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Tales of Unrest-Part24_JOSEPH CONRAD (1857-1924)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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her husband faced her again, with his hand on the door-handle, she

asked herself whether he was unpardonably stupid, or simply ignoble.



She said nervously, and very fast:

"You are deceiving yourself. You never loved me. You wanted a



wife--some woman--any woman that would think, speak, and behave in a

certain way--in a way you approved. You loved yourself."



"You won't believe me?" he asked, slowly.

"If I had believed you loved me," she began, passionately, then drew



in a long breath; and during that pause he heard the steady beat of

blood in his ears. "If I had believed it . . . I would never have come



back," she finished, recklessly.

He stood looking down as though he had not heard. She waited. After a



moment he opened the door, and, on the landing, the sightless woman of

marble appeared, draped to the chin, thrusting blindly at them a



cluster of lights.

He seemed to have forgotten himself in a meditation so deep that on



the point of going out she stopped to look at him in surprise. While

she had been speaking he had wandered on the track of the enigma, out



of the world of senses into the region of feeling. What did it matter

what she had done, what she had said, if through the pain of her acts



and words he had obtained the word of the enigma! There can be no life

without faith and love--faith in a human heart, love of a human being!



That touch of grace, whose help once in life is the privilege of the

most undeserving, flung open for him the portals of beyond, and in



contemplating there the certitude immaterial and precious he forgot

all the meaningless accidents of existence: the bliss of getting, the



delight of enjoying; all the protean and enticing forms of the

cupidity that rules a material world of foolish joys, of contemptible



sorrows. Faith!--Love!--the undoubting, clear faith in the truth of a

soul--the great tenderness, deep as the ocean, serene and eternal,



like the infinite peace of space above the short tempests of the

earth. It was what he had wanted all his life--but he understood it



only then for the first time. It was through the pain of losing her

that the knowledge had come. She had the gift! She had the gift! And



in all the world she was the only human being that could surrender it

to his immense desire. He made a step forward, putting his arms out,



as if to take her to his breast, and, lifting his head, was met by

such a look of blank consternation that his arms fell as though they



had been struck down by a blow. She started away from him, stumbled

over the threshold, and once on the landing turned, swift and



crouching. The train of her gown swished as it flew round her feet. It

was an undisguised panic. She panted, showing her teeth, and the



hate of strength, the disdain of weakness, the eternal preoccupation

of sex came out like a toy demon out of a box.



"This is odious," she screamed.

He did not stir; but her look, her agitated movements, the sound of



her voice were like a mist of facts thickening between him and the

vision of love and faith. It vanished; and looking at that face



triumphant and scornful, at that white face, stealthy and unexpected,

as if discovered staring from an ambush, he was coming back slowly to



the world of senses. His first clear thought was: I am married to that

woman; and the next: she will give nothing but what I see. He felt the



need not to see. But the memory of the vision, the memory that abides

forever within the seer made him say to her with the naive austerity



of a convert awed by the touch of a new creed, "You haven't the gift."

He turned his back on her, leaving her completely mystified. And she



went upstairs slowly, struggling with a distastefulsuspicion of

having been confronted by something more subtle than herself--more



profound than the misunderstood and tragiccontest of her feelings.

He shut the door of the drawing-room and moved at hazard, alone



amongst the heavy shadows and in the fiery twilight as of an elegant

place of perdition. She hadn't the gift--no one had. . . . He stepped



on a book that had fallen off one of the crowded little tables. He




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