But what was the use now?
“I should be mad if I began to love him again when it is too late.”
Bertha was appalled5 by the regret which she felt rising within her, a devil that wrung6 her heart in an iron grip. Oh, she could not risk the possibility of grief, she had suffered too much and she must kill in herself the springs of pain. She dared not leave things which in future years might be the foundations of a new idolatry. Her only chance of peace was to destroy everything that might recall him.
She seized the photograph and without daring to look again, withdrew it from the frame and rapidly tore it in pieces. She looked round the room.
“I musn’t leave anything,” she muttered.
She saw on a table an album containing pictures of Edward at all ages, the child with long curls, the urchin7 in knickerbockers, the schoolboy, the lover of her heart. She had persuaded him to be photographed in London during their honeymoon8, and he was there in half-a-dozen different positions. Bertha thought her heart would break as she destroyed them one by one, and it needed all the strength she had to prevent her from covering them with passionate9 kisses. Her fingers ached with the tearing, but in a little while they were all in fragments in the fireplace. Then, desperately10, she added the letters Edward had written to her; and applied11 a match. She watched them curl and frizzle and burn; and presently they were ashes.
She sank on a chair, exhausted12 by the effort, but quickly roused herself. She drank some water, nerving herself for a more terrible ordeal13; for she knew that on the next few hours depended her future peace.
By now the night was late, a stormy night with the wind howling through the leafless trees. Bertha started when it beat against the windows with a scream that was nearly human. A fear seized her of what she was about to do, but she was driven by a greater fear. She took a candle, and opening the door, listened. There was no one; the wind roared with its long monotonous14 voice, and the branches of a tree beating against a window in the passage gave a ghastly tap-tap, as if unseen spirits were near.
The living, in the presence of death, feel that the whole air is full of something new and terrible. A greater sensitiveness perceives an inexplicable15 feeling of something present, or of some horrible thing happening invisibly. Bertha walked to her husband’s room and for a while dared not enter. At last she opened the door, she lit the candles on the chimney-piece and on the dressing-table, then went to the bed. Edward was lying on his back, with a handkerchief bound round his jaw16 to hold it up, his hands crossed in front.
Bertha stood in front of the corpse17 and looked. The impression of the young man passed away, and she saw him as in truth he was, stout18, red-faced, with the venules of his cheeks standing out distinctly in a purple network; the sides of his face were prominent as of late years they had become; and he had little side whiskers. His skin was lined already and rough, the hair over the front of his head was scanty19, and the scalp was visible, shiny and white. The hands which once had delighted her by their strength, so that she compared them with the porphyry hands of an unfinished statue, now were repellent in their coarseness. For a long time their touch had a little disgusted her. This was the image Bertha wished to impress upon her mind. It was a stranger lying dead before her, a man to whom she was indifferent.
At last turning away, she went out and returned to her own room.
Three days later was the funeral. All the morning wreaths and crosses of beautiful flowers had poured in, and now there was a crowd in the drive in front of Court Leys. The Blackstable Freemasons (Lodge20 No. 31,899), of which Edward at his death was Worshipful Master, had signified their intention of attending, and lined the road, two and two, in white gloves and aprons21. There were likewise representatives of the Tercanbury Lodge (4169), of the Provincial22 Grand Lodge, the Mark Masons, and the Knights23 Templars. The Blackstable unionist Association sent one hundred Conservatives, who walked two and two after the Freemasons. There were a few words as to precedence between Brother G. W. Hancock (P.W.M.), who led the Blackstable Lodge (31,899), and Mr. Atthill Bacot, who marched at the head of the politicians; but it was finally settled in favour of the Lodge, as the older established body. Then came the members of the Local District Council, of which Edward had been chairman, and after these the carriages of the gentry24. Mrs. Mayston Ryle sent a landau and pair, but Mrs. Branderton, the Molsons, and the rest, only sent broughams. It needed a prodigious25 amount of generalship to marshal these forces, and Arthur Branderton lost his temper because the Conservatives would start before they were wanted to.
“Ah,” said Brother A. W. Rogers (the landlord of the Pig and Whistle), “they want Craddock here now. He was the best organiser I’ve ever seen; he’d have got the procession into working order and the funeral over by this time.”
The last carriage disappeared, and Bertha, alone at length, lay down by the window on the sofa. She was devoutly26 grateful to the old convention which prevented the widow’s attendance at the funeral.
She looked with tired and listless eyes at the long avenue of elm-trees, bare of leaf. The sky was gray and the clouds heavy and low. Bertha now was a pale woman of thirty, still beautiful, with curling, abundant hair; but her dark eyes had under them still darker lines, and their fire was half gone. Between her brows was a little vertical27 line, and her lips had lost the joyousness28 of youth, the corners of her mouth turned down with a melancholy29 expression. The face was thin and extremely pale; but what chiefly struck one was that she seemed so utterly30 weary. Her features remained singularly immobile, and there was in her eyes an apathy31 that was very painful. Her eyes said that she had loved and found love wanting, that she had been a mother and that her child had died, and that now she desired nothing very strongly but to be left in peace.
Bertha was indeed tired out, in body and mind, tired of love and hate, tired with friendship and knowledge, tired with the passing years. Her thought wandered to the future and she decided32 to leave Blackstable, and let Court Leys, so that in no moment of weakness might she be tempted33 to return. And first she intended to travel, wishing to live in places where she was unknown, so as more easily to forget the past. Bertha’s memory brought back Italy, the land of those who suffer in unfulfilled desire, the lotus land. She would go there and she would go farther, ever towards the sun; for now she had no ties on earth, and at last, at last she was free.
The melancholy day closed in the great clouds hanging overhead darkened with approaching night. Bertha remembered how ready in her girlhood she had been to pour herself out to the world. Feeling intense fellowship with all human beings, she wished to throw herself into their arms, thinking that they would be outstretched to receive her. Her life seemed to overflow34 into the lives of others, becoming one with theirs as the water of rivers becomes one with the sea. But very soon the power she had felt of doing all this departed; she recognised a barrier between herself and human kind, and felt that they were strangers. Hardly understanding the impossibility of what she desired, she placed all her love, all her faculty35 of expansion, on one person, on Edward, making a final effort, as it were, to break the barrier of consciousness and unite her soul with his. She drew him towards her with all her might, Edward the man, seeking to know him in the depths of his heart, yearning36 to lose herself in him. But at last she saw that what she had striven for was unattainable. I myself stand on one side and the rest of the world on the other. There is an abyss between, that no power can cross, a strange barrier more insuperable than a mountain of fire. Not even the most devoted37 lovers know the essentials of one another’s selves. However ardent38 their passion, however intimate their union, they are always strangers; scarcely more to one another than chance acquaintance.
And when she discovered this, with many tears and after bitter heartache, Bertha retired39 into herself. But soon she found solace40. In her silence she built a world of her own, and kept it from the eyes of every living soul, knowing that none could understand it. And then all ties were irksome, all earthly attachments41 unnecessary.
“If I had been keeping a diary of my emotions, I should close it to-day, with the words, ‘My husband has broken his neck.’”
But she was pained at her own callousness43.
“Poor fellow,” she murmured. “He was honest and kind and forbearing. He did all he could, and tried always to act like a gentleman. He was very useful in the world, and, in his own way, he was fond of me. His only fault was that I loved him—and ceased to love him.”
By her side lay the book she had read while waiting for Edward when he was hunting. Bertha had put it on the table open, face-downwards, when she rose from the sofa to receive the expected visitor; and it had remained as she left it. She was tired of thinking; and taking it now, began to read quietly.
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1
vividly
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| adv.清楚地，鲜明地，生动地 | |
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2
rapture
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| n.狂喜；全神贯注；着迷；v.使狂喜 | |
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3
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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4
manly
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| adj.有男子气概的；adv.男子般地，果断地 | |
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5
appalled
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| v.使惊骇，使充满恐惧( appall的过去式和过去分词)adj.惊骇的；丧胆的 | |
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6
wrung
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| 绞( wring的过去式和过去分词 )； 握紧（尤指别人的手）； 把（湿衣服）拧干； 绞掉（水） | |
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7
urchin
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| n.顽童；海胆 | |
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8
honeymoon
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| n.蜜月（假期）；vi.度蜜月 | |
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9
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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10
desperately
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| adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地 | |
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11
applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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12
exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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13
ordeal
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| n.苦难经历，（尤指对品格、耐力的）严峻考验 | |
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14
monotonous
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| adj.单调的，一成不变的，使人厌倦的 | |
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15
inexplicable
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| adj.无法解释的，难理解的 | |
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16
jaw
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| n.颚，颌，说教，流言蜚语；v.喋喋不休，教训 | |
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17
corpse
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| n.尸体，死尸 | |
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19
scanty
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| adj.缺乏的，仅有的，节省的，狭小的，不够的 | |
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lodge
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| v.临时住宿，寄宿，寄存，容纳；n.传达室，小旅馆 | |
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21
aprons
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| 围裙( apron的名词复数 )； 停机坪，台口（舞台幕前的部份） | |
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22
provincial
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| adj.省的，地方的；n．外省人，乡下人 | |
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23
knights
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| 骑士； （中古时代的）武士( knight的名词复数 )； 骑士； 爵士； （国际象棋中）马 | |
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24
gentry
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| n.绅士阶级，上层阶级 | |
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25
prodigious
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| adj.惊人的，奇妙的；异常的；巨大的；庞大的 | |
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26
devoutly
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| adv.虔诚地，虔敬地，衷心地 | |
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27
vertical
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| adj.垂直的，顶点的，纵向的；n.垂直物，垂直的位置 | |
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28
joyousness
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| 快乐，使人喜悦 | |
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melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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30
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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31
apathy
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| n.漠不关心，无动于衷；冷淡 | |
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32
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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33
tempted
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| v.怂恿（某人）干不正当的事；冒…的险（tempt的过去分词） | |
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34
overflow
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| v.(使)外溢，(使)溢出；溢出，流出，漫出 | |
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35
faculty
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| n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员 | |
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yearning
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| a.渴望的；向往的；怀念的 | |
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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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38
ardent
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，强烈的，烈性的 | |
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39
retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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40
solace
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| n.安慰；v.使快乐；vt.安慰(物)，缓和 | |
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41
attachments
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| n.（用电子邮件发送的）附件( attachment的名词复数 )；附着；连接；附属物 | |
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42
reverted
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| 恢复( revert的过去式和过去分词 )； 重提； 回到…上； 归还 | |
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43
callousness
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