“I never said,” May Bartram replied, “that it hadn’t made me a good deal talked about.”
“Ah well then you’re not ‘saved.’”
“It hasn’t been a question for me. If you’ve had your woman I’ve had,” she said, “my man.”
“And you mean that makes you all right?”
Oh it was always as if there were so much to say!
“I don’t know why it shouldn’t make me—humanly, which is what we’re speaking of—as right as it makes you.”
“I see,” Marcher returned. “‘Humanly,’ no doubt, as showing that you’re living for something. Not, that is, just for me and my secret.”
May Bartram smiled. “I don’t pretend it exactly shows that I’m not living for you. It’s my intimacy7 with you that’s in question.”
He laughed as he saw what she meant. “Yes, but since, as you say, I’m only, so far as people make out, ordinary, you’re—aren’t you? no more than ordinary either. You help me to pass for a man like another. So if I am, as I understand you, you’re not compromised. Is that it?”
She had another of her waits, but she spoke8 clearly enough. “That’s it. It’s all that concerns me—to help you to pass for a man like another.”
He was careful to acknowledge the remark handsomely. “How kind, how beautiful, you are to me! How shall I ever repay you?”
She had her last grave pause, as if there might be a choice of ways. But she chose. “By going on as you are.”
It was into this going on as he was that they relapsed, and really for so long a time that the day inevitably11 came for a further sounding of their depths. These depths, constantly bridged over by a structure firm enough in spite of its lightness and of its occasional oscillation in the somewhat vertiginous12 air, invited on occasion, in the interest of their nerves, a dropping of the plummet13 and a measurement of the abyss. A difference had been made moreover, once for all, by the fact that she had all the while not appeared to feel the need of rebutting14 his charge of an idea within her that she didn’t dare to express—a charge uttered just before one of the fullest of their later discussions ended. It had come up for him then that she “knew” something and that what she knew was bad—too bad to tell him. When he had spoken of it as visibly so bad that she was afraid he might find it out, her reply had left the matter too equivocal to be let alone and yet, for Marcher’s special sensibility, almost too formidable again to touch. He circled about it at a distance that alternately narrowed and widened and that still wasn’t much affected15 by the consciousness in him that there was nothing she could “know,” after all, any better than he did. She had no source of knowledge he hadn’t equally—except of course that she might have finer nerves. That was what women had where they were interested; they made out things, where people were concerned, that the people often couldn’t have made out for themselves. Their nerves, their sensibility, their imagination, were conductors and revealers, and the beauty of May Bartram was in particular that she had given herself so to his case. He felt in these days what, oddly enough, he had never felt before, the growth of a dread16 of losing her by some catastrophe17—some catastrophe that yet wouldn’t at all be the catastrophe: partly because she had almost of a sudden begun to strike him as more useful to him than ever yet, and partly by reason of an appearance of uncertainty18 in her health, co-incident and equally new. It was characteristic of the inner detachment he had hitherto so successfully cultivated and to which our whole account of him is a reference, it was characteristic that his complications, such as they were, had never yet seemed so as at this crisis to thicken about him, even to the point of making him ask himself if he were, by any chance, of a truth, within sight or sound, within touch or reach, within the immediate jurisdiction19, of the thing that waited.
When the day came, as come it had to, that his friend confessed to him her fear of a deep disorder20 in her blood, he felt somehow the shadow of a change and the chill of a shock. He immediately began to imagine aggravations and disasters, and above all to think of her peril21 as the direct menace for himself of personal privation. This indeed gave him one of those partial recoveries of equanimity22 that were agreeable to him—it showed him that what was still first in his mind was the loss she herself might suffer. “What if she should have to die before knowing, before seeing—?” It would have been brutal23, in the early stages of her trouble, to put that question to her; but it had immediately sounded for him to his own concern, and the possibility was what most made him sorry for her. If she did “know,” moreover, in the sense of her having had some—what should he think?—mystical irresistible24 light, this would make the matter not better, but worse, inasmuch as her original adoption25 of his own curiosity had quite become the basis of her life. She had been living to see what would be to be seen, and it would quite lacerate her to have to give up before the accomplishment26 of the vision. These reflexions, as I say, quickened his generosity27; yet, make them as he might, he saw himself, with the lapse9 of the period, more and more disconcerted. It lapsed10 for him with a strange steady sweep, and the oddest oddity was that it gave him, independently of the threat of much inconvenience, almost the only positive surprise his career, if career it could be called, had yet offered him. She kept the house as she had never done; he had to go to her to see her—she could meet him nowhere now, though there was scarce a corner of their loved old London in which she hadn’t in the past, at one time or another, done so; and he found her always seated by her fire in the deep old-fashioned chair she was less and less able to leave. He had been struck one day, after an absence exceeding his usual measure, with her suddenly looking much older to him than he had ever thought of her being; then he recognised that the suddenness was all on his side—he had just simply and suddenly noticed. She looked older because inevitably, after so many years, she was old, or almost; which was of course true in still greater measure of her companion. If she was old, or almost, John Marcher assuredly was, and yet it was her showing of the lesson, not his own, that brought the truth home to him. His surprises began here; when once they had begun they multiplied; they came rather with a rush: it was as if, in the oddest way in the world, they had all been kept back, sown in a thick cluster, for the late afternoon of life, the time at which for people in general the unexpected has died out.
One of them was that he should have caught himself—for he had so done—really wondering if the great accident would take form now as nothing more than his being condemned28 to see this charming woman, this admirable friend, pass away from him. He had never so unreservedly qualified29 her as while confronted in thought with such a possibility; in spite of which there was small doubt for him that as an answer to his long riddle30 the mere31 effacement32 of even so fine a feature of his situation would be an abject33 anticlimax34. It would represent, as connected with his past attitude, a drop of dignity under the shadow of which his existence could only become the most grotesques35 of failures. He had been far from holding it a failure—long as he had waited for the appearance that was to make it a success. He had waited for quite another thing, not for such a thing as that. The breath of his good faith came short, however, as he recognised how long he had waited, or how long at least his companion had. That she, at all events, might be recorded as having waited in vain—this affected him sharply, and all the more because of his at first having done little more than amuse himself with the idea. It grew more grave as the gravity of her condition grew, and the state of mind it produced in him, which he himself ended by watching as if it had been some definite disfigurement of his outer person, may pass for another of his surprises. This conjoined itself still with another, the really stupefying consciousness of a question that he would have allowed to shape itself had he dared. What did everything mean—what, that is, did she mean, she and her vain waiting and her probable death and the soundless admonition of it all—unless that, at this time of day, it was simply, it was overwhelmingly too late? He had never at any stage of his queer consciousness admitted the whisper of such a correction; he had never till within these last few months been so false to his conviction as not to hold that what was to come to him had time, whether he struck himself as having it or not. That at last, at last, he certainly hadn’t it, to speak of, or had it but in the scantiest36 measure—such, soon enough, as things went with him, became the inference with which his old obsession37 had to reckon: and this it was not helped to do by the more and more confirmed appearance that the great vagueness casting the long shadow in which he had lived had, to attest38 itself, almost no margin39 left. Since it was in Time that he was to have met his fate, so it was in Time that his fate was to have acted; and as he waked up to the sense of no longer being young, which was exactly the sense of being stale, just as that, in turn, was the sense of being weak, he waked up to another matter beside. It all hung together; they were subject, he and the great vagueness, to an equal and indivisible law. When the possibilities themselves had accordingly turned stale, when the secret of the gods had grown faint, had perhaps even quite evaporated, that, and that only, was failure. It wouldn’t have been failure to be bankrupt, dishonoured40, pilloried41, hanged; it was failure not to be anything. And so, in the dark valley into which his path had taken its unlooked-for twist, he wondered not a little as he groped. He didn’t care what awful crash might overtake him, with what ignominy or what monstrosity he might yet be associated—since he wasn’t after all too utterly42 old to suffer—if it would only be decently proportionate to the posture43 he had kept, all his life, in the threatened presence of it. He had but one desire left—that he shouldn’t have been “sold.”
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1
intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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2
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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promptly
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| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
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inviting
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| adj.诱人的，引人注目的 | |
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frugal
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| adj.节俭的，节约的，少量的，微量的 | |
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positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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7
intimacy
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| n.熟悉，亲密，密切关系，亲昵的言行 | |
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8
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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9
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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10
lapsed
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| adj.流失的，堕落的v.退步( lapse的过去式和过去分词 )；陷入；倒退；丧失 | |
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11
inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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12
vertiginous
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| adj.回旋的；引起头晕的 | |
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13
plummet
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| vi.(价格、水平等)骤然下跌；n.铅坠；重压物 | |
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14
rebutting
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| v.反驳，驳回( rebut的现在分词 )；击退 | |
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15
affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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17
catastrophe
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| n.大灾难，大祸 | |
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18
uncertainty
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| n.易变，靠不住，不确知，不确定的事物 | |
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jurisdiction
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| n.司法权，审判权，管辖权，控制权 | |
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20
disorder
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| n.紊乱，混乱；骚动，骚乱；疾病，失调 | |
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21
peril
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| n.(严重的)危险；危险的事物 | |
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22
equanimity
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| n.沉着，镇定 | |
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brutal
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| adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的 | |
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24
irresistible
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| adj.非常诱人的，无法拒绝的，无法抗拒的 | |
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25
adoption
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| n.采用，采纳，通过；收养 | |
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accomplishment
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| n.完成，成就，（pl.）造诣，技能 | |
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27
generosity
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| n.大度，慷慨，慷慨的行为 | |
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28
condemned
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| adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
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29
qualified
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| adj.合格的，有资格的，胜任的，有限制的 | |
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30
riddle
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| n.谜，谜语，粗筛；vt.解谜，给…出谜，筛，检查，鉴定，非难，充满于；vi.出谜 | |
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31
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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32
effacement
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| n.抹消，抹杀 | |
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33
abject
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| adj.极可怜的，卑屈的 | |
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34
anticlimax
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| n.令人扫兴的结局；突降法 | |
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35
grotesques
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| n.衣着、打扮、五官等古怪，不协调的样子( grotesque的名词复数 ) | |
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36
scantiest
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| adj.（大小或数量）不足的，勉强够的( scanty的最高级 ) | |
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37
obsession
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| n.困扰，无法摆脱的思想(或情感) | |
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38
attest
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| vt.证明，证实；表明 | |
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39
margin
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| n.页边空白；差额；余地，余裕；边，边缘 | |
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40
dishonoured
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| a.不光彩的，不名誉的 | |
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41
pilloried
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| v.使受公众嘲笑( pillory的过去式和过去分词 )；将…示众；给…上颈手枷；处…以枷刑 | |
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42
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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43
posture
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| n.姿势，姿态，心态，态度；v.作出某种姿势 | |
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