I
don't know; was that last remark of hers the remark of a harlot, or is it what
every decent woman, county family or not county family, thinks at the bottom of
her heart? Or thinks all the time for the matter of that? Who knows?
Yet,
if one doesn't know that at this hour and day, at this level of civilization to
which we have attained, after all the preachings of all the moralists, and all
the teachings of all the mothers to all the daughters in saecula saeculorum...
but perhaps that is what all mothers teach all daughters, not with lips but
with the eyes, or with heart whispering to heart. And, if one doesn't know as
much as that about the first thing in the world, what does one know and why is
one here?
I
asked Mrs Ashburnham whether she had told Florence that and what Florence had
said and she answered:—"Florence didn't offer any comment at all. What
could she say? There wasn't anything to be said. With the oppressing poverty we
had to put up with to keep up appearances, and the way the poverty came
about—you know what I mean—any woman would have been justified in taking a
lover and presents too. Florence once said about a very similar position—she
was a little too well-bred, too American, to talk about mine—that it was a case
of perfectly open riding and the woman could just act on the spur of the
moment. She said it in American of course, but that was the sense of it. I
think her actual words were: 'That it was up to her to take it or leave
it....'"
I
don't want you to think that I am writing Teddy Ashburnham down a brute. I
don't believe he was. God knows, perhaps all men are like that. For as I've
said what do I know even of the smoking-room? Fellows come in and tell the most
extraordinarily gross stories—so gross that they will positively give you a
pain. And yet they'd be offended if you suggested that they weren't the sort of
person you could trust your wife alone with. And very likely they'd be quite
properly offended—that is if you can trust anybody alone with anybody. But that
sort of fellow obviously takes more delight in listening to or in telling gross
stories—more delight than in anything else in the world. They'll hunt languidly
and dress languidly and dine languidly and work without enthusiasm and find it
a bore to carry on three minutes' conversation about anything whatever and yet,
when the other sort of conversation begins, they'll laugh and wake up and throw
themselves about in their chairs. Then, if they so delight in the narration,
how is it possible that they can be offended—and properly offended—at the
suggestion that they might make attempts upon your wife's honour? Or again:
Edward Ashburnham was the cleanest looking sort of chap;—an excellent
magistrate, a first rate soldier, one of the best landlords, so they said, in
Hampshire, England. To the poor and to hopeless drunkards, as I myself have
witnessed, he was like a painstaking guardian. And he never told a story that
couldn't have gone into the columns of the Field more than once or twice in all
the nine years of my knowing him. He didn't even like hearing them; he would move
and get up and go out to buy a cigar or something of that sort. You would have
said that he was just exactly the sort of chap that you could have trusted your
wife with. And I trusted mine and it was madness. And yet again you have me. If
poor Edward was dangerous because of the chastity of his expressions—and they
say that is always the hall-mark of a libertine—what about myself? For I
solemnly affirm that not only have I never so much as hinted at an impropriety
in my conversation in the whole of my days; and more than that, I will guarantee
for the cleanness of my thoughts and the absolute chastity of my life. At what,
then, does it all work out? Is the whole thing a stupidity and a mockery? Am I
no better than a eunuch or is the proper man—the man with the right to
existence—a powerful stallion forever neighing after his neighbour's womankind?
I
don't know. And there is nothing to guide us. And if everything is so nebulous
about a matter so elementary as the morals of sex, what is there to guide us in
the more subtle morality of all other personal contacts, associations, and
activities? Or are we meant to act on impulse alone? It is all a darkness.
I
DON'T know how it is best to put this thing down—whether it would be better to
try and tell the story from the beginning, as if it were a story; or whether to
tell it from this distance of time, as it reached me from the lips of Leonora
or from those of Edward himself.
So
I shall just imagine myself for a fortnight or so at one side of the fireplace
of a country cottage, with a sympathetic soul opposite me. And I shall go on
talking, in a low voice while the sea sounds in the distance and overhead the
great black flood of wind polishes the bright stars. From time to time we shall
get up and go to the door and look out at the great moon and say: "Why, it
is nearly as bright as in Provence!" And then we shall come back to the
fireside, with just the touch of a sigh because we are not in that Provence
where even the saddest stories are gay. Consider the lamentable history of
Peire Vidal. Two years ago Florence and I motored from Biarritz to Las Tours,
which is in the Black Mountains. In the middle of a tortuous valley there rises
up an immense height and on the top are four castles—Las Tours, the Towers. And
the immense wind blew down that valley which was the way from France into
Provence so that the silver grey olive leaves appeared like hair flying in the
wind, and the bunches of rosemary crept into the iron rocks that they might not
be torn up by the roots. (adapted in easier English with the help of
translategoogle.com)
Vocabulario
Rosemary:
romero
Recursos
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