— EMERSON.
A FORTNIGHT had passed since the drawing of lots, and Lady Newhaven remained in ignorance as to which of the two men had received his death warrant. Few have found suspense1 easy to bear; but for the self-centred an intolerable element is added to it, which unselfish natures escape. From her early youth Lady Newhaven had been in the habit of viewing life in picturesque2 tableaux3 vivants of which she invariably formed the central figure. At her confirmation4 the Bishop5, the white-robed clergy6, and the other candidates had served but as a nebulous background against which her own white-clad, kneeling figure, bowed in reverent7 devotion, stood out in high relief.
When she married Lord Newhaven he took so slight a part, though a necessary one, in the wedding groups that their completeness had never been marred8 by misgivings9 as to his exact position in them. When, six years later, after one or two mild flirtations which only served as a stimulus10 to her love of dress, when at last she met, as she would have expressed it, “the one love of her life,” her first fluctuations11 and final deviation12 from the path of honour were the result of new arrangements round the same centre.
The first groups in which Hugh took part had been prodigies13 of virtue14. The young mother with the Madonna face — Lady Newhaven firmly believed that her face, with the crimped fringe drawn15 down to the eyebrows16, resembled that of a Madonna — with her children round her, Lord Newhaven as usual somewhat out of focus in the background; and Hugh, young, handsome, devoted17, heartbroken, and ennobled for life by the contemplation of such impregnable virtue.
“You accuse me of coldness,” she had imagined herself saying in a later scene, when the children and the husband would have made too much of a crowd, and were consequently omitted. “I wish to heaven I were as cold as I appear.”
And she had really said it later on. Hugh never did accuse her of coldness, but that was a detail. Those words, conned18 over many times, had nevertheless actually proceeded out of her mouth. Few of us have the power of saying anything we intend to say. But Lady Newhaven had that power, and enjoyed also in consequence a profound belief in her prophetic instincts; while others, Hugh not excepted, detected a premeditated tone in her conversation, and a sense of incongruity19 between her remarks and the occasion which called them forth20.
From an early date in their married life Lord Newhaven had been in the habit of discounting these remarks by making them in rapid rotation21 himself before proceeding22 to the matter in hand.
“Having noticed that a mother — I mean a young mother — is never really happy in the absence of her children, and that their affection makes up for the carelessness of their father, may I ask, Violet, what day you wish to return to Westhope?” he said one morning at breakfast.
“Any day,” she replied. “I am as miserable23 in one place as in another.”
“We will say Friday week, then,” returned Lord Newhaven, ignoring, as he invariably did, any allusions24 to their relative position, and because he ignored them she made many. “The country,” he added, hurriedly, “will be very refreshing25 after the glare and dust and empty worldly society of London.”
She looked at him in anger. She did not understand the reason, but she had long vaguely26 felt that all conversation seemed to dry up in his presence. He mopped it all into his own sponge, so to speak, and left every subject exhausted27.
She rose in silent dignity, and went to her boudoir and lay down there. The heat was very great, and another fire was burning within her, withering28 her round cheek, and making her small plump hand look shrunk and thin. A fortnight had passed, and she had not heard from Hugh. She had written to him many times, at first only imploring29 him to meet her, but afterwards telling him she knew what had happened, and entreating30 him to put her out of suspense, to send her one line that his life was not endangered. She had received no answer to any of her letters. She came to the conclusion that they had been intercepted31 by Lord Newhaven, and that no doubt the same fate had befallen Hugh’s letters to herself. For some time past, before the drawing of lots, she had noticed that Hugh’s letters had become less frequent and shorter in length. She understood the reason now. Half of them had been intercepted. How that fact could account for the shortness of the remainder may not be immediately apparent to the prosaic32 mind, but it was obvious to Lady Newhaven. That Hugh had begun to weary of her could not force the narrow entrance to her mind. Such a possibility had never been even considered in the pictures of the future with which her imagination busied itself. But what would the future be? The road along which she was walking forked before her eyes, and her usual perspicacity33 was at fault. She knew not in which of those two diverging34 paths the future would lie.
Would she in eighteen months’ time — she should certainly refuse to marry within the year — be standing35 at the altar in a “confection” of lilac and white with Hugh; or would she be a miserable wife, moving ghostlike about her house, in coloured raiment, while a distant grave was always white with flowers sent by a nameless friend of the dead? “How some one must have loved him,” she imagined Hugh’s aged36 mother saying. And once, as that bereaved37 mother came in the dusk to weep beside the grave, did she not see a shadowy figure start up black-robed from the flower-laden sod, and hastily drawing a thick veil over a beautiful despairing face, glide38 away among the trees? At this point Lady Newhaven always began to cry. It was too heart-rending. And her mind in violent recoil39 was caught once more and broken on the same wheel. “Which? Which?”
A servant entered.
“Would her ladyship see Miss West for a few minutes?”
“Yes,” said Lady Newhaven, glad to be delivered from herself, if only by the presence of an acquaintance.
“It is very charitable of you to see me,” said Rachel. “Personally, I think morning calls ought to be a penal40 offence. But I came at the entreaty41 of a former servant of yours. I feel sure you will let me carry some message of forgiveness to her as she is dying. Her name is Morgan. Do you remember her?”
“I once had a maid called Morgan,” said Lady Newhaven. “She was drunken, and I had to part with her in the end; but I kept her as long as I could in spite of it. She had a genius for hair-dressing.”
“She took your diamond heart pendant,” continued Rachel. “She was never found out. She can’t return it, for of course she sold it and spent the money. But now at last she feels she did wrong, and she says she will die easier for your forgiveness.”
“Oh! I forgive her,” said Lady Newhaven indifferently. “I often wondered how I lost it. I never cared about it.” She glanced at Rachel, and added tremulously, “My husband gave it me.”
A sudden impulse was urging her to confide42 in this grave, gentle-eyed woman. The temptation was all the stronger because Rachel, who had only lately appeared in society, was not connected with any portion of her previous life. She was as much a chance acquaintance as a fellow passenger in a railway carriage.
Rachel rose and held out her hand.
“Don’t go,” whispered Lady Newhaven, taking her outstretched hand and holding it.
“I think if I stay,” said Rachel, “that you may say things you will regret later on when you are feeling stronger. You are evidently tired out now. Everything looks exaggerated when we are exhausted, as I see you are.”
“I am worn out with misery,” said Lady Newhaven. “I have not slept for a fortnight. I feel I must tell some one.” And she burst into violent weeping.
Rachel sat down again, and waited patiently for the hysterical43 weeping to cease. Those in whom others confide early learn that their own engagements, their own pleasures and troubles are liable to be set aside at any moment. Rachel was a punctual, exact person, but she missed many trains. Those who sought her seldom realised that her day was as full as, possibly fuller, than their own. Perhaps it was only a very small pleasure to which she had been on her way on this particular morning, and for which she had put on that ethereal grey gown for the first time. At any rate, she relinquished44 it without a second thought.
Presently Lady Newhaven dried her eyes, and turned impulsively45 towards her.
The strata46 of impulsiveness47 and conventional feeling were always so mixed up after one of these emotional upheavals48 that it was difficult to guess which would come uppermost. Sometimes fragments of both appeared on the surface together.
“I loved you from the first moment I saw you,” she said. “I don’t take fancies to people, you know. I am not that kind of person. I am very difficult to please, and I never speak of what concerns myself. I am most reserved. I daresay you have noticed how reserved I am. I live in my shell. But directly I saw you I felt I could talk to you. I said to myself, ‘I will make a friend of that girl.’ Although I always feel a married woman is so differently placed from a girl. A girl only thinks of herself. I am not saying this the least unkindly, but of course it is so. Now a married woman has to consider her husband and family in all she says and does. How will it affect them? That is what I so often say to myself, and then my lips are sealed. But, of course, being unmarried, you would not understand that feeling.”
Rachel did not answer. She was inured49 to this time-honoured conversational50 opening.
“And the temptations of married life,” continued Lady Newhaven, “a girl cannot enter into them.”
“Then do not tell me about them,” said Rachel smiling, wondering if she might still escape. But Lady Newhaven had no intention of letting her go. She only wished to indicate to her her true position. And gradually, not without renewed outbursts of tears, not without traversing many layers of prepared conventional feelings in which a few thin streaks51 of genuine emotion were embedded52, she told her story — the story of a young, high-minded, and neglected wife, and of a husband callous53, indifferent, a scorner of religion, unsoftened even by the advent54 of the children —“such sweet children, such little darlings”— and the gradual estrangement55. Then came the persistent56 siege to the lonely heart of one not pretty perhaps, but fatally attractive to men; the lonely heart’s unparalleled influence for good over the besieger57.
“He would do anything,” said Lady Newhaven, looking earnestly at Rachel. “My influence over him is simply boundless58. If I said, as I sometimes did at balls, how sorry I was to see some plain girl standing out, he would go and dance with her. I have seen him do it.”
“I suppose he did it to please you.”
“That was just it, simply to please me.”
Rachel was not so astonished as Lady Newhaven expected. She certainly was rather wooden, the latter reflected. The story went on. It became difficult to tell, and, according to the teller59, more and more liable to misconstruction. Rachel’s heart ached as bit by bit the inevitable60 development was finally reached in floods of tears.
“And you remember that night you were at an evening party here,” sobbed61 Lady Newhaven, casting away all her mental notes and speaking extempore. “It is just a fortnight ago, and I have not slept since, and he was here, looking so miserable (Rachel started slightly); he sometimes did, if he thought I was hard upon him. And afterwards, when every one had gone, Edward took him to his study and told him he had found us out, and they drew lots which should kill himself within five months — and I listened at the door.”
Lady Newhaven’s voice rose half strangled, hardly human in a shrill62 grotesque63 whimper above the sobs64 which were shaking her. There was no affectation about her now.
Rachel’s heart went out to her the moment she was natural. She knelt down and put her strong arms round her. The poor thing clung to her, and leaning her elaborate head against her, wept tears of real anguish65 upon her breast.
“And which drew the short lighter66?” said Rachel at last.
“I don’t know,” almost shrieked67 Lady Newhaven. “It is that which is killing68 me. Sometimes I think it is Edward, and sometimes I think it is Hugh.”
At the name of Hugh Rachel winced69. Lady Newhaven had mentioned no name in the earlier stages of her story while she had some vestige70 of self-command; but now at last the Christian71 name slipped out unawares.
Rachel strove to speak calmly. She told herself there were many Hughs in the world.
“Is Mr. Hugh Scarlett the man you mean?” she asked. If she had died for it, she must have asked that question.
“Yes,” said Lady Newhaven.
A shadow fell on Rachel’s face, as on the face of one who suddenly discovers, not for the first time, an old enemy advancing upon him under the flag of a new ally.
“I shall always love him,” gasped72 Lady Newhaven, recovering herself sufficiently73 to recall a phrase which she had made up the night before. “I look upon it as a spiritual marriage.”
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1
suspense
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| n.（对可能发生的事）紧张感，担心，挂虑 | |
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2
picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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3
tableaux
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| n.舞台造型，（由活人扮演的）静态画面、场面；人构成的画面或场景( tableau的名词复数 )；舞台造型；戏剧性的场面；绚丽的场景 | |
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confirmation
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| n.证实，确认，批准 | |
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bishop
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| n.主教，（国际象棋）象 | |
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clergy
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| n.[总称]牧师，神职人员 | |
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7
reverent
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| adj.恭敬的，虔诚的 | |
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8
marred
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| adj. 被损毁, 污损的 | |
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misgivings
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| n.疑虑，担忧，害怕；疑虑，担心，恐惧( misgiving的名词复数 )；疑惧 | |
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10
stimulus
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| n.刺激，刺激物，促进因素，引起兴奋的事物 | |
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11
fluctuations
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| 波动，涨落，起伏( fluctuation的名词复数 ) | |
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12
deviation
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| n.背离，偏离；偏差，偏向；离题 | |
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prodigies
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| n.奇才，天才（尤指神童）( prodigy的名词复数 ) | |
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14
virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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15
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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eyebrows
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| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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18
conned
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| adj.被骗了v.指挥操舵( conn的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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incongruity
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| n.不协调，不一致 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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rotation
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| n.旋转；循环，轮流 | |
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22
proceeding
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| n.行动，进行，(pl.)会议录，学报 | |
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23
miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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24
allusions
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| 暗指，间接提到( allusion的名词复数 ) | |
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25
refreshing
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| adj.使精神振作的，使人清爽的，使人喜欢的 | |
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vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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28
withering
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| 使人畏缩的，使人害羞的，使人难堪的 | |
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29
imploring
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| 恳求的，哀求的 | |
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30
entreating
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| 恳求，乞求( entreat的现在分词 ) | |
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31
intercepted
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| 拦截( intercept的过去式和过去分词 )； 截住； 截击； 拦阻 | |
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32
prosaic
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| adj.单调的，无趣的 | |
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33
perspicacity
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| n. 敏锐, 聪明, 洞察力 | |
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34
diverging
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| 分开( diverge的现在分词 )； 偏离； 分歧； 分道扬镳 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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36
aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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37
bereaved
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| adj.刚刚丧失亲人的v.使失去（希望、生命等）( bereave的过去式和过去分词)；（尤指死亡）使丧失（亲人、朋友等）；使孤寂；抢走（财物） | |
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38
glide
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| n./v.溜，滑行；(时间)消逝 | |
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39
recoil
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| vi.退却，退缩，畏缩 | |
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40
penal
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| adj.刑罚的；刑法上的 | |
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41
entreaty
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| n.恳求，哀求 | |
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42
confide
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| v.向某人吐露秘密 | |
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43
hysterical
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| adj.情绪异常激动的，歇斯底里般的 | |
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44
relinquished
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| 交出，让给( relinquish的过去式和过去分词 )； 放弃 | |
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45
impulsively
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| adv.冲动地 | |
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46
strata
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| n.地层（复数）；社会阶层 | |
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47
impulsiveness
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| n.冲动 | |
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48
upheavals
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| 突然的巨变( upheaval的名词复数 )； 大动荡； 大变动； 胀起 | |
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49
inured
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| adj.坚强的，习惯的 | |
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50
conversational
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| adj.对话的，会话的 | |
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51
streaks
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| n.（与周围有所不同的）条纹( streak的名词复数 )；（通常指不好的）特征（倾向）；（不断经历成功或失败的）一段时期v.快速移动( streak的第三人称单数 )；使布满条纹 | |
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52
embedded
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| a.扎牢的 | |
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53
callous
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| adj.无情的，冷淡的，硬结的，起老茧的 | |
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54
advent
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| n.(重要事件等的)到来，来临 | |
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55
estrangement
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| n.疏远，失和，不和 | |
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56
persistent
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| adj.坚持不懈的，执意的；持续的 | |
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57
besieger
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| n. 围攻者, 围攻军 | |
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58
boundless
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| adj.无限的；无边无际的；巨大的 | |
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59
teller
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| n.银行出纳员；(选举)计票员 | |
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60
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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61
sobbed
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| 哭泣，啜泣( sob的过去式和过去分词 )； 哭诉，呜咽地说 | |
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62
shrill
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| adj.尖声的；刺耳的；v尖叫 | |
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63
grotesque
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| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
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64
sobs
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| 啜泣（声），呜咽（声）( sob的名词复数 ) | |
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65
anguish
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| n.(尤指心灵上的)极度痛苦，烦恼 | |
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66
lighter
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| n.打火机，点火器；驳船；v.用驳船运送；light的比较级 | |
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67
shrieked
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| v.尖叫( shriek的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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68
killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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69
winced
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| 赶紧避开，畏缩( wince的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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70
vestige
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| n.痕迹，遗迹，残余 | |
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71
Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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72
gasped
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| v.喘气( gasp的过去式和过去分词 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
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73
sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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