"You have come, Eunice! You have come——"
But he saw well enough what she had come for. She laid the case on the table, but as she tugged6 impatiently at her glove, the fringe of her wrap caught the clasp of it and scattered7 the jewels on the cloth. She tried then to put the ring beside them, but her hand shook so that it fell and rolled upon the floor behind them. Peter picked it up quietly, but he did not offer it to her hand again.
"I have come," said Eunice, "to say what in my mother's house I was afraid of being interrupted in saying; what you must see, what my mother won't see."
"I see you are greatly excited about something!"
"I'm not, I'm not.... That is ... I am, but not in the way you think," she was sharp with insistence8; "that is what you and[Pg 242] mother always say, that I'm nervous or excited, and all the time you don't see."
"What is it I don't see, Eunice?"
"That I can't stand it, that I can't go on with it, that it is dreadful to me,—dreadful!"
"What is dreadful?"
"Everything, being engaged—being married and giving up...." It was fairly racked out of her by some inward torture to which he had not the key.
"Of course, Eunice, if you don't wish to be married so soon——" Peter was all at sea. He brought a chair for her, and perceiving that he would go on standing9 as long as she did, she sat upon the edge of it but kept both the arms as a measure of defence. The slight act of doing something for her restored him for the moment to reality; he bent10 over her. "I've never wanted to hurry you, dearest—— It shall be when you say." She put up her hands suddenly with a shivering movement.
"Oh, never, never at all; never to you!"
Peter could feel that working its track of desolation inward, but the first instinctive11 movement of his surface was to close over the[Pg 243] wound. He took it as he knew he could only take it: as the explosive crisis of the virginal resistance which he remembered he had heard came to girls when marriage loomed12 upon them. He took a turn down the room to steady himself, praying dumbly for the right word.
"It isn't as if I didn't respect you"—she was eager in explanation, hurried and stumbling—"as if I didn't know how good you are ... it is only, because we are so different."
"How different, Eunice?"
"Oh ... older, I suppose." She grew quieter; it appeared on the whole they were getting on. "I care for so many things, you know—dancing—and bridge—young things—and you are always reading and reading. Oh! I couldn't stand it."
So it was out now. She was jealous of his books, a little. Well, he had been self-absorbed. It occurred to him dimly that the thing to have done if he had known a little more about women, had practised with them, was to have provoked her at this point to the tears which should have sealed the renewal13 of his claim to her. What he said was, very quietly:[Pg 244]
"Of course I never meant, Eunice, that you shouldn't have everything you want."
"Oh," she seemed to have found a suffocating14 quality in his gentleness, against which she struck out with drowning gestures, "if you could only understand what it would mean to me never to have anybody I liked to talk to about things,—anybody I liked to be with all the time!" She was choked and aghast at the enormity of it.
"But I thought...." Peter was not able to go on with that. "Isn't there anybody you like to be with, Eunice?"
"Yes," said Eunice. "Burton Henderson."
Mutinous15 and bright she looked at him out of the chair with a hand on either arm of it poised16 for flight or defence. After an interval17 Peter heard his own voice out of a fog rising to the conventional utterance18.
"Of course, if you have learned to love him——"
"I've loved him all the time." She was so bent on making this clear to him that she was careless what went down before her. "From the very beginning," she said, "but he had so[Pg 245] little money, and mother ... I promised you, I know, but it's not as if I ever said I loved you."
She should have spared him that! He had not put out a hand to hold her that he should be so pierced through with needless cruelty. But she was bent on clearing her skirts of him.
"Do you think," she expostulated to his stricken silence, "that if I'd cared in the least I'd have made it so easy for you? Can't you see that it was all arranged, that we jumped at you?" All the time she sat opposite him, thrusting swift and hard, there was no diminution19 of her appealing beauty, the flaming rose of her cheeks and the soft, dark flare of her hair. As if she felt how it belied20 at every turn the quality of her unyielding intention, her voice railed against him feverishly21. "I suppose you think I'm mercenary, and I thought I was, too. You don't know how people like us need money sometimes. All the things we like cost so—all the real things. And poor mamma, she needed things; she'd never had them, and I thought that I could stand being[Pg 246] married to you if I could get them that way.... Maybe I could, you know, if you'd been different, more like us I mean. But there was such a lot you didn't understand ... things you hadn't even heard about. I found that out as soon as we were engaged. There wasn't a thing between us; not a thing."
It poured scalding hot on Peter's sensitive surfaces: made sensitive by the way in which even in this hour her beauty moved him. He felt tears starting in his heart and prayed they might not come to his face. "So you see as we hadn't anything in common it would be better for us not to go on with it even"—she broke a little at this—"even if there hadn't been anybody else. You see that, don't you?" She dared him to deny it rather than begged the concession22 of him as she gathered herself for departure.
"I see that."
"You never really belonged to our set, you know——" She rose now and he rose blindly with her; he hoped that she was done, but there was something still. "It hasn't been easy to go through with it.... Mother isn't[Pg 247] going to make it any easier. It's natural for her to want me to have everything that money would mean, and I thought that if you would just keep away from her ... you owe something to Burton and me for what we've been through, I think ... just leave it to me to manage in my own way...."
"I shall never trouble you, Eunice."
He came close to her then to open the door, seeing that she was to leave him, and he saw too that she had suffered, was at the very ebb23 and stony24 bottom of emotion as she hung for the moment in the doorway searching for some winged shaft25 of separation that should cut her off from the remotest implication of the situation. She found at last the barbedest. All the succeeding time after he closed the door on her was marked for Peter, not by the ticked moments but by successive waves of anguish26 as that poisoned arrow worked its way to his secret places.
"It isn't as if I had ever loved you; I owe it to Mr. Henderson to remind you that I never said I did.... You know I never liked to have you kiss me."[Pg 248]
He had in the months that succeeded to that last sight of Eunice Goodward, moments of unbearably27 wanting to go to her to try for a little to ease his torment28 in a more tender recognition of it—days when he would have taken from her, gratefully even if she had fooled him and he had seen her do it, whatever would have saved him from the certainty that never even in those first exquisite29 moments had she been his. The sharp edge of her young sufficiency had lopped off the right limb of his manhood. Never, even in his dreams, if life had allowed him to dream again, should he be able to see himself in any other guise30 than the meagre, austere31 front which his obligation to his mother and Ellen had obliged him to present to destiny. She had beggared him of all those aptitudes32 for passionate33 relations, by the faith in which he had kept himself inwardly alive. The capacity for loving died in him with the knowledge of not being able to be loved.
Out of the anæsthesia of exhaustion34 from which Italy had revived him, it rolled back upon him that by just the walled imperviousness[Pg 249] that shut Eunice Goodward from the appreciation35 of his passion, he was prevented now from Savilla Dassonville.
点击收听单词发音
1 flare | |
v.闪耀,闪烁;n.潮红;突发 | |
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2 mere | |
adj.纯粹的;仅仅,只不过 | |
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3 consummating | |
v.使结束( consummate的现在分词 );使完美;完婚;(婚礼后的)圆房 | |
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4 inevitably | |
adv.不可避免地;必然发生地 | |
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5 doorway | |
n.门口,(喻)入门;门路,途径 | |
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6 tugged | |
v.用力拉,使劲拉,猛扯( tug的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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7 scattered | |
adj.分散的,稀疏的;散步的;疏疏落落的 | |
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8 insistence | |
n.坚持;强调;坚决主张 | |
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9 standing | |
n.持续,地位;adj.永久的,不动的,直立的,不流动的 | |
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10 bent | |
n.爱好,癖好;adj.弯的;决心的,一心的 | |
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11 instinctive | |
adj.(出于)本能的;直觉的;(出于)天性的 | |
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12 loomed | |
v.隐约出现,阴森地逼近( loom的过去式和过去分词 );隐约出现,阴森地逼近 | |
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13 renewal | |
adj.(契约)延期,续订,更新,复活,重来 | |
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14 suffocating | |
a.使人窒息的 | |
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15 mutinous | |
adj.叛变的,反抗的;adv.反抗地,叛变地;n.反抗,叛变 | |
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16 poised | |
a.摆好姿势不动的 | |
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17 interval | |
n.间隔,间距;幕间休息,中场休息 | |
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18 utterance | |
n.用言语表达,话语,言语 | |
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19 diminution | |
n.减少;变小 | |
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20 belied | |
v.掩饰( belie的过去式和过去分词 );证明(或显示)…为虚假;辜负;就…扯谎 | |
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21 feverishly | |
adv. 兴奋地 | |
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22 concession | |
n.让步,妥协;特许(权) | |
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23 ebb | |
vi.衰退,减退;n.处于低潮,处于衰退状态 | |
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24 stony | |
adj.石头的,多石头的,冷酷的,无情的 | |
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25 shaft | |
n.(工具的)柄,杆状物 | |
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26 anguish | |
n.(尤指心灵上的)极度痛苦,烦恼 | |
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27 unbearably | |
adv.不能忍受地,无法容忍地;慌 | |
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28 torment | |
n.折磨;令人痛苦的东西(人);vt.折磨;纠缠 | |
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29 exquisite | |
adj.精美的;敏锐的;剧烈的,感觉强烈的 | |
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30 guise | |
n.外表,伪装的姿态 | |
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31 austere | |
adj.艰苦的;朴素的,朴实无华的;严峻的 | |
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32 aptitudes | |
(学习方面的)才能,资质,天资( aptitude的名词复数 ) | |
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33 passionate | |
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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34 exhaustion | |
n.耗尽枯竭,疲惫,筋疲力尽,竭尽,详尽无遗的论述 | |
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35 appreciation | |
n.评价;欣赏;感谢;领会,理解;价格上涨 | |
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