For a few moments she stood in the middle of the floor, looking slowly about her. Nothing had ever been changed in the room which, even as a bride, she had planned to modernize2. All her dreams of renovation3 had faded long ago. Some deep central indifference4 had gradually made her regard herself as a third person, living the life meant for another woman, a woman totally unrelated to the vivid Delia Lovell who had entered that house so full of plans and visions. The fault, she knew, was not her husband’s. With a little managing and a little wheedling5 she would have gained every point as easily as she had gained the capital one of taking the foundling baby under her wing. The difficulty was that, after that victory, nothing else seemed worth trying for. The first sight of little Tina had somehow decentralized Delia Ralston’s whole life, making her indifferent to everything else, except indeed the welfare of her own husband and children. Ahead of her she saw only a future full of duties, and these she had gaily6 and faithfully accomplished7. But her own life was over: she felt as detached as a cloistered8 nun9.
The change in her was too deep not to be visible. The Ralstons openly gloried in dear Delia’s conformity10. Each acquiescence11 passed for a concession12, and the family doctrine13 was fortified14 by such fresh proofs of its durability15. Now, as Delia glanced about her at the Leopold Robert lithographs16, the family daguerreotypes, the rosewood and mahogany, she understood that she was looking at the walls of her own grave.
The change had come on the day when Charlotte Lovell, cowering17 on that very lounge, had made her terrible avowal18. Then for the first time Delia, with a kind of fearful exaltation, had heard the blind forces of life groping and crying underfoot. But on that day also she had known herself excluded from them, doomed20 to dwell among shadows. Life had passed her by, and left her with the Ralstons.
Very well, then! She would make the best of herself, and of the Ralstons. The vow19 was immediate21 and unflinching; and for nearly twenty years she had gone on observing it. Once only had she been not a Ralston but herself; once only had it seemed worth while. And now perhaps the same challenge had sounded again; again for a moment, it might be worth while to live. Not for the sake of Clement22 Spender — poor Clement, married years ago to a plain determined23 cousin, who had hunted him down in Rome, and enclosing him in an unrelenting domesticity, had obliged all New York on the grand tour to buy his pictures with a resigned grimace24. No, not for Clement Spender, hardly for Charlotte or even for Tina; but for her own sake, hers, Delia Ralston’s, for the sake of her one missed vision, her forfeited25 reality, she would once more break down the Ralston barriers and reach out into the world.
A faint sound through the silent house disturbed her meditation26. Listening, she heard Charlotte Lovell’s door open and her stiff petticoats rustle27 toward the landing. A light glanced under the door and vanished; Charlotte had passed Delia’s threshold on her way downstairs.
Without moving, Delia continued to listen. Perhaps the careful Charlotte had gone down to make sure that the front door was not bolted, or that she had really covered up the fire. If that were her object, her step would presently be heard returning. But no step sounded; and it became gradually evident that Charlotte had gone down to wait for her daughter. Why?
Delia’s bedroom was at the front of the house. She stole across the heavy carpet, drew aside the curtains and cautiously folded back the inner shutters28. Below her lay the empty square, white with moonlight, its tree-trunks patterned on a fresh sprinkling of snow. The houses opposite slept in darkness; not a footfall broke the white surface, not a wheel-track marred29 the brilliant street. Overhead a heaven full of stars swam in the moonlight.
Of the households around Gramercy Park Delia knew that only two others had gone to the ball: the Petrus Vandergraves and their cousins the young Parmly Ralstons. The Lucius Lannings had just entered on their three years of mourning for Mrs. Lucius’s mother (it was hard on their daughter Kate, just eighteen, who would be unable to “come out” till she was twenty-one); young Mrs. Marcy Mingott was “expecting her third,” and consequently secluded30 from the public eye for nearly a year; and the other denizens31 of the square belonged to the undifferentiated and uninvited.
Delia pressed her forehead against the pane32. Before long carriages would turn the corner, the sleeping square ring with hoof-beats, fresh laughter and young farewells mount from the door-steps. But why was Charlotte waiting for her daughter downstairs in the darkness?
The Parisian clock struck one. Delia came back into the room, raked the fire, picked up a shawl, and, wrapped in it, returned to her vigil. Ah, how old she must have grown, that she should feel the cold at such a moment! It reminded her of what the future held for her: neuralgia, rheumatism33, stiffness, accumulating infirmities. And never had she kept a moonlight watch with a lover’s arms to warm her . . .
The square still lay silent. Yet the ball must surely be ending: the gayest dances did not last long after one in the morning, and the drive from University Place to Gramercy Park was a short one. Delia leaned in the embrasure and listened.
Hoof-beats, muffled34 by the snow, sounded in Irving Place, and the Petrus Vandergraves’ family coach drew up before the opposite house. The Vandergrave girls and their brother sprang out and mounted the steps; then the coach stopped again a few doors farther on, and the Parmly Ralstons, brought home by their cousins, descended35 at their own door. The next carriage that rounded the corner must therefore be the John Juniuses’, bringing Tina.
The gilt36 clock struck half-past one. Delia wondered, knowing that young Delia, out of regard for John Junius’s business hours, never stayed late at evening parties. Doubtless Tina had delayed her; Mrs. Ralston felt a little annoyed with Tina’s thoughtlessness in keeping her cousin up. But the feeling was swept away by an immediate wave of sympathy. “We must go away somewhere, and lead plain lives among plain people.” If Charlotte had carried out her threat — and Delia knew she would hardly have spoken unless her resolve had been taken — it might be that at that very moment poor Tina was dancing her last valse.
Another quarter of an hour passed; then, just as the cold was finding a way through Delia’s shawl, she saw two people turn into the deserted37 square from Irving Place. One was a young man in opera hat and ample cloak. To his arm clung a figure so closely wrapped and muffled that, until the corner light fell on it, Delia hesitated. After that, she wondered that she had not at once recognized Tina’s dancing step, and her manner of tilting38 her head a little sideways to look up at the person she was talking to.
Tina — Tina and Lanning Halsey, walking home alone in the small hours from the Vandergrave ball! Delia’s first thought was of an accident: the carriage might have broken down, or else her daughter been taken ill and obliged to return home. But no; in the latter case she would have sent the carriage on with Tina. And if there had been an accident of any sort the young people would have been hastening to apprise39 Mrs. Ralston; instead of which, through the bitter brilliant night, they sauntered like lovers in a midsummer glade40, and Tina’s thin slippers41 might have been falling on daisies instead of snow.
Delia began to tremble like a girl. In a flash she had the answer to a question which had long been the subject of her secret conjectures42. How did lovers like Charlotte and Clement Spender contrive43 to met? What Latmian solitude44 hid their clandestine45 joys? In the expose compact little society to which they all belonged, how was it possible — literally46 — for such encounters to take place? Delia would never have dared to put the question to Charlotte; there were moments when she almost preferred not to know, not even hazard a guess. But now, at a glance, she understood. How often Charlotte Lovell, staying alone in town with her infirm grandmother, must have walked home from evening parties with Clement Spender, how often have let herself and him into the darkened house in Mercer Street, where there was no one to spy upon their coming but a deaf old lady and her aged47 servants, all securely sleeping overhead! Delia, at the thought, saw the grim drawing-room which had been their moonlit forest, the drawing-room into which old Mrs. Lovell no longer descended, with its swathed chandelier and hard Empire sofas, and the eyeless marble caryatids of the mantel; she pictured the shaft48 of moonlight falling across the swans and garlands of the faded carpet, and in that icy light two young figures in each other’s arms.
Yes: it must have been some such memory that had roused Charlotte’s suspicions, excited her fears, sent her down in the darkness to confront the culprits. Delia shivered at the irony49 of the confrontation50. If Tina had but known! But to Tina, of course, Charlotte was still what she had long since resolved to be: the image of prudish51 spinsterhood. And Delia could imagine how quietly and decently the scene below stairs would presently be enacted52: no astonishment53, no reproaches, no insinuations, but a smiling and resolute54 ignoring of excuses.
“What, Tina? You walked home with Lanning? You imprudent child — in this wet snow! Ah, I see: Delia was worried about the baby, and ran off early, promising55 to send back the carriage — and it never came? Well, my dear, I congratulate you on finding Lanning to see you home . . . Yes — I sat up because I couldn’t for the life of me remember whether you’d taken the latch-key — was there ever such a flighty old aunt? But don’t tell your Mamma, dear, or she’d scold me for being so forgetful, and for staying downstairs in the cold . . . You’re quite sure you have the key? Ah, Lanning has it? Thank you, Lanning; so kind! Goodnight — or one really ought to say, good morning.”
As Delia reached this point in her mute representation of Charlotte’s monologue56 the front door slammed below, and young Lanning Halsey walked slowly away across the square. Delia saw him pause on the opposite pavement, look up at the house-front, and then turn lingeringly away. His dismissal had taken exactly as long as Delia had calculated it would. A moment later she saw a passing light under her door, heard the starched57 rustle of Charlotte’s petticoats, and knew that mother and daughter had reached their rooms.
Slowly, with stiff motions, she began to undress, blew out her candles, and knelt by her bedside, her face hidden.
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1
hearth
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| n.壁炉炉床，壁炉地面 | |
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modernize
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| vt.使现代化，使适应现代的需要 | |
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renovation
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| n.革新，整修 | |
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indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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wheedling
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| v.骗取（某物），哄骗（某人干某事）( wheedle的现在分词 ) | |
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gaily
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| adv.欢乐地，高兴地 | |
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accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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cloistered
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| adj.隐居的，躲开尘世纷争的v.隐退，使与世隔绝( cloister的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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nun
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| n.修女，尼姑 | |
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conformity
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| n.一致，遵从，顺从 | |
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acquiescence
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| n.默许；顺从 | |
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concession
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| n.让步，妥协；特许(权) | |
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doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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fortified
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| adj. 加强的 | |
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durability
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| n.经久性，耐用性 | |
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lithographs
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| n.平版印刷品( lithograph的名词复数 ) | |
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cowering
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| v.畏缩，抖缩( cower的现在分词 ) | |
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avowal
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| n.公开宣称，坦白承认 | |
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vow
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| n.誓(言)，誓约；v.起誓，立誓 | |
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doomed
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| 命定的 | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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clement
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| adj.仁慈的；温和的 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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grimace
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| v.做鬼脸，面部歪扭 | |
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forfeited
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| （因违反协议、犯规、受罚等）丧失，失去( forfeit的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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meditation
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| n.熟虑，（尤指宗教的）默想，沉思，（pl.）冥想录 | |
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rustle
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| v.沙沙作响；偷盗(牛、马等)；n.沙沙声声 | |
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shutters
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| 百叶窗( shutter的名词复数 )； （照相机的）快门 | |
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marred
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| adj. 被损毁, 污损的 | |
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secluded
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| adj.与世隔绝的；隐退的；偏僻的v.使隔开，使隐退( seclude的过去式和过去分词) | |
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denizens
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| n.居民，住户( denizen的名词复数 ) | |
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pane
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| n.窗格玻璃，长方块 | |
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rheumatism
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| n.风湿病 | |
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34
muffled
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| adj.（声音）被隔的；听不太清的；（衣服）裹严的；蒙住的v.压抑，捂住( muffle的过去式和过去分词 )；用厚厚的衣帽包着（自己） | |
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descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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gilt
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| adj.镀金的；n.金边证券 | |
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deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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tilting
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| 倾斜，倾卸 | |
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apprise
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| vt.通知，告知 | |
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glade
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| n.林间空地，一片表面有草的沼泽低地 | |
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41
slippers
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| n. 拖鞋 | |
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conjectures
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| 推测，猜想( conjecture的名词复数 ) | |
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contrive
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| vt.谋划，策划；设法做到；设计，想出 | |
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solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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clandestine
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| adj.秘密的，暗中从事的 | |
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literally
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| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
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47
aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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48
shaft
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| n.(工具的)柄，杆状物 | |
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49
irony
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| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
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50
confrontation
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| n.对抗，对峙，冲突 | |
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51
prudish
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| adj.装淑女样子的，装规矩的，过分规矩的；adv.过分拘谨地 | |
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52
enacted
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| 制定（法律），通过（法案）( enact的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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astonishment
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| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
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54
resolute
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| adj.坚决的，果敢的 | |
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55
promising
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| adj.有希望的，有前途的 | |
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56
monologue
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| n.长篇大论，（戏剧等中的）独白 | |
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starched
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| adj.浆硬的，硬挺的，拘泥刻板的v.把（衣服、床单等）浆一浆( starch的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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