书城外语那些无法拒绝的名篇
6558600000012

第12章 一个小时的故事 (1)

The Story of an Hour

《一个小时的故事》精炼地概述了在一个小时里,

玛拉德夫人对一偶发事件的反应。故事的主人公玛拉

德夫人患有心脏病,当她听到丈夫在一场车祸中丧生

之后,先是痛不欲生,失声痛哭,但独自回到房间后,

她竟很快从悲痛中恢复了过来,有了“自由”的喜悦。

等她再从房间里走出来的时候,她感受到了新生。但

此时,逃过一劫的玛拉德先生出现在门口,玛拉德夫

人心脏病突发,倒地猝死。

[ 美] 凯特·肖邦(Kate Chopin)

一个小时的故事

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 Maitard’s

name leading the list of“ killed”. He had only taken the time

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

notes of a distant song which someone 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 one 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,free,free!”The vacant stare and the look of

terror that had followed it went 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 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 hers 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,