter began to be straightened out, which
indeed took time, she let him know that the happy issue was at last
in view. He had seen her again before that day, both because she
had more than once accompanied the ancient lady to town and because
he had paid another visit to the friends who so conveniently made
of Weatherend one of the charms of their own hospitality. These
friends had taken him back there; he had achieved there again with
Mss Bartram some quiet detachment; and he had in London succeeded
in persuading her to more than one brief absence from her aunt.
They went together, on these latter occasions, to the National
Gallery and the South Kensington Museum, where, among vivid
reminders, they talked of Italy at large--not now attempting to
recover, as at first, the taste of their youth and their ignorance.
That recovery, the first day at Weatherend, had served its purpose
well, had given them quite enough; so that they were, to Marcher's
sense, no longer hovering about the head-waters of their stream,
but had felt their boat pushed sharply off and down the current.
They were literallyafloat together; for our gentleman this was
marked, quite as marked as that the fortunate cause of it was just
the buried treasure of her knowledge. He had with his own hands
dug up this little hoard, brought to light--that is to within reach
of the dim day constituted by their discretions and privacies--the
object of value the hiding-place of which he had, after putting it
into the ground himself, so strangely, so long forgotten. The rare
luck of his having again just stumbled on the spot made him
the moment you have something in your mind--not know anything."
Still, however, she hesitated. "But if you've completely ceased to
be that sort--?"
"Why I can then all the more bear to know. Besides, perhaps I
haven't."
"Perhaps. Yet if you haven't," she added, "I should suppose you'd
remember. Not indeed that I in the least connect with my
impression the invidious name you use. If I had only thought you
foolish," she explained, "the thing I speak of wouldn't so have
remained with me. It was about yourself." She waited as if it
might come to him; but as, only meeting her eyes in wonder, he gave
no sign, she burnt her ships. "Has it ever happened?"
Then it was that, while he continued to stare, a light broke for
him and the blood slowly came to his face, which began to burn with
recognition.
"Do you mean I told you--?" But he faltered, lest what came to him
shouldn't be right, lest he should only give himself away.
"It was something about yourself that it was natural one shouldn't
forget--that is if one remembered you at all. That's why I ask
you," she smiled, "if the thing you then spoke of has ever come to
pass?"
Oh then he saw, but he was lost in wonder and found himself
embarrassed. This, he also saw, made her sorry for him, as if her
allusion had been a mistake. It took him but a moment, however, to
feel it hadn't been, much as it had been a surprise. After the
first little shock of it her knowledge on the contrary began, even
if rather strangely, to taste sweet to him. She was the only other
person in the world then who would have it, and she had had it all
these years, while the fact of his having so breathed his secret
had unaccountably faded from him. No wonder they couldn't have met
as if nothing had happened. "I judge," he finally said, "that I
know what you mean. Only I had strangely enough lost any sense of
having taken you so far into my confidence."
"Is it because you've taken so many others as well?"
"I've taken nobody. Not a creature since then."
"So that I'm the only person who knows?"
"The only person in the world."
"Well," she quickly replied, "I myself have never spoken. I've
never, never repeated of you what you told me." She looked at him
so that he perfectly believed her. Their eyes met over it in such
a way that he was without a doubt. "And I never will."
She spoke with an earnestness that, as if almost excessive, put him
at ease about her possible derision. Somehow the whole question
was a new luxury to him--that is from the moment she was in
possession. If she didn't take the sarcastic view she clearly took
the sympathetic, and that was what he had had, in all the long
time, from no one whomsoever. What he felt was that he couldn't at
present have begun to tell her, and yet could profit perhaps
exquisitely by the accident of having done so of old. "Please
don't then. We're just right as it is."
"Oh I am," she laughed, "if you are!" To which she added: "Then
you do still feel in the same way?"
It was impossible he shouldn't take to himself that she was really
interested, though it all kept coining as a perfect surprise. He
had thought of himself so long as abominably alone, and lo he
wasn't alone a bit. He hadn't been, it appeared, for an hour--
since those moments on the Sorrento boat. It was she who had been,
he seemed to see as he looked at her--she who had been made so by
the graceless fact of his lapse of fidelity. To tell her what he
had told her--what had it been but to ask something of her?
something that she had given, in her charity, without his having,
by a remembrance, by a return of the spirit, failing another
encounter, so much as thanked her. What he had asked of her had
been simply at first not to laugh at him. She had beautifully not
done so for ten years, and she was not doing so now. So he had
endless gratitude to make up. Only for that he must see just how
he had figured to her. "What, exactly, was the account I gave--?"
"Of the way you did feel? Well, it was very simple. You said you
had had from your earliest time, as the deepest thing within you,
the sense of being kept for something rare and strange, possibly
prodigious and terrible, that was sooner or later to happen to you,
that you had in your bones the foreboding and the conviction of,
and that would perhaps overwhelm you."
"Do you call that very simple?" John Marcher asked.
She thought a moment. "It was perhaps because I seemed, as you
spoke, to understand it."
"You do understand it?" he eagerly asked.
Again she kept her kind eyes on him. "You still have the belief?"
"Oh!" he exclaimed helplessly. There was too much to say.
"Whatever it's to be," she clearly made out, "it hasn't yet come."
He shook his head in complete surrender now. "It hasn't yet come.
Only, you know, it isn't anything I'm to do, to achieve in the
world, to be distinguished or admired for. I'm not such an ass as
THAT. It would be much better, no doubt, if I were."
"It's to be something you're merely to suffer?"
"Well, say to wait for--to have to meet, to face, to see suddenly
break out in my life; possibly destroying all further
consciousness, possibly annihilating me; possibly, on the other
hand, only altering everything, striking at the root of all my
world and leaving me to the consequences, however they shape
themselves."
She took this in, but the light in her eyes continued for him not
to be that of mockery. "Isn't what you describe perhaps but the
expectation--or at any rate the sense of danger, familiar to so
many people--of falling in love?"
John Marcher thought. "Did you ask me that before?"
"No--I wasn't so free-and-easy then. But it's what strikes me
now."
"Of course," he said after a moment, "it strikes you. Of course it
strikes ME. Of course what's in store for me may be no more than
that. The only thing is," he went on, "that I think if it had been
that I should by this time know."
"Do you mean because you've BEEN in love?" And then as he but
looked at her in silence: "You've been in love, and it hasn't
meant such a cataclysm, hasn't proved the great affair?"
"Here I am, you see. It hasn't been overwhelming."
"Then it hasn't been love," said May Bartram.
"Well, I at least thought it was. I took it for that--I've taken
it till now. It was agreeable, it was delightful, it was
miserable," he explained. "But it wasn't strange. It wasn't what
my affair's to be."
"You want something all to yourself--something that nobody else
knows or HAS known?"
"It isn't a question of what I 'want'--God knows I don't want
anything. It's only a question of the apprehension that haunts me-
-that I live with day by day."
He said this so lucidly and consistently that he could see it
further impose itself. If she hadn't been interested before she'd
have been interested now.
"Is it a sense of coming violence?"
Evidently now too again he liked to talk of it. "I don't think of
it as--when it does come--necessarily violent. I only think of it
as natural and as of course above all unmistakeable. I think of it
simply as THE thing. THE thing will of itself appear natural."
"Then how will it appear strange?"
Marcher bethought himself. "It won't--to ME."
"To whom then?"
"Well," he replied, smiling at last, "say to you."
"Oh then I'm to be present?"
"Why you are present--since you know."
"I see." She turned it over. "But I mean at the catastrophe."
At this, for a minute, their lightness gave way to their gravity;
it was as if the long look they exchanged held them together. "It
will only depend on yourself--if you'll watch with me."
"Are you afraid?" she asked.
"Don't leave me now," he went on.
"Are you afraid?" she repeated.
"Do you think me simply out of my mind?" he pursued instead of
answering. "Do I merely strike you as a harmless lunatic?"
"No," said May Bartram. "I understand you. I believe you."
"You mean you feel how my obsession--poor old thing--may correspond
to some possible reality?"
"To some possible reality."
"Then you WILL watch with me?"
She hesitated, then for the third time put her question. "Are you
afraid?"
"Did I tell you I was--at Naples?"
"No, you said nothing about it."
"Then I don't know. And I should like to know," said John Marcher.
"You'll tell me yourself whether you think so. If you'll watch
with me you'll see."
"Very good then." They had been moving by this time across the
room, and at the door, before passing out, they paused as for the
full wind-up of their understanding. "I'll watch with you," said
May Bartram.
CHAPTER II
The fact that she "knew"--knew and yet neither chaffed him nor
betrayed him--had in a short time begun to constitute between them
a goodly bond, which became more marked when, within the year that
followed their afternoon at Weatherend, the opportunities for
meeting multiplied. The event that thus promoted these occasions
was the death of the ancient lady her great-aunt, under whose wing,
since losing her mother, she had to such an extent found shelter,
and who, though but the widowed mother of the new successor to the
property, had succeeded--thanks to a high tone and a high temper--
in not forfeiting the supreme position at the great house. The
deposition of this personage arrived but with her death, which,
followed by many changes, made in particular a difference for the
young woman in whom Marcher's expert attention had recognised from
the first a dependent with a pride that might ache though it didn't
bristle. Nothing for a long time had made him easier than the
thought that the aching must have been much soothed by Miss
Bartram's now finding herself able to set up a small home in
London. She had acquired property, to an amount that made that
luxury just possible, under her aunt's extremelycomplicated will,
and when the whole matter began to be straightened out, which
indeed took time, she let him know that the happy issue was at last
in view. He had seen her again before that day, both because she
had more than once accompanied the ancient lady to town and because
he had paid another visit to the friends who so conveniently made
of Weatherend one of the charms of their own hospitality. These
friends had taken him back there; he had achieved there again with
Mss Bartram some quiet detachment; and he had in London succeeded
in persuading her to more than one brief absence from her aunt.
They went together, on these latter occasions, to the National
Gallery and the South Kensington Museum, where, among vivid
reminders, they talked of Italy at large--not now attempting to
recover, as at first, the taste of their youth and their ignorance.
That recovery, the first day at Weatherend, had served its purpose
well, had given them quite enough; so that they were, to Marcher's
sense, no longer hovering about the head-waters of their stream,
but had felt their boat pushed sharply off and down the current.
They were literallyafloat together; for our gentleman this was
marked, quite as marked as that the fortunate cause of it was just
the buried treasure of her knowledge. He had with his own hands
dug up this little hoard, brought to light--that is to within reach
of the dim day constituted by their discretions and privacies--the
object of value the hiding-place of which he had, after putting it
into the ground himself, so strangely, so long forgotten. The rare
luck of his having again just stumbled on the spot made him
- contrary [´kɔntrəri]
a.相反的 n.相反 (初中英语单词) - strangely [´streindʒli] ad.奇怪地；陌生地 (初中英语单词)
- spoken [´spəukən] speak的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
- luxury [´lʌkʃəri] n.奢侈(品)；享受 (初中英语单词)
- sympathetic [,simpə´θetik] a.同情的，有同情心的 (初中英语单词)
- gratitude [´grætitju:d] n.感激，感谢 (初中英语单词)
- account [ə´kaunt] vi.说明 vt.认为 n.帐目 (初中英语单词)
- conviction [kən´vikʃən] n.定罪；确信，信服 (初中英语单词)
- eagerly [´i:gəli] ad.渴望地，急切地 (初中英语单词)
- surrender [sə´rendə] vt.&n.交出；引渡；放弃 (初中英语单词)
- achieve [ə´tʃi:v] vt.完成；达到；获得 (初中英语单词)
- striking [´straikiŋ] a.显著的，明显的 (初中英语单词)
- agreeable [ə´gri:əbəl] a.适合的；符合的 (初中英语单词)
- delightful [di´laitful] a.讨人喜欢的 (初中英语单词)
- impose [im´pəuz] v.课税；强加；利用 (初中英语单词)
- violent [´vaiələnt] a.强暴的；猛烈的 (初中英语单词)
- constitute [´kɔnstitju:t] vt.组成；构成；指定 (初中英语单词)
- extent [ik´stent] n.长度；程度；范围 (初中英语单词)
- supreme [su:´pri:m, sju:-] a.最高的，无上的 (初中英语单词)
- expert [´ekspə:t] n.&a.专家；内行 (初中英语单词)
- amount [ə´maunt] n.总数；数量 v.合计 (初中英语单词)
- extremely [ik´stri:mli] ad.极端地；非常地 (初中英语单词)
- complicated [´kɔmplikeitid] a.结构复杂的；难懂的 (初中英语单词)
- absence [´æbsəns] n.不在，缺席；缺乏 (初中英语单词)
- sharply [´ʃɑ:pli] ad.锋利地；剧烈地 (初中英语单词)
- fortunate [´fɔ:tʃənət] a.幸运的，侥幸的 (初中英语单词)
- repeated [ri´pi:tid] a.反复的；重复的 (高中英语单词)
- perfectly [´pə:fiktli] ad.理想地；完美地 (高中英语单词)
- excessive [ik´sesiv] a.过分的；极端的 (高中英语单词)
- charity [´tʃæriti] n.施舍；慈悲；博爱 (高中英语单词)
- remembrance [ri´membrəns] n.记忆(力)；回忆 (高中英语单词)
- overwhelm [,əuvə´welm] vt.压倒；淹没；打翻 (高中英语单词)
- distinguished [di´stiŋgwiʃt] a.卓越的，著名的 (高中英语单词)
- apprehension [,æpri´henʃən] n.理解；忧虑；逮捕 (高中英语单词)
- harmless [´hɑ:mləs] a.无害的，无恶意的 (高中英语单词)
- goodly [´gudli] a.适意的；漂亮的 (高中英语单词)
- successor [sək´sesə] n.继承人，接班人 (高中英语单词)
- dependent [di´pendənt] a.依赖的；从属的 (高中英语单词)
- finding [´faindiŋ] n.发现物；判断；结果 (高中英语单词)
- hospitality [,hɔspi´tæliti] n.好客，殷勤 (高中英语单词)
- recovery [ri´kʌvəri] n.重获；获得；恢复 (高中英语单词)
- literally [´litərəli] ad.逐字地；实际上 (高中英语单词)
- fidelity [fi´deliti] n.忠实；精确；保真度 (英语四级单词)
- beautifully [´bju:tifəli] ad.美丽地；优美地 (英语四级单词)
- personage [´pə:sənidʒ] n.名流；人物，角色 (英语四级单词)
- conveniently [kən´vi:njəntli] ad.方便地；合宜地 (英语四级单词)
- detachment [di´tætʃmənt] n.分开(离)；分遣队 (英语四级单词)
- afloat [ə´fləut] ad.&a.漂浮；在海上 (英语四级单词)
- earnestness [´ə:nistnis] n.认真，急切；坚定 (英语六级单词)
- derision [di´riʒən] n.嘲笑，嘲弄 (英语六级单词)
- helplessly [´helplisli] ad.无能为力地 (英语六级单词)
- mockery [´mɔkəri] n.嘲笑；笑柄 (英语六级单词)
- consistently [kən´sistəntli] ad.一致地；始终如一地 (英语六级单词)
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