Toward afternoon she remembered that she had promised to dine out and go to the opera. At first she felt that the contact of life would be unendurable; then she shrank from shutting herself up with her misery2. In the end she let herself drift passively on the current of events, going through the mechanical routine of the day without much consciousness of what was happening.
At twilight3, as she sat in the drawing-room, the evening paper was brought in, and in glancing over it her eye fell on a paragraph which seemed printed in more vivid type than the rest. It was headed, The New Museum of Sculpture, and underneath4 she read: “The artists and architects selected to pass on the competitive designs for the new Museum will begin their sittings on Monday, and tomorrow is the last day on which designs may be sent in to the committee. Great interest is felt in the competition, as the conspicuous5 site chosen for the new building, and the exceptionally large sum voted by the city for its erection, offer an unusual field for the display of architectural ability.”
She leaned back, closing her eyes. It was as though a clock had struck, loud and inexorably, marking off some irrecoverable hour. She was seized by a sudden longing6 to seek Dick out, to fall on her knees and plead with him: it was one of those physical obsessions7 against which the body has to stiffen8 its muscles as well as the mind its thoughts. Once she even sprang up to ring for a cab; but she sank back again, breathing as if after a struggle, and gripping the arms of her chair to keep herself down.
“I can only wait for him — only wait for him — ” she heard herself say; and the words loosened the sobs9 in her throat.
At length she went upstairs to dress for dinner. A ghostlike self looked back at her from her toilet-glass: she watched it performing the mechanical gestures of the toilet, dressing10 her, as it appeared, without help from her actual self. Each little act stood out sharply against the blurred11 background of her brain: when she spoke12 to her maid her voice sounded extraordinarily13 loud. Never had the house been so silent; or, stay — yes, once she had felt the same silence, once when Dick, in his school-days, had been ill of a fever, and she had sat up with him on the decisive night. The silence had been as deep and as terrible then; and as she dressed she had before her the vision of his room, of the cot in which he lay, of his restless head working a hole in the pillow, his face so pinched and alien under the familiar freckles14. It might be his death-watch she was keeping: the doctors had warned her to be ready. And in the silence her soul had fought for her boy, her love had hung over him like wings, her abundant useless hateful life had struggled to force itself into his empty veins15. And she had succeeded, she had saved him, she had poured her life into him; and in place of the strange child she had watched all night, at daylight she held her own boy to her breast.
That night had once seemed to her the most dreadful of her life; but she knew now that it was one of the agonies which enrich, that the passion thus spent grows fourfold from its ashes. She could not have borne to keep this new vigil alone. She must escape from its sterile16 misery, must take refuge in other lives till she regained17 courage to face her own. At the opera, in the illumination of the first entr’acte, as she gazed about the house, wondering through the numb18 ache of her wretchedness how others could talk and smile and be indifferent, it seemed to her that all the jarring animation19 about her was suddenly focussed in the face of Clemence Verney. Miss Verney sat opposite, in the front of a crowded box, a box in which, continually, the black-coated background shifted and renewed itself. Mrs. Peyton felt a throb20 of anger at the girl’s bright air of unconcern. She forgot that she too was talking, smiling, holding out her hand to newcomers, in a studied mimicry21 of life, while her real self played out its tragedy behind the scenes. Then it occurred to her that, to Clemence Verney, there was no tragedy in the situation. According to the girl’s calculations, Dick was virtually certain of success; and unsuccess was to her the only conceivable disaster.
All through the opera the sense of that opposing force, that negation22 of her own beliefs, burned itself into Mrs. Peyton’s consciousness. The space between herself and the girl seemed to vanish, the throng24 about them to disperse25, till they were face to face and alone, enclosed in their mortal enmity. At length the feeling of humiliation26 and defeat grew unbearable27 to Mrs. Peyton. The girl seemed to flout28 her in the insolence29 of victory, to sit there as the visible symbol of her failure. It was better after all to be at home alone with her thoughts.
As she drove away from the opera she thought of that other vigil which, only a few streets away, Dick was perhaps still keeping. She wondered if his work were over, if the final stroke had been drawn30. And as she pictured him there, signing his pact31 with evil in the loneliness of the conniving32 night, an uncontrollable impulse possessed33 her. She must drive by his windows and see if they were still alight. She would not go up to him, — she dared not, — but at least she would pass near to him, would invisibly share his watch and hover34 on the edge of his thoughts. She lowered the window and called out the address to the coachman.
The tall office-building loomed35 silent and dark as she approached it; but presently, high up, she caught a light in the familiar windows. Her heart gave a leap, and the light swam on her through tears. The carriage drew up, and for a moment she sat motionless. Then the coachman bent36 down toward her, and she saw that he was asking if he should drive on. She tried to shape a yes, but her lips refused it, and she shook her head. He continued to lean down perplexedly, and at length, under the interrogation of his attitude, it became impossible to sit still, and she opened the door and stepped out. It was equally impossible to stand on the sidewalk, and her next steps carried her to the door of the building. She groped for the bell and rang it, feeling still dimly accountable to the coachman for some consecutiveness37 of action, and after a moment the night watchman opened the door, drawing back amazed at the shining apparition38 which confronted him. Recognizing Mrs. Peyton, whom he had seen about the building by day, he tried to adapt himself to the situation by a vague stammer39 of apology.
“I came to see if my son is still here,” she faltered40.
“Yes, ma’am, he’s here. He’s been here most nights lately till after twelve.”
“And is Mr. Gill with him?”
“No: Mr. Gill he went away just after I come on this evening.”
She glanced up into the cavernous darkness of the stairs.
“Is he alone up there, do you think?”
“Yes, ma’am, I know he’s alone, because I seen his men leaving soon after Mr. Gill.”
Kate lifted her head quickly. “Then I will go up to him,” she said.
The watchman apparently41 did not think it proper to offer any comment on this unusual proceeding42, and a moment later she was fluttering and rustling43 up through the darkness, like a night-bird hovering44 among rafters. There were ten flights to climb: at every one her breath failed her, and she had to stand still and press her hands against her heart. Then the weight on her breast lifted, and she went on again, upward and upward, the great dark building dropping away from her, in tier after tier of mute doors and mysterious corridors. At last she reached Dick’s floor, and saw the light shining down the passage from his door. She leaned against the wall, her breath coming short, the silence throbbing45 in her ears. Even now it was not too late to turn back. She bent over the stairs, letting her eyes plunge46 into the nether47 blackness, with the single glimmer48 of the watchman’s lights in its depths; then she turned and stole toward her son’s door.
There again she paused and listened, trying to catch, through the hum of her pulses, any noise that might come to her from within. But the silence was unbroken — it seemed as though the office must be empty. She pressed her ear to the door, straining for a sound. She knew he never sat long at his work, and it seemed unaccountable that she should not hear him moving about the drawing-board. For a moment she fancied he might be sleeping; but sleep did not come to him readily after prolonged mental effort — she recalled the restless straying of his feet above her head for hours after he returned from his night work in the office.
She began to fear that he might be ill. A nervous trembling seized her, and she laid her hand on the latch49, whispering “Dick!”
Her whisper sounded loudly through the silence, but there was no answer, and after a pause she called again. With each call the hush50 seemed to deepen: it closed in on her, mysterious and impenetrable. Her heart was beating in short frightened leaps: a moment more and she would have cried out. She drew a quick breath and turned the door-handle.
The outer room, Dick’s private office, with its red carpet and easy-chairs, stood in pleasant lamp-lit emptiness. The last time she had entered it, Darrow and Clemence Verney had been there, and she had sat behind the urn23 observing them. She paused a moment, struck now by a fault sound from beyond; then she slipped noiselessly across the carpet, pushed open the swinging door, and stood on the threshold of the work-room. Here the gas-lights hung a green-shaded circle of brightness over the great draughting-table in the middle of the floor. Table and floor were strewn with a confusion of papers — torn blue-prints and tracings, crumpled51 sheets of tracing-paper wrenched52 from the draughting-boards in a sudden fury of destruction; and in the centre of the havoc53, his arms stretched across the table and his face hidden in them, sat Dick Peyton.
He did not seem to hear his mother’s approach, and she stood looking at him, her breast tightening54 with a new fear.
“Dick!” she said, “Dick! — ” and he sprang up, staring with dazed eyes. But gradually, as his gaze cleared, a light spread in it, a mounting brightness of recognition.
“You’ve come — you’ve come — ” he said, stretching his hands to her; and all at once she had him in her breast as in a shelter.
“You wanted me?” she whispered as she held him.
He looked up at her, tired, breathless, with the white radiance of the runner near the goal.
“I had you, dear!” he said, smiling strangely on her; and her heart gave a great leap of understanding.
Her arms had slipped from his neck, and she stood leaning on him, deep-suffused in the shyness of her discovery. For it might still be that he did not wish her to know what she had done for him.
But he put his arm about her, boyishly, and drew her toward one of the hard seats between the tables; and there, on the bare floor, he knelt before her, and hid his face in her lap. She sat motionless, feeling the dear warmth of his head against her knees, letting her hands stray in faint caresses55 through his hair.
Neither spoke for awhile; then he raised his head and looked at her. “I suppose you know what has been happening to me,” he said.
She shrank from seeming to press into his life a hair’s-breadth farther than he was prepared to have her go. Her eyes turned from him toward the scattered56 drawings on the table.
“You have given up the competition?” she said.
“Yes — and a lot more.” He stood up, the wave of emotion ebbing57, yet leaving him nearer, in his recovered calmness, than in the shock of their first moment.
“I didn’t know, at first, how much you guessed,” he went on quietly. “I was sorry I’d shown you Darrow’s letter; but it didn’t worry me much because I didn’t suppose you’d think it possible that I should — take advantage of it. It’s only lately that I’ve understood that you knew everything.” He looked at her with a smile. “I don’t know yet how I found it out, for you’re wonderful about keeping things to yourself, and you never made a sign. I simply felt it in a kind of nearness — as if I couldn’t get away from you. — Oh, there were times when I should have preferred not having you about — when I tried to turn my back on you, to see things from other people’s standpoint. But you were always there — you wouldn’t be discouraged. And I got tired of trying to explain things to you, of trying to bring you round to my way of thinking. You wouldn’t go away and you wouldn’t come any nearer — you just stood there and watched everything that I was doing.”
He broke off, taking one of his restless turns down the long room. Then he drew up a chair beside her, and dropped into it with a great sigh.
“At first, you know, I hated it most awfully58. I wanted to be let alone and to work out my own theory of things. If you’d said a word — if you’d tried to influence me — the spell would have been broken. But just because the actual you kept apart and didn’t meddle59 or pry60, the other, the you in my heart, seemed to get a tighter hold on me. I don’t know how to tell you, — it’s all mixed up in my head — but old things you’d said and done kept coming back to me, crowding between me and what I was trying for, looking at me without speaking, like old friends I’d gone back on, till I simply couldn’t stand it any longer. I fought it off till to-night, but when I came back to finish the work there you were again — and suddenly, I don’t know how, you weren’t an obstacle any longer, but a refuge — and I crawled into your arms as I used to when things went against me at school.”
His hands stole back into hers, and he leaned his head against her shoulder like a boy.
“I’m an abysmally61 weak fool, you know,” he ended; “I’m not worth the fight you’ve put up for me. But I want you to know that it’s your doing — that if you had let go an instant I should have gone under — and that if I’d gone under I should never have come up again alive.”
The End
点击
收听单词发音
收听单词发音 |
1
alleys
|
|
| 胡同，小巷( alley的名词复数 )； 小径 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
misery
|
|
| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
twilight
|
|
| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
underneath
|
|
| adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
conspicuous
|
|
| adj.明眼的，惹人注目的；炫耀的，摆阔气的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
longing
|
|
| n.（for）渴望 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
obsessions
|
|
| n.使人痴迷的人（或物）( obsession的名词复数 )；着魔；困扰 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
stiffen
|
|
| v.(使)硬，(使)变挺，(使)变僵硬 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
sobs
|
|
| 啜泣（声），呜咽（声）( sob的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
dressing
|
|
| n.(食物)调料；包扎伤口的用品，敷料 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
blurred
|
|
| v.（使）变模糊( blur的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）难以区分；模模糊糊；迷离 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
spoke
|
|
| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
extraordinarily
|
|
| adv.格外地；极端地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
freckles
|
|
| n.雀斑，斑点( freckle的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
veins
|
|
| n.纹理；矿脉( vein的名词复数 )；静脉；叶脉；纹理 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
sterile
|
|
| adj.不毛的，不孕的，无菌的，枯燥的，贫瘠的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
regained
|
|
| 复得( regain的过去式和过去分词 )； 赢回； 重回； 复至某地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
numb
|
|
| adj.麻木的，失去感觉的；v.使麻木 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
animation
|
|
| n.活泼，兴奋，卡通片／动画片的制作 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
throb
|
|
| v.震颤，颤动；(急速强烈地)跳动，搏动 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
mimicry
|
|
| n.（生物）拟态，模仿 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
negation
|
|
| n.否定；否认 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
urn
|
|
| n.（有座脚的）瓮；坟墓；骨灰瓮 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
throng
|
|
| n.人群，群众；v.拥挤，群集 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
25
disperse
|
|
| vi.使分散；使消失；vt.分散；驱散 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
26
humiliation
|
|
| n.羞辱 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
27
unbearable
|
|
| adj.不能容忍的；忍受不住的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
28
flout
|
|
| v./n.嘲弄，愚弄，轻视 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
29
insolence
|
|
| n.傲慢；无礼；厚颜；傲慢的态度 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
30
drawn
|
|
| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
31
pact
|
|
| n.合同，条约，公约，协定 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
32
conniving
|
|
| v.密谋 ( connive的现在分词 )；搞阴谋；默许；纵容 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
33
possessed
|
|
| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
34
hover
|
|
| vi.翱翔，盘旋；徘徊；彷徨，犹豫 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
35
loomed
|
|
| v.隐约出现，阴森地逼近( loom的过去式和过去分词 )；隐约出现，阴森地逼近 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
36
bent
|
|
| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
37
consecutiveness
|
|
| Consecutiveness | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
|
38
apparition
|
|
| n.幽灵，神奇的现象 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
39
stammer
|
|
| n.结巴，口吃；v.结结巴巴地说 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
40
faltered
|
|
| （嗓音）颤抖( falter的过去式和过去分词 )； 支吾其词； 蹒跚； 摇晃 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
41
apparently
|
|
| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
42
proceeding
|
|
| n.行动，进行，(pl.)会议录，学报 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
43
rustling
|
|
| n. 瑟瑟声，沙沙声 adj. 发沙沙声的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
44
hovering
|
|
| 鸟( hover的现在分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
45
throbbing
|
|
| a. 跳动的,悸动的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
46
plunge
|
|
| v.跳入，(使)投入，(使)陷入；猛冲 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
47
nether
|
|
| adj.下部的，下面的；n.阴间；下层社会 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
48
glimmer
|
|
| v.发出闪烁的微光；n.微光，微弱的闪光 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
49
latch
|
|
| n.门闩，窗闩；弹簧锁 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
50
hush
|
|
| int.嘘，别出声；n.沉默，静寂；v.使安静 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
51
crumpled
|
|
| adj. 弯扭的, 变皱的 动词crumple的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
52
wrenched
|
|
| v.（猛力地）扭( wrench的过去式和过去分词 )；扭伤；使感到痛苦；使悲痛 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
53
havoc
|
|
| n.大破坏，浩劫，大混乱，大杂乱 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
54
tightening
|
|
| 上紧，固定，紧密 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
55
caresses
|
|
| 爱抚，抚摸( caress的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
56
scattered
|
|
| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
57
ebbing
|
|
| （指潮水）退( ebb的现在分词 )； 落； 减少； 衰落 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
58
awfully
|
|
| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
59
meddle
|
|
| v.干预，干涉，插手 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
60
pry
|
|
| vi.窥(刺)探，打听；vt.撬动(开，起) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
61
abysmally
|
|
| adv.极糟地；可怕地；完全地；极端地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |