The Age of Innocence, Chapter 76

歌手： Edith Wharton • 专辑：The Age of Innocence (unabridged) • 发布时间：2017-01-27 
作词 : Edith Wharton
He sat silent, dazed with inarticulate pain.
Then he groped in the darkness
of the carriage for the little bell that signalled orders to the coachman.
He remembered that May rang twice when she wished to stop.
He pressed the bell,
and the carriage drew up beside the curbstone.

“Why are we stopping?
This is not Granny’s,”
Madame Olenska exclaimed.

“No: I shall get out here,”
he stammered,
opening the door
and jumping to the pavement.
By the light of a street-lamp
he saw her startled face,
and the instinctive motion she made to detain him.
He closed the door,
and leaned for a moment in the window.

“You’re right:
I ought not to have come today,”
he said, lowering his voice
so that the coachman should not hear.
She bent forward,
and seemed about to speak;
but he had already called out the order to drive on,
and the carriage rolled away
while he stood on the corner.
The snow was over,
and a tingling wind had sprung up,
that lashed his face as he stood gazing.
Suddenly
he felt something stiff and cold on his lashes,
and perceived that he had been crying,
and that the wind had frozen his tears.

He thrust his hands in his pockets,
and walked at a sharp pace down Fifth Avenue to his own house.

End of Chapter 29

The AGE of INNOCENCE

BY EDITH WHARTON

BOOK II

Chapter 30

That evening
when Archer came down before dinner
he found the drawing-room empty.

He and May were dining alone,
all the family engagements having been postponed
since Mrs. Manson Mingott’s illness;
and as May was the more punctual of the two
he was surprised that she had not preceded him.
He knew that she was at home,
for while he dressed he had heard
her moving about in her room;
and he wondered what had delayed her.

He had fallen into the way of dwelling on such conjectures
as a means of tying his thoughts fast to reality.
Sometimes he felt as if he had found
the clue to his father-in-law’s absorption in trifles;
perhaps even Mr. Welland, long ago,
had had escapes and visions,
and had conjured up all the hosts of domesticity
to defend himself against them.

When May appeared he thought she looked tired.
She had put on the low-necked and tightly-laced dinner-dress
which the Mingott ceremonial
exacted on the most informal occasions,
and had built her fair hair into its usual accumulated coils;
and her face, in contrast, was wan and almost faded.
But she shone on him with her usual tenderness,
and her eyes had kept the blue dazzle of the day before.

“What became of you, dear?” she asked.
“I was waiting at Granny’s,
and Ellen came alone,
and said she had dropped you on the way
because you had to rush off on business.
There’s nothing wrong?”

“Only some letters I’d forgotten,
and wanted to get off before dinner.”

“Ah—” she said; and a moment afterward:
“I’m sorry you didn’t come to Granny’s—
unless the letters were urgent.”

“They were,” he rejoined,
surprised at her insistence.
“Besides, I don’t see
why I should have gone to your grandmother’s.
I didn’t know you were there.”

She turned and moved to the looking-glass above the mantelpiece.
As she stood there,
lifting her long arm
to fasten a puff that had slipped from its place in her intricate hair,
Archer was struck by something languid and inelastic in her attitude,
and wondered if the deadly monotony of their lives
had laid its weight on her also.
Then he remembered that,
as he had left the house that morning,
she had called over the stairs
that she would meet him at her grandmother’s
so that they might drive home together.
He had called back a cheery “Yes!”
and then, absorbed in other visions,
had forgotten his promise.
Now he was smitten with compunction,
yet irritated that so trifling an omission should be stored up against him
after nearly two years of marriage.
He was weary of living in a perpetual tepid honeymoon,
without the temperature of passion
yet with all its exactions.
If May had spoken out her grievances
(he suspected her of many)
he might have laughed them away;
but she was trained to conceal imaginary wounds
under a Spartan smile.

To disguise his own annoyance
he asked how her grandmother was,
and she answered that Mrs. Mingott was still improving,
but had been rather disturbed by the last news about the Beauforts.

“What news?”

“It seems they’re going to stay in New York.
I believe he’s going into an insurance business, or something.
They’re looking about for a small house.”

The preposterousness of the case was beyond discussion,
and they went in to dinner.
During dinner their talk moved in its usual limited circle;
but Archer noticed
that his wife made no allusion to Madame Olenska,
nor to old Catherine’s reception of her.
He was thankful for the fact,
yet felt it to be vaguely ominous.

They went up to the library for coffee,
and Archer lit a cigar
and took down a volume of Michelet.
He had taken to history in the evenings since May had shown a tendency
to ask him to read aloud whenever she saw him with a volume of poetry:
not that he disliked the sound of his own voice,
but because he could always foresee
her comments on what he read.
In the days of their engagement
she had simply (as he now perceived)
echoed what he told her;
but since he had ceased to provide her with opinions
she had begun to hazard her own,
with results destructive to his enjoyment of the works commented on.

Seeing that he had chosen history
she fetched her work-basket,
drew up an arm-chair to the green-shaded student lamp,
and uncovered a cushion she was embroidering for his sofa.
She was not a clever needle-woman;
her large capable hands were made for riding,
rowing and open-air activities;
but since other wives embroidered cushions for their husbands
she did not wish to omit this last link in her devotion.

She was so placed that Archer, by merely raising his eyes,
could see her bent above her work-frame,
her ruffled elbow-sleeves
slipping back from her firm round arms,
the betrothal sapphire shining on her left hand
above her broad gold wedding-ring,
and the right hand slowly and laboriously stabbing the canvas.
As she sat thus, the lamplight full on her clear brow,
he said to himself with a secret dismay
that he would always know the thoughts behind it,
that never, in all the years to come,
would she surprise him by an unexpected mood,
by a new idea, a weakness, a cruelty or an emotion.
📥 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