The social club he had been interested in in the East End of London … Itwas there that he had first met Rachel Konstam. He could see her nowclearly in his mind’s eye. A girl of medium height, stocky in build, wearingwhat he had not appreciated at the time were very expensive clothes, butwearing them with a dowdy1 air. A round- faced girl, serious, warm-hearted, with an eagerness and a na?vety which had appealed to him. Somuch that needed doing, so much that was worth doing! She had pouredout words eagerly, rather incoherently, and his heart had warmed to her.
For he, too, had felt that there was much that needed doing, much thatwas worth doing; though he himself had a gift of natural irony2 that madehim doubtful whether work worth doing was always as successful as itought to be. But Rachel had had no doubts. If you did this, if you did that,if such and such an institution were endowed, the beneficial results wouldfollow automatically.
She had never allowed, he saw now, for human nature. She had seenpeople always as cases, as problems to be dealt with. She had never seenthat each human being was different, would react differently, had its ownpeculiar idiosyncrasies. He had said to her then, he remembered, not toexpect too much. But she had always expected too much, although she hadimmediately disclaimed3 his accusation4. She had always expected toomuch, and so always she had been disappointed. He had fallen in lovewith her quite quickly, and had been agreeably surprised to find out thatshe was the daughter of wealthy parents.
They had planned their life together on a basis of high thinking and notprecisely plain living. But he could see now clearly what it was that hadprincipally attracted him to her. It was her warmth of heart. Only, andthere was the tragedy, that warmth of heart had not really been for him.
She had been in love with him, yes. But what she had really wanted fromhim and from life was children. And the children had not come.
They had visited doctors, reputable doctors, disreputable doctors, evenquacks, and the verdict in the end had been one she was forced to accept.
She would never have children of her own. He had been sorry for her,very sorry, and he had acquiesced5 quite willingly in her suggestion thatthey should adopt a child. They were already in touch with adoption6 soci-eties when on the occasion of a visit to New York their car had knockeddown a child running out from a tenement7 in the poorer quarter of thecity.
Rachel had jumped out and knelt down in the street by the child whowas only bruised8, not hurt; a beautiful child, golden-haired and blue-eyed.
Rachel had insisted on taking her to hospital to make sure there was no in-jury. She’d interviewed the child’s relations; a slatternly aunt and theaunt’s husband who obviously drank. It was clear that they had no feelingfor the child they had taken in to live with them since her own parentswere dead. Rachel had suggested that the child should come and stay withthem for a few days, and the woman had agreed with alacrity9.
“Can’t look after her properly here,” she’d said.
So Mary had been taken back to their suite10 at the hotel. The child hadobviously enjoyed the soft bed and the luxurious11 bathroom. Rachel hadbought her new clothes. Then the moment had come when the child hadsaid:
“I don’t want to go home. I want to stay here with you.”
Rachel had looked at him, looked at him with a sudden passion of long-ing and delight. She had said to him as soon as they were alone:
“Let’s keep her. It’ll easily be arranged. We’ll adopt her. She’ll be ourown child. That woman’ll be only too pleased to be rid of her.”
He had agreed easily enough. The child seemed quiet, well-behaved, do-cile. She’d obviously no feeling for the aunt and uncle with whom shelived. If this would make Rachel happy, they’d go ahead. Lawyers wereconsulted, papers were signed and henceforth Mary O’Shaughnessy wasknown as Mary Argyle, and sailed with them for Europe. He had thoughtthat at last poor Rachel would be happy. And she had been happy. Happyin an excited, almost feverish12 kind of way, doting13 on Mary, giving herevery kind of expensive toy. And Mary had accepted placidly14, sweetly.
And yet, Leo thought, there had always been something that disturbedhim a little. The child’s easy acquiescence15. Her lack of any kind of home-sickness for her own place and people. True affection, he hoped, wouldcome later. He could see no real signs of it now. Acceptance of benefits,complacence, enjoyment16 of all that was provided. But of love for her newadopted mother? No, he had not seen that.
It was from that time onwards, Leo thought, that he had somehow man-aged to slip to the background of Rachel Argyle’s life. She was a womanwho was by nature a mother, not a wife. Now with the acquiring of Mary,it was as though her maternal17 longings19 were not so much fulfilled as stim-ulated. One child was not enough for her.
All her enterprises from now on were connected with children. Her in-terest lay in orphanages20, in endowments for crippled children, in cases ofbackward children, spastics, orthopaedics—always children. It was admir-able. He felt all along that it was very admirable, but it had become thecentre of her life. Little by little he began to indulge in his own activities.
He began to go more deeply into the historical background of economics,which had always interested him. He withdrew more and more into hislibrary. He engaged in research, in the writing of short, well- phrasedmonographs. His wife, busy, earnest, happy, ran the house and increasedher activities. He was courteous21 and acquiescent22. He encouraged her.
“That is a very fine project, my dear.” “Yes, yes, I should certainly go aheadwith that.” Occasionally a word of caution was slipped in. “You want, Ithink, to examine the position very thoroughly23 before you commit your-self. You mustn’t be carried away.”
She continued to consult him, but sometimes now it was almost perfunc-tory. As time went on she was more and more an authoritarian24. She knewwhat was right, she knew what was best. Courteously25 he withdrew his cri-ticism and his occasional admonitions.
Rachel, he thought, needed no help from him, needed no love from him.
She was busy, happy, terrifically energetic.
Behind the hurt that he could not help feeling, there was also, queerlyenough, a sense of pity for her. It was as though he knew that the path shewas pursuing might be a perilous26 one.
On the outbreak of war in 1939, Mrs. Argyle’s activities were immedi-ately redoubled. Once she had the idea of opening a war nursery for chil-dren from the London slums, she was in touch with many influentialpeople in London. The Ministry27 of Health was quite willing to co-operateand she had looked for and found a suitable house for her purpose. Anewly built, up-to-date house in a remote part of England likely to be freefrom bombing. There she could accommodate up to eighteen childrenbetween the ages of two and seven. The children came not only from poorhomes but also from unfortunate ones. They were orphans28, or illegitimatechildren whose mothers had no intention of being evacuated30 with themand who were bored with looking after them. Children from homes wherethey had been ill-treated and neglected. Three or four of the children werecripples. For orthopaedic treatment she engaged as well as a staff of do-mestic workers, a Swedish masseuse and two fully31 trained hospitalnurses. The whole thing was done not only on a comfortable but on a lux-urious basis. Once he remonstrated32 with her.
“You mustn’t forget, Rachel, these children will have to go back to thebackground from which we took them. You mustn’t make it too difficultfor them.”
She had replied warmly:
“Nothing’s too good for these poor mites33. Nothing!”
He had urged, “Yes, but they’ve got to go back, remember.”
But she had waved that aside. “It mayn’t be necessary. It may—we’llhave to see in the future.”
The exigencies34 of war had soon brought changes. The hospital nurses,restive at looking after perfectly35 healthy children when there was realnursing work to be done, had frequently to be replaced. In the end oneelderly hospital nurse and Kirsten Lindstrom were the only two left. Thedomestic help failed and Kirsten Lindstrom had come to the rescue therealso. She had worked with great devotion and selflessness.
And Rachel Argyle had been busy and happy. There had been, Leo re-membered, moments of occasional bewilderment. The day when Rachel,puzzled at the way one small boy, Micky, was slowly losing weight, his ap-petite failing, had called in the doctor. The doctor could find nothingwrong but had suggested to Mrs. Argyle that the child might be homesick.
Quickly she’d rebuffed the idea.
“That’s impossible! You don’t know the home he has come from. He wasknocked about, ill-treated. It must have been hell for him.”
“All the same,” Dr. MacMaster had said, “all the same, I shouldn’t be sur-prised, The thing is to get him to talk.”
And one day Micky had talked. Sobbing36 in his bed, he cried out, pushingRachel away with his fists:
“I want to go home. I want to go home to our Mom and our Ernie.”
Rachel was upset, almost incredulous.
“He can’t want his mother. She didn’t care tuppence for him. Sheknocked him about whenever she was drunk.”
And he had said gently: “But you’re up against nature, Rachel. She is hismother and he loves her.”
“She was no kind of a mother!”
“He is her own flesh and blood. That’s what he feels. That’s what noth-ing can replace.”
And she had answered: “But by now, surely he ought to look on me ashis mother.”
Poor Rachel, thought Leo. Poor Rachel, who could buy so many things …Not selfish things, not things for herself; who could give to unwanted chil-dren love, care, a home. All these things she could buy for them, but nottheir love for her.
Then the war had ended. The children had begun to drift back to Lon-don, claimed by parents or relatives. But not all of them. Some of themhad remained unwanted and it was then that Rachel had said:
“You know, Leo, they’re like our own children now. This is the momentwhen we can have a real family of our own. Four—five of these childrencan stay with us. We’ll adopt them, provide for them and they’ll really beour children.”
He had felt a vague uneasiness, why he did not quite know. It was notthat he objected to the children, but he had felt instinctively37 the falsenessof it. The assumption that it was easy to make a family of one’s own by ar-tificial means.
“Don’t you think,” he had said, “that it’s rather a risk?”
But she had replied:
“A risk? What does it matter if it is a risk? It’s worth doing.”
Yes, he supposed it was worth doing, only he was not quite as sure asshe was. By now he had grown so far away, so aloof38 in some cold misty39 re-gion of his own, that it was not in him to object. He said as he had said somany times:
“You must do as you please, Rachel.”
She had been full of triumph, full of happiness, making her plans, con-sulting solicitors40, going about things in her usual businesslike way. And soshe had acquired her family. Mary, that eldest41 child brought from NewYork; Micky, the homesick boy who had cried himself to sleep for so manynights, longing18 for his slum home and his negligent42, bad-tempered43 mother;Tina, the graceful44 dark half-caste child whose mother was a prostitute andwhose father had been a Lascar seaman45. Hester, whose young Irishmother had borne an illegitimate child and who wanted to start life again.
And Jacko, the engaging, monkey-faced little boy whose antics made themall laugh, who could always talk himself out of punishment, and charm ex-tra sweets even from that disciplinarian, Miss Lindstrom. Jacko, whosefather was serving a prison sentence and whose mother had gone off withsome other man.
Yes, Leo thought, surely it was a worthwhile job to take these children,to give them the benefits of a home and love and a father and mother.
Rachel, he thought, had had a right to be triumphant46. Only it hadn’tworked out quite the way it was supposed to do … For these children werenot the children that he and Rachel would have had. Within them rannone of the blood of Rachel’s hardworking thrifty47 forebears, none of thedrive and ambition by which the less reputable members of her familyhad gained their assured place in society, none of the vague kindlinessand integrity of mind that he remembered in his own father and grand-father and grandmother. None of the intellectual brilliance48 of his grand-parents on the other side.
Everything that environment could do was done for them. It could do agreat deal, but it could not do everything. There had been those seeds ofweakness which had brought them to the nursery in the first place, andunder stress those seeds might bear flower. That was exemplified veryfully in Jacko. Jacko, the charming, agile49 Jacko, with his merry quips, hischarm, his easy habit of twisting everyone round his finger, was essen-tially of a delinquent50 type. It showed very early in childish thieving, inlies; all things that were put down to his original bad upbringing. Thingsthat could be, Rachel said, easily ironed out. But they never did get ironedout.
His record at school was bad. He was sent down from the university andfrom then it was a long series of painful incidents where he and Rachel,doing the best they could, tried to give the boy the assurance of their loveand their confidence, tried to find work that would be congenial to himwhere he could hope for success if he applied51 himself. Perhaps, Leothought, they had been too soft with him. But no. Soft or hard, in Jacko’scase, he thought the end would have been the same. What he wanted hemust have. If he could not get it by any legitimate29 means he was quite will-ing to get it by any other means. He was not clever enough to be successfulin crime, even petty crime. And so it had come to that last day when hehad arrived broke, in fear of prison, angrily demanding money as hisright, threatening. He had gone away, shouting out that he was comingback and that she had better have the money ready for him—Or else!
And so—Rachel had died. How remote all the past seemed to him. Allthose long years of the war with the boys and girls growing up. And hehimself? Also remote, colourless. It was as though that robust52 energy andzest for life that was Rachel had eaten into him, leaving him limp and ex-hausted, needing, oh so badly, warmth and love.
Even now he could hardly remember when he had first become awarehow close these things were to him. Close at hand … Not proffered53 to him,but there.
Gwenda … The perfect, helpful secretary, working for him, always athand, kind, helpful. There was something about her that had remindedhim of what Rachel had been when he first met her. The same warmth,the same enthusiasm, the same warmheartedness. Only in Gwenda’s case,that warmth, that warmheartedness, that enthusiasm were all for him. Notfor the hypothetical children that she might one day have, just for him. Ithad been like warming one’s hands at a fire … Hands that were cold andstiff with disuse. When had he first realized that she cared for him? It wasdifficult to say. It had not been any sudden revelation.
But suddenly—one day—he had known that he loved her.
And that as long as Rachel lived, they could never marry.
Leo sighed, sat up in his chair and drank his stone-cold tea.
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收听单词发音
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1
dowdy
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| adj.不整洁的；过旧的 | |
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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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disclaimed
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| v.否认( disclaim的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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accusation
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| n.控告，指责，谴责 | |
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acquiesced
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| v.默认，默许( acquiesce的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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adoption
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| n.采用，采纳，通过；收养 | |
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tenement
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| n.公寓；房屋 | |
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bruised
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| [医]青肿的，瘀紫的 | |
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alacrity
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| n.敏捷，轻快，乐意 | |
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suite
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| n.一套(家具)；套房；随从人员 | |
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luxurious
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| adj.精美而昂贵的；豪华的 | |
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feverish
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| adj.发烧的，狂热的，兴奋的 | |
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doting
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| adj.溺爱的，宠爱的 | |
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placidly
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| adv.平稳地，平静地 | |
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acquiescence
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| n.默许；顺从 | |
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enjoyment
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| n.乐趣；享有；享用 | |
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maternal
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| adj.母亲的，母亲般的，母系的，母方的 | |
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longing
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| n.（for）渴望 | |
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longings
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| 渴望，盼望( longing的名词复数 ) | |
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orphanages
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| 孤儿院( orphanage的名词复数 ) | |
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courteous
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| adj.彬彬有礼的，客气的 | |
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acquiescent
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| adj.默许的，默认的 | |
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thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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authoritarian
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| n./adj.专制(的)，专制主义者，独裁主义者 | |
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courteously
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| adv.有礼貌地，亲切地 | |
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perilous
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| adj.危险的，冒险的 | |
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ministry
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| n.(政府的)部；牧师 | |
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orphans
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| 孤儿( orphan的名词复数 ) | |
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legitimate
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| adj.合法的，合理的，合乎逻辑的；v.使合法 | |
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evacuated
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| 撤退者的 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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remonstrated
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| v.抗议( remonstrate的过去式和过去分词 )；告诫 | |
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mites
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| n.（尤指令人怜悯的）小孩( mite的名词复数 )；一点点；一文钱；螨 | |
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exigencies
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| n.急切需要 | |
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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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sobbing
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| <主方>Ⅰ adj.湿透的 | |
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instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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aloof
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| adj.远离的；冷淡的，漠不关心的 | |
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misty
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| adj.雾蒙蒙的，有雾的 | |
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solicitors
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| 初级律师( solicitor的名词复数 ) | |
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eldest
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| adj.最年长的，最年老的 | |
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negligent
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| adj.疏忽的；玩忽的；粗心大意的 | |
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bad-tempered
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| adj.脾气坏的 | |
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graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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seaman
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| n.海员，水手，水兵 | |
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triumphant
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| adj.胜利的，成功的；狂欢的，喜悦的 | |
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thrifty
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| adj.节俭的；兴旺的；健壮的 | |
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brilliance
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| n.光辉，辉煌，壮丽，（卓越的）才华，才智 | |
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agile
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| adj.敏捷的，灵活的 | |
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delinquent
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| adj.犯法的，有过失的；n.违法者 | |
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applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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robust
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| adj.强壮的，强健的，粗野的，需要体力的，浓的 | |
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proffered
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| v.提供，贡献，提出( proffer的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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