The Age of Innocence, Chapter 58

歌手： Edith Wharton • 专辑：The Age of Innocence (unabridged) • 发布时间：2017-01-27 
作词 : Edith Wharton
“It’s a wonder,”
Mrs. Welland remarked,
“that they didn’t choose the Cup Race day!
Do you remember,
two years ago,
their giving a party for a black man on the day of Julia Mingott’s thé dansant?
Luckily this time there’s nothing else going on that I know of—
for of course some of us will have to go.”

Mr. Welland sighed nervously.
“ ‘Some of us,’ my dear—
more than one?
Three o’clock is such a very awkward hour.
I have to be here at half-past three to take my drops:
it’s really no use trying to follow Bencomb’s new treatment if I don’t do it systematically;
and if I join you later,
of course I shall miss my drive.”
At the thought
he laid down his knife and fork again,
and a flush of anxiety rose to his finely-wrinkled cheek.

“There’s no reason why you should go at all, my dear,”
his wife answered with a cheerfulness that had become automatic.
“I have some cards to leave at the other end of Bellevue Avenue,
and I’ll drop in at about half-past three
and stay long enough
to make poor Amy feel that she hasn’t been slighted.”
She glanced hesitatingly at her daughter.
“And if Newland’s afternoon is provided for
perhaps May can drive you out with the ponies,
and try their new russet harness.”

It was a principle in the Welland family
that people’s days and hours should be
what Mrs. Welland called “provided for.”
The melancholy possibility of having to “kill time”
(especially for those who did not care for whist or solitaire)
was a vision that haunted her
as the spectre of the unemployed haunts the philanthropist.
Another of her principles
was that parents should never
(at least visibly)
interfere with the plans of their married children;
and the difficulty of adjusting this respect for May’s independence
with the exigency of Mr. Welland’s claims
could be overcome only by the exercise of an ingenuity
which left not a second of Mrs. Welland’s own time unprovided for.

“Of course I’ll drive with Papa—
I’m sure Newland will find something to do,”
May said,
in a tone that gently reminded her husband of his lack of response.
It was a cause of constant distress to Mrs. Welland
that her son-in-law showed so little foresight in planning his days.
Often already, during the fortnight that he had passed under her roof,
when she enquired how he meant to spend his afternoon,
he had answered paradoxically:
“Oh, I think for a change
I’ll just save it instead of spending it—”
and once,
when she and May had had to go on a long-postponed round of afternoon calls,
he had confessed to having lain all the afternoon under a rock on the beach below the house.

“Newland never seems to look ahead,”
Mrs. Welland once ventured to complain to her daughter;
and May answered serenely:
“No;
but you see it doesn’t matter,
because when there’s nothing particular to do
he reads a book.”

“Ah, yes—like his father!”
Mrs. Welland agreed,
as if allowing for an inherited oddity;
and after that
the question of Newland’s unemployment was tacitly dropped.

Nevertheless,
as the day for the Sillerton reception approached,
May began to show a natural solicitude for his welfare,
and to suggest a tennis match at the Chiverses’,
or a sail on Julius Beaufort’s cutter, as a means of atoning for her temporary desertion.
“I shall be back by six, you know, dear:
Papa never drives later than that—”
and she was not reassured till Archer said that he thought of hiring a run-about
and driving up the island to a stud-farm to look at a second horse for her brougham.
They had been looking for this horse for some time,
and the suggestion was so acceptable
that May glanced at her mother as if to say:
“You see he knows how to plan out his time as well as any of us.”

The idea of the stud-farm and the brougham horse had germinated in Archer’s mind
on the very day when the Emerson Sillerton invitation had first been mentioned;
but he had kept it to himself
as if there were something clandestine in the plan,
and discovery might prevent its execution.
He had, however, taken the precaution
to engage in advance a run-about
with a pair of old livery-stable trotters that could still do their eighteen miles on level roads;
and at two o’clock,
hastily deserting the luncheon-table,
he sprang into the light carriage and drove off.

The day was perfect.
A breeze from the north
drove little puffs of white cloud across an ultramarine sky,
with a bright sea running under it.
Bellevue Avenue was empty at that hour,
and after dropping the stable-lad at the corner of Mill Street
Archer turned down the Old Beach Road
and drove across Eastman’s Beach.

He had the feeling of unexplained excitement
with which, on half-holidays at school,
he used to start off into the unknown.
Taking his pair at an easy gait,
he counted on reaching the stud-farm, which was not far beyond Paradise Rocks, before three o’clock;
so that, after looking over the horse
(and trying him if he seemed promising)
he would still have four golden hours to dispose of.

As soon as he heard of the Sillerton’s party
he had said to himself
that the Marchioness Manson
would certainly come to Newport with the Blenkers,
and that Madame Olenska might again take the opportunity
of spending the day with her grandmother.
At any rate,
the Blenker habitation would probably be deserted,
and he would be able, without indiscretion, to satisfy a vague curiosity concerning it.
He was not sure that he wanted to see the Countess Olenska again;
but ever since he had looked at her from the path above the bay
he had wanted, irrationally and indescribably,
to see the place she was living in,
and to follow the movements of her imagined figure
as he had watched the real one in the summer-house.
The longing was with him day and night, an incessant undefinable craving,
like the sudden whim of a sick man
for food or drink once tasted and long since forgotten.
He could not see beyond the craving,
or picture what it might lead to,
for he was not conscious of any wish to speak to Madame Olenska or to hear her voice.
He simply felt
that if he could carry away the vision of the spot of earth she walked on,
and the way the sky and sea enclosed it,
the rest of the world might seem less empty.

When he reached the stud-farm
a glance showed him that the horse was not what he wanted;
nevertheless he took a turn behind it
in order to prove to himself that he was not in a hurry.
📥 下载LRC歌词 📄 下载TXT歌词

支持卡拉OK同步显示，可用记事本编辑