"It's hardly as much as that. I mean, that I must claim the liberty of a free American citizen to think what I please about your co-religionists. And I suppose that Florence must have liberty to think what she pleases and to say what politeness allows her to say."
"She had better," Leonora answered, "not say one single word against my people or my faith."
It struck me at the time, that there was an unusual, an almost threatening, hardness in her voice. It was almost as if she were trying to convey to Florence, through me, that she would seriously harm my wife if Florence went to something that was an extreme. Yes, I remember thinking at the time that it was almost as if Leonora were saying, through me to Florence:
"You may outrage1 me as you will; you may take all that I personally possess, but do not you care to say one single thing in view of the situation that that will set up—against the faith that makes me become the doormat for your feet."
But obviously, as I saw it, that could not be her meaning. Good people, be they ever so diverse in creed2, do not threaten each other. So that I read Leonora's words to mean just no more than:
"It would be better if Florence said nothing at all against my co-religionists, because it is a point that I am touchy3 about."
That was the hint that, accordingly, I conveyed to Florence when, shortly afterwards, she and Edward came down from the tower. And I want you to understand that, from that moment until after Edward and the girl and Florence were all dead together, I had never the remotest glimpse, not the shadow of a suspicion, that there was anything wrong, as the saying is. For five minutes, then, I entertained the possibility that Leonora might be jealous; but there was never another flicker4 in that flame-like personality. How in the world should I get it?
For, all that time, I was just a male sick nurse. And what chance had I against those three hardened gamblers, who were all in league to conceal5 their hands from me? What earthly chance? They were three to one—and they made me happy. Oh God, they made me so happy that I doubt if even paradise, that shall smooth out all temporal wrongs, shall ever give me the like. And what could they have done better, or what could they have done that could have been worse? I don't know....
I suppose that, during all that time I was a deceived husband and that Leonora was pimping for Edward. That was the cross that she had to take up during her long Calvary of a life....
You ask how it feels to be a deceived husband. Just Heavens, I do not know. It feels just nothing at all. It is not Hell, certainly it is not necessarily Heaven. So I suppose it is the intermediate stage. What do they call it? Limbo6. No, I feel nothing at all about that. They are dead; they have gone before their Judge who, I hope, will open to them the springs of His compassion7. It is not my business to think about it. It is simply my business to say, as Leonora's people say: "Requiem8 aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis. In memoria aeterna erit...." But what were they? The just? The unjust? God knows! I think that the pair of them were only poor wretches9, creeping over this earth in the shadow of an eternal wrath10. It is very terrible....
It is almost too terrible, the picture of that judgement, as it appears to me sometimes, at nights. It is probably the suggestion of some picture that I have seen somewhere. But upon an immense plain, suspended in mid-air, I seem to see three figures, two of them clasped close in an intense embrace, and one intolerably solitary11. It is in black and white, my picture of that judgement, an etching, perhaps; only I cannot tell an etching from a photographic reproduction. And the immense plain is the hand of God, stretching out for miles and miles, with great spaces above it and below it. And they are in the sight of God, and it is Florence that is alone....
And, do you know, at the thought of that intense solitude12 I feel an overwhelming desire to rush forward and comfort her. You cannot, you see, have acted as nurse to a person for twelve years without wishing to go on nursing them, even though you hate them with the hatred13 of the adder14, and even in the palm of God. But, in the nights, with that vision of judgement before me, I know that I hold myself back. For I hate Florence. I hate Florence with such a hatred that I would not spare her an eternity15 of loneliness. She need not have done what she did. She was an American, a New Englander. She had not the hot passions of these Europeans. She cut out that poor imbecile of an Edward—and I pray God that he is really at peace, clasped close in the arms of that poor, poor girl! And, no doubt, Maisie Maidan will find her young husband again, and Leonora will burn, clear and serene16, a northern light and one of the archangels of God. And me.... Well, perhaps, they will find me an elevator to run.... But Florence... .
She should not have done it. She should not have done it. It was playing it too low down. She cut out poor dear Edward from sheer vanity; she meddled17 between him and Leonora from a sheer, imbecile spirit of district visiting. Do you understand that, whilst she was Edward's mistress, she was perpetually trying to reunite him to his wife? She would gabble on to Leonora about forgiveness—treating the subject from the bright, American point of view. And Leonora would treat her like the whore she was. Once she said to Florence in the early morning:
"You come to me straight out of his bed to tell me that that is my proper place. I know it, thank you."
But even that could not stop Florence. She went on saying that it was her ambition to leave this world a little brighter by the passage of her brief life, and how thankfully she would leave Edward, whom she thought she had brought to a right frame of mind, if Leonora would only give him a chance. He needed, she said, tenderness beyond anything.
And Leonora would answer—for she put up with this outrage for years—Leonora, as I understand, would answer something like:
"Yes, you would give him up. And you would go on writing to each other in secret, and committing adultery in hired rooms. I know the pair of you, you know. No. I prefer the situation as it is."
Half the time Florence would ignore Leonora's remarks. She would think they were not quite ladylike. The other half of the time she would try to persuade Leonora that her love for Edward was quite spiritual—on account of her heart. Once she said:
"If you can believe that of Maisie Maidan, as you say you do, why cannot you believe it of me?"
Leonora was, I understand, doing her hair at that time in front of the mirror in her bedroom. And she looked round at Florence, to whom she did not usually vouchsafe18 a glance,—she looked round coolly and calmly, and said:
"Never do you dare to mention Mrs Maidan's name again. You murdered her. You and I murdered her between us. I am as much a scoundrel as you. I don't like to be reminded of it."
Florence went off at once into a babble19 of how could she have hurt a person whom she hardly knew, a person whom with the best intentions, in pursuance of her efforts to leave the world a little brighter, she had tried to save from Edward. That was how she figured it out to herself. She really thought that.... So Leonora said patiently:
"Very well, just put it that I killed her and that it's a painful subject. One does not like to think that one had killed someone. Naturally not. I ought never to have brought her from India."
And that, indeed, is exactly how Leonora looked at it. It is stated a little baldly, but Leonora was always a great one for bald statements.
Leonora, who had been even then filled with pity and contrition21 for the poor child, on returning to our hotel had gone straight to Mrs Maidan's room. She had wanted just to pet her. And she had perceived at first only, on the clear, round table covered with red velvet22, a letter addressed to her. It ran something like:
"Oh, Mrs Ashburnham, how could you have done it? I trusted you so. You never talked to me about me and Edward, but I trusted you. How could you buy me from my husband? I have just heard how you have—in the hall they were talking about it, Edward and the American lady. You paid the money for me to come here. Oh, how could you? How could you? I am going straight back to Bunny...."
Bunny was Mrs Maidan's husband.
And Leonora said that, as she went on reading the letter, she had, without looking round her, a sense that that hotel room was cleared, that there were no papers on the table, that there were no clothes on the hooks, and that there was a strained silence—a silence, she said, as if there were something in the room that drank up such sounds as there were. She had to fight against that feeling, whilst she read the postscript23 of the letter.
"I did not know you wanted me for an adulteress," the postscript began. The poor child was hardly literate24. "It was surely not right of you and I never wanted to be one. And I heard Edward call me a poor little rat to the American lady. He always called me a little rat in private, and I did not mind. But, if he called me it to her, I think he does not love me any more. Oh, Mrs Ashburnham, you knew the world and I knew nothing. I thought it would be all right if you thought it could, and I thought you would not have brought me if you did not, too. You should not have done it, and we out of the same convent...."
Leonora said that she screamed when she read that.
And then she saw that Maisie's boxes were all packed, and she began a search for Mrs Maidan herself—all over the hotel. The manager said that Mrs Maidan had paid her bill, and had gone up to the station to ask the Reiseverkehrsbureau to make her out a plan for her immediate25 return to Chitral. He imagined that he had seen her come back, but he was not quite certain. No one in the large hotel had bothered his head about the child. And she, wandering solitarily26 in the hall, had no doubt sat down beside a screen that had Edward and Florence on the other side. I never heard then or after what had passed between that precious couple. I fancy Florence was just about beginning her cutting out of poor dear Edward by addressing to him some words of friendly warning as to the ravages27 he might be making in the girl's heart. That would be the sort of way she would begin. And Edward would have sentimentally28 assured her that there was nothing in it; that Maisie was just a poor little rat whose passage to Nauheim his wife had paid out of her own pocket. That would have been enough to do the trick.
For the trick was pretty efficiently29 done. Leonora, with panic growing and with contrition very large in her heart, visited every one of the public rooms of the hotel—the dining-room, the lounge, the schreibzimmer, the winter garden. God knows what they wanted with a winter garden in an hotel that is only open from May till October. But there it was. And then Leonora ran—yes, she ran up the stairs—to see if Maisie had not returned to her rooms. She had determined30 to take that child right away from that hideous31 place. It seemed to her to be all unspeakable. I do not mean to say that she was not quite cool about it. Leonora was always Leonora. But the cold justice of the thing demanded that she should play the part of mother to this child who had come from the same convent. She figured it out to amount to that. She would leave Edward to Florence and to me—and she would devote all her time to providing that child with an atmosphere of love until she could be returned to her poor young husband. It was naturally too late.
She had not cared to look round Maisie's rooms at first. Now, as soon as she came in, she perceived, sticking out beyond the bed, a small pair of feet in high-heeled shoes. Maisie had died in the effort to strap32 up a great portmanteau. She had died so grotesquely33 that her little body had fallen forward into the trunk, and it had closed upon her, like the jaws34 of a gigantic alligator35. The key was in her hand. Her dark hair, like the hair of a Japanese, had come down and covered her body and her face.
Leonora lifted her up—she was the merest featherweight—and laid her on the bed with her hair about her. She was smiling, as if she had just scored a goal in a hockey match. You understand she had not committed suicide. Her heart had just stopped. I saw her, with the long lashes36 on the cheeks, with the smile about the lips, with the flowers all about her. The stem of a white lily rested in her hand so that the spike37 of flowers was upon her shoulder. She looked like a bride in the sunlight of the mortuary candles that were all about her, and the white coifs of the two nuns38 that knelt at her feet with their faces hidden might have been two swans that were to bear her away to kissing-kindness land, or wherever it is. Leonora showed her to me. She would not let either of the others see her. She wanted, you know, to spare poor dear Edward's feelings. He never could bear the sight of a corpse39. And, since she never gave him an idea that Maisie had written to her, he imagined that the death had been the most natural thing in the world. He soon got over it. Indeed, it was the one affair of his about which he never felt much remorse40.
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1
outrage
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| n.暴行，侮辱，愤怒；vt.凌辱，激怒 | |
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creed
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| n.信条；信念，纲领 | |
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touchy
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| adj.易怒的；棘手的 | |
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flicker
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| vi./n.闪烁，摇曳，闪现 | |
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conceal
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽 | |
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limbo
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| n.地狱的边缘；监狱 | |
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compassion
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| n.同情，怜悯 | |
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8
requiem
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| n.安魂曲，安灵曲 | |
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9
wretches
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| n.不幸的人( wretch的名词复数 )；可怜的人；恶棍；坏蛋 | |
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10
wrath
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| n.愤怒，愤慨，暴怒 | |
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11
solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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12
solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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14
adder
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| n.蝰蛇；小毒蛇 | |
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eternity
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| n.不朽，来世；永恒，无穷 | |
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16
serene
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| adj. 安详的，宁静的，平静的 | |
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17
meddled
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| v.干涉，干预（他人事务）( meddle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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18
vouchsafe
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| v.惠予，准许 | |
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19
babble
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| v.含糊不清地说，胡言乱语地说，儿语 | |
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20
jaunt
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| v.短程旅游；n.游览 | |
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21
contrition
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| n.悔罪，痛悔 | |
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22
velvet
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| n.丝绒，天鹅绒；adj.丝绒制的，柔软的 | |
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23
postscript
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| n.附言，又及；(正文后的)补充说明 | |
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literate
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| n.学者；adj.精通文学的，受过教育的 | |
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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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solitarily
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| adv.独自一人地，寂寞地 | |
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27
ravages
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| 劫掠后的残迹，破坏的结果，毁坏后的残迹 | |
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sentimentally
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| adv.富情感地 | |
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efficiently
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| adv.高效率地，有能力地 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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31
hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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32
strap
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| n.皮带，带子；v.用带扣住，束牢；用绷带包扎 | |
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33
grotesquely
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| adv. 奇异地,荒诞地 | |
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34
jaws
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| n.口部；嘴 | |
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35
alligator
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| n.短吻鳄(一种鳄鱼) | |
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36
lashes
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| n.鞭挞( lash的名词复数 )；鞭子；突然猛烈的一击；急速挥动v.鞭打( lash的第三人称单数 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥 | |
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37
spike
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| n.长钉，钉鞋；v.以大钉钉牢，使...失效 | |
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38
nuns
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| n.（通常指基督教的）修女， （佛教的）尼姑( nun的名词复数 ) | |
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39
corpse
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| n.尸体，死尸 | |
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40
remorse
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| n.痛恨，悔恨，自责 | |
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