Owen Leath did not go back with his step-mother to Givre.
In reply to her suggestion he announced his intention ofstaying on a day or two longer in Paris.
Anna left alone by the first train the next morning. Darrowwas to follow in the afternoon. When Owen had left them theevening before, Darrow waited a moment for her to speak;then, as she said nothing, he asked her if she really wishedhim to return to Givre. She made a mute sign of assent1, andhe added: "For you know that, much as I'm ready to do forOwen, I can't do that for him--I can't go back to be sentaway again.""No--no!"He came nearer, and looked at her, and she went to him. Allher fears seemed to fall from her as he held her. It was adifferent feeling from any she had known before: confusedand turbid2, as if secret shames and rancours stirred in it,yet richer, deeper, more enslaving. She leaned her headback and shut her eyes beneath his kisses. She knew nowthat she could never give him up.
Nevertheless she asked him, the next morning, to let her goback alone to Givre. She wanted time to think. She wasconvinced that what had happened was inevitable3, that sheand Darrow belonged to each other, and that he was right insaying no past folly4 could ever put them asunder5. If therewas a shade of difference in her feeling for him it was thatof an added intensity6. She felt restless, insecure out ofhis sight: she had a sense of incompleteness, of passionatedependence, that was somehow at variance7 with her ownconception of her character.
It was partly the consciousness of this change in herselfthat made her want to be alone. The solitude8 of her innerlife had given her the habit of these hours of self-examination, and she needed them as she needed her morningplunge into cold water.
During the journey she tried to review what had happened inthe light of her new decision and of her sudden relief frompain. She seemed to herself to have passed through somefiery initiation9 from which she had emerged seared andquivering, but clutching to her breast a magic talisman10.
Sophy Viner had cried out to her: "Some day you'll know!"and Darrow had used the same words. They meant, shesupposed, that when she had explored the intricacies anddarknesses of her own heart her judgment11 of others would beless absolute. Well, she knew now--knew weaknesses andstrengths she had not dreamed of, and the deep discord12 andstill deeper complicities between what thought in her andwhat blindly wanted...
Her mind turned anxiously to Owen. At least the blow thatwas to fall on him would not seem to have been inflicted13 byher hand. He would be left with the impression that hisbreach with Sophy Viner was due to one of the ordinarycauses of such disruptions: though he must lose her, hismemory of her would not be poisoned. Anna never for amoment permitted herself the delusion14 that she had renewedher promise to Darrow in order to spare her step-son thislast refinement15 of misery16. She knew she had been promptedby the irresistible17 impulse to hold fast to what was mostprecious to her, and that Owen's arrival on the scene hadbeen the pretext18 for her decision, and not its cause; yetshe felt herself fortified19 by the thought of what she hadspared him. It was as though a star she had been used tofollow had shed its familiar ray on ways unknown to her.
All through these meditations20 ran the undercurrent of anabsolute trust in Sophy Viner. She thought of the girl witha mingling21 of antipathy22 and confidence. It was humiliatingto her pride to recognize kindred impulses in a characterwhich she would have liked to feel completely alien to her.
But what indeed was the girl really like? She seemed to haveno scruples23 and a thousand delicacies25. She had givenherself to Darrow, and concealed26 the episode from OwenLeath, with no more apparent sense of debasement than thevulgarest of adventuresses; yet she had instantly obeyed thevoice of her heart when it bade her part from the one andserve the other.
Anna tried to picture what the girl's life must have been:
what experiences, what initiations, had formed her. But herown training had been too different: there were veils shecould not lift. She looked back at her married life, andits colourless uniformity took on an air of high restraintand order. Was it because she had been so incurious that ithad worn that look to her? It struck her with amazement27 thatshe had never given a thought to her husband's past, orwondered what he did and where he went when he was away fromher. If she had been asked what she supposed he thoughtabout when they were apart, she would instantly haveanswered: his snuff-boxes. It had never occurred to herthat he might have passions, interests, preoccupations ofwhich she was absolutely ignorant. Yet he went up to Parisrather regularly: ostensibly to attend sales andexhibitions, or to confer with dealers28 and collectors. Shetried to picture him, straight, trim, beautifully brushedand varnished29, walking furtively30 down a quiet street, andlooking about him before he slipped into a doorway31. Sheunderstood now that she had been cold to him: what morelikely than that he had sought compensations? All men werelike that, she supposed--no doubt her simplicity32 had amusedhim.
In the act of transposing Fraser Leath into a Don Juan shewas pulled up by the ironic33 perception that she was simplytrying to justify34 Darrow. She wanted to think that all menwere "like that" because Darrow was "like that": she wantedto justify her acceptance of the fact by persuading herselfthat only through such concessions35 could women like herselfhope to keep what they could not give up. And suddenly shewas filled with anger at her blindness, and then at herdisastrous attempt to see. Why had she forced the truth outof Darrow? If only she had held her tongue nothing need everhave been known. Sophy Viner would have broken herengagement, Owen would have been sent around the world, andher own dream would have been unshattered. But she hadprobed, insisted, cross-examined, not rested till she haddragged the secret to the light. She was one of the lucklesswomen who always have the wrong audacities36, and who alwaysknow it...
Was it she, Anna Leath, who was picturing herself to herselfin that way? She recoiled37 from her thoughts as if with asense of demoniac possession, and there flashed through herthe longing38 to return to her old state of fearlessignorance. If at that moment she could have kept Darrowfrom following her to Givre she would have done so...
But he came; and with the sight of him the turmoil39 fell andshe felt herself reassured40, rehabilitated41. He arrivedtoward dusk, and she motored to Francheuil to meet him. Shewanted to see him as soon as possible, for she had divined,through the new insight that was in her, that only hispresence could restore her to a normal view of things. Inthe motor, as they left the town and turned into the high-road, he lifted her hand and kissed it, and she leanedagainst him, and felt the currents flow between them. Shewas grateful to him for not saying anything, and for notexpecting her to speak. She said to herself: "He nevermakes a mistake--he always knows what to do"; and then shethought with a start that it was doubtless because he had sooften been in such situations. The idea that his tact42 was akind of professional expertness filled her with repugnance,and insensibly she drew away from him. He made no motion tobring her nearer, and she instantly thought that that wascalculated too. She sat beside him in frozen misery,wondering whether, henceforth, she would measure in this wayhis every look and gesture. Neither of them spoke43 againtill the motor turned under the dark arch of the avenue, andthey saw the lights of Givre twinkling at its end. ThenDarrow laid his hand on hers and said: "I know, dear--" andthe hardness in her melted. "He's suffering as I am," shethought; and for a moment the baleful fact between themseemed to draw them closer instead of walling them up intheir separate wretchedness.
It was wonderful to be once more re-entering the doors ofGivre with him, and as the old house received them into itsmellow silence she had again the sense of passing out of adreadful dream into the reassurance44 of kindly45 and familiarthings. It did not seem possible that these quiet rooms, sofull of the slowly-distilled accumulations of a fastidioustaste, should have been the scene of tragic46 dissensions.
The memory of them seemed to be shut out into the night withthe closing and barring of its doors.
At the tea-table in the oak-room they found Madame deChantelle and Effie. The little girl, catching47 sight ofDarrow, raced down the drawing-rooms to meet him, andreturned in triumph on his shoulder. Anna looked at themwith a smile. Effie, for all her graces, was chary48 of suchfavours, and her mother knew that in according them toDarrow she had admitted him to the circle where Owen hadhitherto ruled.
Over the tea-table Darrow gave Madame de Chantelle theexplanation of his sudden return from England. On reachingLondon, he told her, he had found that the secretary he wasto have replaced was detained there by the illness of hiswife. The Ambassador, knowing Darrow's urgent reasons forwishing to be in France, had immediately proposed his goingback, and awaiting at Givre the summons to relieve hiscolleague; and he had jumped into the first train, withouteven waiting to telegraph the news of his release. He spokenaturally, easily, in his usual quiet voice, taking his teafrom Effie, helping49 himself to the toast she handed, andstooping now and then to stroke the dozing50 terrier. Andsuddenly, as Anna listened to his explanation, she askedherself if it were true.
The question, of course, was absurd. There was no possiblereason why he should invent a false account of his return,and every probability that the version he gave was the realone. But he had looked and spoken in the same way when hehad answered her probing questions about Sophy Viner, andshe reflected with a chill of fear that she would neveragain know if he were speaking the truth or not. She wassure he loved her, and she did not fear his insincerity asmuch as her own distrust of him. For a moment it seemed toher that this must corrupt51 the very source of love; then shesaid to herself: "By and bye, when I am altogether his, weshall be so near each other that there will be no room forany doubts between us." But the doubts were there now, onemoment lulled52 to quiescence53, the next more torturinglyalert. When the nurse appeared to summon Effie, the littlegirl, after kissing her grandmother, entrenched54 herself onDarrow's knee with the imperious demand to be carried up tobed; and Anna, while she laughingly protested, said toherself with a pang55: "Can I give her a father about whom Ithink such things?"The thought of Effie, and of what she owed to Effie, hadbeen the fundamental reason for her delays and hesitationswhen she and Darrow had come together again in England. Herown feeling was so clear that but for that scruple24 she wouldhave put her hand in his at once. But till she had seen himagain she had never considered the possibility of re-marriage, and when it suddenly confronted her it seemed, forthe moment, to disorganize the life she had planned forherself and her child. She had not spoken of this to Darrowbecause it appeared to her a subject to be debated withinher own conscience. The question, then, was not as to hisfitness to become the guide and guardian56 of her child; nordid she fear that her love for him would deprive Effie ofthe least fraction of her tenderness, since she did notthink of love as something measured and exhaustible but as atreasure perpetually renewed. What she questioned was herright to introduce into her life any interests and dutieswhich might rob Effie of a part of her time, or lessen57 thecloseness of their daily intercourse58.
She had decided59 this question as it was inevitable that sheshould; but now another was before her. Assuredly, at herage, there was no possible reason why she should cloisterherself to bring up her daughter; but there was every reasonfor not marrying a man in whom her own faith was notcomplete...
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assent
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| v.批准，认可；n.批准，认可 | |
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turbid
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| adj.混浊的，泥水的，浓的 | |
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inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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folly
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| n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话 | |
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asunder
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| adj.分离的，化为碎片 | |
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intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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variance
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| n.矛盾，不同 | |
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solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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initiation
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| n.开始 | |
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talisman
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| n.避邪物，护身符 | |
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judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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discord
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| n.不和，意见不合，争论，（音乐）不和谐 | |
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inflicted
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| 把…强加给，使承受，遭受( inflict的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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delusion
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| n.谬见，欺骗，幻觉，迷惑 | |
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refinement
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| n.文雅；高尚；精美；精制；精炼 | |
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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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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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pretext
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| n.借口，托词 | |
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fortified
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| adj. 加强的 | |
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meditations
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| 默想( meditation的名词复数 )； 默念； 沉思； 冥想 | |
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mingling
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| adj.混合的 | |
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antipathy
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| n.憎恶；反感，引起反感的人或事物 | |
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scruples
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| n.良心上的不安( scruple的名词复数 )；顾虑，顾忌v.感到于心不安，有顾忌( scruple的第三人称单数 ) | |
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scruple
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| n./v.顾忌，迟疑 | |
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delicacies
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| n.棘手( delicacy的名词复数 )；精致；精美的食物；周到 | |
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concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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amazement
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| n.惊奇，惊讶 | |
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dealers
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| n.商人( dealer的名词复数 )；贩毒者；毒品贩子；发牌者 | |
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varnished
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| 浸渍过的，涂漆的 | |
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furtively
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| adv. 偷偷地, 暗中地 | |
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doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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ironic
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| adj.讽刺的，有讽刺意味的，出乎意料的 | |
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justify
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| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
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concessions
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| n.（尤指由政府或雇主给予的）特许权( concession的名词复数 )；承认；减价；（在某地的）特许经营权 | |
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audacities
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| n.大胆( audacity的名词复数 )；鲁莽；胆大妄为；鲁莽行为 | |
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recoiled
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| v.畏缩( recoil的过去式和过去分词 )；退缩；报应；返回 | |
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longing
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| n.（for）渴望 | |
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turmoil
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| n.骚乱，混乱，动乱 | |
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reassured
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| adj.使消除疑虑的；使放心的v.再保证，恢复信心( reassure的过去式和过去分词) | |
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rehabilitated
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| 改造（罪犯等）( rehabilitate的过去式和过去分词 )； 使恢复正常生活； 使恢复原状； 修复 | |
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tact
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| n.机敏，圆滑，得体 | |
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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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reassurance
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| n.使放心，使消除疑虑 | |
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kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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chary
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| adj.谨慎的，细心的 | |
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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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dozing
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| v.打瞌睡,假寐 n.瞌睡 | |
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corrupt
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| v.贿赂，收买；adj.腐败的，贪污的 | |
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lulled
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| vt.使镇静，使安静（lull的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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quiescence
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| n.静止 | |
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entrenched
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| adj.确立的，不容易改的(风俗习惯) | |
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pang
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| n.剧痛，悲痛，苦闷 | |
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guardian
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| n.监护人；守卫者，保护者 | |
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lessen
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| vt.减少，减轻；缩小 | |
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intercourse
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| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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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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