三个月后，是六月，我们在戈灵。有个周末你一些牛津的朋友来了，从星期六呆到星期一。他们临走的那天上午，你又当众大吵了一番。太可怕太气人了，我告诉你我们非分手不可。记得很清楚，我们站在平坦的槌球场上，四周是一片漂亮的草坪，我给你指出，我们正在互相作践对方，你绝对是在把我往绝路上拖，而我也明显地没让你真正幸福，一刀两断才是上策[15a]。午餐后你闷闷不乐地走了，给管家留了一封最恶语伤人的信，要他在你走后交给我。可不出三天，你又从伦敦拍电报来，求我宽恕，让你回来。我已租了那个地方让你高兴，照你的要求雇了你自己的仆人。那可怕的脾气总让我为你遗憾得不得了，你自己也深受其害[15b]。我喜欢你。因此就让你回来，原谅了你。又过了三个月，是九月，你又闹了几场，事缘我给你指出了你试译《莎乐美》中犯的小学生般的错误。你现在应该是个不错的法语学者，看得出那译文既配不上它想移译的原作，也配不上你这个普通的牛津生。你那时当然不知道了，给我写信谈论此事时言辞暴烈，在一封信中说过你对我“并无任何心智上的亏欠”。记得读这句话时，我觉得在我们的整个友谊中你写给我的就这个是真的。我看到一个教养较少的人对你真的会更合适得多。这么说绝无怨你怪你的意思，只是道出过从交往的事实而已。归根结底一切人际交往的纽带，不管是婚姻还是友谊，都是交谈，而交谈必须有一个共同的基础。如果双方的文化教养迥异，那唯一可能的共同基础只能建立在最低的层面上。思想和行为上的琐屑讨人喜欢。我曾用这一点来作为一个非常睿智的人生哲学的基石，在剧本和悖语[15c]中加以表达。但是我们生活中的蠢话傻事[15d]却常常变得令人烦不胜烦：我们只是在泥淖中相遇。你谈话时总是围绕着的那个话题虽然引人入胜，引人入胜得不得了，但到头来我还是觉得腻味[15e]。我常常被它烦得要死，但却接受了它，就像接受了你要去杂耍剧场[15f]的狂热，接受了你荒唐地大吃大喝的癖好，以及别的在我看来不那么有趣的脾气；也就是说，我干脆当它为一个不得不忍受的东西，当它为同你认识所要付出的高昂代价的一部分。离开戈灵后我到第纳德两周，你因为我没带上你而大为光火，在我动身前在阿尔伯玛尔旅馆就这事同我大闹了几场，搞得非常不愉快，而后又往我小住几天的一所庄园发了几封同样令人不快的电报。我记得跟你说过，你理应同家人相聚一阵，因为整个夏季你都是在别处过的。但是实际上，坦白地告诉你吧，我无论如何不能让你呆在我身边。我们在一起已经有十二个星期了，我需要休息，需要从与你相处那可怕的压力下解脱出来。我有必要自己一个人呆一阵子。是心智上的必要。因此我坦白，在你的信中，也就是上面所引的那封，我看到了一个非常好的机会，来了结你我之间突然冒出来的这段致命的友谊，让它了结而不留忿懑。这正是我三个月前在戈灵的那个明媚的六月上午的确想做的。然而却有话传来——我应该坦诚地说是我的一个朋友，你在落难时求助过他——说是假如我把你的译作像小学生的练习一样送回去，你会觉得很伤心，或许几乎是无颜见人，说是我在心智上对你太过苛求了，还说不管你写什么，做什么，你的心都是完完全全向着我的。你在文学中刚刚起步，我不想成为第一个刹你的车、泼你冷水[15g]的人。我知道得很清楚，除非是由一位诗人执笔，否则没有哪个译文可以说能充分地传达出我作品的色彩与节奏。心意的奉献﹐在我看来﹐过去是、现在仍然是一件不能轻言丢弃的好事。因此，我把你﹐连同你的译文一起接了回来。刚好又是三个月过后，又是当众闹了几场，最后积聚成一场特别令人嫌恶的争吵。那是个星期一晚上，你由两个朋友陪着到我房间里来闹。第二天早晨，我简直是身不由己地躲开你飞逃出国，编了些荒唐的理由向家人说明我的仓促离去，给仆人留了个假地址，怕你搭下一班火车尾随而至。记得那天下午，我坐在火车车厢里向巴黎飞驶而去，心想自己的生活怎么会弄成如此一塌糊涂；我堂堂一个世界知名人士，竟然就这么被迫逃离英国，为的是甩掉一段友情，这友情在心智和道德上都会把我内心美好的东西破坏殆尽[15h]；这个我飞奔逃离的人，这个我同他纠缠了那么多日子的人，并非什么从阴沟泥潭里蹦到现代生活中的怪物，而是你本人，一个社会地位同我一样、上的是同一所牛津学院的年轻人，一个我的座上常客[15i]。同往常一样的那些哀求悔过的电报跟着就来了。我不予理睬。最后你威胁说，除非我答应见你，否则你绝不答应动身去埃及。我在你的同意和配合下，曾亲自央求你母亲送你离开英国到埃及去，怕你在伦敦把自己糟蹋坏了。我知道你要是不去，会令她大失所望的。看在她的份上[15j]我真的见了你。情之所至[15k]，甚至连你大概都忘不了的，我原谅了过去的一切，虽然将来会怎样我一句不说。
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On my return to London next day I remember sitting in my room and sadly and seriously trying to make up my mind whether or not you really were what you seemed to me to be, so full of terrible defects, so utterly ruinous both to yourself and to others[16a], so fatal a one to know even or to be with. For a whole week I thought about it, and wondered if after all I was not unjust and mistaken in my estimate of you. At the end of the week a letter from your mother is handed in. It expressed to the full every feeling I myself had about you. In it she spoke of your blind exaggerated vanity which made you despise your home, and treat your elder brother — that candidissima anima—“as a Philistine:” of your temper which made her afraid to speak to you about your life, the life she felt, she knew, you were leading: about your conduct in money matters, so distressing to her in more ways than one: of the degeneration and change that had taken place in you. She saw, of course, that heredity had burdened you with a terrible legacy, and frankly admitted it, admitted it with terror: he is “the one of my children who has inherited the fatal Douglas temperament,” she wrote of you. At the end she stated that she felt bound to declare that your friendship with me, in her opinion, had so intensified your vanity that it had become the source of all your faults, and earnestly begged me not, to meet you abroad. I wrote to her at once, in reply, and told her that I agreed entirely with every word she had said. I added much more. I went as far as I could possibly go. I told her that the origin of our friendship was you in your undergraduate days at Oxford coming to beg me to help you in very serious trouble of a very particular character. I told her that your life had been continually in the same manner troubled[16b]. The reason of your going to Belgium you had placed to the fault of your companion in that journey, and your mother had reproached me with having introduced you to him. I replaced the fault on the right shoulders, on yours. I assured her at the end that I had not the smallest intention of meeting you abroad, and begged her to try to keep you there[16c], either as an honorary attaché[16d], if that were possible, or to learn modern languages, if it were not; or for any reason she chose, at least during two or three years, and for your sake as well as for mine.
记得我第二天回到伦敦，坐在房间里悲伤而又认真地思索着，你到底是不是我认为的那样，全是可怕的缺点，对己对人都是祸害一个[16a]，同你相处甚至相识，就要酿成致命之祸。整整一个星期，我都在想这事，捉摸着是不是真的看错了人，把你冤枉了。那个周末一封你母亲的信送来了。信中将我自己对你存有的每一个印象说得透彻无遗。说到你那盲目地自视甚高的虚荣心，这使你看不起自己的家，把你的兄长——那个老实人——看作市侩庸人；说到你的脾气使她不敢同你谈你的生活，她感到、她知道你过的那种生活；说到你在处理钱财事务上的行为，在在让她苦恼丧气；还说到你的变化和堕落。当然她看到了，遗传让你背上了一个可怕的性格负担，并且也坦白地承认、心怀恐惧地承认：他是“我孩子中继承了致命的道格拉斯家族禀性的那一个”，信中是这么说你的。最后她说她觉得只好挑明，你同我的交往依她看是大大加强了你的虚荣心，以致成为你一切过失的根源，并恳切地请求我别在国外同你会面。我马上给她回信，说我对她讲的每句话都完全同意。还加了许多，把我可能说的都说了。我告诉她，我们的友谊源自你在牛津读大学时，那时你碰上了非常特别又非常严重的麻烦，向我求助。我告诉她，你的生活仍旧如此，仍旧为同样的麻烦所困扰[16b]。你把去比利时的原因归咎于同行友伴的过失，你母亲就怪我把他介绍给你。我于是把责任放到了该放的肩膀上，那就是你的肩膀。我最后向她保证，我一点也没这意思要同你在国外见面，并央求她想法把你留在埃及[16c]，可能的话在使馆里供个荣誉官职[16d]，不行的话就在那里学习现代语言，或者以任何一个她认为合适的理由。但为你好也为我好，至少要留在那儿两三年。16
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In the meantime you are writing to me by every post from Egypt. I took not the smallest notice of any of your communications. I read them, and tore them up. I had quite settled to have no more to do with you. My mind was made up, and I gladly devoted myself to the Art whose progress I had allowed you to interrupt. At the end of three months, your mother, with that unfortunate weakness of will that characterises her, and that in the tragedy of my life has been an element no less fatal than your father’s violence, actually writes to me herself — I have no doubt, of course, at your instigation — tells me that you are extremely anxious to hear from me, and in order that I should have no excuse for not communicating with you, sends me your address in Athens, which, of course, I knew perfectly well. I confess I was absolutely astounded at her letter. I could not understand how, after what she had written to me in December, and what I in answer had written to her, she could in any way try to repair or to renew my unfortunate friendship with you[17a]. I acknowledged her letter[17b], of course, and again urged her to try and get you connected with some Embassy abroad, so as to prevent your returning to England, but I did not write to you, or take any more notice of your telegrams than I did before your mother had written to me. Finally you actually telegraphed to my wife begging her to use her influence with me to get me to write to you. Our friendship had always been a source of distress to her: not merely because she had never liked you personally, but because she saw how your continual companionship altered me, and not for the better: still, just as she had always been most gracious and hospitable to you, so she could not bear the idea of my being in any way unkind — for so it seemed to her — to any of my friends. She thought, knew indeed, that it was a thing alien to my character. At her request I did communicate with you. I remember the wording of my telegram quite well. I said that time healed every wound but that for many months to come I would neither write to you nor see you. You started without delay for Paris, sending me passionate telegrams on the road to beg me to see you once, at any rate. I declined[17c]. You arrived in Paris late on a Saturday night, and found a brief letter from me waiting for you at your hotel stating that I would not see you. Next morning I received in Tite Street a telegram of some ten or eleven pages in length[17d] from you. You stated in it that no matter what you had done to me you could not believe that I would absolutely decline to see you: you reminded me that for the sake of seeing me even for one hour you had travelled six days and nights across Europe without stopping once on the way: you made what I must admit was a most pathetic appeal, and ended with what seemed to me a threat of suicide, and one not thinly veiled. You had yourself often told me how many of your race there had been who had stained their hands in their own blood; your uncle certainly, your grandfather possibly; many others in the mad, bad line from which you come.[17.1] Pity, my old affection for you, regard for your mother to whom your death under such dreadful circumstances would have been a blow almost too great for her to bear, the horror of the idea that so young a life, and one that amidst all its ugly faults had still promise of beauty in it[17e], should come to so revolting an end, mere humanity itself — all these, if excuses be necessary, must serve as my excuse for consenting to accord you one last interview. When I arrived in Paris, your tears, breaking out again and again all through the evening, and falling over your cheeks like rain as we sat, at dinner first at Voisin’s, at supper at Paillard’s afterwards:[17.2] the unfeigned joy you evinced at seeing me, holding my hand whenever you could, as though you were a gentle and penitent child: your contrition, so simple and sincere, at the moment: made me consent to renew our friendship[17f]. Two days after we had returned to London, your father saw you having luncheon with me at the Cafe Royal, joined my table, drank of my wine, and that afternoon, through a letter addressed to you, began his first attack on me.
在这期间你从埃及不断给我写信，每班邮都有你的信。这些书信我全然不当回事，看过就撕了。不再跟你打交道我觉得很泰然。我决心已定，愉快地把自己献给艺术，那曾经让你把它给打断了的艺术。三个月后，你母亲亲自写信来了——很不幸，她个性中那典型的软弱，在我生活的悲剧中所起的致命作用不亚于你父亲的暴虐——我当然不怀疑是你叫她写的，她说你急得不得了要我写信给你，而为了使我不至于有借口不写，还把你在雅典的地址寄过来了。你的地址，我当然知道得再清楚不过了。坦白说看了她的信我目瞪口呆。真不明白，在她写了十二月份那封信后，在我回了她那封信后，到头来她怎么还会想法重修重建我同你的这段不幸的友谊[17a]。我没话讲，认收了她的信[17b]，又再次催她想法把你同海外的哪家大使馆挂钩，使你不会回到英国来。可我没给你写信，同接到你母亲的这封信以前一样，依然把你的电报不当回事。最终你竟打电报给我妻子，求她用她对我的影响使我写信给你。我们的交往从来就是一桩令她苦恼的事——这不光是因为她从来就不喜欢你这个人，还因为她看到了同你来往把我变成了怎样一个人，不是变得更好——可仍然，就像对你一贯的善意款待一样，她不忍心看到我对任何朋友有任何的不周，因为在她看来这是对朋友不周。她认为，她的确明白，我不是这种性格的人。在她的要求下我确实同你联系了。那封电报的词句我记得很清楚。我说时间愈合每一处伤口，但是在未来好几个月内我既不会写信给你也不会见你。你刻不容缓地动身前往巴黎，一路上给我发来激情洋溢的电报，求我无论如何见你一面。我婉言拒绝了[17c]。你在一个星期六晚上很迟才到了巴黎，在下榻的旅馆发现我给你的一封短信，说我不会见你的。第二天上午我在泰特街收到你的一封电报，长十到十一页[17d]。你在电报里说，不管你对我做了什么事，你都不相信我会永不见你。你说了，为了见我，哪怕是一个小时，你六天里昼夜兼程地横跨欧洲；你的电文，我必须承认，写得像一份哀婉凄绝的呼求，而结尾依我看又以自杀相威胁，一个不加掩饰的威胁。你自己常常告诉过我，你的家族中有多少人曾经双手沾满自己的鲜血；你的叔父无疑是一个，你的祖父可能又是一个，在你出身的这个狂乱败坏的家系里还有别的许多人呢。我可怜你，又碍于旧情，也出于对你母亲的尊重——你要是如此可怕地死去那对她的打击就太大了——还有那种恐怖之感，想到一个如此年轻的生命，尽管在在是缺点陋习﹐但还存着美的希望[17e]，就要这么可怕地死于非命，同时还有人性本身——这一切，要是有必要找借口的话，就必定是我答应最后让你再见一面的借口了。当我到巴黎时，那天整个晚上，不管是在瓦松晚餐还是后来在帕拉德夜宵，你都哭得像个泪人儿似的；看到我时那份真心的欢乐、就像一个柔顺悔祸的小孩[17f]那样拉着我的手不放的样子，在当时显得那么单纯率真的悔过之意，这一切使得我答应与你重修旧好[17f]。我们回到伦敦两天后，你父亲看见我同你在皇家咖啡座午餐，便加入进来，喝了我的酒。当天下午通过一封给你的信，开始了他对我的第一轮攻击。
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It may be strange, but I had once again, I will not say the chance, but the duty of separating from you forced on me. I need hardly remind you that I refer to your conduct to me at Brighton from October l0th to 13th, 1894. Three years ago is a long time for you to go back. But we who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments. We have nothing else to think of. Suffering — curious as it may sound to you — is the means by which we exist, because it is the only means by which we become conscious of existing; and the remembrance of suffering in the past is necessary to us as the warrant, the evidence, of our continued identity. Between myself and the memory of joy lies a gulf no less deep than that between myself and joy in its actuality. Had our life together been as the world fancied it to be, one simply of pleasure, profligacy and laughter, I would not be able to recall a single passage in it. It is because it was full of moments and days tragic, bitter, sinister in their warnings, dull or dreadful in their monotonous scenes and unseemly violence, that I can see or hear each separate incident in its detail, can indeed see or hear little else[18a]. So much in this place do men live by pain that my friendship with you, in the way through which I am forced to remember it, appears to me always as a prelude consonant with those varying modes of anguish which each day I have to realise; nay more, to necessitate them even[18b]; as though my life, whatever it had seemed to myself and to others, had all the while been a real Symphony of Sorrow, passing through its rhythmically-linked movements to its certain resolution, with that inevitableness that in Art characterises the treatment of every great theme.
也许说来奇怪，但是要我同你分手的责任，我不说这是机会，再次落在了我身上。该不用提醒了吧，我指的是你在1 8 9 4年10月10日到 13日在布莱顿对我的举止态度。三年了，要你回想可真是个不短的时间。但对我们这些在监牢里度日的人们，生活中不见人间的动静而只有悲哀，只能以肌体跳痛的顿挫、内心悲苦的短长来度量时日。我们没别的好想了。受苦——你听着也许会觉得好奇——就是我们得以存在的手段，因为只有通过它，我们才能有存在的意识；而记住受过的苦对我们是必要的，这是对我们身份继续存在的认可和证明。我与记忆中的欢乐之间，隔着一道深渊，其深不亚于我和现实的欢乐之间隔着的深渊。假如我们在一起的生活真的如世人所想象的那样，纯粹是享乐、挥霍和欢笑，那我就会一丁点也记不起来。正因为那生活时时刻刻都包孕着悲剧、痛苦、恶毒，一幕幕单调地重复着乏味可怕的吵闹和卑劣的暴力，所以那些事一件件一点点都历历如在眼前，切切似在耳边，说实在的别的什么就很少能看得到听得见了[18a]。这里的人们是如此的苦中度日，所以我同你的友谊，照我那样被迫去记住的样子，总显得像是一支序曲，与眼前变换着的痛苦一脉相承。这些痛苦每一天我都得体会领悟；不仅如此，甚至得靠它们度日[18b]；似乎我的生活，不管在我本人还是在别人眼里曾经是什么样子，从来就是一部真正的悲怆交响曲，一个乐章一个乐章有节奏地推向其必然的结局，一切是那样的必然，简直就是艺术上处理每个伟大主题的典型手法。
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I spoke of your conduct to me on three successive days, three years ago, did I not? I was trying to finish my last play at Worthing by myself. The two visits you had paid to me had ended. You suddenly appeared a third time bringing with you a companion whom you actually proposed should stay in my house. I (you must admit now quite properly) absolutely declined. I entertained you, of course; I had no option in the matter: but elsewhere, and not in my own home. The next day, a Monday, your companion returned to the duties of his profession, and you stayed with me. Bored with Worthing, and still more, I have no doubt, with my fruitless efforts to concentrate my attention on my play, the only thing that really interested me at the moment, you insist on being taken to the Grand Hotel at Brighton[19a]. The night we arrive you fall ill with that dreadful low fever that is foolishly called the influenza, your second, if not third attack. I need not remind you how I waited on you, and tended you, not merely with every luxury of fruit, flowers, presents, books, and the like that money can procure, but with that affection, tenderness and love[19b] that, whatever you may think, is not to be procured for money. Except for an hour’s walk in the morning, an hour’s drive in the afternoon, I never left the hotel. I got special grapes from London for you, as you did not care for those the hotel supplied, invented things to please you, remained either with you or in the room next to yours, sat with you every evening to quiet or amuse you[19c].
三年前我曾连续三天讲过你对我的举止态度，不是吗？那时我想一个人呆在沃辛，把最后一个剧本写完。你来过两次。走后又突然第三次出现，还带了一个人，竟说要在我的房子里逗留。我断然拒绝了（你现在必须承认我那样做是很对的）。我当然是接待了你们，在这事上我别无选择——但要在别的地方，不能在我家里。第二天是星期一，你的那个人回去办他的公务去了，你则留下来。沃辛呆腻了，而且我不怀疑，由于我毫无希望地想把注意力集中在剧本上，而那又是我当时唯一的兴趣所在，你更不耐烦了，硬要我带你去布莱顿的宏伟酒家[19a]。我们到的那个晚上你病倒了，就是那讨厌的低烧，人们糊里糊涂地称之为流感。这是你的第二次发作，如果不是第三次的话。用不着提醒你，当时我是怎样地伺候照顾你，不只是源源不断的水果鲜花、礼物书籍诸如此类用钱买得到的东西，还有那份感情、那份亲切、那份爱[19b]，不管你怎么想这些都是用钱买不来的。 除了上午一个小时散步，下午一个小时驾车出去，我从未离开过旅馆。因为你不喜欢旅馆提供的葡萄，我就给你从伦敦买来特别的葡萄，还编造各种事情让你高兴，要不就守在你旁边，要不就呆在隔壁房间，每天晚上都坐着陪你，使你安静，逗你开心[19c]。
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After four or five days you recover, and I take lodgings in order to try and finish my play. You, of course, accompany me. The morning after the day on which we were installed I feel extremely ill. You have to go to London on business, but promise to return in the afternoon. In London you meet a friend, and do not come back to Brighton till late the next day, by which time I am in a terrible fever, and the doctor finds I have caught the influenza from you. Nothing could have been more uncomfortable for anyone ill than the lodgings turn out to be. My sitting-room is on the first floor, my bedroom on the third. There is no manservant to wait on one, not even anyone to send out on a message, or to get what the doctor orders. But you are there. I feel no alarm. The next two days you leave me entirely alone without care, without attendance[20a], without anything. It was not a question of grapes, flower, and charming gifts: it was a question of mere necessaries: I could not even get the milk the doctor had ordered for me: lemonade was pronounced an impossibility: and when I begged you to procure me a book at the bookseller’s, or if they had not got whatever I had fixed on to choose something else, you never even take the trouble to go there. And when I was left all day without anything to read in consequence, you calmly tell me that you bought me the book and that they promised to send it down, a statement which I found out by chance afterwards to have been entirely untrue from beginning to end. All the while you are of course living at my expense, driving about, dining at the Grand Hotel, and indeed only appearing in my room for money. On the Saturday night, you having left me completely unattended and alone since the morning, I asked you to come back after dinner, and sit with me for a little. With irritable voice and ungracious manner you promise to do so. I wait till eleven o'clock and you never appear. I then left a note for you in your room just reminding you of the promise you had made me, and how you had kept it. At three in the morning[20b], unable to sleep, and tortured with thirst, I made my way, in the dark and cold, down to the sitting-room in the hopes of finding some water there. I found you. You fell on me with every hideous word an intemperate mood, an undisciplined and untutored nature could suggest. By the terrible alchemy of egotism you converted your remorse into rage[20c]. You accused me of selfishness in expecting you to be with me when I was ill; of standing between you and your amusements; of trying to deprive you of your pleasures. You told me, and I know it was quite true, that you had come back at midnight simply in order to change your dress-clothes, and go out again to where you hoped new pleasures were waiting for you, but that by leaving for you a letter in which I had reminded you that you had neglected me the whole day and the whole evening, I had really robbed you of your desire for more enjoyments, and diminished your actual capacity for fresh delights. I went back upstairs in disgust, and remained sleepless till dawn, nor till long after dawn was I able to get anything to quench the thirst of the fever that was on me. At eleven o'clock you came into my room. In the previous scene I could not help observing that by my letter I had, at any rate, checked you in a night of more than usual excess. In the morning you were quite yourself. I waited naturally to hear what excuses you had to make, and in what way you were going to ask for the forgiveness that you knew in your heart was invariably waiting for you, no matter what you did; your absolute trust that I would always forgive you being the thing in you that I always really liked the best, perhaps the best thing in you to like. So far from doing that, you began to repeat the same scene with renewed emphasis and more violent assertion. I told you at length to leave the room: you pretended to do so, but when I lifted up my head from the pillow in which I had buried it, you were still there, and with brutality of laughter and hysteria of rage you moved suddenly towards me. A sense of horror came over me, for what exact reason I could not make out; but I got out of my bed at once, and bare-footed and just as I was, made my way down the two flights of stairs to the sitting-room, which I did not leave till the owner of the lodgings — whom I had rung for-had assured me that you had left my bedroom, and promised to remain within call, in case of necessity. After an interval of an hour, during which time the doctor had come and found me, of course, in a state of absolute nervous prostration, as well as in a worse condition of fever than I had been at the outset, you returned silently, for money: took what you could and on the dressing-table and mantelpiece, and left the house with your luggage. Need I tell you[20d] what I thought of you during the two wretched lonely days of illness that followed? Is it necessary for me to state that [20d] I saw clearly that it would be a dishonour to myself to continue even an acquaintance with such a one as you had showed yourself to be? That[20d] I recognised that the ultimate moment had come, and recognised it as being really a great relief? And that[20d] I knew that for the future my Art and Life would be freer and better and more beautiful in every possible way? Ill as I was, I felt at ease[20e]. The fact that the separation was irrevocable gave me peace. By Tuesday the fever had left me, and for the first time I dined downstairs. Wednesday was my birthday. Amongst the telegrams and communications on my table was a letter in your handwriting. I opened it with a sense of sadness over me. I knew that the time had gone by when a pretty phrase, an expression of affection, a word of sorrow would make me take you back. But I was entirely deceived. I had underrated you. The letter you sent to me on my birthday was an elaborate repetition of the two scenes, set cunningly and carefully down in black and white! You mocked me with common jests. Your one satisfaction in the whole affair was, you said, that you retired to the Grand Hotel, and entered your luncheon to my account before you left for town. You congratulated me on my prudence in leaving my sickbed, on my sudden flight downstairs. “It was an ugly moment for you,” you said, “uglier than you imagine.” Ah! I felt it but too well. What it had really meant I did not know: whether you had with you the pistol you had bought to try and frighten your father with, and that, thinking it to be unloaded, you had once fired off in a public restaurant in my company: whether your hand was moving towards a common dinner-knife that by chance was lying on the table between us: whether, forgetting in your rage your low stature and inferior strength, you had thought of some specially personal insult, or attack even, as I lay ill there: I could not tell. I do not know to the present moment. All I know is that a feeling of utter horror had come over me, and that I had felt that unless I left the room at once, and got away, you would have done, or tried to do, something that would have been, even to you, a source of lifelong shame[20f]. Only once before in my life had I experienced such a feeling of horror at any human being. It was when in my library at Tite Street, waving his small hands in the air in epileptic fury, you father, with his bully, or his friend, between us, had stood uttering every foul word his foul mind could think of, and screaming the loathsome threats he afterwards with such cunning carried out. In the latter case he, of course, was the one who had to leave the room first. I drove him out. In your case I went[20g]. It was not the first time I had been obliged to save you from yourself[20h].
