For years Philip Hayn had been wondering about the great city only a hundred or two miles distant from his home,—wondering, reading, and questioning,—until he knew far more about it than thousands of men born and reared on Manhattan Island. He had dreamed of the day when he would visit the city, and had formed plans and itineraries1 for consuming such time as he hoped to have, changing them again and again to conform to longer or shorter periods. He was prepared to be an intelligent tourist, to see only what was well worth being looked at, and to study much that could not be seen in any other place which he was ever likely to visit.
At last he was in New York: his time would be limited only by the expense of remaining at hotel or boarding-house. Yet he found himself utterly2 without impulse to follow any of his carefully-perfected plans. He strolled about a great deal, but in an utterly aimless way. He passed public buildings which he knew by sight as among those he had intended to inspect, but he did not even enter their doors; the great libraries in which for years he had hoped to quench3 the literary thirst that had been little more than tantalized4 by the collective books in{75} Haynton were regarded with impatience5. Of all he saw while rambling6 about alone, nothing really fixed7 his attention but the contents of shop-windows. He could not pass a clothing-store without wondering if some of the goods he saw within would not become him better than what he was wearing; he spent hours in looking at displays of dress-goods and imagining how one or other pattern or fabric8 would look on Lucia; and he wasted many hours more in day-dreams of purchasing—only for her—the bits of jewelry9 and other ornaments10 with which some windows were filled.
Loneliness increased the weakening effect of his imaginings. He knew absolutely no one in the city but the Tramlays and Marge, and he had too much sense to impose himself upon them; besides, Marge was terribly uninteresting to him, except as material for a study of human nature,—material that was peculiarly unattractive when such a specimen11 as Lucia was always in his mind’s eye and insisting upon occupying his whole attention.
His loneliness soon became intolerable; after a single day of it he hurried to the river, regardless of probable criticism and teasing based on his new clothes, to chat with Sol Mantring and the crew of the sloop12. The interview was not entirely13 satisfactory, and Phil cut his visit short, departing with a brow full of wrinkles and a heart full of wonder and indignation at the persistency14 with which Sol and both his men talked of Lucia Tramlay and the regard in which they assumed Phil held her. How should they imagine such a thing? He well knew—and{76} detested—the rural rage for prying15 into the affairs of people, particularly young men and women who seemed at all fond of one another; but what had he ever done or said to make these rough fellows think Lucia was to him anything but a boarder in his father’s house? As he wondered, there came to his mind a line which he had often painfully followed in his copy-book at school: “The face of youth is an open book.” It did not tend at all to restore composure to his own face.
Hour by hour he found himself worse company. He had never before made such a discovery. There had been hundreds and thousands of days in his life when from dawn to dark he had been alone on the farm, in the woods, or in his fishing-boat, several miles off shore on the ocean; yet the companionship of his thoughts had been satisfactory. He had sung and whistled by the hour, recited to himself favorite bits of poetry and prose, rehearsed old stories and jokes, and enjoyed himself so well that sometimes he was annoyed rather than pleased when an acquaintance would appear and insist on diverting his attention to some trivial personal or business affair. Why could he not cheer himself now?—he who always had been the life and cheer of whatever society he found himself in?
He tried to change the current of his thoughts by looking at other people; but the result was dismal16 in the extreme. He lounged about Broadway, strolled in Central Park, walked down Fifth Avenue, and from most that he saw he assumed that everybody who was having a pleasant time, driving fine horses,{77} or living in a handsome house, was rich. He had been carefully trained in the belief that “a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth,” but his observations of New York were severely17 straining his faith. He was entirely orthodox in his belief as to the prime source of riches, but he suddenly became conscious of an unhappy, persistent18 questioning as to why he also had not been born rich, or had riches thrust upon him. He understood now the mad strife19 for wealth which he had often heard alluded20 to as the prevailing21 sin of large cities; he wished he knew how to strive for it himself,—anywhere, in any way, if only he might always be one of the thousands of people who seemed to wear new clothes all the time, and spend their evenings in elegant society, or in the gorgeous seclusion22 of palaces like that occupied by Marge’s club.
For instance, there was Marge. Phil had asked Tramlay what business Marge was in, and the reply was, “None in particular: lives on his income.” What, asked Phil of himself, was the reason that such a man, who did not seem much interested in anything, should have plenty of money and nothing to do, when a certain other person, who could keenly enjoy, and, he believed, honestly improve, all of Marge’s privileges, should have been doomed23 to spend his life in hard endeavor to wrest24 the plainest food from the jealous earth and threatening sea, and have but a chance glimpse of the Paradise that the rich were enjoying,—a glimpse which probably would make his entire after-life wretched. Could he{78} ever again be what he had so long been?—a cheerful, contented25 young farmer and fisherman? He actually shivered as he called up the picture of the long road, alternately dusty and muddy, that passed his father’s house, its sides of brown fence and straggling bushes and weeds converging26 in the distance, an uncouth27 human figure or a crawling horse and wagon28 its only sign of animation29, and contrasted it with Fifth Avenue, its boundaries handsome houses and its roadway thronged30 with costly31 equipages bearing well-dressed men and beautiful women. Passing the house of a merchant prince, he saw in the window a fine bronze group on a stand; how different from the little plaster vase of wax flowers and fruits which had been visible through his mother’s “best room” window as long as he could remember!
Yes, money was the sole cause of the difference: money, or the lack of it, had cursed his father, as it now was cursing him. None of the elderly men he saw had faces more intelligent than his father, yet at that very moment the fine old man was probably clad in oft-patched trousers and cotton shirt, digging muck from a black slimy pit to enrich the thin soil of the wheat-lot. And his mother: it made his blood boil to think of her in faded calico preparing supper in the plain old kitchen at home, while scores of richly-clad women of her age, but without her alert, smiling face, were leaning back in carriages and seemingly unconscious of the blessing32 of being exempt33 from homely34 toil35.
And, coming back to himself, money, or lack of it, would soon banish36 him from all that now his eye{79} was feasting upon. It would also banish him from Lucia. He had read stories of poor young men whom wondrous37 chances of fortune had helped to the hands and hearts of beautiful maidens38 clad in fine raiment and wearing rare gems39, but he never had failed to remind himself that such tales were only romances; now the memory of them seemed only to emphasize the sarcasm40 of destiny. Money had made between him and Lucia a gulf41 as wide as the ocean,—as the distance between the poles,—as——
He might have compared it with eternity42, had not his eye been arrested by somebody in a carriage in the long line that was passing up the avenue. It was Lucia herself, riding with her mother. Perhaps heaven had pity on the unhappy boy, for some obstruction43 brought the line to a halt, and Phil, stepping from the sidewalk, found that the gulf was not too wide to be spanned, for an instant at least, by two hands.
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1
itineraries
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| n.旅程，行程( itinerary的名词复数 ) | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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quench
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| vt.熄灭，扑灭；压制 | |
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tantalized
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| v.逗弄，引诱，折磨( tantalize的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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impatience
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| n.不耐烦，急躁 | |
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rambling
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| adj.[建]凌乱的，杂乱的 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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8
fabric
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| n.织物，织品，布；构造，结构，组织 | |
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jewelry
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| n.（jewllery）（总称）珠宝 | |
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ornaments
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| n.装饰( ornament的名词复数 )；点缀；装饰品；首饰v.装饰，点缀，美化( ornament的第三人称单数 ) | |
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specimen
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| n.样本，标本 | |
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sloop
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| n.单桅帆船 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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persistency
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| n. 坚持(余辉, 时间常数) | |
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prying
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| adj.爱打听的v.打听，刺探（他人的私事）( pry的现在分词 )；撬开 | |
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dismal
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| adj.阴沉的，凄凉的，令人忧郁的，差劲的 | |
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severely
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| adv.严格地；严厉地；非常恶劣地 | |
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persistent
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| adj.坚持不懈的，执意的；持续的 | |
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strife
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| n.争吵，冲突，倾轧，竞争 | |
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alluded
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| 提及，暗指( allude的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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prevailing
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| adj.盛行的；占优势的；主要的 | |
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seclusion
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| n.隐遁，隔离 | |
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doomed
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| 命定的 | |
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wrest
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| n.扭，拧，猛夺；v.夺取，猛扭，歪曲 | |
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contented
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| adj.满意的，安心的，知足的 | |
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converging
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| adj.收敛[缩]的，会聚的，趋同的v.（线条、运动的物体等）会于一点( converge的现在分词 )；（趋于）相似或相同；人或车辆汇集；聚集 | |
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uncouth
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| adj.无教养的，粗鲁的 | |
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wagon
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| n.四轮马车，手推车，面包车；无盖运货列车 | |
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animation
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| n.活泼，兴奋，卡通片／动画片的制作 | |
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thronged
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| v.成群，挤满( throng的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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costly
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| adj.昂贵的，价值高的，豪华的 | |
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32
blessing
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| n.祈神赐福；祷告；祝福，祝愿 | |
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exempt
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| adj.免除的；v.使免除；n.免税者，被免除义务者 | |
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homely
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| adj.家常的，简朴的；不漂亮的 | |
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35
toil
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| vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事 | |
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banish
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| vt.放逐，驱逐；消除，排除 | |
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wondrous
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| adj.令人惊奇的，奇妙的；adv.惊人地；异乎寻常地；令人惊叹地 | |
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38
maidens
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| 处女( maiden的名词复数 )； 少女； 未婚女子； （板球运动）未得分的一轮投球 | |
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39
gems
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| growth； economy； management； and customer satisfaction 增长 | |
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40
sarcasm
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| n.讥讽，讽刺，嘲弄，反话 （adj.sarcastic） | |
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41
gulf
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| n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂 | |
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42
eternity
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| n.不朽，来世；永恒，无穷 | |
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43
obstruction
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| n.阻塞，堵塞；障碍物 | |
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