登陆注册
15316400000038

第38章 THE RECKONING August, 1902(2)

Mrs.Westall laughed."Not always--or altogether! But I should like some tea, please."Una led her to the corner where innocent beverages were dispensed.As Julia received her cup she scrutinized the girl more carefully.It was not such a girlish face, after all-- definite lines were forming under the rosy haze of youth.She reflected that Una must be six-and-twenty, and wondered why she had not married.A nice stock of ideas she would have as her dower! If THEY were to be a part of the modern girl's trousseau--Mrs.Westall caught herself up with a start.It was as though some one else had been speaking--a stranger who had borrowed her own voice: she felt herself the dupe of some fantastic mental ventriloquism.Concluding suddenly that the room was stifling and Una's tea too sweet, she set down her cup, and looked about for Westall: to meet his eyes had long been her refuge from every uncertainty.She met them now, but only, as she felt, in transit; they included her parenthetically in a larger flight.She followed the flight, and it carried her to a corner to which Una had withdrawn--one of the palmy nooks to which Mrs.Van Sideren attributed the success of her Saturdays.Westall, a moment later, had overtaken his look, and found a place at the girl's side.She bent forward, speaking eagerly; he leaned back, listening, with the depreciatory smile which acted as a filter to flattery, enabling him to swallow the strongest doses without apparent grossness of appetite.Julia winced at her own definition of the smile.

On the way home, in the deserted winter dusk, Westall surprised his wife by a sudden boyish pressure of her arm."Did I open their eyes a bit? Did I tell them what you wanted me to?" he asked gaily.

-?"

Almost unconsciously, she let her arm slip from his."What I wanted-"Why, haven't you--all this time?" She caught the honest wonder of histone."I somehow fancied you'd rather blamed me for not talking more openly--before-- You've made me feel, at times, that I was sacrificing principles to expediency."She paused a moment over her reply; then she asked quietly: "What made you decide not to--any longer?"She felt again the vibration of a faint surprise."Why--the wish to please you!" he answered, almost too simply.

"I wish you would not go on, then," she said abruptly.

He stopped in his quick walk, and she felt his stare through the darkness.

"Not go on--?"

"Call a hansom, please.I'm tired," broke from her with a sudden rush of physical weariness.

Instantly his solicitude enveloped her.The room had been infernally hot--and then that confounded cigarette smoke--he had noticed once or twice that she looked pale--she mustn't come to another Saturday.She felt herself yielding, as she always did, to the warm influence of his concern for her, the feminine in her leaning on the man in him with a conscious intensity of abandonment.He put her in the hansom, and her hand stole into his in the darkness.A tear or two rose, and she let them fall.It was so delicious to cry over imaginary troubles!

That evening, after dinner, he surprised her by reverting to the subject of his talk.He combined a man's dislike of uncomfortable questions with an almost feminine skill in eluding them; and she knew that if he returned to the subject he must have some special reason for doing so.

"You seem not to have cared for what I said this afternoon.Did I put the case badly?""No--you put it very well."

"Then what did you mean by saying that you would rather not have me go on with it?"She glanced at him nervously, her ignorance of his intention deepeningher sense of helplessness.

"I don't think I care to hear such things discussed in public.""I don't understand you," he exclaimed.Again the feeling that his surprise was genuine gave an air of obliquity to her own attitude.She was not sure that she understood herself.

"Won't you explain?" he said with a tinge of impatience.Her eyes wandered about the familiar drawing-room which had been the scene of so many of their evening confidences.The shaded lamps, the quiet-colored walls hung with mezzotints, the pale spring flowers scattered here and there in Venice glasses and bowls of old Sevres, recalled, she hardly knew why, the apartment in which the evenings of her first marriage had been passed--a wilderness of rosewood and upholstery, with a picture of a Roman peasant above the mantel-piece, and a Greek slave in "statuary marble" between the folding-doors of the back drawing-room.It was a room with which she had never been able to establish any closer relation than that between a traveller and a railway station; and now, as she looked about at the surroundings which stood for her deepest affinities--the room for which she had left that other room--she was startled by the same sense of strangeness and unfamiliarity.The prints, the flowers, the subdued tones of the old porcelains, seemed to typify a superficial refinement that had no relation to the deeper significances of life.

Suddenly she heard her husband repeating his question."I don't know that I can explain," she faltered.

He drew his arm-chair forward so that he faced her across the hearth.The light of a reading-lamp fell on his finely drawn face, which had a kind of surface-sensitiveness akin to the surface-refinement of its setting."Is it that you no longer believe in our ideas?" he asked.

"In our ideas--?"

"The ideas I am trying to teach.The ideas you and I are supposed to stand for." He paused a moment."The ideas on which our marriage was founded."The blood rushed to her face.He had his reasons, then--she was sure now that he had his reasons! In the ten years of their marriage, how often had either of them stopped to consider the ideas on which it was founded?

同类推荐
  • 送覃二判官

    送覃二判官

    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。
  • 洞玄灵宝定观经注

    洞玄灵宝定观经注

    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。
  • 鹤林玉露

    鹤林玉露

    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。
  • 眼科心法要诀

    眼科心法要诀

    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。
  • 养一斋李杜诗话

    养一斋李杜诗话

    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。
热门推荐
  • 淡漠轨迹

    淡漠轨迹

    你完成童年的梦了吗?是不是仍旧为了一片瓦,一口食,苟延残喘着。每个人的生活轨迹不同,偶尔有交集,有分散。巧得是我经历的或许你也正在经历,不要嘲笑谁的青春过得狼狈,幸运的只是一时,让那些不完美的用思想来完善。
  • 错过了十世

    错过了十世

    错过了,还能在一起吗,纠缠了十世,等了十世
  • 轮回吧,少年

    轮回吧,少年

    一个腹黑的平凡宅男在轮回中寻求自身,体会感情,救赎世界的老套故事。为什么要变强?只是因为我们在成长。起个高端大气的名字真难。
  • 天界地界

    天界地界

    讲述作者(常年华)三次西部行,看尽八万里路云和雪,历尽艰难险阻,阅尽醉人景色。作者以日记的形式讲述帕米尔高原无人居住区域、藏地至今尚未通车的墨脱县,以及那些遥远、路险、常人很难去的那些地方的所见、所听、所感。《天界地界(两疆穿行八万里)》是一本文化旅游读本,对于向往西藏、新疆旅游的读者起着向导作用。
  • 网游之勇士村

    网游之勇士村

    “老天预言,在勇士村面临危机时,必有天降勇士帮助勇士村度过难关!”于是被誉为天降勇士的方震就这样接管了这个平凡的小村子。打经济战,打文化战,也打征服战!看方震如何带领这个小村子一步一步变成天下第一城。
  • 圣魂杀

    圣魂杀

    一个被随意殴打、辱骂的小乞丐,被一个神秘组织收入,经过各种残酷的训练,他成为组织中最冷酷,强大的杀手,但为什么他背叛了组织,惹到组织的追杀,他如何能逃脱强大组织的追杀……圣魂杀带您走进不一样的异世大陆….
  • 回天战记

    回天战记

    姜农重生,为这个异界带来了新活力。奈何前有异鬼族不断入侵,后有凶兽一族威胁在即,眼看异界将要沦陷。身怀绝无仅有的双气旋他该怎么做?听说穿越者最终都会拯救世界,一想到这里姜农便觉得正能量满满,浑身充满使不完的力气。
  • 三岛遇上的案件

    三岛遇上的案件

    (第一次连载,请多指教!)三岛在警察局中不断遇到奇怪的案件,这一具具尸体背后是怎样的故事呢?或满溢温情或人性黑暗,或爱或憎,这便大抵是我们所处的这个世界。
  • tfboys之冰心少女

    tfboys之冰心少女

    他说过,他会等她一世,会一直守护她。可他还是令她失望。一次次误会,是巧合,还是事实?黯然的她,选择了离开。当他得知一切真相后,时光却早已悄悄流走,再无机会。多年后,她以惊人的身份出现在他面前,但她早已不是五年前需要他保护的女孩。她举起那把银色的手枪,冰冷的枪口对着他,厌恶地说:“喂,你离我远点,我可不敢保证我不会开枪杀了你。”或许,回忆,只是昨夜的星空。
  • 人潮拥挤只为放弃你

    人潮拥挤只为放弃你

    从小时候拿棒棒糖哄人,到长大拿钱哄人,后来知道错了,因为他们需要的是你的棒棒糖,而你需要的是他们的同情当一个人失去一样东西的时候,会得到另一件东西作者QQ:2919468911