登陆注册
5242200000212

第212章 Chapter 4(7)

So the high voice quavered, aiming truly at effects far over the heads of gaping neighbours; so the speaker, piling it up, sticking at nothing, as less interested judges might have said, seemed to justify the (292) faith with which she was honoured. Maggie meanwhile at the window knew the strangest thing to be happening: she had turned suddenly to crying, or was at least on the point of it--the lighted square before her all blurred and dim. The high voice went on; its quaver was doubtless for conscious ears only, but there were verily thirty seconds during which it sounded, for our young woman, like the shriek of a soul in pain. Kept up a minute longer it would break and collapse--so that Maggie felt herself the next thing turn with a start to her father. "Can't she be stopped? Has n't she done it ENOUGH?"--some such question as that she let herself ask him to suppose in her. Then it was that, across half the gallery--for he had n't moved from where she had first seen him--he struck her as confessing, with strange tears in his own eyes, to sharp identity of emotion. "Poor thing, poor thing"--it reached straight--"IS N'T she, for one's credit, on the swagger?" After which, as held thus together they had still another strained minute, the shame, the pity, the better knowledge, the smothered protest, the divined anguish even, so overcame him that, blushing to his eyes, he turned short away. The affair but of a few muffled moments, this snatched communion yet lifted Maggie as on air--so much for deep guesses on her own side too it gave her to think of. There was honestly an awful mixture in things, and it was n't closed to her aftersense of such passages--we have already indeed in other cases seen it open--that the deepest depth of all, in a perceived penalty, was that you could n't be sure some of your compunctions and contortions would n't show for ridiculous. (293)

Amerigo that morning for instance had been as absent as he at this juncture appeared to desire he should mainly be noted as being; he had gone to London for the day and the night--a necessity that now frequently rose for him and that he had more than once suffered to operate during the presence of guests, successions of pretty women, the theory of his fond interest in whom had been publicly cultivated. It had never occurred to his wife to pronounce him ingenuous, but there came at last a high dim August dawn when she could n't sleep and when, creeping restlessly about and breathing at her window the coolness of wooded acres, she found the faint flush of the east march with the perception of that other almost equal prodigy.

It rosily coloured her vision that--even such as he was, yes--her husband could on occasion sin by excess of candour. He would n't otherwise have given as his reason for going up to Portland Place in the August days that he was arranging books there. He had bought a great many of late and had had others, a large number, sent from Rome--wonders of old print in which her father had been interested. But when her imagination tracked him to the dusty town, to the house where drawn blinds and pale shrouds, where a caretaker and a kitchenmaid were alone in possession, it was n't to see him, in his shirtsleeves, unpacking battered boxes.

She saw him in truth less easily beguiled--saw him wander in the closed dusky rooms from place to place or else for long periods recline on deep sofas and stare before him through the smoke of ceaseless cigarettes. She made him out as liking better than anything in (294) the world just now to be alone with his thoughts. Being herself connected with his thoughts, she continued to believe, more than she had ever been, it was thereby a good deal as if he were alone with HER. She made him out as resting so from that constant strain of the perfunctory to which he was exposed at Fawns; and she was accessible to the impression of the almost beggared aspect of this alternative. It was like his doing penance in sordid ways--being sent to prison or being kept without money; it would n't have taken much to make her think of him as really kept without food. He might have broken away, might easily have started to travel; he had a right--thought wonderful Maggie now--to so many more freedoms than he took! His secret was of course that at Fawns he all the while winced, was all the while in presences in respect to which he had thrown himself back with a hard pressure on whatever mysteries of pride, whatever inward springs familiar to the man of the world, he could keep from snapping. Maggie, for some reason, had that morning, while she watched the sunrise, taken an extraordinary measure of the ground on which he would have HAD to snatch at pretexts for absence. It all came to her there--he got off to escape from a sound. The sound was in her own ears still--that of Charlotte's high coerced quaver before the cabinets in the hushed gallery; the voice by which she herself had been pierced the day before as by that of a creature in anguish and by which, while she sought refuge at the blurred window, the tears had been forced into her eyes. Her comprehension soared so high that the wonder for her became really his not (295) feeling the need of wider intervals and thicker walls.

Before THAT admiration she also meditated; consider as she might now she kept reading not less into what he omitted than into what he performed a beauty of intention that touched her fairly the more by being obscure.

It was like hanging over a garden in the dark; nothing was to be made of the confusion of growing things, but one felt they were folded flowers and that their vague sweetness made the whole air their medium. He had to turn away, but he was n't at least a coward; he would wait on the spot for the issue of what he had done on the spot. She sank to her knees with her arm on the ledge of her window-seat, where she blinded her eyes from the full glare of seeing that his idea could only be to wait, whatever might come, at her side. It was to her buried face that she thus for a long time felt him draw nearest; though after a while, when the strange wail of the gallery began to repeat its inevitable echo, she was conscious of how that brought out his pale hard grimace.

同类推荐
  • 归田琐记

    归田琐记

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • Bound to Rise

    Bound to Rise

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 九天应元雷声普化天尊玉枢宝经

    九天应元雷声普化天尊玉枢宝经

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 华严经合论纂要

    华严经合论纂要

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 菜根谭

    菜根谭

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
热门推荐
  • 一世惊梦

    一世惊梦

    她,是混迹于青楼的花魁,也是武林中令人闻色丧胆的“魅”;他,是武林中群花追逐的新秀,亦是皇家遗弃的弃子。为了复仇,她错入宫廷,为了追逐,他重归故里。江湖恩怨,宫廷之争,究竟孰是孰非……--情节虚构,请勿模仿
  • 布登勃洛克的一家(诺贝尔文学奖文集)

    布登勃洛克的一家(诺贝尔文学奖文集)

    诺贝尔文学奖,以其人类理想主义的伟大精神,为世界文学提供了永恒的标准。其中所包含的诗、小说、散文、戏剧、哲学、史学等不同体裁。不同风格的杰作,流光溢彩,各具特色,全面展现了20世纪世界文学的总体各局。吉卜林、梅特林克、泰戈尔、法朗士、消伯纳、叶芝、纪德……一个个激动人心的名字;《尼尔斯骑鹅旅行记》、《青鸟》、《吉檀迦利》、《福尔赛世家》、《六个寻找作者的剧中人》、《伪币制造者》、《巴比特》……一部部辉煌灿烂的名著,洋洋大观,百川归海,全部汇聚于这套诺贝尔文学奖获奖者文集之中。全新的译文,真实的获奖内幕,细致生动的作家及作品介绍,既展现了作家的创作轨迹、作品的风格特色,也揭示了文学的内在规律。
  • 豹隐纪谈

    豹隐纪谈

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 丞相大人的试卷

    丞相大人的试卷

    本书精选中国历史上38位足智多谋的名臣,通过考卷的形式,以档案、个人自述、综合测评、古今闲话、趣闻大播报等多个活泼有趣的互动板块,全方位展现他们的一生。
  • 一世凰途

    一世凰途

    她倾尽所有,用尽一生的厚爱却未换回他转身的薄情。妹妹的鸠占鹊巢,夫君的狼子野心,似冰椎刺心,万箭穿目,让她身心皆受地狱之火折磨。她不惜耗尽元力,染白了一头青丝,寻出七世龙骨下落,助他一统天。他还给她的,却是冰冷的铁链,绝情的抛弃,甚至是不屑一顾地讥讽,唐子烟你不过是一颗棋子……
  • 顶尖管理九工具

    顶尖管理九工具

    探讨的是世界级工商领袖和管理大师们所推崇的管理手段和方法。在这里,你可以领略到顶尖且极具适用性的一些成功经验,以及在今后管理中必须掌握的一些管理技巧。它们都源于世界顶级企业经营管理中所总结出来的实际经验,多数可以被运用到管理实践中。
  • 公子无心爱良夜

    公子无心爱良夜

    谁人不知大赵国公主赵良宴最爱驾一匹白青马飞扬跋扈的往将军府门口那么一杵,高冠长佩,气势凌人的指着大门叫道:“霍斐,今儿你再不出来,我灵犀宫统共两百余宫女嬷嬷太监就跟这儿一堵,本公主就是要让整个长安城的名门贵女知道,你霍斐霍大将军是本公主的人!”谁人都说她乐昌公主不知廉耻,又不知好歹的看上了京城男神霍大将军,霍斐却避她如过街老鼠。可从没人知道她灵犀宫的绣枕下面,还保留着许多年前的那支素银簪。她知道,逼婚是个技术活儿。她也知道,坚持是世界上最好的良药。
  • 全唐诗话续编

    全唐诗话续编

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 华裔身份的追索与建构:美国华裔文学流散叙事研究

    华裔身份的追索与建构:美国华裔文学流散叙事研究

    近年来,美国华裔文学研究成为一种显学,受到了国内外特别是国内专家和学者持续关注和重视,其研究成果层出不穷,研究视角丰富多彩。但本书在批判性地汲取前人研究的基础上从流散叙事视角出发,结合后殖民理论,对若干具有代表性的美国华裔作家和华裔文学作品所体现出的漂泊精神意向、心理状态、身份意识、身份归属、身份重构、不可避免的跨文化交流和多元特质新文化景观进行了深度的、系统的、别样的阐释和研究。本书共包括6个章节:导论、美国华裔文学中的文化身份焦虑与认同危机、美国华裔文学中文化之根的追寻、美国华裔文学中文化身份的建构、美国华裔作家的现代视域与融合态势、结论。
  • 最让你释放情感的心灵故事(智慧背囊16本)

    最让你释放情感的心灵故事(智慧背囊16本)

    俄国诗人普希金说:“假如生活欺骗了你,不要忧郁,也不要愤慨!不顺心的时候暂且容忍。相信吧,快乐的日子就会到来。”生活中,会经历喜怒哀乐各种复杂的情感。如果以积极的心态去面对,雨季会变为晴天;如果以消极的心态去面对,晴天会变为雨季。但是,任何的人,无论雨季或者晴天,心中的情感都需要最真实的释放、解脱。本书汇集了最感人至深的几百个情感故事,以引人共鸣的心灵物语来进行点拨,使广大读者在故事中得到释放、领悟、受益,更加以积极、乐观的心态去面对生活、开创生活。