In the Adirondacks Ralph Marvell sat day after day on the balcony of his little house above the lake, staring at the great white cloud-reflections in the water and at the dark line of trees that closed them in. Now and then he got into the canoe and paddled himself through a winding1 chain of ponds to some lonely clearing in the forest; and there he lay on his back in the pine-needles and watched the great clouds form and dissolve themselves above his head.
All his past life seemed to be symbolized2 by the building-up and breaking-down of those fluctuating shapes, which incalculable wind-currents perpetually shifted and remodelled3 or swept from the zenith like a pinch of dust. His sister told him that he looked well--better than he had in years; and there were moments when his listlessness, his stony4 insensibility to the small pricks5 and frictions6 of daily life, might have passed for the serenity7 of recovered health.
There was no one with whom he could speak of Undine. His family had thrown over the whole subject a pall8 of silence which even Laura Fairford shrank from raising. As for his mother, Ralph had seen at once that the idea of talking over the situation was positively9 frightening to her. There was no provision for such emergencies in the moral order of Washington Square. The affair was a "scandal," and it was not in the Dagonet tradition to acknowledge the existence of scandals. Ralph recalled a dim memory of his childhood, the tale of a misguided friend of his mother's who had left her husband for a more congenial companion, and who, years later, returning ill and friendless to New York, had appealed for sympathy to Mrs. Marvell. The latter had not refused to give it; but she had put on her black cashmere and two veils when she went to see her unhappy friend, and had never mentioned these errands of mercy to her husband.
Ralph suspected that the constraint11 shown by his mother and sister was partly due to their having but a dim and confused view of what had happened. In their vocabulary the word "divorce" was wrapped in such a dark veil of innuendo12 as no ladylike hand would care to lift. They had not reached the point of differentiating13 divorces, but classed them indistinctively as disgraceful incidents, in which the woman was always to blame, but the man, though her innocent victim, was yet inevitably14 contaminated. The time involved in the "proceedings15" was viewed as a penitential season during which it behoved the family of the persons concerned to behave as if they were dead; yet any open allusion16 to the reason for adopting such an attitude would have been regarded as the height of indelicacy.
Mr. Dagonet's notion of the case was almost as remote from reality. All he asked was that his grandson should "thrash" somebody, and he could not be made to understand that the modern drama of divorce is sometimes cast without a Lovelace.
"You might as well tell me there was nobody but Adam in the garden when Eve picked the apple. You say your wife was discontented? No woman ever knows she's discontented till some man tells her so. My God! I've seen smash-ups before now; but I never yet saw a marriage dissolved like a business partnership17. Divorce without a lover? Why, it's--it's as unnatural18 as getting drunk on lemonade."
After this first explosion Mr. Dagonet also became silent; and Ralph perceived that what annoyed him most was the fact of the "scandal's" not being one in any gentlemanly sense of the word. It was like some nasty business mess, about which Mr. Dagonet couldn't pretend to have an opinion, since such things didn't happen to men of his kind. That such a thing should have happened to his only grandson was probably the bitterest experience of his pleasantly uneventful life; and it added a touch of irony19 to Ralph's unhappiness to know how little, in the whole affair, he was cutting the figure Mr. Dagonet expected him to cut.
At first he had chafed20 under the taciturnity surrounding him: had passionately21 longed to cry out his humiliation22, his rebellion, his despair. Then he began to feel the tonic23 effect of silence; and the next stage was reached when it became clear to him that there was nothing to say. There were thoughts and thoughts: they bubbled up perpetually from the black springs of his hidden misery24, they stole on him in the darkness of night, they blotted25 out the light of day; but when it came to putting them into words and applying them to the external facts of the case, they seemed totally unrelated to it. One more white and sun-touched glory had gone from his sky; but there seemed no way of connecting that with such practical issues as his being called on to decide whether Paul was to be put in knickerbockers or trousers, and whether he should go back to Washington Square for the winter or hire a small house for himself and his son.
The latter question was ultimately decided26 by his remaining under his grandfather's roof. November found him back in the office again, in fairly good health, with an outer skin of indifference27 slowly forming over his lacerated soul. There had been a hard minute to live through when he came back to his old brown room in Washington Square. The walls and tables were covered with photographs of Undine: effigies28 of all shapes and sizes, expressing every possible sentiment dear to the photographic tradition. Ralph had gathered them all up when he had moved from West End Avenue after Undine's departure for Europe, and they throned over his other possessions as her image had throned over his future the night he had sat in that very room and dreamed of soaring up with her into the blue...
It was impossible to go on living with her photographs about him; and one evening, going up to his room after dinner, he began to unhang them from the walls, and to gather them up from book-shelves and mantel-piece and tables. Then he looked about for some place in which to hide them. There were drawers under his book-cases; but they were full of old discarded things, and even if he emptied the drawers, the photographs, in their heavy frames, were almost all too large to fit into them. He turned next to the top shelf of his cupboard; but here the nurse had stored Paul's old toys, his sand-pails, shovels29 and croquet-box. Every corner was packed with the vain impedimenta of living, and the mere10 thought of clearing a space in the chaos30 was too great an effort.
He began to replace the pictures one by one; and the last was still in his hand when he heard his sister's voice outside. He hurriedly put the portrait back in its usual place on his writing-table, and Mrs. Fairford, who had been dining in Washington Square, and had come up to bid him good night, flung her arms about him in a quick embrace and went down to her carriage.
The next afternoon, when he came home from the office, he did not at first see any change in his room; but when he had lit his pipe and thrown himself into his arm-chair he noticed that the photograph of his wife's picture by Popple no longer faced him from the mantel-piece. He turned to his writing-table, but her image had vanished from there too; then his eye, making the circuit of the walls, perceived that they also had been stripped. Not a single photograph of Undine was left; yet so adroitly31 had the work of elimination32 been done, so ingeniously the remaining objects readjusted, that the change attracted no attention.
Ralph was angry, sore, ashamed. He felt as if Laura, whose hand he instantly detected, had taken a cruel pleasure in her work, and for an instant he hated her for it. Then a sense of relief stole over him. He was glad he could look about him without meeting Undine's eyes, and he understood that what had been done to his room he must do to his memory and his imagination: he must so readjust his mind that, whichever way he turned his thoughts, her face should no longer confront him. But that was a task that Laura could not perform for him, a task to be accomplished33 only by the hard continuous tension of his will.
With the setting in of the mood of silence all desire to fight his wife's suit died out. The idea of touching34 publicly on anything that had passed between himself and Undine had become unthinkable. Insensibly he had been subdued35 to the point of view about him, and the idea of calling on the law to repair his shattered happiness struck him as even more grotesque36 than it was degrading. Nevertheless, some contradictory37 impulse of his divided spirit made him resent, on the part of his mother and sister, a too-ready acceptance of his attitude. There were moments when their tacit assumption that his wife was banished38 and forgotten irritated him like the hushed tread of sympathizers about the bed of an invalid39 who will not admit that he suffers.
His irritation40 was aggravated41 by the discovery that Mrs. Marvell and Laura had already begun to treat Paul as if he were an orphan42. One day, coming unnoticed into the nursery, Ralph heard the boy ask when his mother was coming back; and Mrs. Fairford, who was with him, answered: "She's not coming back, dearest; and you're not to speak of her to father."
Ralph, when the boy was out of hearing, rebuked43 his sister for her answer. "I don't want you to talk of his mother as if she were dead. I don't want you to forbid Paul to speak of her."
Laura, though usually so yielding, defended herself. "What's the use of encouraging him to speak of her when he's never to see her? The sooner he forgets her the better."
Ralph pondered. "Later--if she asks to see him--I shan't refuse."
Mrs. Fairford pressed her lips together to check the answer: "She never will!"
Ralph heard it, nevertheless, and let it pass. Nothing gave him so profound a sense of estrangement44 from his former life as the conviction that his sister was probably right. He did not really believe that Undine would ever ask to see her boy; but if she did he was determined45 not to refuse her request.
Time wore on, the Christmas holidays came and went, and the winter continued to grind out the weary measure of its days. Toward the end of January Ralph received a registered letter, addressed to him at his office, and bearing in the corner of the envelope the names of a firm of Sioux Falls attorneys. He instantly divined that it contained the legal notification of his wife's application for divorce, and as he wrote his name in the postman's book he smiled grimly at the thought that the stroke of his pen was doubtless signing her release. He opened the letter, found it to be what he had expected, and locked it away in his desk without mentioning the matter to any one.
He supposed that with the putting away of this document he was thrusting the whole subject out of sight; but not more than a fortnight later, as he sat in the Subway on his way down-town, his eye was caught by his own name on the first page of the heavily head-lined paper which the unshaved occupant of the next seat held between grimy fists. The blood rushed to Ralph's forehead as he looked over the man's arm and read: "Society Leader Gets Decree," and beneath it the subordinate clause: "Says Husband Too Absorbed In Business To Make Home Happy." For weeks afterward46, wherever he went, he felt that blush upon his forehead. For the first time in his life the coarse fingering of public curiosity had touched the secret places of his soul, and nothing that had gone before seemed as humiliating as this trivial comment on his tragedy. The paragraph continued on its way through the press, and whenever he took up a newspaper he seemed to come upon it, slightly modified, variously developed, but always reverting47 with a kind of unctuous48 irony to his financial preoccupations and his wife's consequent loneliness. The phrase was even taken up by the paragraph writer, called forth49 excited letters from similarly situated50 victims, was commented on in humorous editorials and served as a text for pulpit denunciations of the growing craze for wealth; and finally, at his dentist's, Ralph came across it in a Family Weekly, as one of the "Heart problems" propounded51 to subscribers, with a Gramophone, a Straight-front Corset and a Vanity-box among the prizes offered for its solution.
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winding
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| n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈 | |
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symbolized
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| v.象征，作为…的象征( symbolize的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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remodelled
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| v.改变…的结构[形状]( remodel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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stony
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| adj.石头的，多石头的，冷酷的，无情的 | |
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pricks
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| 刺痛( prick的名词复数 )； 刺孔； 刺痕； 植物的刺 | |
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frictions
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| n.摩擦( friction的名词复数 )；摩擦力；冲突；不和 | |
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serenity
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| n.宁静，沉着，晴朗 | |
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pall
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| v.覆盖，使平淡无味；n.柩衣，棺罩；棺材；帷幕 | |
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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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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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constraint
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| n.(on)约束，限制；限制(或约束)性的事物 | |
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innuendo
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| n.暗指，讽刺 | |
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differentiating
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| [计] 微分的 | |
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inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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proceedings
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| n.进程，过程，议程；诉讼(程序)；公报 | |
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allusion
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| n.暗示，间接提示 | |
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partnership
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| n.合作关系，伙伴关系 | |
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unnatural
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| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
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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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chafed
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| v.擦热（尤指皮肤）( chafe的过去式 )；擦痛；发怒；惹怒 | |
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passionately
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| ad.热烈地，激烈地 | |
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humiliation
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| n.羞辱 | |
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tonic
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| n./adj.滋补品，补药，强身的，健体的 | |
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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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blotted
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| 涂污( blot的过去式和过去分词 )； （用吸墨纸）吸干 | |
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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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indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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effigies
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| n.（人的）雕像，模拟像，肖像( effigy的名词复数 ) | |
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shovels
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| n.铲子( shovel的名词复数 )；锹；推土机、挖土机等的)铲；铲形部份v.铲子( shovel的第三人称单数 )；锹；推土机、挖土机等的)铲；铲形部份 | |
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chaos
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| n.混乱，无秩序 | |
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adroitly
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| adv.熟练地，敏捷地 | |
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elimination
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| n.排除，消除，消灭 | |
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33
accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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subdued
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| adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
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grotesque
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| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
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contradictory
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| adj.反驳的，反对的，抗辩的；n.正反对，矛盾对立 | |
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banished
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| v.放逐，驱逐( banish的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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invalid
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| n.病人，伤残人；adj.有病的，伤残的；无效的 | |
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irritation
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| n.激怒，恼怒，生气 | |
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aggravated
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| 使恶化( aggravate的过去式和过去分词 )； 使更严重； 激怒； 使恼火 | |
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orphan
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| n.孤儿；adj.无父母的 | |
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43
rebuked
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| 责难或指责( rebuke的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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estrangement
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| n.疏远，失和，不和 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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reverting
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| 恢复( revert的现在分词 )； 重提； 回到…上； 归还 | |
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unctuous
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| adj.油腔滑调的，大胆的 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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situated
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| adj.坐落在...的，处于某种境地的 | |
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51
propounded
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| v.提出（问题、计划等）供考虑[讨论]，提议( propound的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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