IF only Aggie1 Heuston had changed those sour-apple curtains in the front drawing-room, Nona thought—if she had substituted deep upholstered armchairs for the hostile gilt2 seats, and put books in the marqueterie cabinets in place of blue china dogs and Dresden shepherdesses, everything in three lives might have been different...
But Aggie had probably never noticed the colour of the curtains or the angularity of the furniture. She had certainly never missed the books. She had accepted the house as it came to her from her parents, who in turn had taken it over, in all its dreary3 frivolity4, from their father and mother. It embodied5 the New York luxury of the 'seventies in every ponderous6 detail, from the huge cabbage roses of the Aubusson carpet to the triple layer of curtains designed to protect the aristocracy of the brown-stone age from the plebeian7 intrusion of light and air.
"Funny," Nona thought again—"that all this ugliness should prick8 me like nettles9, and matter no more to Aggie than if it were in the next street. She's a saint, I know. But what I want to find is a saint who hates ugly furniture, and yet lives among it with a smile. What's the merit, if you never see it?" She addressed herself to a closer inspection10 of one of the cabinets, in which Aggie's filial piety11 had preserved her mother's velvet12 and silver spectacle-case, and her father's ivory opera-glasses, in combination with an alabaster13 Leaning Tower and a miniature copy of Carlo Dolci's Magdalen.
Queer dead rubbish—but queerer still that, at that moment and in that house, Nona's uncanny detachment should permit her to smile at it! Where indeed—she wondered again—did one's own personality end, and that of others, of people, landscapes, chairs or spectacle-cases, begin? Ever since she had received, the night before, Aggie's stiff and agonized14 little note, which might have been composed by a child with a tooth-ache, Nona had been apprehensively15 asking herself if her personality didn't even include certain shreds16 and fibres of Aggie. It was all such an inextricable tangle17...
Here she came. Nona heard the dry click of her steps on the stairs and across the polished bareness of the hall. She had written: "If you could make it perfectly18 convenient to call—" Aggie's nearest approach to a friendly summons! And as she opened the door, and advanced over the cabbage roses, Nona saw that her narrow face, with the eyes too close together, and the large pale pink mouth with straight edges, was sharpened by a new distress19.
"It's very kind of you to come, Nona—" she began in her clear painstaking20 voice.
"Oh, nonsense, Aggie! Do drop all that. Of course I know what it's about."
Aggie turned noticeably paler; but her training as a hostess prevailing21 over her emotion, she pushed forward a gilt chair. "Do sit down." She placed herself in an adjoining sofa corner. Overhead, Aggie's grandmother, in a voluted gilt frame, held a Brussels lace handkerchief in her hand, and leaned one ruffled22 elbow on a velvet table-cover fringed with knobby tassels23.
"You say you know—" Aggie began.
"Of course."
"Stanley—he's told you?"
Nona's nerves were beginning to jump and squirm like a bundle of young vipers24. Was she going to be able to stand much more of these paralyzing preliminaries?
"Oh, yes: he's told me."
Aggie dropped her lids and stared down at her narrow white hands. Then a premonitory twitch25 ran along her lips and drew her forehead into little wrinkles of perplexity.
"I don't want you to think I've any cause of complaint against Stanley—none whatever. There has never been a single unkind word... We've always lived together on the most perfect terms..."
"Only now—he's—he's left me," Aggie concluded, the words wrung27 out of her in laboured syllables28. She raised one hand and smoothed back a flat strand29 of hair which had strayed across her forehead.
Nona was silent. She sat with her eyes fixed30 on that small twitching31 mask—real face it could hardly be called, since it had probably never before been suffered to express any emotion that was radically32 and peculiarly Aggie's.
"You knew that too?" Aggie continued, in a studiously objective tone.
"He has nothing to reproach me with—nothing whatever. He expressly told me so."
"Yes; I know. That's the worst of it."
"The worst of it?"
"Why, if he had, you might have had a good row that would have cleared the air."
Suddenly Nona felt Aggie's eyes fixed on her with a hungry penetrating34 stare. "Did you and he use to have good rows, as you call it?"
"Oh, by the hour—whenever we met!" Nona, for the life of her, could not subdue35 the mocking triumph in her voice.
Aggie's lips narrowed. "You've been very great friends, I know; he's often told me so. But if you were always quarrelling how could you continue to respect each other?"
"I don't know that we did. At any rate, there was no time to think about it; because there was always the making-up, you see."
"The making-up?"
"Aggie," Nona burst out abruptly36, "have you never known what it was to have a man give you a jolly good hug, and feel full enough of happiness to scent37 a whole garden with it?"
Aggie lifted her lids on a glance which was almost one of terror. The image Nona had used seemed to convey nothing to her, but the question evidently struck her with a deadly force.
"A man—what man?"
Nona laughed. "Well, for the sake of argument—Stanley!"
"I can't imagine why you ask such queer questions, Nona. How could we make up when we never quarrelled?"
"Is it queer to ask you if you ever loved your husband?"
"It's queer of you to ask it," said the wife simply. Nona's swift retort died unspoken, and she felt one of her slow secret blushes creeping up to the roots of her hair.
"I'm sorry, Aggie. I'm horribly nervous—and I suppose you are. Hadn't we better start fresh? What was it you wanted to see me about?"
Aggie was silent for a moment, as if gathering38 up all her strength; then she answered: "To tell you that if he wants to marry you I shan't oppose a divorce any longer."
"Aggie!"
The two sat silent, opposite each other, as if they had reached a point beyond which words could not carry their communion. Nona's mind, racing39 forward, touched the extreme limit of human bliss40, and then crawled back from it bowed and broken-winged.
"But only on that condition," Aggie began again, with deliberate emphasis.
"On condition—that he marries me?"
Aggie made a motion of assent. "I have a right to impose my conditions. And what I want is"—she faltered41 suddenly—"what I want is that you should save him from Cleo Merrick..." Her level voice broke and two tears forced their way through her lashes42 and fell slowly down her cheeks.
"Save him from Cleo Merrick?" Nona fancied she heard herself laugh. Her thoughts seemed to drag after her words as if she were labouring up hill through a ploughed field. "Isn't it rather late in the day to make that attempt? You say he's already gone off with her."
"He's joined her somewhere—I don't know where. He wrote from his club before leaving. But I know they don't sail till the day after tomorrow; and you must get him back, Nona, you must save him. It's too awful. He can't marry her; she has a husband somewhere who refuses to divorce her."
"Like you and Stanley!"
Aggie drew back as if she had been struck. "Oh, no, no!" She looked despairingly at Nona. "When I tell you I don't refuse now..."
"Well, perhaps Cleo Merrick's husband may not, either."
"It's different. He's a Catholic, and his church won't let him divorce. And it can't be annulled43. Stanley's just going to live with her ... openly ... and she'll go everywhere with him ... exactly as if they were husband and wife ... and everybody will know that they're not."
Nona sat silent, considering with set lips and ironic44 mind the picture thus pitilessly evoked45. "Well, if she loves him..."
"Loves him? A woman like that!"
"She's been willing to make a sacrifice for him, at any rate. That's where she has a pull over both of us."
"But don't you see how awful it is for them to be living together in that way?"
"I see it's the best thing that could happen to Stanley to have found a woman plucky46 enough to give him the thing he wanted—the thing you and I both refused him."
She saw Aggie's lifeless cheek redden. "I don't know what you mean by ... refusing..."
"I mean his happiness—that's all! You refused to divorce him, didn't you? And I refused to do—what Cleo Merrick's doing. And here we both are, sitting on the ruins; and that's the end of it, as far as you and I are concerned."
"But it's not the end—it's not too late. I tell you it's not too late! He'll leave her even now if you ask him to ... I know he will!"
Nona stood up with a dry laugh. "Thank you, Aggie. Perhaps he would—only we shall never find out."
"Never find out? When I keep telling you—"
"Because even if I've been a coward that's no reason why I should be a cad." Nona was buttoning her coat and clasping her fur about her neck with quick precise movements, as if wrapping herself close against the treacherous47 sweetness that was beginning to creep into her veins48. Suddenly she felt she could not remain a moment longer in that stifling49 room, face to face with that stifling misery50.
"The better woman's got him—let her keep him," she said.
She put out her hand, and for a moment Aggie's cold damp fingers lay in hers. Then they were pulled away, and Aggie caught Nona by the sleeve. "But Nona, listen! I don't understand you. Isn't it what you've always wanted?"
"Oh, more than anything in life!" the girl cried, turning breathlessly away.
The outer door swung shut on her, and on the steps she stood still and looked back at the ruins on which she had pictured herself sitting with Aggie Heuston.
"I do believe," she murmured to herself, "I know most of the new ways of being rotten; I only wish I was sure I knew the best new way of being decent..."
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1
aggie
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| n.农校，农科大学生 | |
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gilt
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| adj.镀金的；n.金边证券 | |
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dreary
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| adj.令人沮丧的，沉闷的，单调乏味的 | |
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frivolity
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| n.轻松的乐事，兴高采烈；轻浮的举止 | |
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embodied
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| v.表现( embody的过去式和过去分词 )；象征；包括；包含 | |
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ponderous
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| adj.沉重的，笨重的，(文章)冗长的 | |
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plebeian
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| adj.粗俗的；平民的；n.平民；庶民 | |
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prick
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| v.刺伤，刺痛，刺孔；n.刺伤，刺痛 | |
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nettles
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| n.荨麻( nettle的名词复数 ) | |
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inspection
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| n.检查，审查，检阅 | |
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piety
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| n.虔诚，虔敬 | |
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velvet
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| n.丝绒，天鹅绒；adj.丝绒制的，柔软的 | |
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alabaster
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| adj.雪白的；n.雪花石膏；条纹大理石 | |
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14
agonized
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| v.使（极度）痛苦，折磨( agonize的过去式和过去分词 )；苦斗；苦苦思索；感到极度痛苦 | |
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apprehensively
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| adv.担心地 | |
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shreds
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| v.撕碎，切碎( shred的第三人称单数 )；用撕毁机撕毁（文件） | |
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tangle
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| n.纠缠；缠结；混乱；v.(使)缠绕；变乱 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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painstaking
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| adj.苦干的；艰苦的，费力的，刻苦的 | |
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prevailing
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| adj.盛行的；占优势的；主要的 | |
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ruffled
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| adj. 有褶饰边的, 起皱的 动词ruffle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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23
tassels
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| n.穗( tassel的名词复数 )；流苏状物；（植物的）穗；玉蜀黍的穗状雄花v.抽穗， （玉米）长穗须( tassel的第三人称单数 )；使抽穗， （为了使作物茁壮生长）摘去穗状雄花；用流苏装饰 | |
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24
vipers
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| n.蝰蛇( viper的名词复数 )；毒蛇；阴险恶毒的人；奸诈者 | |
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25
twitch
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| v.急拉，抽动，痉挛，抽搐；n.扯，阵痛，痉挛 | |
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murmur
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| n.低语，低声的怨言；v.低语，低声而言 | |
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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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syllables
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| n.音节( syllable的名词复数 ) | |
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strand
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| vt.使（船）搁浅，使（某人）困于（某地） | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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twitching
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| n.颤搐 | |
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radically
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| ad.根本地，本质地 | |
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assent
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| v.批准，认可；n.批准，认可 | |
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penetrating
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| adj.（声音）响亮的，尖锐的adj.（气味）刺激的adj.（思想）敏锐的，有洞察力的 | |
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subdue
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| vt.制服，使顺从，征服；抑制，克制 | |
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abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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racing
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| n.竞赛，赛马；adj.竞赛用的，赛马用的 | |
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bliss
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| n.狂喜，福佑，天赐的福 | |
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41
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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42
lashes
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| n.鞭挞( lash的名词复数 )；鞭子；突然猛烈的一击；急速挥动v.鞭打( lash的第三人称单数 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥 | |
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43
annulled
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| v.宣告无效( annul的过去式和过去分词 )；取消；使消失；抹去 | |
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44
ironic
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| adj.讽刺的，有讽刺意味的，出乎意料的 | |
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evoked
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| [医]诱发的 | |
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plucky
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| adj.勇敢的 | |
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treacherous
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| adj.不可靠的，有暗藏的危险的；adj.背叛的，背信弃义的 | |
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veins
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| n.纹理；矿脉( vein的名词复数 )；静脉；叶脉；纹理 | |
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stifling
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| a.令人窒息的 | |
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misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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