一双蓝眼睛 英文版 A Pair of Blue Eyes
托马斯.哈代 Thomas Hardy
Chapter XXXV
'And wilt thou leave me thus?--say nay--say nay!'
me be separated from you again, willyou.
The scene shifts to Knight's chambers in Bede's Inn. It was latein the evening of the day following his departure from Endelstow.A drizzling rain descended upon London, forming a humid and drearyhalo over every well-lighted street. The rain had not yet beenprevalent long enough to give to rapid vehicles that clear anddistinct rattle which follows the thorough washing of the stonesby a drenching rain, but was just sufficient to make footway androadway slippery, adhesive, and clogging to both feet and wheels.
Knight was standing by the fire, looking into its expiring embers,previously to emerging from his door for a dreary journey home toRichmond. His hat was on, and the gas turned off. The blind ofthe window overlooking the alley was not drawn down; and with thelight from beneath, which shone over the ceiling of the room,came, in place of the usual babble, only the reduced clatter andquick speech which were the result of necessity rather thanchoice.
Whilst he thus stood, waiting for the expiration of the fewminutes that were wanting to the time for his catching the train,a light tapping upon the door mingled with the other sounds thatreached his ears. It was so faint at first that the outer noiseswere almost sufficient to drown it. Finding it repeated Knightcrossed the lobby, crowded with books and rubbish, and opened thedoor.
A woman, closely muffled up, but visibly of fragile build, wasstanding on the landing under the gaslight. She sprang forward,flung her arms round Knight's neck, and uttered a low cry--
'O Harry, Harry, you are killing me! I could not help coming.Don't send me away--don't! Forgive your Elfride for coming--I loveyou so!'
Knight's agitation and astonishment mastered him for a fewmoments.
'Elfride!' he cried, 'what does this mean? What have you done?'
'Do not hurt me and punish me--Oh, do not! I couldn't help coming;it was killing me. Last night, when you did not come back, Icould not bear it--I could not! Only let me be with you, and seeyour face, Harry; I don't ask for more.'
Her eyelids were hot, heavy, and thick with excessive weeping, andthe delicate rose-red of her cheeks was disfigured and inflamed bythe constant chafing of the handkerchief in wiping her many tears.
'Who is with you? Have you come alone?' he hurriedly inquired.
'Yes. When you did not come last night, I sat up hoping you wouldcome--and the night was all agony--and I waited on and on, and youdid not come! Then when it was morning, and your letter said youwere gone, I could not endure it; and I ran away from them to St.Launce's, and came by the train. And I have been all daytravelling to you, and you won't make me go away again, will you,Harry, because I shall always love you till I die?'
'Yet it is wrong for you to stay. O Elfride! what have youcommitted yourself to? It is ruin to your good name to run to melike this! Has not your first experience been sufficient to keepyou from these things?'
'My name! Harry, I shall soon die, and what good will my name beto me then? Oh, could I but be the man and you the woman, I wouldnot leave you for such a little fault as mine! Do not think it wasso vile a thing in me to run away with him. Ah, how I wish youcould have run away with twenty women before you knew me, that Imight show you I would think it no fault, but be glad to get youafter them all, so that I had you! If you only knew me through andthrough, how true I am, Harry. Cannot I be yours? Say you love mejust the same, and don't let me be separated from you again, willyou? I cannot bear it--all the long hours and days and nightsgoing on, and you not there, but away because you hate me!'
'Not hate you, Elfride,' he said gently, and supported her withhis arm. 'But you cannot stay here now--just at present, I mean.'
'I suppose I must not--I wish I might. I am afraid that if--youlose sight of me--something dark will happen, and we shall notmeet again. Harry, if I am not good enough to be your wife, Iwish I could be your servant and live with you, and not be sentaway never to see you again. I don't mind what it is exceptthat!'
'No, I cannot send you away: I cannot. God knows what dark futuremay arise out of this evening's work; but I cannot send you away!You must sit down, and I will endeavour to collect my thoughts andsee what had better be done.
At that moment a loud knocking at the house door was heard byboth, accompanied by a hurried ringing of the bell that echoedfrom attic to basement. The door was quickly opened, and after afew hasty words of converse in the hall, heavy footsteps ascendedthe stairs.
The face of Mr. Swancourt, flushed, grieved, and stern, appearedround the landing of the staircase. He came higher up, and stoodbeside them. Glancing over and past Knight with silentindignation, he turned to the trembling girl.
'O Elfride! and have I found you at last? Are these your tricks,madam? When will you get rid of your idiocies, and conductyourself like a decent woman? Is my family name and house to bedisgraced by acts that would be a scandal to a washerwoman'sdaughter? Come along, madam; come!'
'She is so weary!' said Knight, in a voice of intensest anguish.'Mr. Swancourt, don't be harsh with her--let me beg of you to betender with her, and love her!'
'To you, sir,' said Mr. Swancourt, turning to him as if by thesheer pressure of circumstances, 'I have little to say. I canonly remark, that the sooner I can retire from your presence thebetter I shall be pleased. Why you could not conduct yourcourtship of my daughter like an honest man, I do not know. Whyshe--a foolish inexperienced girl--should have been tempted tothis piece of folly, I do not know. Even if she had not knownbetter than to leave her home, you might have, I should think.'
'It is not his fault: he did not tempt me, papa! I came.'
'If you wished the marriage broken off, why didn't you say soplainly? If you never intended to marry, why could you not leaveher alone? Upon my soul, it grates me to the heart to be obligedto think so ill of a man I thought my friend!'
Knight, soul-sick and weary of his life, did not arouse himself toutter a word in reply. How should he defend himself when hisdefence was the accusation of Elfride? On that account he felt amiserable satisfaction in letting her father go on thinking andspeaking wrongfully. It was a faint ray of pleasure straying intothe great gloominess of his brain to think that the vicar mightnever know but that he, as her lover, tempted her away, whichseemed to be the form Mr. Swancourt's misapprehension had taken.
'Now, are you coming?' said Mr. Swancourt to her again. He tookher unresisting hand, drew it within his arm, and led her down thestairs. Knight's eyes followed her, the last moment begetting inhim a frantic hope that she would turn her head. She passed on,and never looked back.
He heard the door open--close again. The wheels of a cab grazedthe kerbstone, a murmured direction followed. The door wasslammed together, the wheels moved, and they rolled away.
From that hour of her reappearance a dreadful conflict ragedwithin the breast of Henry Knight. His instinct, emotion,affectiveness--or whatever it may be called--urged him to standforward, seize upon Elfride, and be her cherisher and protectorthrough life. Then came the devastating thought that Elfride'schildlike, unreasoning, and indiscreet act in flying to him onlyproved that the proprieties must be a dead letter with her; thatthe unreserve, which was really artlessness without ballast, meantindifference to decorum; and what so likely as that such a womanhad been deceived in the past? He said to himself, in a mood ofthe bitterest cynicism: 'The suspicious discreet woman whoimagines dark and evil things of all her fellow-creatures is fartoo shrewd to be deluded by man: trusting beings like Elfride arethe women who fall.'
Hours and days went by, and Knight remained inactive. Lengtheningtime, which made fainter the heart-awakening power of herpresence, strengthened the mental ability to reason her down.Elfride loved him, he knew, and he could not leave off loving herbut marry her he would not. If she could but be again his ownElfride--the woman she had seemed to be--but that woman was deadand buried, and he knew her no more! And how could he marry thisElfride, one who, if he had originally seen her as she was, wouldhave been barely an interesting pitiable acquaintance in his eyes--no more?
It cankered his heart to think he was confronted by the closestinstance of a worse state of things than any he had assumed in thepleasant social philosophy and satire of his essays.
The moral rightness of this man's life was worthy of all praise;but in spite of some intellectual acumen, Knight had in him amodicum of that wrongheadedness which is mostly found inscrupulously honest people. With him, truth seemed too clean andpure an abstraction to be so hopelessly churned in with error aspractical persons find it. Having now seen himself mistaken insupposing Elfride to be peerless, nothing on earth could make himbelieve she was not so very bad after all.
He lingered in town a fortnight, doing little else than vibratebetween passion and opinions. One idea remained intact--that itwas better Elfride and himself should not meet.
When he surveyed the volumes on his shelves--few of which had beenopened since Elfride first took possession of his heart--theiruntouched and orderly arrangement reproached him as an apostatefrom the old faith of his youth and early manhood. He haddeserted those never-failing friends, so they seemed to say, foran unstable delight in a ductile woman, which had ended all inbitterness. The spirit of self-denial, verging on asceticism,which had ever animated Knight in old times, announced itself ashaving departed with the birth of love, with it having gone theself-respect which had compensated for the lack of self-gratification. Poor little Elfride, instead of holding, asformerly, a place in his religion, began to assume the hue of atemptation. Perhaps it was human and correctly natural thatKnight never once thought whether he did not owe her a littlesacrifice for her unchary devotion in saving his life.
With a consciousness of having thus, like Antony, kissed awaykingdoms and provinces, he next considered how he had revealed hishigher secrets and intentions to her, an unreserve he would neverhave allowed himself with any man living. How was it that he hadnot been able to refrain from telling her of adumbrationsheretofore locked in the closest strongholds of his mind?
Knight's was a robust intellect, which could escape outside theatmosphere of heart, and perceive that his own love, as well asother people's, could be reduced by change of scene andcircumstances. At the same time the perception was a superimposedsorrow:
'O last regret, regret can die!'
But being convinced that the death of this regret was the bestthing for him, he did not long shrink from attempting it. Heclosed his chambers, suspended his connection with editors, andleft London for the Continent. Here we will leave him to wanderwithout purpose, beyond the nominal one of encouragingobliviousness of Elfride.