CHAPTER 3

 I read this letter to the end and looked up, and there was my home about me, a room ruddy-brown and familiar, with the row of old pewter things upon the dresser, the steel engravings of former Strattons that came to me from my father, a convex mirror exaggerating my upturned face. And Rachel just risen again sat at the other end of the table, a young mother, fragile and tender-eyed. The clash of these two systems of reality was amazing. It was as though I had not been parted from Mary for a day, as though all that separation and all that cloud of bitter jealousy¹ had been a mere² silence between two people in the same room. Indeed it was extraordinarily³ like that, as if I had been sitting at a desk, imagining myself alone, reading my present life as one reads in a book at a shaded lamp, and then suddenly that silent other had spoken.

 

And then I looked at the page of my life before me and became again a character in the story.

 

I met the enquiry in Rachel's eyes. "It's a letter from Mary Justin," I said.

 

She did not answer for a few moments. She became interested in the flame of the little spirit lamp that kept her coffee hot. She finished what she had to do with that and then remarked, "I thought you two were not to correspond."

 

"Yes," I said, putting the letter down; "that was the understanding."

 

There was a little interval⁴ of silence, and then I got up and went to the fireplace where the bacon and sausages stood upon a trivet.

 

"I suppose," said Rachel, "she wants to hear from you again."

 

"She thinks that now we have children, and that she has two, we can consider what was past, past and closed and done with, and she wants to hear—about me.... Apart from everything else—we were very great friends."

 

 

"Of course," said Rachel with lips a little awry⁵, "of course. You must have been great friends. And it's natural for her to write."

 

"I suppose," she added, "her husband knows."

 

"She's told him, she says...."

 

Her eye fell on the letter in my hand for the smallest fraction of a second, and it was as if hastily she snatched away a thought from my observation. I had a moment of illuminating⁶ embarrassment⁷. So far we had contrived⁸ to do as most young people do when they marry, we had sought to make our lives unreservedly open to one another, we had affected⁹ an entire absence of concealments about our movements, our thoughts. If perhaps I had been largely silent to her about Mary it was not so much that I sought to hide things from her as that I myself sought to forget. It is one of the things that we learn too late, the impossibility of any such rapid and wilful¹⁰ coalescences of souls. But we had maintained a convention of infinite communism since our marriage; we had shown each other our letters as a matter of course, shared the secrets of our friends, gone everywhere together as far as we possibly could.

 

I wanted now to give her the letter in my hand to read—and to do so was manifestly impossible. Something had arisen between us that made out of our unity¹¹ two abruptly¹² separated figures masked and veiled. Here were things I knew and understood completely and that I could not even describe to Rachel. What would she make of Mary's "Write to me. Write to me"? A mere wish to resume.... I would not risk the exposure of Mary's mind and heart and unhappiness, to her possible misinterpretation....

 

 

That letter fell indeed like a pitiless searchlight into all that region of differences ignored, over which we had built the vaulted¹³ convention of our complete mutual¹⁴ understanding. In my memory it seems to me now as though we hung silent for quite a long time over the evasions¹⁵ that were there so abruptly revealed.

 

Then I put the letter into my pocket with a clumsy assumption of carelessness, and knelt down to the fender and sausages.

 

"It will be curious," I said, "to write to her again.... To tell her about things...."

 

And then with immense interest, "Are these Chichester sausages you've got here, Rachel, or some new kind?"

 

Rachel roused herself to respond with an equal affectation, and we made an eager conversation about bacon and sausages—for after that startling gleam of divergence¹⁶ we were both anxious to get back to the superficialities of life again.

1 jealousy   

n.妒忌，嫉妒，猜忌

参考例句：

• Some women have a disposition to jealousy.有些女人生性爱妒忌。
• I can't support your jealousy any longer.我再也无法忍受你的嫉妒了。

2 mere   

adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过

参考例句：

• That is a mere repetition of what you said before.那不过是重复了你以前讲的话。
• It's a mere waste of time waiting any longer.再等下去纯粹是浪费时间。

3 extraordinarily   

adv.格外地；极端地

参考例句：

• She is an extraordinarily beautiful girl.她是个美丽非凡的姑娘。
• The sea was extraordinarily calm that morning.那天清晨，大海出奇地宁静。

4 interval   

n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息

参考例句：

• The interval between the two trees measures 40 feet.这两棵树的间隔是40英尺。
• There was a long interval before he anwsered the telephone.隔了好久他才回了电话。

5 awry   

adj.扭曲的，错的

参考例句：

• She was in a fury over a plan that had gone awry. 计划出了问题，她很愤怒。
• Something has gone awry in our plans.我们的计划出差错了。

6 illuminating   

a.富于启发性的，有助阐明的

参考例句：

• We didn't find the examples he used particularly illuminating. 我们觉得他采用的那些例证启发性不是特别大。
• I found his talk most illuminating. 我觉得他的话很有启发性。

7 embarrassment   

n.尴尬；使人为难的人(事物)；障碍；窘迫

参考例句：

• She could have died away with embarrassment.她窘迫得要死。
• Coughing at a concert can be a real embarrassment.在音乐会上咳嗽真会使人难堪。

8 contrived   

adj.不自然的，做作的；虚构的

参考例句：

• There was nothing contrived or calculated about what he said.他说的话里没有任何蓄意捏造的成分。
• The plot seems contrived.情节看起来不真实。

9 affected   

adj.不自然的，假装的

参考例句：

• She showed an affected interest in our subject.她假装对我们的课题感到兴趣。
• His manners are affected.他的态度不自然。

10 wilful   

adj.任性的，故意的

参考例句：

• A wilful fault has no excuse and deserves no pardon.不能宽恕故意犯下的错误。
• He later accused reporters of wilful distortion and bias.他后来指责记者有意歪曲事实并带有偏见。

11 unity   

n.团结，联合，统一；和睦，协调

参考例句：

• When we speak of unity,we do not mean unprincipled peace.所谓团结，并非一团和气。
• We must strengthen our unity in the face of powerful enemies.大敌当前，我们必须加强团结。

12 abruptly   

adv.突然地，出其不意地

参考例句：

• He gestured abruptly for Virginia to get in the car.他粗鲁地示意弗吉尼亚上车。
• I was abruptly notified that a half-hour speech was expected of me.我突然被通知要讲半个小时的话。

13 vaulted   

adj.拱状的

参考例句：

• She vaulted over the gate and ran up the path. 她用手一撑跃过栅栏门沿着小路跑去。
• The formal living room has a fireplace and vaulted ceilings. 正式的客厅有一个壁炉和拱形天花板。

14 mutual   

adj.相互的，彼此的；共同的，共有的

参考例句：

• We must pull together for mutual interest.我们必须为相互的利益而通力合作。
• Mutual interests tied us together.相互的利害关系把我们联系在一起。

15 evasions   

逃避( evasion的名词复数 )； 回避； 遁辞； 借口

参考例句：

• A little overwhelmed, I began the generalized evasions which that question deserves. 我有点不知所措，就开始说一些含糊其词的话来搪塞。
• His answers to my questions were all evasions. 他对我的问题的回答均为遁词。

16 divergence   

n.分歧，岔开

参考例句：

• There is no sure cure for this transatlantic divergence.没有什么灵丹妙药可以消除大西洋两岸的分歧。
• In short,it was an age full of conflicts and divergence of values.总之，这一时期是矛盾与价值观分歧的时期。