2015년 11월 17일 화요일

The Pest 25

The Pest 25


They walked along some way in silence. Alice had become a habit, and to
learn that she was going to leave them made him realize that the absence
of her quiet influence would make a real change to him. His wife had
almost suddenly grown to be nothing to him but a burden which he had
taken up and which he must carry with as good an outward grace as he
could assume. He believed her emotions to be so shallow that she would
not long moan over his dead affection and that she would be reasonably
content so long as he could provide her with luxuries and amusement. But
now he was brought definitely face to face with the fact that he was
bound to a companion who was becoming every day more distasteful to him
and with whom he would have to spend many days alone. There are people
whose influence though strong is so quiet that we do not value them at
their true price until they are taken from us; such an one was Alice
Lane. Her suddenly announced departure showed plainly to West that she
had become almost a necessity to him; that she had helped often to
smooth away asperities and to cover over Agatha’s deficiencies, and that
she could give him that comradeship which he had learned the need of by
discovering his wife’s inability to give it to him.
 
Comradeship only, he believed, for he did not, in any usual sense of the
word, love her. She had become a quiet, steadying, soothing influence, a
mental support and sedative. It was not her strange, placid comeliness
that appealed to him; it was not the feminine in her: she was almost to
him what a man friend would be, save that, as a woman, he had to treat
her with respect, and with self-respect. She had not come between him
and his wife, but, on the contrary, by complementing her deficiencies,
had made her the longer endurable. He had grown accustomed during the
last few months to her companionship; he had not, indeed, talked much to
her, or in any degree sought her confidence, but her mere presence had
acted soothingly upon him; and to be with her had been restful and
pacifying. Her return to her brother’s house would practically mean that
she would go out of his life, except for occasional visits and meetings.
But he could think of no compelling reason that he could urge for her
staying longer with them, and, as she had accused him of being, he was
well aware of her firmness in carrying out any decision to which she had
come. He had been accustomed to having his own way with those around
him, but instead of irritating him, it added to his respect and
admiration for her, to find that what she thought right to do, she would
do, and that no persuasion of his could move or stay her.
 
“Tell me why you are going?” he asked, as they turned to go homeward,
and faced the eager wind. “And why you think that Aggy doesn’t care so
much for you as she used to do?”
 
“If I were a man I suppose I should be expected to give a reason for my
doings. But you see, I’m a mere woman, and of course act on impulse.”
 
“Not at all a mere woman. And much too clever, not to know that
generalizations are always untrue. I conclude that a man’s an ignorant
ass when he says that something or other is ‘just like a woman.’ Though
it is rather like a woman to avoid answering a question by making an
aimless remark. Why are you going home?”
 
“Why should I have stayed so long? Why shouldn’t I go away?
Whywhylots of ‘whys.’”
 
“Don’t you enjoy being with us?”
 
“Of course I do,” she answered, no sign of the pain the question caused
her showing in her tone, though she ached to be able to tell him how
exquisite was the torture to which he was putting her. “Of course I do.
I _did_ think you knew that; you’re not the sort of man who needs to be
told everything every day.”
 
“Well, I won’t make use of an old friend’s privilege of worrying you.
But, look here, when’ll you come to see us again?”
 
“When Aggy asks me, if she doesn’t ask me too soon.”
 
The words sprang to her lips in such haste that she could not stay them.
She repented them bitterly, for she realized at once that they might
lead to disaster for Agatha, who might refuse to ask her again to visit
her; who might, rendered brave by jealousy, oppose her husband’s wish,
who might, in a moment of anger, give her reason for so doing, thereby
perhaps making an inevitable breach in her married happiness. But the
words being said, any attempt to withdraw them might stimulate dangerous
questioning on his part.
 
“When Aggy asks you!” he answered, throwing his head up and laughing
gayly. “Well, you may as well not go away at all, then. Does she know
you’re going to-morrow?”
 
“I told her yesterday.”
 
“Funny she didn’t tell me. What did _she_ say?”
 
“Asked me to stay.”
 
“There you are!”
 
She bit her lip and looked away from him, but he could see the
__EXPRESSION__ of trouble that was upon her face, and felt compunction at
having so over-eagerly pressed her.
 
“What an obstinate tease I am!” he said. “When I can’t have my own way,
I’ve a beastly habit of plugging away till I get it, quite forgetting
what it may cost the other chap to give it. What a clumsy boor you must
think me; I deserve to be kicked. I ought to know well enough that you
always have a real reason for what you do.”
 
She dared not reply, for fear her voice would betray her.
 
When they reached the hotel he went up to his wife’s room, hoping to
find her physically better, and less querulous for her rest. She was
lying on the bed, covered with a thick eider-down quilt, and turned
slowly to look at him as he came in tiptoe.
 
“I was just going to sleep, and now you’ve roused me up,” she
complained, and turned away again.
 
“I’m so sorry, dearie; it was clumsy of me,” he said, going round the
bed, and sitting down on the side. He took her hand, which she let lie
passively in his.
 
“Don’t feel any better?” he asked.
 
“My head’s not aching so much, at least not quite.”
 
“That’s fine. ‘Once on the mend, soon at an end.’”
 
“Where did you walk?”
 
“Just along the front with Alice, nearly to Hove. The wind’s jolly
cold.”
 
“Jolly? It’s horrid; Brighton’s horrid: too cold to go out, and the
hotel is so stuffy.”
 
“Is it? I hadn’t noticed it. But I do wish you would go out more. You
know what the doctor saidlots of fresh air.”
 
“But he didn’t tell me to go out when it was so cold it gave me
neuralgia all over my head.”
 
“Let me ring and we’ll have tea up here. It’ll cheer you up.”
 
“I do wish you wouldn’t always treat me like a child!” she said
pettishly; “so long as you give me pretty things or feed me with sweets
you think I’m happy.”
 
“Aren’t you happy, dear?”
 
“No, I’m not!” she answered sharply.
 
“Not?” he repeated, as he stood up and started to walk about the room.
“I thought you were, dear. What can I do? I’ve always tried my best to
give you what you wanted.”
 
“Please don’t walk about like that, you don’t know what a headache is.
Youdon’t understand things.”
 
“Don’t I?” he asked, standing with his back to the fire; “then why not
try to teach me?”
 
“You always think you know everything, and are always right and that I’m
always wrong. But I’m right sometimes.”
 
“Why, Aggy, what on earth have I done to deserve such a slating?”
 
As she did not make any reply he went across to the bedside, and,
stooping down, kissed her, upon which she turned impatiently away.
 
“If you don’t want me to treat you as a child you shouldn’t behave like
one,” he said, and, after a moment’s hesitation, walked out of the room.
 
 
 
 
CHAPTER XVII
 
 
WHILE the sun was shining cheerily at Brighton the rain was pouring down
drearily in London, Acacia Grove looking its very worst under the leaden
sky; the roadway a sea of mud, the leafless branches of the trees
dripping and streaming, the evergreen shrubs in the scrubby gardens none
the less dirty for their washing; even the sharp rat-tat, rat-tat, of
the postman as he went from house to house sounding dismal, as if all
the letters he bore must announce death or disaster.
 
Squire had finished his frugal breakfast, and stood, newspaper in hand,
looking aimlessly out of the window. The trouble through which he was
passing had left no trace or mark upon his face, but there was a
restless misery in his eyes. Sighing heavily, he held up the paper and
glanced at it without purpose, almost unconsciously. “Sunshine at
Brighton” was the heading of an article down which his eye ran without
comprehension until Maddison’s name fixed his attention:“Another
well-known face occasionally seen on the King’s Road is that of Mr.
George Maddison, the A.R.A., who is staying at his cottage at
Rottingdean.”
 
He crushed the paper angrily and threw it aside. They were at
Rottingdean, then; that was why his watch upon the studio had been vain.
They had gone away, trusting to his not being able to trace them.
 
Since his interview with Maddison, Squire’s life had been a restless
dream; every purpose had left him save one, the finding of Marian.
Despite the upshot of his last conversation with her, he still felt
confident that he could rescue her from the terrible life she was
leading. Hour after hour, sometimes by day, sometimes by night, he had
watched the studio in hopes of meeting her. He had seen Maddison several
times, but had avoided him; it was Marian with whom he desired to speak.
He had tried to track Maddison more than once, but one accident or
another had baffled him. Then Maddison appeared no more, and he had had
to wait upon “the skirts of happy chance,” and now fate had helped him.
Still he hesitated, for by several incidents it had been borne in upon
him that to save one soul he was neglecting many others intrusted to his
caresinners, some of them, greater even than Marian. Could he feel
assured that he was pursuing the right course? That there was no element
of self in his eagerness to find Marian and to save her? Would he have
been so eager had she been a stranger to him? He was torn this way and that by the doubts which assailed him.

댓글 없음: