一个小时的故事
雨果作品-我眼中的春节
一个小时的故事
大家都知道马兰德夫人的心脏有毛病，所以在把她丈夫的死讯告诉她时
都是小心
翼翼的，尽可能地温和委婉。坏消息是她的姐姐约瑟芬告诉她的，她连话都没说
成句，
只是遮遮掩掩地向她暗示。她丈夫的朋友理查兹也在场。当火车事故的消
息传来的时候，理查兹正好在报
社里，遇难者名单上布兰特雷·马兰德的名字排
在第一个……
Knowing
that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart
trouble, great care
was taken to break to her
as gently as possible the news of her husband's
death.
It was her sister Josephine who
told her, in broken sentences, veiled hints
that revealed in half concealing. Her
husband's friend Richards was there,
too, near
her. It was he who had been in the newspaper
office when
intelligence of the railroad
disaster was received, with Brently
Mallard's
name leading the list of
to assure himself of
its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened
to
forestall any less careful, less tender
friend in bearing the sad message.
She did not
hear the story as many women have heard the same,
with a
paralyzed inability to accept its
significance. She wept at once, with
sudden,
wild abandonment, in her sister's arms. When the
storm of grief
had spent itself she went away
to her room alone. She would have no one
follow her.
There stood, facing the open
window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into
this she sank, pressed down by a physical
exhaustion that haunted her body
and seemed to
reach into her soul.
She could see in the open
square before her house the tops of trees that
were all aquiver with the new spring life. The
delicious breath of rain
was in the air. In
the street below a peddler was crying his wares.
The
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notes of a distant song which some one
was singing reached her faintly,
and countless
sparrows were twittering in the eaves.
There
were patches of blue sky showing here and there
through the clouds
that had met and piled
above the other in the west facing her window.
She sat with her head thrown back upon the
cushion of the chair, quite
motionless, except
when a sob came up into her throat and shook her,
as
a child who has cried itself to sleep
continues to sob in its dreams.
She was young,
with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke
repression and
even a certain strength. But
now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose
gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those
patches of blue sky. It
was not a glance of
reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of
intelligent thought.
There was something
coming to her and she was waiting for it,
fearfully.
What was it? She did not know; it
was too subtle and elusive to name. But
she
felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward
her through the
sounds, the scents, the color
that filled the air.
Now her bosom rose and
fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize
this thing that was approaching to possess
her, and she was striving to
beat it back with
her will-as powerless as her two white slender
hands
would have been.
When she abandoned
herself a little whispered word escaped her
slightly
parted lips. She said it over and
over under her breath:
free!
from her eyes.
They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast,
and the
coursing blood warmed and relaxed
every inch of her body.
She did not stop to
ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that
held
her. A clear and exalted perception
enabled her to dismiss the suggestion
as
trivial.
She knew that she would weep again
when she saw the kind, tender hands
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folded in death; the
face that had never looked save with love upon
her,
fixed and gray and dead. But she saw
beyond that bitter moment a long
procession of
years to come that would belong to her absolutely.
And she
opened and spread her arms out to them
in welcome.
There would be no one to live for
her during those coming years; she would
live
for herself. There would be no powerful will
bending her in that blind
persistence with
which men and women believe they have a right to
impose
a private will upon a fellow-creature.
A kind intention or a cruel
intention made the
act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in
that
brief moment of illumination.
And yet
she had loved him-sometimes. Often she had not.
What did it matter!
What could love, the
unsolved mystery, count for in face of this
possession
of self-assertion, which she
suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse
of her being!
Josephine was kneeling
before the closed door with her lips to the
keyhole,imploring for admission. open the
door! I beg; open the
door-you will make
yourself ill. What are you doing, Louise? For
heaven's
sake open the door.
away. I am not
making myself she was drinking in a very elixir
of life through that open window.
Her
fancy was running riot along those days ahead of
her. Spring days,
and summer days, and all
sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed
a quick prayer that life might be long. It was
only yesterday she had
thought with a shudder
that life might be long.
She arose at length
and opened the door to her sister's importunities.
There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and
she carried herself
unwittingly like a goddess
of Victory. She clasped her sister's waist,
and together they descended the stairs.
Richards stood waiting for them
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at the bottom.
Someone was opening the front door with a
latchkey. It was Brently Mallard
who entered,
a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his
gripsack
and umbrella. He had been far from
the scene of accident, and did not even
know
there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine's
piercing cry; at
Richards' quick motion to
screen him from the view of his wife.
But
Richards was too late.
When the doctors came
they said she had died of heart disease-of joy
that
kills.
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