It led, briefly12, in the course of the October afternoon, to his closer meeting with May Bartram, whose face, a reminder13, yet not quite a remembrance, as they sat much separated at a very long table, had begun merely by troubling him rather pleasantly. It affected14 him as the sequel of something of which he had lost the beginning. He knew it, and for the time quite welcomed it, as a continuation, but didn’t know what it continued, which was an interest or an amusement the greater as he was also somehow aware—yet without a direct sign from her—that the young woman herself hadn’t lost the thread. She hadn’t lost it, but she wouldn’t give it back to him, he saw, without some putting forth15 of his hand for it; and he not only saw that, but saw several things more, things odd enough in the light of the fact that at the moment some accident of grouping brought them face to face he was still merely fumbling16 with the idea that any contact between them in the past would have had no importance. If it had had no importance he scarcely knew why his actual impression of her should so seem to have so much; the answer to which, however, was that in such a life as they all appeared to be leading for the moment one could but take things as they came. He was satisfied, without in the least being able to say why, that this young lady might roughly have ranked in the house as a poor relation; satisfied also that she was not there on a brief visit, but was more or less a part of the establishment—almost a working, a remunerated part. Didn’t she enjoy at periods a protection that she paid for by helping17, among other services, to show the place and explain it, deal with the tiresome18 people, answer questions about the dates of the building, the styles of the furniture, the authorship of the pictures, the favourite haunts of the ghost? It wasn’t that she looked as if you could have given her shillings—it was impossible to look less so. Yet when she finally drifted toward him, distinctly handsome, though ever so much older—older than when he had seen her before—it might have been as an effect of her guessing that he had, within the couple of hours, devoted19 more imagination to her than to all the others put together, and had thereby20 penetrated21 to a kind of truth that the others were too stupid for. She was there on harder terms than any one; she was there as a consequence of things suffered, one way and another, in the interval22 of years; and she remembered him very much as she was remembered—only a good deal better.
By the time they at last thus came to speech they were alone in one of the rooms—remarkable for a fine portrait over the chimney-place—out of which their friends had passed, and the charm of it was that even before they had spoken they had practically arranged with each other to stay behind for talk. The charm, happily, was in other things too—partly in there being scarce a spot at Weatherend without something to stay behind for. It was in the way the autumn day looked into the high windows as it waned24; the way the red light, breaking at the close from under a low sombre sky, reached out in a long shaft25 and played over old wainscots, old tapestry26, old gold, old colour. It was most of all perhaps in the way she came to him as if, since she had been turned on to deal with the simpler sort, he might, should he choose to keep the whole thing down, just take her mild attention for a part of her general business. As soon as he heard her voice, however, the gap was filled up and the missing link supplied; the slight irony27 he divined in her attitude lost its advantage. He almost jumped at it to get there before her. “I met you years and years ago in Rome. I remember all about it.” She confessed to disappointment—she had been so sure he didn’t; and to prove how well he did he began to pour forth the particular recollections that popped up as he called for them. Her face and her voice, all at his service now, worked the miracle—the impression operating like the torch of a lamplighter who touches into flame, one by one, a long row of gas-jets. Marcher flattered himself the illumination was brilliant, yet he was really still more pleased on her showing him, with amusement, that in his haste to make everything right he had got most things rather wrong. It hadn’t been at Rome—it had been at Naples; and it hadn’t been eight years before—it had been more nearly ten. She hadn’t been, either, with her uncle and aunt, but with her mother and brother; in addition to which it was not with the Pembles he had been, but with the Boyers, coming down in their company from Rome—a point on which she insisted, a little to his confusion, and as to which she had her evidence in hand. The Boyers she had known, but didn’t know the Pembles, though she had heard of them, and it was the people he was with who had made them acquainted. The incident of the thunderstorm that had raged round them with such violence as to drive them for refuge into an excavation—this incident had not occurred at the Palace of the Caesars, but at Pompeii, on an occasion when they had been present there at an important find.
He accepted her amendments28, he enjoyed her corrections, though the moral of them was, she pointed29 out, that he really didn’t remember the least thing about her; and he only felt it as a drawback that when all was made strictly30 historic there didn’t appear much of anything left. They lingered together still, she neglecting her office—for from the moment he was so clever she had no proper right to him—and both neglecting the house, just waiting as to see if a memory or two more wouldn’t again breathe on them. It hadn’t taken them many minutes, after all, to put down on the table, like the cards of a pack, those that constituted their respective hands; only what came out was that the pack was unfortunately not perfect—that the past, invoked31, invited, encouraged, could give them, naturally, no more than it had. It had made them anciently meet—her at twenty, him at twenty-five; but nothing was so strange, they seemed to say to each other, as that, while so occupied, it hadn’t done a little more for them. They looked at each other as with the feeling of an occasion missed; the present would have been so much better if the other, in the far distance, in the foreign land, hadn’t been so stupidly meagre. There weren’t, apparently32, all counted, more than a dozen little old things that had succeeded in coming to pass between them; trivialities of youth, simplicities33 of freshness, stupidities of ignorance, small possible germs, but too deeply buried—too deeply (didn’t it seem?) to sprout34 after so many years. Marcher could only feel he ought to have rendered her some service—saved her from a capsized boat in the bay or at least recovered her dressing-bag, filched35 from her cab in the streets of Naples by a lazzarone with a stiletto. Or it would have been nice if he could have been taken with fever all alone at his hotel, and she could have come to look after him, to write to his people, to drive him out in convalescence36. Then they would be in possession of the something or other that their actual show seemed to lack. It yet somehow presented itself, this show, as too good to be spoiled; so that they were reduced for a few minutes more to wondering a little helplessly why—since they seemed to know a certain number of the same people—their reunion had been so long averted37. They didn’t use that name for it, but their delay from minute to minute to join the others was a kind of confession38 that they didn’t quite want it to be a failure. Their attempted supposition of reasons for their not having met but showed how little they knew of each other. There came in fact a moment when Marcher felt a positive pang39. It was vain to pretend she was an old friend, for all the communities were wanting, in spite of which it was as an old friend that he saw she would have suited him. He had new ones enough—was surrounded with them for instance on the stage of the other house; as a new one he probably wouldn’t have so much as noticed her. He would have liked to invent something, get her to make-believe with him that some passage of a romantic or critical kind had originally occurred. He was really almost reaching out in imagination—as against time—for something that would do, and saying to himself that if it didn’t come this sketch40 of a fresh start would show for quite awkwardly bungled41. They would separate, and now for no second or no third chance. They would have tried and not succeeded. Then it was, just at the turn, as he afterwards made it out to himself, that, everything else failing, she herself decided42 to take up the case and, as it were, save the situation. He felt as soon as she spoke2 that she had been consciously keeping back what she said and hoping to get on without it; a scruple43 in her that immensely touched him when, by the end of three or four minutes more, he was able to measure it. What she brought out, at any rate, quite cleared the air and supplied the link—the link it was so odd he should frivolously44 have managed to lose.
“You know you told me something I’ve never forgotten and that again and again has made me think of you since; it was that tremendously hot day when we went to Sorrento, across the bay, for the breeze. What I allude45 to was what you said to me, on the way back, as we sat under the awning46 of the boat enjoying the cool. Have you forgotten?”
He had forgotten, and was even more surprised than ashamed. But the great thing was that he saw in this no vulgar reminder of any “sweet” speech. The vanity of women had long memories, but she was making no claim on him of a compliment or a mistake. With another woman, a totally different one, he might have feared the recall possibly even some imbecile “offer.” So, in having to say that he had indeed forgotten, he was conscious rather of a loss than of a gain; he already saw an interest in the matter of her mention. “I try to think—but I give it up. Yet I remember the Sorrento day.”
“I’m not very sure you do,” May Bartram after a moment said; “and I’m not very sure I ought to want you to. It’s dreadful to bring a person back at any time to what he was ten years before. If you’ve lived away from it,” she smiled, “so much the better.”
“Ah if you haven’t why should I?” he asked.
“Lived away, you mean, from what I myself was?”
“From what I was. I was of course an ass23,” Marcher went on; “but I would rather know from you just the sort of ass I was than—from the moment you have something in your mind—not know anything.”
Still, however, she hesitated. “But if you’ve completely ceased to be that sort—?”
“Why I can then all the more bear to know. Besides, perhaps I haven’t.”
“Perhaps. Yet if you haven’t,” she added, “I should suppose you’d remember. Not indeed that I in the least connect with my impression the invidious name you use. If I had only thought you foolish,” she explained, “the thing I speak of wouldn’t so have remained with me. It was about yourself.” She waited as if it might come to him; but as, only meeting her eyes in wonder, he gave no sign, she burnt her ships. “Has it ever happened?”
Then it was that, while he continued to stare, a light broke for him and the blood slowly came to his face, which began to burn with recognition.
“Do you mean I told you—?” But he faltered47, lest what came to him shouldn’t be right, lest he should only give himself away.
“It was something about yourself that it was natural one shouldn’t forget—that is if one remembered you at all. That’s why I ask you,” she smiled, “if the thing you then spoke of has ever come to pass?”
Oh then he saw, but he was lost in wonder and found himself embarrassed. This, he also saw, made her sorry for him, as if her allusion48 had been a mistake. It took him but a moment, however, to feel it hadn’t been, much as it had been a surprise. After the first little shock of it her knowledge on the contrary began, even if rather strangely, to taste sweet to him. She was the only other person in the world then who would have it, and she had had it all these years, while the fact of his having so breathed his secret had unaccountably faded from him. No wonder they couldn’t have met as if nothing had happened. “I judge,” he finally said, “that I know what you mean. Only I had strangely enough lost any sense of having taken you so far into my confidence.”
“Is it because you’ve taken so many others as well?”
“I’ve taken nobody. Not a creature since then.”
“So that I’m the only person who knows?”
“The only person in the world.”
“Well,” she quickly replied, “I myself have never spoken. I’ve never, never repeated of you what you told me.” She looked at him so that he perfectly49 believed her. Their eyes met over it in such a way that he was without a doubt. “And I never will.”
She spoke with an earnestness that, as if almost excessive, put him at ease about her possible derision. Somehow the whole question was a new luxury to him—that is from the moment she was in possession. If she didn’t take the sarcastic50 view she clearly took the sympathetic, and that was what he had had, in all the long time, from no one whomsoever. What he felt was that he couldn’t at present have begun to tell her, and yet could profit perhaps exquisitely51 by the accident of having done so of old. “Please don’t then. We’re just right as it is.”
“Oh I am,” she laughed, “if you are!” To which she added: “Then you do still feel in the same way?”
It was impossible he shouldn’t take to himself that she was really interested, though it all kept coming as a perfect surprise. He had thought of himself so long as abominably52 alone, and lo he wasn’t alone a bit. He hadn’t been, it appeared, for an hour—since those moments on the Sorrento boat. It was she who had been, he seemed to see as he looked at her—she who had been made so by the graceless fact of his lapse53 of fidelity54. To tell her what he had told her—what had it been but to ask something of her? something that she had given, in her charity, without his having, by a remembrance, by a return of the spirit, failing another encounter, so much as thanked her. What he had asked of her had been simply at first not to laugh at him. She had beautifully not done so for ten years, and she was not doing so now. So he had endless gratitude55 to make up. Only for that he must see just how he had figured to her. “What, exactly, was the account I gave—?”
“Of the way you did feel? Well, it was very simple. You said you had had from your earliest time, as the deepest thing within you, the sense of being kept for something rare and strange, possibly prodigious56 and terrible, that was sooner or later to happen to you, that you had in your bones the foreboding and the conviction of, and that would perhaps overwhelm you.”
“Do you call that very simple?” John Marcher asked.
She thought a moment. “It was perhaps because I seemed, as you spoke, to understand it.”
“You do understand it?” he eagerly asked.
Again she kept her kind eyes on him. “You still have the belief?”
“Oh!” he exclaimed helplessly. There was too much to say.
“Whatever it’s to be,” she clearly made out, “it hasn’t yet come.”
He shook his head in complete surrender now. “It hasn’t yet come. Only, you know, it isn’t anything I’m to do, to achieve in the world, to be distinguished57 or admired for. I’m not such an ass as that. It would be much better, no doubt, if I were.”
“It’s to be something you’re merely to suffer?”
“Well, say to wait for—to have to meet, to face, to see suddenly break out in my life; possibly destroying all further consciousness, possibly annihilating58 me; possibly, on the other hand, only altering everything, striking at the root of all my world and leaving me to the consequences, however they shape themselves.”
She took this in, but the light in her eyes continued for him not to be that of mockery. “Isn’t what you describe perhaps but the expectation—or at any rate the sense of danger, familiar to so many people—of falling in love?”
John Marcher thought. “Did you ask me that before?”
“No—I wasn’t so free-and-easy then. But it’s what strikes me now.”
“Of course,” he said after a moment, “it strikes you. Of course it strikes me. Of course what’s in store for me may be no more than that. The only thing is,” he went on, “that I think if it had been that I should by this time know.”
“Do you mean because you’ve been in love?” And then as he but looked at her in silence: “You’ve been in love, and it hasn’t meant such a cataclysm59, hasn’t proved the great affair?”
“Here I am, you see. It hasn’t been overwhelming.”
“Then it hasn’t been love,” said May Bartram.
“Well, I at least thought it was. I took it for that—I’ve taken it till now. It was agreeable, it was delightful60, it was miserable,” he explained. “But it wasn’t strange. It wasn’t what my affair’s to be.”
“You want something all to yourself—something that nobody else knows or has known?”
“It isn’t a question of what I ‘want’—God knows I don’t want anything. It’s only a question of the apprehension61 that haunts me—that I live with day by day.”
He said this so lucidly62 and consistently that he could see it further impose itself. If she hadn’t been interested before she’d have been interested now.
“Is it a sense of coming violence?”
Evidently now too again he liked to talk of it. “I don’t think of it as—when it does come—necessarily violent. I only think of it as natural and as of course above all unmistakeable. I think of it simply as the thing. The thing will of itself appear natural.”
“Then how will it appear strange?”
Marcher bethought himself. “It won’t—to me.”
“To whom then?”
“Well,” he replied, smiling at last, “say to you.”
“Oh then I’m to be present?”
“Why you are present—since you know.”
“I see.” She turned it over. “But I mean at the catastrophe63.”
At this, for a minute, their lightness gave way to their gravity; it was as if the long look they exchanged held them together. “It will only depend on yourself—if you’ll watch with me.”
“Are you afraid?” she asked.
“Don’t leave me now,” he went on.
“Are you afraid?” she repeated.
“Do you think me simply out of my mind?” he pursued instead of answering. “Do I merely strike you as a harmless lunatic?”
“No,” said May Bartram. “I understand you. I believe you.”
“You mean you feel how my obsession—poor old thing—may correspond to some possible reality?”
“To some possible reality.”
“Then you will watch with me?”
She hesitated, then for the third time put her question. “Are you afraid?”
“Did I tell you I was—at Naples?”
“No, you said nothing about it.”
“Then I don’t know. And I should like to know,” said John Marcher. “You’ll tell me yourself whether you think so. If you’ll watch with me you’ll see.”
“Very good then.” They had been moving by this time across the room, and at the door, before passing out, they paused as for the full wind-up of their understanding. “I’ll watch with you,” said May Bartram.
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1
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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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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renewal
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| adj.(契约)延期，续订，更新，复活，重来 | |
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luncheon
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| n.午宴，午餐，便宴 | |
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motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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appreciations
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| n.欣赏( appreciation的名词复数 )；感激；评定；（尤指土地或财产的）增值 | |
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mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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ecstasy
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| n.狂喜，心醉神怡，入迷 | |
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9
quenches
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| 解（渴）( quench的第三人称单数 )； 终止（某事物）； （用水）扑灭（火焰等）； 将（热物体）放入水中急速冷却 | |
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sniffing
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| n.探查法v.以鼻吸气，嗅，闻( sniff的现在分词 )；抽鼻子（尤指哭泣、患感冒等时出声地用鼻子吸气）；抱怨，不以为然地说 | |
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11
promptly
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| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
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briefly
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| adv.简单地，简短地 | |
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reminder
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| n.提醒物，纪念品；暗示，提示 | |
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affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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fumbling
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| n. 摸索,漏接 v. 摸索,摸弄,笨拙的处理 | |
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helping
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| n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的 | |
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tiresome
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| adj.令人疲劳的，令人厌倦的 | |
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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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thereby
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| adv.因此，从而 | |
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penetrated
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| adj. 击穿的，鞭辟入里的 动词penetrate的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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interval
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| n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息 | |
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ass
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| n.驴；傻瓜，蠢笨的人 | |
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waned
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| v.衰落( wane的过去式和过去分词 )；（月）亏；变小；变暗淡 | |
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shaft
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| n.(工具的)柄，杆状物 | |
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tapestry
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| n.挂毯，丰富多采的画面 | |
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irony
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| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
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amendments
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| （法律、文件的）改动( amendment的名词复数 )； 修正案； 修改； （美国宪法的）修正案 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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strictly
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| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
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invoked
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| v.援引( invoke的过去式和过去分词 )；行使（权利等）；祈求救助；恳求 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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simplicities
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| n.简单，朴素，率直( simplicity的名词复数 ) | |
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sprout
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| n.芽，萌芽；vt.使发芽，摘去芽；vi.长芽，抽条 | |
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filched
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| v.偷（尤指小的或不贵重的物品）( filch的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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convalescence
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| n.病后康复期 | |
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averted
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| 防止，避免( avert的过去式和过去分词 )； 转移 | |
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confession
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| n.自白，供认，承认 | |
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pang
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| n.剧痛，悲痛，苦闷 | |
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sketch
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| n.草图；梗概；素描；v.素描；概述 | |
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bungled
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| v.搞糟，完不成( bungle的过去式和过去分词 )；笨手笨脚地做；失败；完不成 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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scruple
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| n./v.顾忌，迟疑 | |
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frivolously
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| adv.轻浮地，愚昧地 | |
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allude
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| v.提及，暗指 | |
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awning
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| n.遮阳篷；雨篷 | |
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47
faltered
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| （嗓音）颤抖( falter的过去式和过去分词 )； 支吾其词； 蹒跚； 摇晃 | |
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allusion
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| n.暗示，间接提示 | |
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49
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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50
sarcastic
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| adj.讥讽的，讽刺的，嘲弄的 | |
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51
exquisitely
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| adv.精致地；强烈地；剧烈地；异常地 | |
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52
abominably
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| adv. 可恶地，可恨地，恶劣地 | |
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53
lapse
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| n.过失，流逝，失效，抛弃信仰，间隔；vi.堕落，停止，失效，流逝；vt.使失效 | |
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54
fidelity
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| n.忠诚，忠实；精确 | |
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55
gratitude
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| adj.感激，感谢 | |
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56
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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57
distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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58
annihilating
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| v.（彻底）消灭( annihilate的现在分词 )；使无效；废止；彻底击溃 | |
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59
cataclysm
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| n.洪水，剧变，大灾难 | |
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60
delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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61
apprehension
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| n.理解，领悟；逮捕，拘捕；忧虑 | |
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62
lucidly
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| adv.清透地，透明地 | |
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63
catastrophe
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| n.大灾难，大祸 | |
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