Scott Fitzgerald - The Sensible Thing 汉译

There it was on the bureau, the letter — in sacred ink, on blessed paper — all over the city, people, if they listened, could hear the beating of George O’Kelly’s heart. He read the commas, the blots, and the thumb-smudge on the margin — then he threw himself hopelessly upon his bed.

He was in a mess, one of those terrific messes which are ordinary incidents in the life of the poor, which follow poverty like birds of prey. The poor go under or go up or go wrong or even go on, somehow, in a way the poor have — but George O’Kelly was so new to poverty that had any one denied the uniqueness of his case he would have been astounded.

Less than two years ago he had been graduated with honors from The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and had taken a position with a firm of construction engineers in southern Tennessee. All his life he had thought in terms of tunnels and skyscrapers and great squat dams and tall, three-towered bridges, that were like dancers holding hands in a row, with heads as tall as cities and skirts of cable strand. It had seemed romantic to George O’Kelly to change the sweep of rivers and the shape of mountains so that life could flourish in the old had lands of the world where it had never taken root before.

At present he was an insurance clerk at forty dollars a week with his dream slipping fast behind him. The dark little girl who had made this mess, this terrible and intolerable mess, was waiting to be sent for in a town in Tennessee. …getting up from the bed he wrote a telegram.

“LETTER DEPRESSED ME HAVE YOU LOST YOUR

NERVE YOU ARE FOOLISH AND JUST UPSET TO THINK

OF BREAKING OFF WHY NOT MARRY ME IMMEDIATE¬LYSURE WE CAN MAKE IT ALL R1GHT —”

He hesitated for a wild minute, and then added in a hand that could scarcely be recognized as his own “IN ANY CASE I WILL ARRIVE TOMORROW AT SIX O’CLOCK”

When he finished he ran out of the apartment and down to the telegraph office near the subway stop. He possessed in this world not quite one hundred dollars, but the letter showed that she was “nervous” and this left him no choice. He knew what “nervous” meant — that she was emotionally depressed, that the prospect of marrying into a life of poverty and struggle was putting too much strain upon her love.

Jonquil Gary was her name, and to George O’Kelly nothing had ever looked so fresh and pale as her face when she saw him and fled to him eagerly along the station platform. Her arms were raised to him, her mouth was half parted for his kiss…

They sat together on the sofa, overcome by each other’s presence, beyond all except fragmentary endearments. At the supper hour Jonquil’s father and mother appeared and were glad to see George. They liked him, and had been interested in his engineering career when he had first come to Tennessee over a year before. They had been sorry when he had given it up and gone to New York to look for something more immediately profitable, but while they deplored the curtailment of his career they sympathized with him and were ready to recognize the engagement. During dinner they asked about his progress in New York.

“Everything’s going fine,” he told them with enthusiasm. “I’ve been promoted — better salary.

He was miserable as he said this — but they were all so glad.

“But you ought to save your money,” Mrs. Cary reproached him gently. “Not spend it, all on this expensive trip.

Dinner was over — he and Jonquil were alone and she came hack into his arms.

“So glad you’re here,” she sighed. “Wish you never were going away again, darling.”

“Do you miss me?”

“Oh, so much, so much.

“Do you — do other men come to see you often?”

The question surprised her. The dark velvet eyes stared at him.

“Why, of course they do. All the time. Why I’ve told you in letters that they did, dearest.

This was true — but he was in a supersensitive mood and in-voluntarily he plunged into the specific world he had intended to avoid.

“When will you marry me?”

“Are you ready for me to marry you?”

All at once his nerves gave way, and he sprang to his feet.

“Just when I’m ready to marry you, you write me the most nervous letters, as if you’re going to back out, and I have to come rushing down here—”

“You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”

“But I do want to!” insisted George.

It seemed to him that he was being very cool and logical and that she was putting him deliberately in the wrong. With every word they were drawing farther and farther apart—and he was unable to stop himself or to keep worry and pain out of his voice...

In the heat of the next day the breaking-point came. They had each guessed the truth about the other, but of the two she was the more ready to admit the situation.

“There’s no use going on.” she said miserably, “You know you hate the insurance business, and you’ll never do well in it.

“That’s not it,” he insisted stubbornly, “I hate going on alone. If you’ll marry me and come with me and take a chance with me, I can make good at anything, but not while I’m worrying about you down here.”

She was silent a long time before she answered, not thinking — for she had seen the end — but only waiting, because she knew that every word would seem more cruel than the last. Finally she spoke: “George. I love you with all my heart, and I don’t see how I can ever love any one else but you. If you’d been ready for me two months ago I’d have married you — now I can’t because it doesn’t seem to be the sensible thing.

He made wild accusations — there was someone else — she was keeping something from him!

“No, there’s no one else.

This was true. But reaching from the strain of this affair she had found relief in the company of young boys, who had the merit of meaning absolutely nothing in her life.

George didn’t take the situation well, at all. He seized her in his arms and tried literally to kiss her into marrying him at once. When this failed, he broke into a long monologue of self-pity, and ceased only when he saw that he was making himself despicable in her sight. He threatened to leave when he had no intention of leaving, and refused to go when she told him that, after all, it was best that he should.

For a while she was sorry, then for another while she was merely kind.

“You’d better go now,” she cried at last, so loud that Mrs. Gary came downstairs in alarm.

“Is something the matter?”

“I’m going away, Mrs. Gary,” said George brokenly. Jonquil had left the room.

“Don’t feel so badly, George,” Mrs. Gary blinked at him in helpless sympathy-sorry and, in the same breath, glad that the little tragedy was almost done. “If I were you, I’d go home to your mother for a week or so. Perhaps after all this is the sensible thing...

On a damp afternoon in September of the following year a young man with his face burned to a deep copper glow got off a train at a city in Tennessee. Vie looked around anxiously, and seemed relieved when he found that there was no one in the station to meet him. He taxied to the best hotel in the city where he registered with some satisfaction as George O’Kelly, Cuzco, Peru.

Up in his room he sat for a few minutes at the window looking down into the familiar street below. Then with his hand trembling faintly he took off the telephone receiver and called a number.

“Is Miss Jonquil in?”

“This is she.

“Oh—” his voice after overcoming a faint tendency to waver went on with friendly formality.

“This is George O’Kelly. Did you get my letter?”

“Yes. I thought you’d be in today.”

Her voice, cool and unmoved, disturbed him, but not as he had expected. This was the voice of a stranger, unexcited, and pleasantly glad to see him — that was all. He wanted to put down the telephone and catch his breath.

“I haven’t seen you for — a long time,” lie succeeded in making this sound offhand. “Over a year.”

He knew how long it had been — to the day.

“It’ll be awfully nice to talk to you again.

“I’ll be there in about an hour.

He hung up. For four long seasons every minute of his leisure had been crowded with anticipation of this hour, and now this hour was here. He had thought of finding her married, engaged, in love — he had not thought she would be unstirred at his return.

There would never again in his life, he felt, be another ten months like these he had just gone through. He had made an admittedly remarkable showing for a young engineer — stumbled into two unusual opportunities, one in Peru, whence he had just returned, and another, consequent upon it, in New York, whither he was bound. In this short time he had risen from poverty into a position of unlimited opportunity...

The house loomed up suddenly beside him, and his first thought was that it had assumed a strange unreality. There was nothing changed — only everything was changed. It was smaller and it seemed shabbier than before — there was no cloud of magic hovering over its roof and issuing from the windows of the upper floor. He rang the doorbell and an unfamiliar colored maid appeared. Miss Jonquil would be down in a moment.

Then the door opened and Jonquil came into the room — and it was as though everything in it suddenly blurred before his eyes. He had not remembered how beautiful she was, and he felt his face grow pale and his voice diminish to a poor sigh in his throat.

He said “Hello,” and they each took a few steps forward and shook hands. Then they sat in chairs quite far apart and gazed at each other across the room.

“You’ve come back,” she said, and he answered just as tritely: “I wanted to stop in and see you as I came through.

He tried to neutralize the tremor in his voice by looking any-where but at her face. The obligation to speak was on him, but, unless he immediately began to boast, it seemed that there was nothing to say. There had never been anything casual in their previous relations — it didn’t seem possible that people in this Position would talk about the weather.

“This is ridiculous,” he broke out in sudden embarrassment. “I don’t know exactly what to do. Does my being here bother you?”

“No.” The answer was both reticent and impersonally sad. It depressed him.

“Are you engaged?” he demanded.

“No.

“Are you in love with someone?”

She shook her head.

“Oh.” He leaned back in his chair. Another subject seemed exhausted— the interview was not taking the course he had intended.

“You don’t love me any more, do you?” he asked her in a level voice.

“No.”

When Mrs. Gary came in a minute later, and spoke to him about his success— there had been a half column about him in the local paper — he was a mixture of emotions. He knew now that he still wanted this girl, and he knew that the past sometimes comes back — that was all. For the rest he must be strong and watchful and he would see...

Then dinner was over and he and Jonquil were alone in the room which had seen the beginning of their love affair and the end. It seemed to him long ago and inexpressibly sad. On that sofa he had felt agony and grief such as he would never feel a-gain. He would never be so weak or so tired and miserable and poor. Yet he knew that that boy of fifteen months before had had something, a trust, a warmth that was gone forever. The sensible thing —-they had done the sensible thing. He had traded his first youth for strength and carved success out of despair. But with his youth, life had carried away the freshness of his love.

“You won’t marry me, will you?” he said quietly. Jonquil shook her dark head.

“I’m never going to marry,” she answered.

He nodded.

“I’m going on to Washington in the morning,” he said.

“Oh —”

“I have to go. I’ve got to be in New York by the first, and meanwhile I want to stop off in Washington.”

“Business I”

“No — oh,” he said as if reluctantly, “there’s someone there I must see who was very kind to me when I was so — down and out.”

This was invented. There was no one in Washington for him to see — but he was watching Jonquil narrowly, and he was sure that she winced a little, that her eyes closed and then opened wide again.

“But before I go I want to tell you the things that happened to me since I saw you, and, as maybe vie won’t meet again, I wonder if — if just this once you’d sit in my lap like you used to. I wouldn’t ask except since there’s no one else —yet —perhaps it doesn’t matter.

She nodded, and in a moment was sitting in his lap as she had sat so often in that vanished spring. The feel of her head against his shoulder, of her familiar body, sent a shock of emotion over him. His arms holding her had a tendency to tighten around her, so he leaned back and began to talk thoughtfully into the air.

He told her of a despairing two weeks in New York which had terminated with an attractive if not very profitable job in a construction plant in Jersey City. When the Peru business had first presented itself, it had not seemed an extraordinary opportunity. He was to be third assistant engineer on the expedition, but only ten of the American party, including eight rodmen and surveyors, had ever reached Cuzco. Ten days later the chief of the expedition was dead of yellow fever. That had been his chance, a chance for anybody but a fool, a marvelous chance —

“A chance for anybody but a fool?” she interrupted innocently.

“Even for a fool,” he continued. “It was wonderful. Well, I wired New York—”

“And so,” she interrupted again, “they wired that you ought to take a chance?”

“Ought to!” he exclaimed, still leaning back. “That I had to. There was no time to lose—”

“Not a minute?”

“Not a minute.

“Not even time for—”she paused.

“For what?”

“Look.”

He bent his head forward suddenly, and she drew herself to him in the same moment, her lips half open like a flower.

“Yes,” he whispered into her lips. “There’s all the time in the world...

All the time in the world — his life and hers. But for an instant as he kissed her he knew that though he search through eternity he could never recapture those lost April hours.