“I am glad I came,” said Katherine. “It was nice of you to think of this boat. It is fresher on the water.”
She was happy; he was by her side. The little canopy15 of lanterns above their heads seemed to draw them together, isolate16 them from the outer world. The lights whirled around her as in a dream. Raine too, for all his man’s lesser17 emotional impressibility, felt a slight exaltation, a continuance of the strange sense of the unreality of things. As the moments passed, this common mood grew in intensity18.
They spoke19 of the incident of the dinner-table, but like other things it seemed to lose perspective. Meanwhile the old wizened20 boatman, apparently21 far away in the bows, rowed stolidly22 round and round within the basin formed by the quays and jetties.
“It is a mad story,” said Katherine. “Almost fantastic. What object had he? Was he a fiend, or a coward, or what?”
“Both,” said Raine. “With a soft sentimental23 heart. A fiend that is half a fool is ever the blackest of fiends. He is irresponsible for his own hell.”
“Are all men like that who make life a hell for women?”
“In a way. Men are blind to the consequences of their own actions. Apply the truism specially24. Or else they see only their own paths before them. Sometimes men seem ‘a little brood.’ I often wonder how women can love them.”
“Do you? Would you include yourself?”
“Yes. I suppose so.”
“Do you think you could ever be cruel to a woman?”
“I could never lie to her, if you mean that. The woman who loves me will find me straight, however much of an inferior brute25 I might be otherwise.”
“Don’t,” said Katherine. “You frighten me—the suggestion—”
“But you asked me whether I could be cruel.”
“A woman’s thoughts and speech are never so intense as a man’s. You throw a lurid26 light on my words and I shrink from them. Forgive me. I know that you could be nothing but what was good and truehearted.”
Raine looked at her. Her face was delicate in its strength, very pure in its sadness.’ The dim light by which it was visible suggested infinite things beyond that could be revealed in a greater brightness. He felt wonderfully drawn27 to her.
“Men have been cruel to you. That is why you ask.”
“Ah no!” she said, turning away her head quickly. “I will never call men cruel. I have suffered. Who has not? The greatest suffering—it is the greatest suffering in life—that which comes between man and woman.”
“It is true,” replied Raine musingly28. “As it can be the greatest joy. Once I could not bear to think of it, for the pain. It is strange—”
“What is strange?” asked Katherine in a low voice.
He was scarcely conscious how he had come to strike the chord of his own life. It seemed natural at the moment.
“It is strange how like a dream it all appears now; as if another than I—a bosom29 friend, whose secrets I shared—had gone through it.”
She put her hand lightly on his arm, and he felt the touch to his heart.
“Would you care for me to tell you? I should like to. It would seem a way of laying a ghost peacefully and reverently30. It has never passed out of me yet—not even to my father.”
“Tell me,” murmured Katherine.
“Both are dead—twelve years ago.”
“Both?”
“Yes; mother and child. I was little else than a boy—an undergraduate. She was little else than a girl—yet she had been married—then deserted31 by her husband and utterly32 alone and friendless when I met her—in London. She was a dresser at a theatre—educated though, and refined far above her class. At first I helped her—then loved her—we couldn’t marry—she offered—at first I refused. But then—well, you can end it. We loved each other dearly. If she had lived, I should have been true to her till this day—I should have married her, for she would soon have become a widow. When the child was born, I was one-and-twenty—she nineteen. We were wildly, ecstatically happy. Three months afterwards the child caught diphtheria—she caught it too from the baby—first the little one died—then the mother died in my arms. I seemed to have lived all my life before I had entered upon it. It was a heavy burthen for a lad.”
“And since?” asked Katherine gently.
“I have shrunk morbidly33 from risking such torture a second time.”
“Yours is a nature to love altogether if it loves at all.”
“I reverence34 love too highly to treat it lightly,” he said. “Tell me,” he added, “do you think my punishment came upon me rightly? There are those that would. Are you one?”
“God forbid,” she replied in a low voice. “God forbid that I of all creatures should dare to judge others.”
The earnestness in her tone startled him. He caught a side-view of her face. It wore the same look of sadness as on the night they had seen “Denise” together in the winter. She had suffered. A great yearning35 pity for her rose in his heart.
“It is well that the past can be the past,” he said. “We live, and gather to ourselves fresh personalities36. A little gradual change, a little daily hardening or softening37, weakening or strengthening—and at the end of a few years we are different entities38. Things become memories—reflections without life. That was why I said it was strange. Now all that time is only a vague memory, and it mingles39 with the far-off memory of my mother, who died when I was a tiny boy. And now I have put it to rest for ever—for it was a ghost until I knew you. Do you believe in idle fancies?”
“I live in a great many,” said Katherine.
“I fancied—that by telling you, I should be free to give myself up to a new, strange, wonderful world that I saw ready to open for me.”
“Could I ever say ‘I thank you’ for telling me?” replied Katherine. “I take all that you have said to my heart.”
There was a long silence. He put his hand down by her side and it rested upon hers. She made a movement to withdraw it, but his touch tightened40 into a clasp. She allowed it to remain, surrendering herself to the happiness. Each felt the subtle communion of spirit too precious to be broken by speech. The lantern-hung boats passed backwards41 and forwards. One party, just as they came abreast42, struck up an attempt at a jodeling song: “Juch hol-dio hol-di-ai-do hol-di-a hol-dio.”
The suddenness startled them. Katherine drew away her hand hastily as he looked round.
“Why did you?” he asked.
“Because—because the little dream-time came to an end.”
“Why should it?”
“It is the nature of dreams.”
“Why, then, should it be a dream?”
“Because it can never be a reality.”
“It can. If you cared.”
The words were low, scarcely audible, but they stirred the woman’s soul to its depths. She remained for a moment spellbound, gazing away from him, down at the fantastically flecked water. A yearning, passionate43 desire shook her. One glance, one touch, one little murmured word, and she would unlock the flood-gates of a love that her whole being cried aloud for. Often she had given herself up to the tremulous joy of anticipation44. Now the moment had come. It depended upon her to give a sign. But she could not. She dared not. A sign would make it all a reality in sober fact. She shrank from it now that she was brought face to face with it. With a woman’s instinct she sought to temporize45. But what could she say? If she cared! To deny was beyond her strength. Meanwhile the pause was growing embarrassing. She felt that his eyes were fixed upon her—that he was awaiting an answer.
“What I have said has pained you.”
She turned her head to reply desperately46, she scarce knew how. But the first syllable47 died upon her lips. A flash of lightning quivered across the space, bringing into view for a vivid, dazzling second the semicircle of the quay2, the old clustering city, the Salèves; and almost simultaneously48 a terrific peal49 of thunder broke above their heads. Katherine was not a nervous woman, but the flash and the peal were so sudden, that she instinctively50 gave a little cry and grasped Raine’s arm. Before the rumble51 had died away, great drops of rain fell. In another moment it came down as from a water-spout.
The evening had been close, but they had not thought of a storm. Katherine had only a light wrap to put over her thin dress. The gay lanterns swinging above their heads and before their eyes—now they were a lightless mass of wet paper—had prevented them from noticing the gradual clouding over of the sky. They were in the middle of the basin. Amid the roar of the rain and the shouts from the boats around them, they could hear the dull noise of the crowd on the quays scampering52 away to shelter.
“My poor child, you will get wet through,” cried Raine, “put this round you. Let us get in as quickly as we can.”
He pulled off his rough tweed coat and threw it oyer her shoulders; and then, before either Katherine or the old boatman were aware of his intentions, he had dispossessed the latter of his place, taken the sculls, and was pulling for shore with a vigour53 that the little boat had never before felt in its rowlocks.
Drenched54, blinded, bewildered by the avalanche55 of water, Katherine felt a triumphal glow of happiness. The heavens seemed to have come to her rescue, to have given her another chance of life. She was pleased too at having his coat about her, at having heard the rough, protecting tenderness in his voice. It pleased her to feel herself borne along by his strong arms. She could just distinguish his outline in the pitch darkness, and the shimmer56 of his white shirt-sleeves. There was nothing particularly heroic in his action, but it was supremely57 that of a man, strong, prompt, and helpful. Another flash as vivid as the first showed him a smile on her face. He shouted a cheery word as the swift darkness fell again, and rowed on vigorously, delighted at the transient vision.
In a few moments they were by the Grand Quai, amidst a confusion of boats hurriedly disgorging their loads. Experienced in many a river crush, Raine skilfully58 brought his boat to the landing-place, paid the old boatman, and assisted Katherine to land. It was still pouring violently. When they reached the top of the quay, Raine paused for a moment to take his bearings.
“It is ridiculous to think of a cab or shelter,” he said, “We must dash home as quickly as we can. Come along.”
He passed her arm through his hurriedly, and set off at a smart pace.
“Don’t take off that,” he cried, preventing an attempt on her part to remove the coat from her shoulders.
“But you—oh—I can’t!”
“You must,” he said, authoritatively59.
And Katherine found it sweet to yield to his will.
They walked rapidly homewards, speaking very little, owing to the exigencies60 of the situation, but feeling very close to one another. Even the touch of grotesqueness61 in this unconventional flight through the rain made them laugh happily together, as they stumbled along in their haste.
“It is very sweet of you not to mind,” he said.
She gave his arm a little pressure for reply, and laughed light-heartedly.
At the porte-cochere of the pension, Katherine paused before mounting the stairs, to take breath and to restore Raine his coat.
The gas-lamp by the door threw its light upon them and for the first time they saw each other clearly. They were drenched to the skin. A simultaneous exclamation62 rose to the lips of each.
“I earnestly hope you have taken no hurt,” added Raine in a tone of concern.
“Oh no! One never takes hurt when one is happy.”
The glow on her wet cheeks and the light in her eyes confirmed the statement as far as the happiness went.
They entered at the door; he gave her his hand to help her up the stairs.
“When do you start to-morrow?”
“At seven.”
“Must you go?”
“Yes. There seems to be no help for it. But I shall come back. You know that. I hate going away from you.”
They stopped at the end of the little corridor where her room was situated63. He detained the parting hand she gave him.
“Tell me. Were you pained at what I said—the last thing, in the boat?” “Pained? No.”
“Then you do care?” She was silent. But she lifted her eyes to him and he read there what she could not speak. With a sudden impulse he threw his arm around her, dripping as she was, and kissed her. Then she broke away and fled to her room.
Raine’s first act on reaching his room was to summon a servant and send Katherine a glass of cherry-brandy, which he poured from a flask64 he had brought with him for mountaineering chances, together with a scribbled65 line: “Drink this, at once.”
Then he changed his dripping garments for comfortable flannels66, and went in search of his father. But the old man, though he smiled at Raine’s account of his adventure, was still depressed67.
“It will be wretched without you,” he said. “Yet you must go away for a time. Make it as short as you can, Raine. I shall think in the meantime of a way out of the difficulty.”
“Couldn’t you take Felicia somewhere?” suggested Raine. “To Lucerne. You might start a few days before my return. I must come back for a little while. Afterwards, I might join you, when you have parted from Felicia, and go back to Oxford68 with you.”
“I will see,” replied the old man a little wearily.
“Poor old dad,” said Raine.
“Man is ever poor,” said his father. “He will never learn the lesson of life. Even with one foot in the grave he plants the other upon the ladder of illusion.”
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1
quays
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| 码头( quay的名词复数 ) | |
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quay
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| n.码头，靠岸处 | |
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gaily
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| adv.欢乐地，高兴地 | |
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swarmed
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| 密集( swarm的过去式和过去分词 )； 云集； 成群地移动； 蜜蜂或其他飞行昆虫成群地飞来飞去 | |
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illuminated
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| adj.被照明的；受启迪的 | |
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darted
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| v.投掷，投射( dart的过去式和过去分词 )；向前冲，飞奔 | |
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thither
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| adv.向那里；adj.在那边的，对岸的 | |
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myriads
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| n.无数，极大数量( myriad的名词复数 ) | |
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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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momentary
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| adj.片刻的，瞬息的；短暂的 | |
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vista
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| n.远景，深景，展望，回想 | |
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looming
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| n.上现蜃景（光通过低层大气发生异常折射形成的一种海市蜃楼）v.隐约出现，阴森地逼近( loom的现在分词 )；隐约出现，阴森地逼近 | |
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13
hull
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| n.船身；(果、实等的)外壳；vt.去(谷物等)壳 | |
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hubbub
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| n.嘈杂；骚乱 | |
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canopy
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| n.天篷，遮篷 | |
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isolate
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| vt.使孤立，隔离 | |
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lesser
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| adj.次要的，较小的；adv.较小地，较少地 | |
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intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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spoke
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| 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 | |
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wizened
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| adj.凋谢的；枯槁的 | |
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21
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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stolidly
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| adv.迟钝地，神经麻木地 | |
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sentimental
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| adj.多愁善感的，感伤的 | |
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specially
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| adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地 | |
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brute
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| n.野兽，兽性 | |
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lurid
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| adj.可怕的；血红的；苍白的 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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musingly
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| adv.沉思地，冥想地 | |
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bosom
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| n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的 | |
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reverently
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| adv.虔诚地 | |
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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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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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morbidly
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| adv.病态地 | |
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reverence
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| n.敬畏，尊敬，尊严；Reverence:对某些基督教神职人员的尊称；v.尊敬，敬畏，崇敬 | |
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yearning
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| a.渴望的；向往的；怀念的 | |
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personalities
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| n. 诽谤，（对某人容貌、性格等所进行的）人身攻击； 人身攻击；人格, 个性, 名人( personality的名词复数 ) | |
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softening
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| 变软，软化 | |
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entities
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| 实体对像； 实体，独立存在体，实际存在物( entity的名词复数 ) | |
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mingles
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| 混合，混入( mingle的第三人称单数 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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tightened
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| 收紧( tighten的过去式和过去分词 )； （使）变紧； （使）绷紧； 加紧 | |
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backwards
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| adv.往回地，向原处，倒，相反，前后倒置地 | |
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abreast
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| adv.并排地；跟上(时代)的步伐，与…并进地 | |
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passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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anticipation
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| n.预期，预料，期望 | |
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temporize
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| v.顺应时势；拖延 | |
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desperately
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| adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地 | |
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syllable
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| n.音节；vt.分音节 | |
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48
simultaneously
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| adv.同时发生地，同时进行地 | |
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49
peal
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| n.钟声；v.鸣响 | |
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50
instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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51
rumble
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| n.隆隆声；吵嚷；v.隆隆响；低沉地说 | |
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52
scampering
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| v.蹦蹦跳跳地跑，惊惶奔跑( scamper的现在分词 ) | |
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53
vigour
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| （=vigor）n.智力，体力，精力 | |
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54
drenched
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| adj.湿透的；充满的v.使湿透( drench的过去式和过去分词 )；在某人（某物）上大量使用（某液体） | |
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avalanche
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| n.雪崩，大量涌来 | |
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56
shimmer
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| v./n.发微光，发闪光；微光 | |
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supremely
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| adv.无上地，崇高地 | |
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skilfully
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| adv. (美skillfully)熟练地 | |
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authoritatively
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| 命令式地，有权威地，可信地 | |
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exigencies
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| n.急切需要 | |
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grotesqueness
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exclamation
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| n.感叹号，惊呼，惊叹词 | |
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situated
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| adj.坐落在...的，处于某种境地的 | |
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flask
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| n.瓶，火药筒，砂箱 | |
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scribbled
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| v.潦草的书写( scribble的过去式和过去分词 )；乱画；草草地写；匆匆记下 | |
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flannels
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| 法兰绒男裤； 法兰绒( flannel的名词复数 ) | |
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depressed
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| adj.沮丧的，抑郁的，不景气的，萧条的 | |
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Oxford
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| n.牛津（英国城市） | |
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