Nine
So that was that, and Ellie and I got married. It sounds abrupt1 just puttingit like that, but you see it was really just the way things happened. We de-cided to be married and we got married.
It was part of the whole thing—not just an end to a romantic novel or afairy story. “And so they got married and lived happily ever afterwards.”
You can’t, after all, make a big drama out of living happily ever after-wards. We were married and we were both happy and it was really quitea time before anyone got on to us and began to make the usual difficultiesand commotions2 and we’d made up our minds to those.
The whole thing was really extraordinarily3 simple. In her desire forfreedom Ellie had covered her tracks very cleverly up to now. The usefulGreta had taken all the necessary steps, and was always on guard behindher. And I had realized fairly soon on that there was nobody really whosebusiness it was to care terribly about Ellie and what she was doing. Shehad a stepmother who was engrossed4 in her own social life and love af-fairs. If Ellie didn’t wish to accompany her to any particular spot on theglobe there was no need for Ellie to do so. She’d had all the proper gover-nesses and ladies’ maids and scholastic5 advantages and if she wanted to goto Europe, why not? If she chose to have her twenty-first birthday in Lon-don, again why not? Now that she had come into her vast fortune she hadthe whip hand of her family in so far as spending her money went. If she’dwanted a villa6 on the Riviera or a castle on the Costa Brava or a yacht orany of those things, she had only to mention the fact and someone amongthe retinues7 that surrounded millionaires would put everything in handimmediately.
Greta, I gather, was regarded by her family as an admirable stooge.
Competent, able to make all arrangements with the utmost efficiency, sub-servient no doubt and charming to the stepmother, the uncle and a fewodd cousins who seemed to be knocking about. Ellie had no fewer thanthree lawyers at her command, from what she let fall every now and then.
She was surrounded by a vast financial network of bankers and lawyersand the administrators8 of trust funds. It was a world that I just gotglimpses of every now and then, mostly from things that Ellie let fall care-lessly in the course of conversation. It didn’t occur to her, naturally, that Iwouldn’t know about all those things. She had been brought up in themidst of them and she naturally concluded that the whole world knewwhat they were and how they worked and all the rest of it.
In fact, getting glimpses of the special peculiarities9 of each other’s liveswere unexpectedly what we enjoyed most in our early married life. To putit quite crudely—and I did put things crudely to myself, for that was theonly way to get to terms with my new life—the poor don’t really knowhow the rich live and the rich don’t know how the poor live, and to findout is really enchanting10 to both of them. Once I said uneasily:
“Look here, Ellie, is there going to be an awful schemozzle over all this,over our marriage, I mean?”
Ellie considered without, I noticed, very much interest.
“Oh yes,” she said, “they’ll probably be awful.” And she added, “I hopeyou won’t mind too much.”
“I won’t mind—why should I?—But you, will they bully11 you over it?”
“I expect so,” said Ellie, “but one needn’t listen. The point is that theycan’t do anything.”
“But they’ll try?”
“Oh yes,” said Ellie. “They’ll try.” Then she added thoughtfully, “They’llprobably try and buy you off.”
“Buy me off?”
“Don’t look so shocked,” said Ellie, and she smiled, a rather happy littlegirl’s smile. “It isn’t put exactly like that.” Then she added, “They boughtoff Minnie Thompson’s first, you know.”
“Minnie Thompson? Is that the one they always call the oil heiress?”
“Yes, that’s right. She ran off and married a life guard off the beach.”
“Look here, Ellie,” I said uneasily, “I was a life guard at Littlehamptononce.”
“Oh, were you? What fun! Permanently12?”
“No, of course not. Just one summer, that’s all.”
“I wish you wouldn’t worry,” said Ellie.
“What happened about Minnie Thompson?”
“They had to go up to 200,000 dollars, I think,” said Ellie, “he wouldn’ttake less. Minnie was man-mad and really a half-wit,” she added.
“You take my breath away, Ellie,” I said. “I’ve not only acquired a wife,I’ve got something I can trade for solid cash at any time.”
“That’s right,” said Ellie. “Send for a high-powered lawyer and tell himyou’re willing to talk turkey. Then he fixes up the divorce and the amountof alimony,” said Ellie, continuing my education. “My stepmother’s beenmarried four times,” she added, “and she’s made quite a lot out of it.” Andthen she said, “Oh, Mike, don’t look so shocked.”
The funny thing is that I was shocked. I felt a priggish distaste for thecorruption of modern society in its richer phases. There had been some-thing so little-girl-like about Ellie, so simple, almost touching13 in her atti-tude that I was astonished to find how well up she was in worldly affairsand how much she took for granted. And yet I knew that I was right abouther fundamentally. I knew quite well the kind of creature that Ellie was.
Her simplicity14, her affection, her natural sweetness. That didn’t mean shehad to be ignorant of things. What she did know and took for granted wasa fairly limited slice of humanity. She didn’t know much about my world,the world of scrounging for jobs, of race course gangs and dope gangs, therough and tumble dangers of life, the sharp-Aleck flashy type that I knewso well from living amongst them all my life. She didn’t know what it wasto be brought up decent and respectable but always hard up for money,with a mother who worked her fingers to the bone in the name of respect-ability, determining that her son should do well in life. Every pennyscrimped for and saved, and the bitterness when your gay carefree sonthrew away his chances or gambled his all on a good tip for the 3:30.
She enjoyed hearing about my life as much as I enjoyed hearing abouthers. Both of us were exploring a foreign country.
Looking back I see what a wonderfully happy life it was, those earlydays with Ellie. At the time I took them for granted and so did she. Wewere married in a registry office in Plymouth. Guteman is not an uncom-mon name. Nobody, reporters or otherwise, knew the Guteman heiresswas in England. There had been vague paragraphs in papers occasionally,describing her as in Italy or on someone’s yacht. We were married in theRegistrar’s office with his clerk and a middle-aged16 typist as witnesses. Hegave us a serious little harangue17 on the serious responsibilities of marriedlife, and wished us happiness. Then we went out, free and married. Mr.
and Mrs. Michael Rogers! We spent a week in a seaside hotel and then wewent abroad. We had a glorious three weeks travelling about whereverthe fancy took us and no expense spared.
We went to Greece and we went to Florence, and to Venice and lay onthe Lido, then to the French Riviera and then to the Dolomites. Half theplaces I forget the names of now. We took planes or chartered a yacht orhired large and handsome cars. And while we enjoyed ourselves, Greta, Igathered from Ellie, was still on the Home Front doing her stuff.
Travelling about in her own way, sending letters and forwarding all thevarious post-cards and letters that Ellie had left with her.
“There’ll be a day of reckoning, of course,” said Ellie. “They’ll comedown on us like a cloud of vultures. But we might as well enjoy ourselvesuntil that happens.”
“What about Greta?” I said. “Won’t they be rather angry with her whenthey find out?”
“Oh, of course,” said Ellie, “but Greta won’t mind. She’s tough.”
“Mightn’t it stop her getting another job?”
“Why should she get another job?” said Ellie. “She’ll come and live withus.”
“No!” I said.
“What do you mean, no, Mike?”
“We don’t want anyone living with us,” I said.
“Greta wouldn’t be in the way,” said Ellie, “and she’d be very useful.
Really, I don’t know what I’d do without her. I mean, she manages and ar-ranges everything.”
I frowned. “I don’t think I’d like that. Besides, we want our own house—our dream house, after all, Ellie—we want it to ourselves.”
“Yes,” said Ellie, “I know what you mean. But all the same—” She hesit-ated. “I mean, it would be very hard on Greta not to have anywhere tolive. After all, she’s been with me, done everything for me for four yearsnow. And look how she’s helped me to get married and all that.”
“I won’t have her butting18 in between us all the time!”
“But she’s not like that at all, Mike. You haven’t even met her yet.”
“No. No, I know I haven’t but—but it’s nothing to do with, oh with likingher or not. We want to be by ourselves, Ellie.”
“Darling Mike,” said Ellie softly.
We left it at that for the moment.
During the course of our travels we had met Santonix. That was inGreece. He had been in a small fisherman’s cottage near the sea. I wasstartled by how ill he looked, much worse than when I had seen him ayear ago. He greeted both Ellie and myself very warmly.
“So you’ve done it, you two,” he said.
“Yes,” said Ellie, “and now we’re going to have our house built, aren’twe?”
“I’ve got the drawings for you here, the plans,” he said to me. “She’s toldyou, hasn’t she, how she came and ferreted me out and gave me her—commands,” he said, choosing the words thoughtfully.
“Oh! not commands,” said Ellie. “I just pleaded.”
“You know we’ve bought the site?” I said.
“Ellie wired and told me. She sent me dozens of photographs.”
“Of course you’ve got to come and see it first,” said Ellie. “You mightn’tlike the site.”
“I do like it.”
“You can’t really know till you’ve seen it.”
“But I have seen it, child. I flew over five days ago. I met one of yourhatchet-faced lawyers there—the English one.”
“Mr. Crawford?”
“That’s the man. In fact, operations have already started: clearing theground, removing the ruins of the old house, foundations—drains—Whenyou get back to England I’ll be there to meet you.” He got out his plansthen and we sat talking and looking at our house to be. There was even arough water-colour sketch19 of it as well as the architectural elevations20 andplans.
“Do you like it, Mike?”
I drew a deep breath.
“Yes,” I said, “that’s it. That’s absolutely it.”
“You used to talk about it enough, Mike. When I was in a fanciful mood Iused to think that piece of land had laid a spell upon you. You were a manin love with a house that you might never own, that you might never see,that might never even be built.”
“But it’s going to be built,” said Ellie. “It’s going to be built, isn’t it?”
“If God or the devil wills it,” said Santonix. “It doesn’t depend on me.”
“You’re not any—any better?” I asked doubtfully.
“Get it into your thick head. I shall never be better. That’s not on thecards.”
“Nonsense,” I said. “People are finding cures for things all the time. Doc-tors are gloomy brutes21. They give people up for dead and then the peoplelaugh and cock a snook at them and live for another fifty years.”
“I admire your optimism, Mike, but my malady22 isn’t one of that kind.
They take you to hospital and give you a change of blood and back youcome again with a little leeway of life, a little span of time gained. And soon, getting weaker each time.”
“You are very brave,” said Ellie.
“Oh no, I’m not brave. When a thing is certain there’s nothing to bebrave about. All you can do is find your consolation23.”
“Building houses?”
“No, not that. You’ve less vitality24 all the time, you see, and thereforebuilding houses becomes more difficult, not easier. The strength keeps giv-ing out. No. But there are consolations25. Sometimes very queer ones.”
“I don’t understand you,” I said.
“No, you wouldn’t, Mike. I don’t know really that Ellie would. Shemight.” He went on, speaking not so much to us as to himself. “Two thingsrun together, side by side. Weakness and strength. The weakness of fadingvitality and the strength of frustrated26 power. It doesn’t matter, you see,what you do now! You’re going to die anyway. So you can do anything youchoose. There’s nothing to deter15 you, there’s nothing to hold you back. Icould walk through the streets of Athens shooting down every man or wo-man whose face I didn’t like. Think of that.”
“The police could arrest you just the same,” I pointed27 out.
“Of course they could. But what could they do? At the most take my life.
Well my life’s going to be taken by a greater power than the law in a veryshort time. What else could they do? Send me to prison for twenty—thirtyyears? That’s rather ironical28, isn’t it, there aren’t twenty or thirty years forme to serve. Six months — one year — eighteen months at the utmost.
There’s nothing anyone can do to me. So in the span that’s left to me I amking. I can do what I like. Sometimes it’s a very heady thought. Only—only, you see, there’s not much temptation because there’s nothing partic-ularly exotic or lawless that I want to do.”
After we had left him, as we were driving back to Athens, Ellie said tome:
“He’s an odd person. Sometimes you know, I feel frightened of him.”
“Frightened, of Rudolf Santonix—why?”
“Because he isn’t like other people and because he has a—I don’t know—a ruthlessness and an arrogance29 about him somewhere. And I think thathe was trying to tell us, really, that knowing he’s going to die soon has in-creased his arrogance. Supposing,” said Ellie, looking at me in an anim-ated way, with almost a rapt and emotional expression on her face, “sup-posing he built us our lovely castle, our lovely house on the cliff’s edgethere in the pines, supposing we were coming to live in it. There he was onthe doorstep and he welcomed us in and then—”
“Well, Ellie?”
“Then supposing he came in after us, he slowly closed the doorway30 be-hind us and sacrificed us there on the threshold. Cut our throats or some-thing.”
“You frighten me, Ellie. The things you think of!”
“The trouble with you and me, Mike, is that we don’t live in the realworld. We dream of fantastic things that may never happen.”
“Don’t think of sacrifices in connection with Gipsy’s Acre.”
“It’s the name, I suppose, and the curse upon it.”
“There isn’t any curse,” I shouted. “It’s all nonsense. Forget it.”
That was in Greece.
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1
abrupt
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| adj.突然的，意外的；唐突的，鲁莽的 | |
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commotions
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| n.混乱，喧闹，骚动( commotion的名词复数 ) | |
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extraordinarily
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| adv.格外地；极端地 | |
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engrossed
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| adj.全神贯注的 | |
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5
scholastic
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| adj.学校的，学院的，学术上的 | |
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6
villa
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| n.别墅，城郊小屋 | |
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7
retinues
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| n.一批随员( retinue的名词复数 ) | |
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8
administrators
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| n.管理者( administrator的名词复数 )；有管理（或行政）才能的人；（由遗嘱检验法庭指定的）遗产管理人；奉派暂管主教教区的牧师 | |
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9
peculiarities
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| n. 特质, 特性, 怪癖, 古怪 | |
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10
enchanting
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| a.讨人喜欢的 | |
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11
bully
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| n.恃强欺弱者，小流氓；vt.威胁，欺侮 | |
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12
permanently
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| adv.永恒地，永久地，固定不变地 | |
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13
touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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14
simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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15
deter
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| vt.阻止，使不敢，吓住 | |
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16
middle-aged
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| adj.中年的 | |
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17
harangue
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| n.慷慨冗长的训话，言辞激烈的讲话 | |
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18
butting
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| 用头撞人（犯规动作） | |
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sketch
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| n.草图；梗概；素描；v.素描；概述 | |
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20
elevations
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| （水平或数量）提高( elevation的名词复数 )； 高地； 海拔； 提升 | |
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brutes
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| 兽( brute的名词复数 )； 畜生； 残酷无情的人； 兽性 | |
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22
malady
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| n.病，疾病(通常做比喻) | |
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23
consolation
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| n.安慰，慰问 | |
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24
vitality
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| n.活力，生命力，效力 | |
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25
consolations
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| n.安慰，慰问( consolation的名词复数 )；起安慰作用的人（或事物） | |
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26
frustrated
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| adj.挫败的，失意的，泄气的v.使不成功( frustrate的过去式和过去分词 )；挫败；使受挫折；令人沮丧 | |
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27
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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28
ironical
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| adj.讽刺的，冷嘲的 | |
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29
arrogance
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| n.傲慢，自大 | |
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30
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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