The months passed, and neither of them dared start a conversation about this episode. Ella seemed to be often sad. The time was approaching when she would have the fourth baby.
“I don’t think I shall get over it this time!” she said one day.
“Pooh! what childish fear! Why shouldn’t it be as well now as ever?[56]”
She shook her head. “I feel almost sure I am going to die; and I should be glad, if it were not for[57] Nelly, and Frank, and Tiny.”
“And me!”
“You’ll soon find somebody to fill my place,” she murmured, with a sad smile. “I am not going to get over it this time,” she repeated. “Something tells me I shan’t.”
This view of the situation was rather a bad beginning; and, in fact, six weeks later, in May, she was lying in her room, pulseless and bloodless, and the baby for whose unnecessary life she was slowly parting with her own was fat and well. Just before her death she spoke to Marchmill softly:
“Will, I want to speak to you – about you know what – that time we visited Solentsea. I can’t tell how I could forget you so, my husband! But I thought you were unkind; that you neglected me; that you weren’t up to my intellectual level, while he was, and far above it – ”
She could get no further then; and she died a few hours later, without having said anything more to her husband about her love for the poet.
But when she had been dead a couple of years it happened one day that, in turning over some forgotten papers that he wished to destroy before his second wife entered the house, William Marchmill found a lock of hair in an envelope, with the photograph of the poet, and a date was written on the back in his wife’s hand. It was the time they had spent at Solentsea.
Marchmill looked long and thoughtfully at the hair and portrait, for something struck him. Bringing the little boy who had been the death of his mother, now a noisy toddler, he took him on his knee, held the lock of hair against the child’s head, and set up the photograph on the table behind, so that he could closely compare the features of the two faces. By a trick of Nature there was undoubtedly strong likeness to the man Ella had never seen; the dreamy expression of the poet’s face was like the child’s, and the hair was of the same colour.
“I’m damned if I didn’t think so![58]» murmured Marchmill. “Then she had an affair with that fellow at the lodgings! Let me see: the dates – the second week in August… the third week in May. Yes… yes… Get away, you poor little brat! You are nothing to me!”
Amy Foster
After Joseph Conrad (1857–1924)
Kennedy is a country doctor, and lives in Colebrook, on the shores of Eastbay. The High Street[59] of the little town stretches along the wall which defends it from the sea. Beyond the sea-wall there are miles of the barren beach, with the village of Brenzett standing across the water; and still further out the column of a lighthouse, looking in the distance no bigger than a pencil, marks the end of the land. The country at the back of Brenzett is low and flat, but the bay is fairly well sheltered from the seas, and occasionally a big ship stops a mile and a half to the north from the “Ship Inn” in Brenzett.
If you walk from the Colebrook Church up the road, you will see a broad valley. In this valley with Brenzett, Colebrook and Darnford, the market town fourteen miles away, lies the practice of my friend Kennedy. He had begun life as surgeon in the Navy, and afterwards was the companion of a famous traveler. His papers on the fauna and flora made him known to scientific societies. And now he had come to a country practice.
Many years ago, he invited me to stay with him. I came readily, and as he could not neglect his patients to keep me company, he took me on his rounds – thirty miles or so of an afternoon, sometimes. I waited for him on the roads; the horse reached after the leafy branches, and, sitting in the dogcart, I could hear Kennedy’s laugh through the half-open door left open of some cottage. He had the talent of making people talk to him freely, and a patience in listening to their tales.
One day, as we were leaving a large village, I saw on our left a low, black cottage, with some roses climbing on the porch. Kennedy pulled up. A woman, in full sunlight, was throwing a dripping blanket over a line stretched between two old apple-trees. The doctor raised his voice over the hedge: “How’s your child, Amy?”
I had the time to see her dull face, red, as if her flat cheeks had been vigorously slapped, the squat figure, the thin brown hair drawn into a knot at the back of the head. She looked quite young. Her voice sounded low and timid.
“He’s well, thank you.”
We trotted again. “A young patient of yours,” I said; and the doctor muttered, “Her husband used to be.[60]”
“She seems a dull creature,” I remarked.
“Yes,” said Kennedy. “She is very passive. It’s enough to look at the red hands hanging at the end of those short arms, at those slow brown eyes, to know the inertness of her mind – an inertness that is safe from all the surprises of imagination. And yet which of us is safe? She had enough imagination to fall in love. She’s the daughter of Isaac Foster, who from a small farmer has sunk into a shepherd. His misfortunes began from his runaway marriage with the cook of his father, who passionately struck his name off his will.[61]”
Kennedy continued.
“She’s the eldest of a large family. At the age of fifteen they put her out to service[62] at the New Barns Farm. I attended Mrs. Smith, and saw that girl there for the first time. Mrs. Smith, a kind person with a sharp nose, made her put on a black dress every afternoon. I don’t know what made me notice her at all. There are faces that call your attention by a curious want of definiteness.[63] When sharply spoken to,[64] she was able to lose her head at once; but her heart was very kind. She had never expressed a dislike for anybody, and she was tender to every living creature. She was devoted to Mrs. Smith, to Mr. Smith, to their dogs, cats, canaries, to Mrs. Smith’s gray parrot. Nevertheless, when that outlandish bird, attacked by the cat, shrieked for help in human accents, she ran out into the yard stopping her ears, and did not prevent the crime. For Mrs. Smith this was another evidence of her stupidity. Her short-sighted eyes would swim with pity[65] for a poor mouse in a trap, and she had been seen once by some boys on her knees in the wet grass helping a toad in difficulties. There is no kindness of heart without a certain amount of imagination. She had some. She had even more than is necessary to understand suffering and to be moved by pity. She fell in love under circumstances that leave no room for doubt[66] about it; for you need imagination to discover your ideal in an unfamiliar shape.
“How this ability came to her is a mystery. She was born in the village, and had never been further away from it than Colebrook or perhaps Darnford. She lived for four years with the Smiths. New Barns is an isolated farmhouse a mile away from the road, and she was content to look day after day at the same fields and hills; at the trees and the hedges; at the faces of the four men about the farm, always the same – day after day, month after month, year after year. She never showed a desire for conversation, and, as it seemed to me, she did not know how to smile. Sometimes of a fine Sunday afternoon she would put on her best dress, a pair of stout boots, a large gray hat with a black feather, climb over two hills, walk over three fields and along two hundred yards of road – never further. There stood Foster’s cottage. She would help her mother to give their tea to the younger children, wash up, kiss the little ones, and go back to the farm. That was all. All the rest, all the change, all the relaxation. She never seemed to want anything more. And then she fell in love. She fell in love silently, obstinately – perhaps helplessly. It came slowly, but when it came it worked like a powerful charm…”
56
Why shouldn’t it be as well now as ever? – Почему всё не должно закончиться так же хорошо, как всегда?
59
The High Street – Хай-стрит (
60
used to be –
61
His misfortunes began from his runaway marriage with the cook of his father, who passionately struck his name off his will. – Его несчастья начались, когда он женился, сбежав с кухаркой своего отца, который в сердцах вычеркнул его из завещания.
65
her short-sighted eyes would swim with pity – её близорукие глаза бывало наполнялись слезами от жалости.