第 30 页

“大概卡弗莱太太家没有什么人——这个季节伦敦是座荒城。你打扮得太美了，”阿切尔对坐在身边的梅说。在双座马车上，梅披着天鹅绒镶边的天蓝色斗篷，那样光彩照人，完美无暇，以致把她暴露在伦敦的尘垢中也好像是一种罪过。

“我不想让他们觉得我穿得像个野蛮人。”她那轻蔑的态度足以使波卡洪塔斯愤怒；阿切尔又一次感到震惊：就连一个不谙世事的美国妇女对穿着的社交优势也推崇备至。

“这是她们的盔甲，”他想，“是她们对陌生人的防范，也是对他们的挑衅。”他第一次理解了这种热诚，受其驱使，那个不会在头发上系缎带来取悦他的梅，已经完成了挑选、订制大批服装的隆重议式。

果然不出他所料，卡弗莱太太家的宴会规模很小。在冷冷清清的长客厅里，除了女主人和她妹妹，他们只见到一位技围巾的夫人和她的丈夫——和蔼的教区牧师，一个被卡弗莱夫人称为侄子的沉默寡言的少年和一位两眼有神、皮肤黝黑的小个子绅士，当卡弗莱太太介绍说是她侄子的家庭教师时，他报了个法国名字。

走进朦胧灯光下面容模糊的人群，梅•阿切尔像一只游弋的天鹅，身上洒满落日的余辉；在她丈夫的眼里，她比任何时候都显得高大、美丽，衣服的窸窣声也格外响。阿切尔意识到，这红润的面颊和窸窣的响声正是她极度幼稚羞怯的标志。

“他们究竟想要我说什么呢？”她那双无助的眼睛向他乞求地说。此时此刻，她那引起惶惑的幽灵也唤起在座的人内心同样的不安。然而，即使在对自己失去信心的时候，美貌仍能唤醒男人心中的信任，牧师和那位法国名字的教师很快就明白表示，他们希望梅不必拘束。

然而，尽管他们使尽浑身解数，宴会仍是索然无味。阿切尔注意到，他妻子为了显示在外国人面前的轻松自如，所谈的话题反而变得越来越生硬狭隘，以致尽管她的风韵令人艳羡，她的谈吐却令人扫兴。牧师不久便放弃了努力，但那位家庭教师却操着最完美流畅的英语继续殷勤地对她滔滔不绝，直到女士们上楼去了客厅，才使所有的人明显得到了解脱。

喝了一杯红葡萄酒后，牧师不得不匆匆去赴一个约会；那个貌似有病的害羞的侄子也被打发去睡了，而阿切尔和家庭教师仍坐着对饮。猛然间，阿切尔发现自己从最后一次与内德•温塞特交流之后还从没这般畅谈过。原来，卡弗莱太太的侄子因受到肺痨的威胁，不得不离开哈罗公学去了瑞士，在气候温和的雷曼湖畔呆了两年。因为他是个小书呆子，所以委托给里维埃先生照料，后者把他带回英国，并将一直陪伴他到来年春天进入牛津大学；里维埃先生坦率地补充说，到那时他只好另谋高就了。

阿切尔想，像他这样兴趣广泛、博学多艺的人，不可能找不到工作。他大约30岁，一张瘦削难看的脸（梅一定会称他相貌平平）把他的想法一览无余地展示出来，但他活泼的天性中却没有轻浮。卑贱的成分。

他早逝的父亲原是个职位低下的外交官，本打算要他子承父业，但对文学的痴迷却使这位年轻人投身于新闻界，继而又献身创作（显然没有成功），最后——经历了他对听者省略掉的其他尝试与变故——他当上了在瑞士教英国少年的家庭教师。但在此之前，他多年住在巴黎，经常出没于龚古尔的阁楼，莫泊桑曾建议他不要再尝试写作（阿切尔觉得这也异常荣耀了），他还多次在他母亲家与梅里美交谈。他显然一直极端贫困，忧患重重（因为要供养母亲和未嫁的妹妹），而且他的文学抱负显然也已成泡影。老实说，他的处境看来并不比内德•温塞特更光明；然而正如他说的，在他生活的世界里，没有哪个爱思想的人精神上会感到饥饿。可怜的温塞特正是为了这种爱好快要饿死了，阿切尔也如临其境地怀着羡慕之心看着这个热情洋溢的穷青年，他在贫困中活得是那样富足。

“您知道，先生，为了保持心智的自由，不使自己的鉴赏力和批判个性受压抑，是可以不惜代价的，对吗？正是为了这个原因，我才离开了新闻界，干起了更枯燥的差事：家庭教师和私人秘书。这种工作当然非常单调辛苦，但却可以保持精神上的自由——在法语里我们叫做 ‘自重’。当你听到高雅的谈论时，你可以参加进去，发表自己的意见而不必折衷；或者只是倾听，在心里默默抗辩。啊——高雅的言论——那真是无与伦比啊，对吗？精神食粮才是我们的惟一需要。所以我从不为放弃外交和新闻而后悔——那只是放弃自我的两种不同形式罢了。”当阿切尔点燃又一支烟时，里维埃目光炯炯地盯着他说：“您瞧，先生，为了能够正视生活，即使住在阁楼也值得，对吗？可话又说回来，毕竟你要挣钱付阁楼的房租；我承认干一辈子私人教师——或者别的 ‘私人’什么——几乎跟在布加勒斯特做二等秘书一样令人寒心。有时候，我觉得必须去冒险：去冒大险。比如，在美国，你看有没有适合我的机会呢——在纽约？”

阿切尔用惊讶的目光望着他。纽约，一个经常与龚古尔兄弟和福楼拜见面、并认为只有精神生活才是真正生活的年轻人要去纽约！他继续困惑地盯着里维埃先生，不知该如何告诉他，他的这些优势与擅长肯定会成为他成功的障碍。

“纽约——纽约——可一定得是纽约吗？”阿切尔结结巴巴地说，他根本想不出他生活的城市能给一个视高雅谈论为惟一需要的年轻人提供什么赚钱机会。

里维埃先生灰黄的脸上突然泛起一片红润。“我——我想那是你所在的大城市：那儿的精神生活不是更活跃吗？”他答道。然后，仿佛害怕给听者留下求助的印象似的，他急忙接着说：“只不过随便说说而已——主要是自己的想法。实际上，我并不是着眼于眼前——”他站起来，毫无拘束地补充说：“不过卡弗莱太太会觉得我该把你带到楼上去了。”

回家的路上，阿切尔深深思考着这段插曲，和里维埃先生的交谈有如给他的双肺注入了新鲜空气。他最初的冲动是第二天邀请他吃饭；不过他已经渐渐明白，已婚男人为什么不总能够立即顺从自己最初的冲动。

“那个年轻教师很有趣：饭后我们围绕书和一些问题谈得很投机，”他在马车里试探地说。

梅从梦境般的沉默中苏醒过来。6个月前他面对这种沉默会浮想联翩，但婚后这段生活使他掌握了它的秘诀。

“你说那个小法国人？他不是很普通的吗？”她漠然答道；他猜想她心中正暗自感到失望，因为在伦敦被邀请去见一个牧师和一个法国教师而失望。这种失望并非缘于通常称为势利的那种感情，而是出自老纽约的一种意识——当尊严在国外受到威胁时的反应。假如让梅的父母在第五大街款待卡弗莱一家，他们会引荐比牧师和家庭教师更有分量的人物。

但阿切尔心中不快，便跟她对上了。

“普通——他哪里普通？”他质问道。而她的回答也格外麻利：“怎么啦，处处都很普通，除了在他的教室里。这些人在社交界总是很尴尬。不过，”她为了缓和空气又补充说，“他如果聪明一点的话，我想我就不会知道了。”

阿切尔对她用“普通”一词感到反感，对她用“聪明”一词几乎是同样反感。不过他开始害怕去细想她身上那些令他反感的东西。毕竟，她的观点向来是一成不变的，与他成长过程中接触的人完全一致。以前他总认为这种观点是必然的，但却无关紧要。直到几个月之前，他还不曾认识一位对生活持有不同观点的“好”女人；男人一结婚，就必然遇上好女人。

“啊——既然这样，我就不请他吃饭了！”他笑着下结论说。梅大惑不解地答道：“我的天——请卡弗莱家的家庭教师吃饭？”

“唔，不是与卡弗莱姐妹在同一天。如果你不愿意，就算了。但我确实很想再和他谈谈，他正打算到纽约找份工作。”

她益发吃惊也益发冷淡：他几乎认为她在怀疑他沾染了“异国情调”。

“在纽约找工作？什么样的工作？人们不需要法语教师，他想干什么呢？”

“我想，首先是能享受高雅的交谈，”丈夫故意作对地回嘴说。她爆发出一阵赞赏的笑声。“哎哟，纽兰，真有趣！这不是太法国化了吗？”

总的说来，梅拒绝认真考虑他邀请里维埃先生吃饭的要求而使事情这样了结，他感到高兴。否则，再在饭后谈一次，就很难不说到纽约的问题了。阿切尔越想越觉得难以使里维埃先生与他熟悉的纽约社会的任何一个画面相调和。

一阵寒心的直觉使他认识到，将来的许多问题都会这样子给他否决。然而，当他支付了车费，尾随妻子长长的裙据走进屋里时，他又从一句令人宽慰的俗语中寻得了慰藉：前6个月是婚姻生活中最艰难的时期。“在这之后，我想我们差不多会把彼此的棱角完全磨去的，”他心里想。但糟糕的是，梅的压力正对准了他最想保留的那些棱角。

Chapter 21

The small bright lawn stretched away smoothly to the big bright sea.

The turf was hemmed with an edge of scarlet geranium and coleus, and cast-iron vases painted in chocolate colour, standing at intervals along the winding path that led to the sea, looped their garlands of petunia and ivy geranium above the neatly raked gravel.

Half way between the edge of the cliff and the square wooden house (which was also chocolate-coloured, but with the tin roof of the verandah striped in yellow and brown to represent an awning) two large targets had been placed against a background of shrubbery. On the other side of the lawn, facing the targets, was pitched a real tent, with benches and garden-seats about it. A number of ladies in summer dresses and gentlemen in grey frock-coats and tall hats stood on the lawn or sat upon the benches; and every now and then a slender girl in starched muslin would step from the tent, bow in hand, and speed her shaft at one of the targets, while the spectators interrupted their talk to watch the result.

Newland Archer, standing on the verandah of the house, looked curiously down upon this scene. On each side of the shiny painted steps was a large blue china flower-pot on a bright yellow china stand. A spiky green plant filled each pot, and below the verandah ran a wide border of blue hydrangeas edged with more red geraniums. Behind him, the French windows of the drawing-rooms through which he had passed gave glimpses, between swaying lace curtains, of glassy parquet floors islanded with chintz poufs, dwarf armchairs, and velvet tables covered with trifles in silver.

The Newport Archery Club always held its August meeting at the Beauforts'. The sport, which had hitherto known no rival but croquet, was beginning to be discarded in favour of lawn-tennis; but the latter game was still considered too rough and inelegant for social occasions, and as an opportunity to show off pretty dresses and graceful attitudes the bow and arrow held their own.

Archer looked down with wonder at the familiar spectacle. It surprised him that life should be going on in the old way when his own reactions to it had so completely changed. It was Newport that had first brought home to him the extent of the change. In New York, during the previous winter, after he and May had settled down in the new greenish-yellow house with the bow-window and the Pompeian vestibule, he had dropped back with relief into the old routine of the office, and the renewal of this daily activity had served as a link with his former self. Then there had been the pleasurable excitement of choosing a showy grey stepper for May's brougham (the Wellands had given the carriage), and the abiding occupation and interest of arranging his new library, which, in spite of family doubts and disapprovals, had been carried out as he had dreamed, with a dark embossed paper, Eastlake book-cases and "sincere" arm-chairs and tables. At the Century he had found Winsett again, and at the Knickerbocker the fashionable young men of his own set; and what with the hours dedicated to the law and those given to dining out or entertaining friends at home, with an occasional evening at the Opera or the play, the life he was living had still seemed a fairly real and inevitable sort of business.

But Newport represented the escape from duty into an atmosphere of unmitigated holiday-making. Archer had tried to persuade May to spend the summer on a remote island off the coast of Maine (called, appropriately enough, Mount Desert), where a few hardy Bostonians and Philadelphians were camping in "native" cottages, and whence came reports of enchanting scenery and a wild, almost trapper-like existence amid woods and waters.

But the Wellands always went to Newport, where they owned one of the square boxes on the cliffs, and their son-in-law could adduce no good reason why he and May should not join them there. As Mrs. Welland rather tartly pointed out, it was hardly worth while for May to have worn herself out trying on summer clothes in Paris if she was not to be allowed to wear them; and this argument was of a kind to which Archer had as yet found no answer.

May herself could not understand his obscure reluctance to fall in with so reasonable and pleasant a way of spending the summer. She reminded him that he had always liked Newport in his bachelor days, and as this was indisputable he could only profess that he was sure he was going to like it better than ever now that they were to be there together. But as he stood on the Beaufort verandah and looked out on the brightly peopled lawn it came home to him with a shiver that he was not going to like it at all.

It was not May's fault, poor dear. If, now and then, during their travels, they had fallen slightly out of step, harmony had been restored by their return to the conditions she was used to. He had always foreseen that she would not disappoint him; and he had been right. He had married (as most young men did) because he had met a perfectly charming girl at the moment when a series of rather aimless sentimental adventures were ending in premature disgust; and she had represented peace, stability, comradeship, and the steadying sense of an unescapable duty.

He could not say that he had been mistaken in his choice, for she had fulfilled all that he had expected. It was undoubtedly gratifying to be the husband of one of the handsomest and most popular young married women in New York, especially when she was also one of the sweetest-tempered and most reasonable of wives; and Archer had never been insensible to such advantages. As for the momentary madness which had fallen upon him on the eve of his marriage, he had trained himself to regard it as the last of his discarded experiments. The idea that he could ever, in his senses, have dreamed of marrying the Countess Olenska had become almost unthinkable, and she remained in his memory simply as the most plaintive and poignant of a line of ghosts.

But all these abstractions and eliminations made of his mind a rather empty and echoing place, and he supposed that was one of the reasons why the busy animated people on the Beaufort lawn shocked him as if they had been children playing in a grave-yard.

He heard a murmur of skirts beside him, and the Marchioness Manson fluttered out of the drawing-room window. As usual, she was extraordinarily festooned and bedizened, with a limp Leghorn hat anchored to her head by many windings of faded gauze, and a little black velvet parasol on a carved ivory handle absurdly balanced over her much larger hatbrim.

"My dear Newland, I had no idea that you and May had arrived! You yourself came only yesterday, you say? Ah, business--business--professional duties . . . I understand. Many husbands, I know, find it impossible to join their wives here except for the week-end." She cocked her head on one side and languished at him through screwed-up eyes. "But marriage is one long sacrifice, as I used often to remind my Ellen--"

Archer's heart stopped with the queer jerk which it had given once before, and which seemed suddenly to slam a door between himself and the outer world; but this break of continuity must have been of the briefest, for he presently heard Medora answering a question he had apparently found voice to put.

"No, I am not staying here, but with the Blenkers, in their delicious solitude at Portsmouth. Beaufort was kind enough to send his famous trotters for me this morning, so that I might have at least a glimpse of one of Regina's garden-parties; but this evening I go back to rural life. The Blenkers, dear original beings, have hired a primitive old farm-house at Portsmouth where they gather about them representative people . . ." She drooped slightly beneath her protecting brim, and added with a faint blush: "This week Dr. Agathon Carver is holding a series of Inner Thought meetings there. A contrast indeed to this gay scene of worldly pleasure-- but then I have always lived on contrasts! To me the only death is monotony. I always say to Ellen: Beware of monotony; it's the mother of all the deadly sins. But my poor child is going through a phase of exaltation, of abhorrence of the world. You know, I suppose, that she has declined all invitations to stay at Newport, even with her grandmother Mingott? I could hardly persuade her to come with me to the Blenkers', if you will believe it! The life she leads is morbid, unnatural. Ah, if she had only listened to me when it was still possible . . . When the door was still open . . . But shall we go down and watch this absorbing match? I hear your May is one of the competitors."

Strolling toward them from the tent Beaufort advanced over the lawn, tall, heavy, too tightly buttoned into a London frock-coat, with one of his own orchids in its buttonhole. Archer, who had not seen him for two or three months, was struck by the change in his appearance. In the hot summer light his floridness seemed heavy and bloated, and but for his erect square- shouldered walk he would have looked like an over-fed and over-dressed old man.

There were all sorts of rumours afloat about Beaufort. In the spring he had gone off on a long cruise to the West Indies in his new steam-yacht, and it was reported that, at various points where he had touched, a lady resembling Miss Fanny Ring had been seen in his company. The steam-yacht, built in the Clyde, and fitted with tiled bath-rooms and other unheard-of luxuries, was said to have cost him half a million; and the pearl necklace which he had presented to his wife on his return was as magnificent as such expiatory offerings are apt to be. Beaufort's fortune was substantial enough to stand the strain; and yet the disquieting rumours persisted, not only in Fifth Avenue but in Wall Street. Some people said he had speculated unfortunately in railways, others that he was being bled by one of the most insatiable members of her profession; and to every report of threatened insolvency Beaufort replied by a fresh extravagance: the building of a new row of orchid-houses, the purchase of a new string of race-horses, or the addition of a new Meissonnier or Cabanel to his picture-gallery.

He advanced toward the Marchioness and Newland with his usual half-sneering smile. "Hullo, Medora! Did the trotters do their business? Forty minutes, eh? . . . Well, that's not so bad, considering your nerves had to be spared." He shook hands with Archer, and then, turning back with them, placed himself on Mrs. Manson's other side, and said, in a low voice, a few words which their companion did not catch.

The Marchioness replied by one of her queer foreign jerks, and a "Que voulez-vous?" which deepened Beaufort's frown; but he produced a good semblance of a congratulatory smile as he glanced at Archer to say: "You know May's going to carry off the first prize."

"Ah, then it remains in the family," Medora rippled; and at that moment they reached the tent and Mrs. Beaufort met them in a girlish cloud of mauve muslin and floating veils.

May Welland was just coming out of the tent. In her white dress, with a pale green ribbon about the waist and a wreath of ivy on her hat, she had the same Diana-like aloofness as when she had entered the Beaufort ball-room on the night of her engagement. In the interval not a thought seemed to have passed behind her eyes or a feeling through her heart; and though her husband knew that she had the capacity for both he marvelled afresh at the way in which experience dropped away from her.

She had her bow and arrow in her hand, and placing herself on the chalk-mark traced on the turf she lifted the bow to her shoulder and took aim. The attitude was so full of a classic grace that a murmur of appreciation followed her appearance, and Archer felt the glow of proprietorship that so often cheated him into momentary well-being. Her rivals--Mrs. Reggie Chivers, the Merry girls, and divers rosy Thorleys, Dagonets and Mingotts, stood behind her in a lovely anxious group, brown heads and golden bent above the scores, and pale muslins and flower-wreathed hats mingled in a tender rainbow. All were young and pretty, and bathed in summer bloom; but not one had the nymph- like ease of his wife, when, with tense muscles and happy frown, she bent her soul upon some feat of strength.