겨울 꿈
Winter Dreams
by
날씨가 싸늘하고 흐린 가을 날이라던가, 미네소타의 긴 겨울이 하얀 상자 뚜껑처럼 덮일 때면, 덱스터는 골프코스를 덮은 눈 위에서 스키를 탔다. 그럴 때면 그는 풍경을 보며 깊은 우울감에 빠졌다. 긴 겨울 동안 골프코스는 부스스한 깃털을 한 참새들이 우글거리는 곳으로 바뀔 수밖에 없는 것이 마음 아팠다. 여름에는 화려한 색깔들이 펄럭이던 티샷 지점에는 이제 무릎까지 얼어붙은 황량한 벙커만 남아 있는 것도 우울했다. 언덕을 넘을 때면 차가운 바람이 고통처럼 불어왔고, 해가 나오면 형체도 경계도 없는 강렬한 눈부심 때문에 눈을 가늘게 뜬 채 터벅터벅 걸어갔다.
4월이 되자 겨울은 순식간에 물러갔다. 눈은 이미 녹아내려 블랙 베어 호수로 흘러들었고, 골퍼들은 빨간색과 검은색 공으로 시즌을 시작했다. 들뜬 기쁨도, 촉촉한 생동감이 감도는 과도기도 없이 추위가 사라진 것이다.
Dexter knew that there was something dismal about this Northern spring, just as he knew there was something gorgeous about the fall. Fall made him clinch his hands and tremble and repeat idiotic sentences to himself, and make brisk abrupt gestures of command to imaginary audiences and armies. October filled him with hope which November raised to a sort of ecstatic triumph, and in this mood the fleeting brilliant impressions of the summer at Sherry Island were ready grist to his mill. He became a golf champion and defeated Mr. T. A. Hedrick in a marvellous match played a hundred times over the fairways of his imagination, a match each detail of which he changed about untiringly—sometimes he won with almost laughable ease, sometimes he came up magnificently from behind. Again, stepping from a Pierce-Arrow automobile, like Mr. Mortimer Jones, he strolled frigidly into the lounge of the Sherry Island Golf Club—or perhaps, surrounded by an admiring crowd, he gave an exhibition of fancy diving from the spring-board of the club raft.... Among those who watched him in open-mouthed wonder was Mr. Mortimer Jones.
덱스터는 북쪽 지방의 봄에는 어딘가 음울한 기운이 감돈다는 것을 알고 있었고, 가을에는 또 어딘가 아름다운 기운이 있다는 것도 알고 있었다. 가을이 되면 그는 손을 꽉 쥐고 몸을 떨며 바보 같은 말을 중얼거리며, 상상 속의 군중이나 병사들에게 갑작스럽고 단호한 몸짓으로 명령을 했다. 10월은 그에게 희망을 불어넣었고, 11월은 황홀한 승리감으로 고조되었으며 이러한 기분이 되면, 셰리 섬에서 보낸 여름의 짧고 찬란한 기억들은 그의 머릿속 창작의 밑거름이 되었다. 그는 상상 속 페어웨이 위에서 수백 번이나 치러진 멋진 경기에서 T. A. 헤드릭 씨를 꺾어 골프 챔피언이 되었는데, 경기마다 그는 세부 규칙을 바꾸어 때로는 우스울 정도로 손쉽게 승리하기도 했고, 때로는 멋지게 역전승을 거두기도 했다. 이번에도 그는 모티머 존스 씨처럼 피어스-애로우 자동차에서 내려, 셰리 아일랜드 골프 클럽 라운지로 냉담한 태도로 걸어 들어갔다. 아니면, 감탄하는 군중에 둘러싸인 채 클럽 뗏목으로 만든 스프링보드 위에서 멋진 다이빙 솜씨를 뽐내기도 했다.... 입을 딱 벌린 채 경이로움에 잠겨 그를 지켜보던 사람들 중에는 모티머 존스 씨도 있었다.
And one day it came to pass that Mr. Jones—himself and not his ghost—came up to Dexter with tears in his eyes and said that Dexter was the best caddy in the club, and wouldn't he decide not to quit if Mr. Jones made it worth his while, because every other caddy in the club lost one ball a hole for him regularly.
"No, sir," said Dexter decisively, "I don't want to caddy any more." Then, after a pause: "I'm too old."
"You're not more than fourteen. Why the devil did you decide just this morning that you wanted to quit? You promised that next week you'd go over to the State tournament with me."
"I decided I was too old."
Dexter handed in his "A Class" badge, collected what money was due him from the caddy master, and walked home to Black Bear Village.
"The best —— caddy I ever saw," shouted Mr. Mortimer Jones over a drink that afternoon. "Never lost a ball! Willing! Intelligent! Quiet! Honest! Grateful!"
그러던 어느 날, 존스 씨가 -상상 속의 유령이 아니라 그 본인이 직접- 눈에 눈물을 글썽이며 덱스터에게 다가왔다. 그는 덱스터야말로 클럽 최고의 캐디라고 치켜세우며, 만약 충분한 보상을 해준다면 캐디 일을 그만 두겠다는 말을 취소하지 않겠느냐고 물었다. 왜냐하면 클럽의 다른 모든 캐디들은 홀마다 공을 하나씩 잃어버리기 일쑤기 때문이라고 했다.
"아니요." 덱스터가 단호하게 말했다. "더 이상 캐디 일을 하고 싶지 않아요." 그러고는 잠시 말을 멈췄다가 덧붙였다. "나이가 너무 많거든요."
"너 기껏해야 열네 살이잖아. 도대체 왜 하필 오늘 아침에 그만두겠다고 마음먹은 거야? 다음 주에 나랑 같이 주州 대회에 가기로 약속했었잖아."
"저는 제가 너무 늙었다고 판단이 됩니다."
덱스터는 'A급' 배지를 반납하고 캐디 마스터에게서 받을 돈을 챙긴 뒤, 블랙 베어 빌리지에 있는 집을 향해 걸어갔다.
"내가 본 최고의 캐디야." 그날 오후, 모티머 존스 씨가 술잔을 기울이며 소리쳤다. "공을 한 번도 잃어버린 적이 없어! 의욕적이고, 영리하고, 조용하고, 정직하고, 고마워할 줄도 알지!"
The little girl who had done this was eleven—beautifully ugly as little girls are apt to be who are destined after a few years to be inexpressibly lovely and bring no end of misery to a great number of men. The spark, however, was perceptible. There was a general ungodliness in the way her lips twisted down at the corners when she smiled, and in the—Heaven help us!—in the almost passionate quality of her eyes. Vitality is born early in such women. It was utterly in evidence now, shining through her thin frame in a sort of glow.
그 일을 한 소녀는 열한 살이었다. 훗날 말로 다 할 수 없을 만큼 아름다운 여인이 되어 숱한 남자들에게 끝없는 비탄을 안겨줄 운명을 타고난 어린 소녀들에게서 흔히 볼 수 있는, 그런 '아름다운 추함'을 지닌 아이였다. 하지만 그 매혹의 불씨는 이미 엿보이고 있었다. 미소를 지을 때면 입꼬리가 아래로 비스듬히 처지는 모습이나 -맙소사!- 거의 열정적이라 할 만큼 강렬한 눈빛에는 어딘가 불경스러운 기운마저 감돌았다. 그런 여인들에게는 생명력이 일찍부터 싹트는 법이다. 그 생명력은 지금 그녀의 가냘픈 몸을 뚫고 은은한 빛을 발하며 분명하게 드러나고 있었다.
She had come eagerly out on to the course at nine o'clock with a white linen nurse and five small new golf-clubs in a white canvas bag which the nurse was carrying. When Dexter first saw her she was standing by the caddy house, rather ill at ease and trying to conceal the fact by engaging her nurse in an obviously unnatural conversation graced by startling and irrevelant grimaces from herself.
그 소녀는 9시에 하얀 린넨 옷을 입은 한 간호사와 함께 코스로 의기양양하게 나왔는데, 간호사는 흰 캔버스 가방에 담긴 새 골프채 다섯 자루를 들고 있었다. 덱스터가 처음 그녀를 보았을 때, 그녀는 캐디 하우스 옆에 서서 다소 어색해 하고 있었다. 그녀는 간호사에게 뜬금없고 기이한 표정을 지어 보이며, 분명 부자연스러운 대화를 건네는 방식으로 그 어색함을 감추려 애쓰고 있었다.
"Well, it's certainly a nice day, Hilda," Dexter heard her say. She drew down the corners of her mouth, smiled, and glanced furtively around, her eyes in transit falling for an instant on Dexter.
Then to the nurse:
"Well, I guess there aren't very many people out here this morning, are there?"
The smile again—radiant, blatantly artificial—convincing.
"I don't know what we're supposed to do now," said the nurse, looking nowhere in particular.
"Oh, that's all right. I'll fix it up."
"글쎄, 정말 좋은 날이네, 힐다." 덱스터는 그녀가 그렇게 말하는 소리를 들었다. 그녀는 입꼬리를 내리며 미소를 지었고, 주변을 슬쩍 둘러보다가 잠시 덱스터를 보았다.
그리고는 간호사에게 말했다.
"음, 오늘 아침에는 사람이 별로 없나 보네요?"
또다시 환한 미소가 번졌다. 뻔하도록 인위적인 미소였지만, 설득력이 있었다.
"어떻게 해야 할지 모르겠네." 간호사는 딱히 어디를 보는지도 모른 채 말했다.
"아, 괜찮아요. 제가 알아서 할게요."
Dexter stood perfectly still, his mouth slightly ajar. He knew that if he moved forward a step his stare would be in her line of vision—if he moved backward he would lose his full view of her face. For a moment he had not realized how young she was. Now he remembered having seen her several times the year before—in bloomers.
Suddenly, involuntarily, he laughed, a short abrupt laugh—then, startled by himself, he turned and began to walk quickly away.
"Boy!"
Dexter stopped.
"Boy——"
Beyond question he was addressed. Not only that, but he was treated to that absurd smile, that preposterous smile—the memory of which at least a dozen men were to carry into middle age.
"Boy, do you know where the golf teacher is?"
"He's giving a lesson."
"Well, do you know where the caddy-master is?"
"He isn't here yet this morning."
"Oh." For a moment this baffled her. She stood alternately on her right and left foot.
"We'd like to get a caddy," said the nurse. "Mrs. Mortimer Jones sent us out to play golf, and we don't know how without we get a caddy."
Here she was stopped by an ominous glance from Miss Jones, followed immediately by the smile.
"There aren't any caddies here except me," said Dexter to the nurse, "and I got to stay here in charge until the caddy-master gets here."
"Oh."
Miss Jones and her retinue now withdrew, and at a proper distance from Dexter became involved in a heated conversation, which was concluded by Miss Jones taking one of the clubs and hitting it on the ground with violence. For further emphasis she raised it again and was about to bring it down smartly upon the nurse's bosom, when the nurse seized the club and twisted it from her hands.
"You damn little mean old thing!" cried Miss Jones wildly.
Another argument ensued. Realizing that the elements of the comedy were implied in the scene, Dexter several times began to laugh, but each time restrained the laugh before it reached audibility. He could not resist the monstrous conviction that the little girl was justified in beating the nurse.
The situation was resolved by the fortuitous appearance of the caddy-master, who was appealed to immediately by the nurse.
"Miss Jones is to have a little caddy, and this one says he can't go."
"Mr. McKenna said I was to wait here till you came," said Dexter quickly.
"Well, he's here now." Miss Jones smiled cheerfully at the caddy-master. Then she dropped her bag and set off at a haughty mince toward the first tee.
"Well?" The caddy-master turned to Dexter. "What you standing there like a dummy for? Go pick up the young lady's clubs."
"I don't think I'll go out to-day," said Dexter.
"You don't——"
"I think I'll quit."
The enormity of his decision frightened him. He was a favorite caddy, and the thirty dollars a month he earned through the summer were not to be made elsewhere around the lake. But he had received a strong emotional shock, and his perturbation required a violent and immediate outlet.It is not so simple as that, either. As so frequently would be the case in the future, Dexter was unconsciously dictated to by his winter dreams.
덱스터는 입을 약간 벌린 채 꼼짝도 하지 않고 서 있었다. 그는 한 걸음 앞으로 다가가면 자신의 시선이 그녀의 시야에 걸릴 것이고, 뒤로 물러서면 그녀의 얼굴을 온전히 볼 수 없게 되리라는 것을 알고 있었다. 잠시 동안 그는 그녀가 얼마나 어린 아이인지 미처 모르고 있었다. 그러다 작년에 그녀를 몇 번 본 적이 있다는 사실이 떠올랐다. 그때 그녀는 블루머(헐렁한 바지) 차림이었다.
갑자기, 덱스터는 자신도 모르게 짧고 툭 끊어지는 듯한 웃음을 터뜨렸다. 그러고는 스스로 놀란 듯 몸을 돌려 빠르게 걸어갔다.
"이봐!"
덱스터가 멈춰 섰다.
"얘야—"
의심할 여지 없이 덱스터는 자신을 부르는 소리를 들었다. 그 뿐만이 아니었다. 그는 그 기이한 미소, 그 터무니없는 미소를 마주해야 했는데, 적어도 십수 명의 남자들이 중년이 되어서까지 그 미소를 기억 속에 간직하게 될 바로 그런 미소였다.
"얘야, 골프 선생님이 어디 계신지 아니?"
"레슨 중이세요."
"그럼 캐디 마스터는 어디 계신지 아니?"
"오늘 아침에는 아직 안 오셨어요."
"아." 그녀는 잠시 어리둥절했다. 그리고 오른발과 왼발을 번갈아 가며 디뎠다.
"캐디를 구하고 싶어." 간호사가 말했다. "모티머 존스 부인께서 우리에게 골프를 치라고 보내 주셨는데, 캐디 없이는 어떻게 해야 할지 모르겠거든."
바로 그때 존스 양의 불길한 눈길과 곧이어 번뜩이는 미소가 그녀의 말을 멈추게 했다.
"여기에는 저밖에 캐디가 없어요." 덱스터가 간호사에게 말했다. "캐디 마스터가 올 때까지 제가 여기서 책임을 맡아야 해요."
"아."
존스 양과 그녀의 수행원들은 덱스터로부터 적당히 떨어진 곳으로 물러나 격렬한 대화를 나누기 시작했는데, 결국 존스 양이 클럽 하나를 집어 들고는 거칠게 땅바닥을 내리치는 것으로 그 대화는 끝이 났다. 그녀는 자신의 의사를 더욱 확실히 하려는 듯 클럽을 다시 들어올려 간호사의 가슴을 세게 내리치려 했으나, 간호사가 그 클럽을 낚아채어, 그녀의 손에서 비틀어 빼앗았다.
"이 고약하고 심술궂은 늙은이 같으니라고!" 존스 양이 격앙된 목소리로 소리쳤다.
또다시 말다툼이 벌어졌다. 덱스터는 그 장면 속에 희극적인 요소가 담겨 있음을 깨닫고 몇 차례 웃음을 터뜨릴 뻔했으나, 그때마다 소리가 밖으로 새어 나오기 전에 웃음을 억눌렀다. 그는 그 어린 존스 양이 간호사를 때린 것이 정당했다는, 기이할 정도의 확신을 떨쳐낼 수 없었다.
간호사가 도움을 청한 캐디 마스터가 뜻밖에 나타나 상황이 해결되었다.
"존스 양은 어린 캐디가 있어야 하는데, 이 녀석은 갈 수 없다고 하는군요."
"맥케나 씨가 존스 양이 오실 때까지 나에게 여기서 기다리라고 하셨습니다." 덱스터가 재빨리 대답했다.
"자, 이제 왔습니다." 존스 양은 캐디에게 밝게 미소 지었다. 그러고는 골프백을 내려놓고는 거만한 걸음으로 첫 번째 티를 향해 걸어갔다.
"자, 어때?" 캐디 마스터가 덱스터에게 돌아보며 말했다. "왜 거기 바보처럼 서 있어? 가서 아가씨 골프채나 들어."
"오늘은 안 나갈 것 같아요." 덱스터가 말했다.
"설마...."
"그냥 그만둘래요."
자신이 내린 결정의 무게가 그를 두렵게 했다. 그는 인기 있는 캐디였고, 여름 동안 벌어들이는 월 30달러는 호수 주변의 다른 곳에서는 결코 얻을 수 없는 수입이었다. 하지만 그는 강렬한 심적 충격을 받은 상태였고, 그로 인한 동요를 해소하기 위해서는 격렬하고 즉각적인 분출구가 필요했다. 그러나 그렇게 간단한 문제도 아니었다. 훗날 흔히 그랬듯이, 덱스터는 무의식중에 자신의 '겨울 꿈'에 이끌리고 있었다.
II
Now, of course, the quality and the seasonability of these winter dreams varied, but the stuff of them remained. They persuaded Dexter several years later to pass up a business course at the State university—his father, prospering now, would have paid his way—for the precarious advantage of attending an older and more famous university in the East, where he was bothered by his scanty funds. But do not get the impression, because his winter dreams happened to be concerned at first with musings on the rich, that there was anything merely snobbish in the boy. He wanted not association with glittering things and glittering people—he wanted the glittering things themselves. Often he reached out for the best without knowing why he wanted it—and sometimes he ran up against the mysterious denials and prohibitions in which life indulges. It is with one of those denials and not with his career as a whole that this story deals.
물론 그 '겨울 꿈'들이 지닌 질이나 시기적 성격은 매번 달랐지만, 그 꿈의 본질 만은 변함없이 남아 있었다. 훗날 덱스터는 주립 대학의 경영학 과정을 밟는 대신(당시 사업이 번창하던 아버지가 학비를 대줄 수 있었음에도 불구하고) 동부에 있는 더 오래되고 유명한 대학에 진학하는 길을 택했는데, 이는 불확실한 이점을 따른 선택으로, 그곳에서 그는 늘 부족한 학비 문제로 골머리를 앓아야 했다. 그러나 그의 겨울 꿈이 처음에는 부유한 사람들에 대한 동경에서 비롯되었다고 해서, 그 소년에게 단지 속물적인 면이 있었다고 생각해서는 안 될 것이다. 그는 화려한 것들이나 화려한 사람들과 어울리는 것을 원했던 게 아니라, 바로 그 화려한 것들 자체를 원했던 것이다. 그는 종종 자신이 왜 그것을 원하는지도 모르면서 최고의 것을 갈망하곤 했으며, 때로는 삶이 으레 안겨주는 알 수 없는 거절이나 제약에 부딪히기도 했다. 이 이야기는 그의 인생 전체가 아니라, 바로 그러한 거절 중 하나에 관한 것이다.
==========
He made money. It was rather amazing. After college he went to the city from which Black Bear Lake draws its wealthy patrons. When he was only twenty-three and had been there not quite two years, there were already people who liked to say: "Now there's a boy—" All about him rich men's sons were peddling bonds precariously, or investing patrimonies precariously, or plodding through the two dozen volumes of the "George Washington Commercial Course," but Dexter borrowed a thousand dollars on his college degree and his confident mouth, and bought a partnership in a laundry.
그는 돈을 벌었다. 실로 놀라운 일이었다. 대학을 졸업한 뒤, 그는 블랙 베어 레이크를 찾는 많은 부자들이 사는 도시로 갔다. . 그곳에 머문 지 채 2년도 되지 않은 스물세 살의 나이에, 벌써부터 사람들은 그를 두고 "저 청년이야말로..."라며 입을 모아 이야기하곤 했다. 주변의 부잣집 아들들이 위태롭게 채권을 팔거나 불안정한 방식으로 유산을 투자하고, 혹은 '조지 워싱턴 상업 과정George Washington Commercial Course'이라는 방대한 교재를 힘겹게 공부하고 있을 때, 덱스터는 대학 졸업장과 자신감 넘치는 언변을 담보로 1천 달러를 빌려 세탁소의 지분을 인수했다.
===============
It was a small laundry when he went into it but Dexter made a specialty of learning how the English washed fine woollen golf-stockings without shrinking them, and within a year he was catering to the trade that wore knickerbockers. Men were insisting that their Shetland hose and sweaters go to his laundry just as they had insisted on a caddy who could find golf-balls. A little later he was doing their wives' lingerie as well—and running five branches in different parts of the city. Before he was twenty-seven he owned the largest string of laundries in his section of the country. It was then that he sold out and went to New York. But the part of his story that concerns us goes back to the days when he was making his first big success.
처음 시작할 때만 해도 그곳은 작은 세탁소에 불과했지만, 덱스터는 고급 울 골프 양말을 줄어들지 않게 세탁하는 영국인들의 비법을 익히는 데 주력했고, 1년도 채 되지 않아 니커보커(knickerbocker: 뉴욕의 초기 네덜란드 정착민의 후손 ) 바지를 즐겨 입는 고객 층을 사로잡았다. 사람들은 마치 골프공을 잘 찾아내는 캐디를 고집하듯, 자신들의 셰틀랜드(Shetland: 스코틀랜드 북쪽 해안에 위치한 약 100개의 섬으로 이루어진 군도 )양말과 스웨터를 반드시 그의 세탁소에 맡기려 했다. 얼마 지나지 않아 그는 고객 아내들의 속옷까지 세탁하게 되었고, 도시 곳곳에 5개의 지점을 운영하기에 이르렀다. 스물 일곱이 되기도 전에 그는 그 지역에서 가장 큰 세탁소 체인을 소유하게 되었다. 바로 그때, 그는 사업을 매각하고 뉴욕으로 떠났다. 하지만 우리가 주목하는 그에 대한 이야기는, 그가 처음으로 큰 성공을 거두던 시절로 거슬러 올라간다.
==============
When he was twenty-three Mr. Hart—one of the gray-haired men who like to say "Now there's a boy"—gave him a guest card to the Sherry Island Golf Club for a week-end. So he signed his name one day on the register, and that afternoon played golf in a foursome with Mr. Hart and Mr. Sandwood and Mr. T. A. Hedrick. He did not consider it necessary to remark that he had once carried Mr. Hart's bag over this same links, and that he knew every trap and gully with his eyes shut—but he found himself glancing at the four caddies who trailed them, trying to catch a gleam or gesture that would remind him of himself, that would lessen the gap which lay between his present and his past.
그가 스물세 살 때, "허허, 저 녀석 참 괜찮군" 하는 말을 즐겨 하던 백발의 신사들 중 한 명인 하트 씨가 그에게 주말 동안 셰리 아일랜드 골프 클럽을 이용할 수 있는 초대 카드를 선물로 주었다. 그렇게 해서 어느 날 오후 그는 하트 씨, 샌드우드 씨, 그리고 T. A. 헤드릭 씨와 함께 4인 1조로 골프를 치게 되었다. 그는 과거에 바로 이 골프장에서 하트 씨의 골프 가방을 메고 다녔으며, 눈을 감고도 모든 벙커와 골짜기 위치를 꿰뚫고 있다는 사실을 굳이 내색할 필요는 없다고 생각했다. 하지만 그는 자신들의 뒤를 따르는 네 명의 캐디들을 자꾸만 힐끗거리고 있었다. 혹시라도 자신의 옛 모습을 떠올리게 하거나, 현재의 자신과 과거의 자신 사이에 놓인 간극을 좁혀줄 만한 어떤 눈빛이나 몸짓을 그들에게서 발견할 수 있을까 해서였다.
==============
It was a curious day, slashed abruptly with fleeting, familiar impressions. One minute he had the sense of being a trespasser—in the next he was impressed by the tremendous superiority he felt toward Mr. T. A. Hedrick, who was a bore and not even a good golfer any more.
그날은 순간적이고 익숙한 느낌이 들던, 기묘한 하루였다. 한순간 그는 자신이 마치 침입자라도 된 듯한 기분을 느꼈지만, 바로 다음 순간에는 T. A. 헤드릭 씨에 대해 압도적인 우월감을 느끼며 그를 대단찮게 여겼다. 헤드릭 씨는 지루한 인물인 데다, 이제는 골프 실력조차 형편없었기 때문이다.
============
Then, because of a ball Mr. Hart lost near the fifteenth green, an enormous thing happened. While they were searching the stiff grasses of the rough there was a clear call of "Fore!" from behind a hill in their rear. And as they all turned abruptly from their search a bright new ball sliced abruptly over the hill and caught Mr. T. A. Hedrick in the abdomen.
"By Gad!" cried Mr. T. A. Hedrick, "they ought to put some of these crazy women off the course. It's getting to be outrageous."
A head and a voice came up together over the hill:
"Do you mind if we go through?"
"You hit me in the stomach!" declared Mr. Hedrick wildly.
"Did I?" The girl approached the group of men. "I'm sorry. I yelled 'Fore!'"
Her glance fell casually on each of the men—then scanned the fairway for her ball.
"Did I bounce into the rough?"
It was impossible to determine whether this question was ingenuous or malicious. In a moment, however, she left no doubt, for as her partner came up over the hill she called cheerfully:
"Here I am! I'd have gone on the green except that I hit something."
그러던 중, 하트 씨가 15번 홀 그린 근처에서 공을 잃어버려, 엄청난 일이 벌어졌다. 그들이 러프의 억센 풀숲을 뒤지고 있을 때, 등 뒤 언덕 너머로부터 "위험해요!"라고 외치는 분명한 소리가 들려왔다. 모두가 하던 일을 멈추고 급히 고개를 돌리는 순간, 반짝이는 새 공 하나가 언덕을 넘어 날아와 T. A. 헤드릭 씨의 복부를 강타했다.
"맙소사!" T. A. 헤드릭 씨가 소리쳤다. "저 미친 여자들을 좀 쫓아내야겠어. 정말 너무하잖아."
언덕 너머로 머리가 보이고 동시에 목소리가 들려왔다.
"저희가 지나가도 될까요?"
"내 배를 쳤잖아!" 헤드릭 씨가 격분하여 소리쳤다.
"내가요?" 여자가 남자들에게 다가왔다. "죄송합니다. '위험'이라고 소리쳤어요."
그녀는 무심코 남자들을 한 명씩 훑어본 후, 페어웨이에서 자기 공을 찾으려고 했다.
""내 공이 러프에 빠졌나?"
이 의문이 순수한 것인지 악의적인 의도인지 분간하기 어려웠다. 하지만 잠시 후 그녀의 파트너가 언덕 너머로 올라오자, 그녀는 밝은 목소리로 외쳤다.
"저 여기 있어요! 뭐에 맞지 않았더라면 그린에 올라갔을 텐데."
=====================
As she took her stance for a short mashie shot, Dexter looked at her closely. She wore a blue gingham dress, rimmed at throat and shoulders with a white edging that accentuated her tan. The quality of exaggeration, of thinness, which had made her passionate eyes and down-turning mouth absurd at eleven, was gone now. She was arrestingly beautiful. The color in her cheeks was centred like the color in a picture—it was not a "high" color, but a sort of fluctuating and feverish warmth, so shaded that it seemed at any moment it would recede and disappear. This color and the mobility of her mouth gave a continual impression of flux, of intense life, of passionate vitality—balanced only partially by the sad luxury of her eyes.
그녀가 짧은 아이언 샷을 치기 위해 자세를 잡자, 덱스터는 그녀를 유심히 바라보았다. 그녀는 푸른색 면제 체크무늬 원피스를 입고 있었는데, 목과 어깨를 두른 흰색 테두리가 그녀의 그을린 피부를 더욱 돋보이게 했다. 열정적인 눈매와 아래로 처진 입매를 다소 우스꽝스럽게 보이게 했던 그 과장된 느낌이나 지나치게 마른 체형은 이제 사라지고 없었다. 그녀는 시선을 사로잡을 만큼 아름다웠다. 뺨 가운데 감도는 홍조는 마치 그림 속의 색채 같았는데, 그것은 단순히 붉게 상기된 색이 아니라 마치 금세라도 옅어져 사라질 듯 일렁이며, 열기 어린 온기를 머금은 듯한 색이었다. 이러한 홍조와 표정에 따라 변화하는 입매는 끊임없이 변하는 듯한 강렬한 생명력과 열정적인 활력을 느끼게 했으며, 그 분위기는 그녀의 눈에 서린 슬픈 듯한 우아함과 묘한 조화를 이루고 있었다.
She swung her mashie impatiently and without interest, pitching the ball into a sand-pit on the other side of the green. With a quick, insincere smile and a careless "Thank you!" she went on after it.
"That Judy Jones!" remarked Mr. Hedrick on the next tee, as they waited—some moments—for her to play on ahead. "All she needs is to be turned up and spanked for six months and then to be married off to an old-fashioned cavalry captain."
"My God, she's good-looking!" said Mr. Sandwood, who was just over thirty.
"Good-looking!" cried Mr. Hedrick contemptuously, "she always looks as if she wanted to be kissed! Turning those big cow-eyes on every calf in town!"
It was doubtful if Mr. Hedrick intended a reference to the maternal instinct.
"She'd play pretty good golf if she'd try," said Mr. Sandwood.
"She has no form," said Mr. Hedrick solemnly.
"She has a nice figure," said Mr. Sandwood.
"Better thank the Lord she doesn't drive a swifter ball," said Mr. Hart, winking at Dexter.
그녀는 서둘러 공을 쳤고, 공은 그린 반대편 벙커에 빠졌다. 어색한 미소를 지으며, "감사합니다!"라는 말을 무심히 건네고는 공을 쫓아갔다.
"저 주디 존스 말이야!" 헤드릭 씨가 옆 티에서 그녀가 먼저 플레이 하기를 기다리며 말했다. "6개월 동안 매를 맞고 정신 차리고 나서 구식 기병대 대장이랑 결혼시키면 되겠군."
"맙소사, 정말 예쁘군!" 서른 살이 조금 넘은 샌드우드 씨가 말했다.
"예쁘다고?!" 헤드릭 씨가 경멸적으로 외쳤다. "쟤는 항상 키스받고 싶어 하는 것처럼 보여! 마을 송아지들마다 그 큰 눈으로 쳐다보잖아!"
헤드릭 씨가 모성 본능을 염두에 두고 한 말인지는 의문이었다.
"마음만 먹으면 꽤 훌륭한 골프 실력을 보여줄 텐데 말이야." 샌드우드 씨가 말했다.
"자세가 엉망이야." 헤드릭 씨가 엄숙하게 말했다.
"몸매는 아주 좋지." 샌드우드 씨가 말했다.
"공을 더 멀리 날리지 않는 걸 다행으로 여겨야 할걸." 하트 씨가 덱스터에게 윙크하며 말했다.
Later in the afternoon the sun went down with a riotous swirl of gold and varying blues and scarlets, and left the dry, rustling night of Western summer. Dexter watched from the veranda of the Golf Club, watched the even overlap of the waters in the little wind, silver molasses under the harvest-moon. Then the moon held a finger to her lips and the lake became a clear pool, pale and quiet. Dexter put on his bathing-suit and swam out to the farthest raft, where he stretched dripping on the wet canvas of the spring-board.
오후 늦게 해가 저물며 황금빛과 다채로운 푸른색, 진홍색이 뒤섞여 소용돌이치며 화려한 광경을 연출했고, 이내 여름밤 서부 특유의 건조한 밤이 찾아왔다. 덱스터는 골프 회관 베란다에 서서, 수확 계절의 달빛 아래, 미풍 속에 은빛 당밀처럼 일렁이며 잔잔하게 겹쳐지는 호수 물결을 바라보았다. 그러다 달이 입술에 손가락을 갖다 대듯 고요해지자, 호수는 창백하고 정적인 맑은 웅덩이로 변했다. 덱스터는 수영복으로 갈아입고 가장 멀리 떨어진 뗏목까지 헤엄쳐 나아가, 그곳 다이빙대의 젖은 캔버스 위에 몸을 뻗고 누웠다.
There was a fish jumping and a star shining and the lights around the lake were gleaming. Over on a dark peninsula a piano was playing the songs of last summer and of summers before that—songs from "Chin-Chin" and "The Count of Luxemburg" and "The Chocolate Soldier"—and because the sound of a piano over a stretch of water had always seemed beautiful to Dexter he lay perfectly quiet and listened.
물고기 한 마리가 튀어오르고, 별이 빛나는 가운데 호수 주변의 불빛들이 반짝이고 있었다. 어둑한 호수의 선착장 쪽으로부터 '친친', '룩셈부르크 백작', '초콜릿 병사' 등에 나오는 여름철의 노래들을 연주하는 피아노 소리가 들려왔는데, 물 위로 울려 퍼지는 피아노 소리를 언제나 아름답게 느꼈던 덱스터는 숨을 죽인 채 가만히 그 소리에 귀를 기울였다.
The tune the piano was playing at that moment had been gay and new five years before when Dexter was a sophomore at college. They had played it at a prom once when he could not afford the luxury of proms, and he had stood outside the gymnasium and listened. The sound of the tune precipitated in him a sort of ecstasy and it was with that ecstasy he viewed what happened to him now. It was a mood of intense appreciation, a sense that, for once, he was magnificently attune to life and that everything about him was radiating a brightness and a glamour he might never know again.
그 순간 피아노 선율은 덱스터가 대학 2학년이던 5년 전만 해도 경쾌하고 새로운 곡이었다. 그가 무도회에 참석할 형편이 되지 못했던 시절 그때, 어느 무도회에서 그 곡이 연주되었을 때 그는 체육관 밖에 서서 그 소리를 듣곤 했었다. 그 선율은 그에게 일종의 황홀경을 불러일으켰고, 그는 바로 그 황홀경 속에서 지금 자신에게 펼쳐지는 상황을 바라보았다. 바로 삶을 깊이 음미하는 기분, 즉 자신이 삶과 더할 나위 없이 완벽한 조화를 이루며, 주변의 모든 것들이 다시는 경험하지 못할지도 모를 찬란함과 매혹을 발산하고 있다는 느낌이었다.
===
A low, pale oblong detached itself suddenly from the darkness of the Island, spitting forth the reverberate sound of a racing motor-boat. Two white streamers of cleft water rolled themselves out behind it and almost immediately the boat was beside him, drowning out the hot tinkle of the piano in the drone of its spray. Dexter raising himself on his arms was aware of a figure standing at the wheel, of two dark eyes regarding him over the lengthening space of water—then the boat had gone by and was sweeping in an immense and purposeless circle of spray round and round in the middle of the lake. With equal eccentricity one of the circles flattened out and headed back toward the raft.
섬의 어둠 속으로부터 납짝하고 희끄무레한 직사각형 물체가 갑자기 모습을 드러내더니, 굉음을 내며 질주하는 모터보트의 소리를 사방으로 뿜어냈다. 보트 뒤편으로는 물살이 갈라지며 두 갈래의 하얀 띠가 길게 펼쳐졌고, 보트는 순식간에 그의 곁으로 다가와 물보라 소리로 피아노의 경쾌한 선율을 집어삼켜 버렸다. 팔로 몸을 일으킨 덱스터는 조타석에 서 있는 한 형체와, 점점 멀어지는 수면 너머로 자신을 응시하는 두 개의 검은 눈동자를 보았다. 곧 보트는 호수 한가운데에서 거대하고도 목적 없는 물보라의 원을 그리며 뱅글뱅글 원을 그리며 돌기 시작했다. 그러다 종잡을 수 없는 움직임으로 그 원 중 하나가 궤도를 바꾸어 뗏목을 향해 다시 다가왔다.
"Who's that?" she called, shutting off her motor. She was so near now that Dexter could see her bathing-suit, which consisted apparently of pink rompers.
The nose of the boat bumped the raft, and as the latter tilted rakishly he was precipitated toward her. With different degrees of interest they recognized each other.
"Aren't you one of those men we played through this afternoon?" she demanded.
He was.
"Well, do you know how to drive a motor-boat? Because if you do I wish you'd drive this one so I can ride on the surf-board behind. My name is Judy Jones"—she favored him with an absurd smirk—rather, what tried to be a smirk, for, twist her mouth as she might, it was not grotesque, it was merely beautiful—"and I live in a house over there on the Island, and in that house there is a man waiting for me. When he drove up at the door I drove out of the dock because he says I'm his ideal."
"저 사람 누구야?" 그녀는 엔진을 끄며 소리쳤다. 그녀가 가까이 다가오자,덱스터는 그녀의 수영복 차림을 볼 수 있었다. 분홍색 점프수트 두 벌로 이루어진 수영복이었다.
보트의 앞 부분이 뗏목에 부딪히자 뗏목이 비스듬히 기울어졌고, 덱스터는 그녀 쪽으로 쏠렸다. 서로 다른 정도의 흥미를 느끼며 둘은 서로를 알아보았다.
"오늘 오후에 우리랑 같이 놀았던 남자들 중 한 명 아니야?" 그녀가 물었다.
맞는 말이었다.
"저기, 모터보트 운전할 줄 아세요? 할 줄 아신다면 이걸 좀 몰아주셨으면 좋겠어요. 그래야 제가 뒤에서 서핑-보드를 탈 수 있거든요. 제 이름은 주디 존스예요." 그녀는 짓궂은 미소를 지었다. 아니, 정확히 말하자면 미소를 지으려 애썼다고 해야 할 것이다. 입매를 아무리 비틀어 보아도 기괴해지기는커녕 그저 아름다울 뿐이었으니까. "저는 저기 섬에 있는 집에 사는데, 그 집에 절 기다리는 남자가 한 명 있거든요. 그 사람이 차를 몰고 집 앞에 도착했을 때 저는 부두에서 보트를 몰고 나왔어요. 그는 자기가 생각하는 이상형이 바로 저라면서 저를 찾아왔거든요."
There was a fish jumping and a star shining and the lights around the lake were gleaming. Dexter sat beside Judy Jones and she explained how her boat was driven. Then she was in the water, swimming to the floating surf-board with a sinuous crawl. Watching her was without effort to the eye, watching a branch waving or a sea-gull flying. Her arms, burned to butternut, moved sinuously among the dull platinum ripples, elbow appearing first, casting the forearm back with a cadence of falling water, then reaching out and down, stabbing a path ahead.
물고기가 튀어 오르고 별이 빛나는 가운데, 호수 주변의 불빛들이 반짝이고 있었다. 덱스터는 주디 존스 곁에 앉아 있었고, 그녀는 자신의 보트를 어떻게 조종하는지 설명해 주었다. 이내 그녀는 물속으로 들어가 유연한 크롤 영법으로 물 위에 떠 있는 서핑-보드를 향해 헤엄쳐 갔다. 흔들리는 나뭇가지나 날아가는 갈매기를 바라볼 때처럼, 그녀의 모습을 지켜보는 일은 눈에 전혀 부담이 없었다. 갈색으로 그을린 그녀의 팔은 은은한 백금빛 잔물결 사이를 유연하게 움직였다. 팔꿈치가 먼저 솟아오른 다음, 마치 떨어지는 물줄기 같은 리듬으로 아래팔을 뒤로 넘겼고, 이어서 앞을 향해 팔을 뻗어 내리며 물살을 갈랐다.
They moved out into the lake; turning, Dexter saw that she was kneeling on the low rear of the now uptilted surf-board.
"Go faster," she called, "fast as it'll go."
Obediently he jammed the lever forward and the white spray mounted at the bow. When he looked around again the girl was standing up on the rushing board, her arms spread wide, her eyes lifted toward the moon.
"It's awful cold," she shouted. "What's your name?"
He told her.
"Well, why don't you come to dinner to-morrow night?"
His heart turned over like the fly-wheel of the boat, and, for the second time, her casual whim gave a new direction to his life.
그들은 호수로 나아갔다. 덱스터는 뒤를 돌아보니 그녀가 이제 위로 기울어진 서핑-보드의 낮은 뒷부분에 무릎을 꿇고 있는 것을 보았다.
"더 빨리," 그녀가 외쳤다. "최대한 빨리."
그는 고분고분 레버를 앞으로 밀었고, 하얀 물보라가 뱃머리로 솟구쳤다. 그가 다시 돌아보니 소녀는 빠르게 나아가는 보드 위에 서서, 두 팔을 활짝 벌리고 달을 올려다보고 있었다.
III
Next evening while he waited for her to come down-stairs, Dexter peopled the soft deep summer room and the sun-porch that opened from it with the men who had already loved Judy Jones. He knew the sort of men they were—the men who when he first went to college had entered from the great prep schools with graceful clothes and the deep tan of healthy summers. He had seen that, in one sense, he was better than these men. He was newer and stronger. Yet in acknowledging to himself that he wished his children to be like them he was admitting that he was but the rough, strong stuff from which they eternally sprang.
When the time had come for him to wear good clothes, he had known who were the best tailors in America, and the best tailors in America had made him the suit he wore this evening. He had acquired that particular reserve peculiar to his university, that set it off from other universities. He recognized the value to him of such a mannerism and he had adopted it; he knew that to be careless in dress and manner required more confidence than to be careful. But carelessness was for his children. His mother's name had been Krimslich. She was a Bohemian of the peasant class and she had talked broken English to the end of her days. Her son must keep to the set patterns.
At a little after seven Judy Jones came down-stairs. She wore a blue silk afternoon dress, and he was disappointed at first that she had not put on something more elaborate. This feeling was accentuated when, after a brief greeting, she went to the door of a butler's pantry and pushing it open called: "You can serve dinner, Martha." He had rather expected that a butler would announce dinner, that there would be a cocktail. Then he put these thoughts behind him as they sat down side by side on a lounge and looked at each other.
"Father and mother won't be here," she said thoughtfully.
He remembered the last time he had seen her father, and he was glad the parents were not to be here to-night—they might wonder who he was. He had been born in Keeble, a Minnesota village fifty miles farther north, and he always gave Keeble as his home instead of Black Bear Village. Country towns were well enough to come from if they weren't inconveniently in sight and used as footstools by fashionable lakes.
They talked of his university, which she had visited frequently during the past two years, and of the near-by city which supplied Sherry Island with its patrons, and whither Dexter would return next day to his prospering laundries.
During dinner she slipped into a moody depression which gave Dexter a feeling of uneasiness. Whatever petulance she uttered in her throaty voice worried him. Whatever she smiled at—at him, at a chicken liver, at nothing—it disturbed him that her smile could have no root in mirth, or even in amusement. When the scarlet corners of her lips curved down, it was less a smile than an invitation to a kiss.
Then, after dinner, she led him out on the dark sun-porch and deliberately changed the atmosphere.
"Do you mind if I weep a little?" she said.
"I'm afraid I'm boring you," he responded quickly.
"You're not. I like you. But I've just had a terrible afternoon. There was a man I cared about, and this afternoon he told me out of a clear sky that he was poor as a church-mouse. He'd never even hinted it before. Does this sound horribly mundane?"
"Perhaps he was afraid to tell you."
"Suppose he was," she answered. "He didn't start right. You see, if I'd thought of him as poor—well, I've been mad about loads of poor men, and fully intended to marry them all. But in this case, I hadn't thought of him that way, and my interest in him wasn't strong enough to survive the shock. As if a girl calmly informed her fiancé that she was a widow. He might not object to widows, but——
"Let's start right," she interrupted herself suddenly. "Who are you, anyhow?"
For a moment Dexter hesitated. Then:
"I'm nobody," he announced. "My career is largely a matter of futures."
"Are you poor?"
"No," he said frankly, "I'm probably making more money than any man my age in the Northwest. I know that's an obnoxious remark, but you advised me to start right."
There was a pause. Then she smiled and the corners of her mouth drooped and an almost imperceptible sway brought her closer to him, looking up into his eyes. A lump rose in Dexter's throat, and he waited breathless for the experiment, facing the unpredictable compound that would form mysteriously from the elements of their lips. Then he saw—she communicated her excitement to him, lavishly, deeply, with kisses that were not a promise but a fulfilment. They aroused in him not hunger demanding renewal but surfeit that would demand more surfeit ... kisses that were like charity, creating want by holding back nothing at all.
It did not take him many hours to decide that he had wanted Judy Jones ever since he was a proud, desirous little boy.
IV
It began like that—and continued, with varying shades of intensity, on such a note right up to the dénouement. Dexter surrendered a part of himself to the most direct and unprincipled personality with which he had ever come in contact. Whatever Judy wanted, she went after with the full pressure of her charm. There was no divergence of method, no jockeying for position or premeditation of effects—there was a very little mental side to any of her affairs. She simply made men conscious to the highest degree of her physical loveliness. Dexter had no desire to change her. Her deficiencies were knit up with a passionate energy that transcended and justified them.
When, as Judy's head lay against his shoulder that first night, she whispered, "I don't know what's the matter with me. Last night I thought I was in love with a man and to-night I think I'm in love with you——"—it seemed to him a beautiful and romantic thing to say. It was the exquisite excitability that for the moment he controlled and owned. But a week later he was compelled to view this same quality in a different light. She took him in her roadster to a picnic supper, and after supper she disappeared, likewise in her roadster, with another man. Dexter became enormously upset and was scarcely able to be decently civil to the other people present. When she assured him that she had not kissed the other man, he knew she was lying—yet he was glad that she had taken the trouble to lie to him.
He was, as he found before the summer ended, one of a varying dozen who circulated about her. Each of them had at one time been favored above all others—about half of them still basked in the solace of occasional sentimental revivals. Whenever one showed signs of dropping out through long neglect, she granted him a brief honeyed hour, which encouraged him to tag along for a year or so longer. Judy made these forays upon the helpless and defeated without malice, indeed half unconscious that there was anything mischievous in what she did.
When a new man came to town every one dropped out—dates were automatically cancelled.
The helpless part of trying to do anything about it was that she did it all herself. She was not a girl who could be "won" in the kinetic sense—she was proof against cleverness, she was proof against charm; if any of these assailed her too strongly she would immediately resolve the affair to a physical basis, and under the magic of her physical splendor the strong as well as the brilliant played her game and not their own. She was entertained only by the gratification of her desires and by the direct exercise of her own charm. Perhaps from so much youthful love, so many youthful lovers, she had come, in self-defense, to nourish herself wholly from within.
Succeeding Dexter's first exhilaration came restlessness and dissatisfaction. The helpless ecstasy of losing himself in her was opiate rather than tonic. It was fortunate for his work during the winter that those moments of ecstasy came infrequently. Early in their acquaintance it had seemed for a while that there was a deep and spontaneous mutual attraction—that first August, for example—three days of long evenings on her dusky veranda, of strange wan kisses through the late afternoon, in shadowy alcoves or behind the protecting trellises of the garden arbors, of mornings when she was fresh as a dream and almost shy at meeting him in the clarity of the rising day. There was all the ecstasy of an engagement about it, sharpened by his realization that there was no engagement. It was during those three days that, for the first time, he had asked her to marry him. She said "maybe some day," she said "kiss me," she said "I'd like to marry you," she said "I love you"—she said—nothing.
The three days were interrupted by the arrival of a New York man who visited at her house for half September. To Dexter's agony, rumor engaged them. The man was the son of the president of a great trust company. But at the end of a month it was reported that Judy was yawning. At a dance one night she sat all evening in a motor-boat with a local beau, while the New Yorker searched the club for her frantically. She told the local beau that she was bored with her visitor, and two days later he left. She was seen with him at the station, and it was reported that he looked very mournful indeed.
On this note the summer ended. Dexter was twenty-four, and he found himself increasingly in a position to do as he wished. He joined two clubs in the city and lived at one of them. Though he was by no means an integral part of the stag-lines at these clubs, he managed to be on hand at dances where Judy Jones was likely to appear. He could have gone out socially as much as he liked—he was an eligible young man, now, and popular with down-town fathers. His confessed devotion to Judy Jones had rather solidified his position. But he had no social aspirations and rather despised the dancing men who were always on tap for the Thursday or Saturday parties and who filled in at dinners with the younger married set. Already he was playing with the idea of going East to New York. He wanted to take Judy Jones with him. No disillusion as to the world in which she had grown up could cure his illusion as to her desirability.
Remember that—for only in the light of it can what he did for her be understood.
Eighteen months after he first met Judy Jones he became engaged to another girl. Her name was Irene Scheerer, and her father was one of the men who had always believed in Dexter. Irene was light-haired and sweet and honorable, and a little stout, and she had two suitors whom she pleasantly relinquished when Dexter formally asked her to marry him.
Summer, fall, winter, spring, another summer, another fall—so much he had given of his active life to the incorrigible lips of Judy Jones. She had treated him with interest, with encouragement, with malice, with indifference, with contempt. She had inflicted on him the innumerable little slights and indignities possible in such a case—as if in revenge for having ever cared for him at all. She had beckoned him and yawned at him and beckoned him again and he had responded often with bitterness and narrowed eyes. She had brought him ecstatic happiness and intolerable agony of spirit. She had caused him untold inconvenience and not a little trouble. She had insulted him, and she had ridden over him, and she had played his interest in her against his interest in his work—for fun. She had done everything to him except to criticise him—this she had not done—it seemed to him only because it might have sullied the utter indifference she manifested and sincerely felt toward him.
When autumn had come and gone again it occurred to him that he could not have Judy Jones. He had to beat this into his mind but he convinced himself at last. He lay awake at night for a while and argued it over. He told himself the trouble and the pain she had caused him, he enumerated her glaring deficiencies as a wife. Then he said to himself that he loved her, and after a while he fell asleep. For a week, lest he imagined her husky voice over the telephone or her eyes opposite him at lunch, he worked hard and late, and at night he went to his office and plotted out his years.
At the end of a week he went to a dance and cut in on her once. For almost the first time since they had met he did not ask her to sit out with him or tell her that she was lovely. It hurt him that she did not miss these things—that was all. He was not jealous when he saw that there was a new man to-night. He had been hardened against jealousy long before.
He stayed late at the dance. He sat for an hour with Irene Scheerer and talked about books and about music. He knew very little about either. But he was beginning to be master of his own time now, and he had a rather priggish notion that he—the young and already fabulously successful Dexter Green—should know more about such things.
That was in October, when he was twenty-five. In January, Dexter and Irene became engaged. It was to be announced in June, and they were to be married three months later.
The Minnesota winter prolonged itself interminably, and it was almost May when the winds came soft and the snow ran down into Black Bear Lake at last. For the first time in over a year Dexter was enjoying a certain tranquillity of spirit. Judy Jones had been in Florida, and afterward in Hot Springs, and somewhere she had been engaged, and somewhere she had broken it off. At first, when Dexter had definitely given her up, it had made him sad that people still linked them together and asked for news of her, but when he began to be placed at dinner next to Irene Scheerer people didn't ask him about her any more—they told him about her. He ceased to be an authority on her.
May at last. Dexter walked the streets at night when the darkness was damp as rain, wondering that so soon, with so little done, so much of ecstasy had gone from him. May one year back had been marked by Judy's poignant, unforgivable, yet forgiven turbulence—it had been one of those rare times when he fancied she had grown to care for him. That old penny's worth of happiness he had spent for this bushel of content. He knew that Irene would be no more than a curtain spread behind him, a hand moving among gleaming tea-cups, a voice calling to children ... fire and loveliness were gone, the magic of nights and the wonder of the varying hours and seasons ... slender lips, down-turning, dropping to his lips and bearing him up into a heaven of eyes.... The thing was deep in him. He was too strong and alive for it to die lightly.
In the middle of May when the weather balanced for a few days on the thin bridge that led to deep summer he turned in one night at Irene's house. Their engagement was to be announced in a week now—no one would be surprised at it. And to-night they would sit together on the lounge at the University Club and look on for an hour at the dancers. It gave him a sense of solidity to go with her—she was so sturdily popular, so intensely "great."
He mounted the steps of the brownstone house and stepped inside.
"Irene," he called.
Mrs. Scheerer came out of the living-room to meet him.
"Dexter," she said, "Irene's gone up-stairs with a splitting headache. She wanted to go with you but I made her go to bed."
"Nothing serious, I——"
"Oh, no. She's going to play golf with you in the morning. You can spare her for just one night, can't you, Dexter?"
Her smile was kind. She and Dexter liked each other. In the living-room he talked for a moment before he said good-night.
Returning to the University Club, where he had rooms, he stood in the doorway for a moment and watched the dancers. He leaned against the door-post, nodded at a man or two—yawned.
"Hello, darling."
The familiar voice at his elbow startled him. Judy Jones had left a man and crossed the room to him—Judy Jones, a slender enamelled doll in cloth of gold: gold in a band at her head, gold in two slipper points at her dress's hem. The fragile glow of her face seemed to blossom as she smiled at him. A breeze of warmth and light blew through the room. His hands in the pockets of his dinner-jacket tightened spasmodically. He was filled with a sudden excitement.
"When did you get back?" he asked casually.
"Come here and I'll tell you about it."
She turned and he followed her. She had been away—he could have wept at the wonder of her return. She had passed through enchanted streets, doing things that were like provocative music. All mysterious happenings, all fresh and quickening hopes, had gone away with her, come back with her now.
She turned in the doorway.
"Have you a car here? If you haven't, I have."
"I have a coupé."
In then, with a rustle of golden cloth. He slammed the door. Into so many cars she had stepped—like this—like that—her back against the leather, so—her elbow resting on the door—waiting. She would have been soiled long since had there been anything to soil her—except herself—but this was her own self outpouring.
With an effort he forced himself to start the car and back into the street. This was nothing, he must remember. She had done this before, and he had put her behind him, as he would have crossed a bad account from his books.
He drove slowly down-town and, affecting abstraction, traversed the deserted streets of the business section, peopled here and there where a movie was giving out its crowd or where consumptive or pugilistic youth lounged in front of pool halls. The clink of glasses and the slap of hands on the bars issued from saloons, cloisters of glazed glass and dirty yellow light.
She was watching him closely and the silence was embarrassing; yet in this crisis he could find no casual word with which to profane the hour. At a convenient turning he began to zigzag back toward the University Club.
"Have you missed me?" she asked suddenly.
"Everybody missed you."
He wondered if she knew of Irene Scheerer. She had been back only a day—her absence had been almost contemporaneous with his engagement.
"What a remark!" Judy laughed sadly—without sadness. She looked at him searchingly. He became absorbed in the dashboard.
"You're handsomer than you used to be," she said thoughtfully. "Dexter, you have the most rememberable eyes."
He could have laughed at this, but he did not laugh. It was the sort of thing that was said to sophomores. Yet it stabbed at him.
"I'm awfully tired of everything, darling." She called every one darling, endowing the endearment with careless, individual comraderie. "I wish you'd marry me."
The directness of this confused him. He should have told her now that he was going to marry another girl, but he could not tell her. He could as easily have sworn that he had never loved her.
"I think we'd get along," she continued, on the same note, "unless probably you've forgotten me and fallen in love with another girl."
Her confidence was obviously enormous. She had said, in effect, that she found such a thing impossible to believe, that if it were true he had merely committed a childish indiscretion—and probably to show off. She would forgive him, because it was not a matter of any moment but rather something to be brushed aside lightly.
"Of course you could never love anybody but me," she continued, "I like the way you love me. Oh, Dexter, have you forgotten last year?"
"No, I haven't forgotten."
"Neither have I!"
Was she sincerely moved—or was she carried along by the wave of her own acting?
"I wish we could be like that again," she said, and he forced himself to answer:
"I don't think we can."
"I suppose not.... I hear you're giving Irene Scheerer a violent rush."
There was not the faintest emphasis on the name, yet Dexter was suddenly ashamed.
"Oh, take me home," cried Judy suddenly; "I don't want to go back to that idiotic dance—with those children."
Then, as he turned up the street that led to the residence district, Judy began to cry quietly to herself. He had never seen her cry before.
The dark street lightened, the dwellings of the rich loomed up around them, he stopped his coupé in front of the great white bulk of the Mortimer Joneses house, somnolent, gorgeous, drenched with the splendor of the damp moonlight. Its solidity startled him. The strong walls, the steel of the girders, the breadth and beam and pomp of it were there only to bring out the contrast with the young beauty beside him. It was sturdy to accentuate her slightness—as if to show what a breeze could be generated by a butterfly's wing.
He sat perfectly quiet, his nerves in wild clamor, afraid that if he moved he would find her irresistibly in his arms. Two tears had rolled down her wet face and trembled on her upper lip.
"I'm more beautiful than anybody else," she said brokenly, "why can't I be happy?" Her moist eyes tore at his stability—her mouth turned slowly downward with an exquisite sadness: "I'd like to marry you if you'll have me, Dexter. I suppose you think I'm not worth having, but I'll be so beautiful for you, Dexter."
A million phrases of anger, pride, passion, hatred, tenderness fought on his lips. Then a perfect wave of emotion washed over him, carrying off with it a sediment of wisdom, of convention, of doubt, of honor. This was his girl who was speaking, his own, his beautiful, his pride.
"Won't you come in?" He heard her draw in her breath sharply.
Waiting.
"All right," his voice was trembling, "I'll come in."
V
It was strange that neither when it was over nor a long time afterward did he regret that night. Looking at it from the perspective of ten years, the fact that Judy's flare for him endured just one month seemed of little importance. Nor did it matter that by his yielding he subjected himself to a deeper agony in the end and gave serious hurt to Irene Scheerer and to Irene's parents, who had befriended him. There was nothing sufficiently pictorial about Irene's grief to stamp itself on his mind.
Dexter was at bottom hard-minded. The attitude of the city on his action was of no importance to him, not because he was going to leave the city, but because any outside attitude on the situation seemed superficial. He was completely indifferent to popular opinion. Nor, when he had seen that it was no use, that he did not possess in himself the power to move fundamentally or to hold Judy Jones, did he bear any malice toward her. He loved her, and he would love her until the day he was too old for loving—but he could not have her. So he tasted the deep pain that is reserved only for the strong, just as he had tasted for a little while the deep happiness.
Even the ultimate falsity of the grounds upon which Judy terminated the engagement that she did not want to "take him away" from Irene—Judy, who had wanted nothing else—did not revolt him. He was beyond any revulsion or any amusement.
He went East in February with the intention of selling out his laundries and settling in New York—but the war came to America in March and changed his plans. He returned to the West, handed over the management of the business to his partner, and went into the first officers' training-camp in late April. He was one of those young thousands who greeted the war with a certain amount of relief, welcoming the liberation from webs of tangled emotion.
VI
This story is not his biography, remember, although things creep into it which have nothing to do with those dreams he had when he was young. We are almost done with them and with him now. There is only one more incident to be related here, and it happens seven years farther on.
It took place in New York, where he had done well—so well that there were no barriers too high for him. He was thirty-two years old, and, except for one flying trip immediately after the war, he had not been West in seven years. A man named Devlin from Detroit came into his office to see him in a business way, and then and there this incident occurred, and closed out, so to speak, this particular side of his life.
"So you're from the Middle West," said the man Devlin with careless curiosity. "That's funny—I thought men like you were probably born and raised on Wall Street. You know—wife of one of my best friends in Detroit came from your city. I was an usher at the wedding."
Dexter waited with no apprehension of what was coming.
"Judy Simms," said Devlin with no particular interest; "Judy Jones she was once."
"Yes, I knew her." A dull impatience spread over him. He had heard, of course, that she was married—perhaps deliberately he had heard no more.
"Awfully nice girl," brooded Devlin meaninglessly, "I'm sort of sorry for her."
"Why?" Something in Dexter was alert, receptive, at once.
"Oh, Lud Simms has gone to pieces in a way. I don't mean he ill-uses her, but he drinks and runs around——-"
"Doesn't she run around?"
"No. Stays at home with her kids."
"Oh."
"She's a little too old for him," said Devlin.
"Too old!" cried Dexter. "Why, man, she's only twenty-seven."
He was possessed with a wild notion of rushing out into the streets and taking a train to Detroit. He rose to his feet spasmodically.
"I guess you're busy," Devlin apologized quickly. "I didn't realize——"
"No, I'm not busy," said Dexter, steadying his voice. "I'm not busy at all. Not busy at all. Did you say she was—twenty-seven? No, I said she was twenty-seven."
"Yes, you did," agreed Devlin dryly.
"Go on, then. Go on."
"What do you mean?"
"About Judy Jones."
Devlin looked at him helplessly.
"Well, that's—I told you all there is to it. He treats her like the devil. Oh, they're not going to get divorced or anything. When he's particularly outrageous she forgives him. In fact, I'm inclined to think she loves him. She was a pretty girl when she first came to Detroit."
A pretty girl! The phrase struck Dexter as ludicrous.
"Isn't she—a pretty girl, any more?"
"Oh, she's all right."
"Look here," said Dexter, sitting down suddenly, "I don't understand. You say she was a 'pretty girl' and now you say she's 'all right.' I don't understand what you mean—Judy Jones wasn't a pretty girl, at all. She was a great beauty. Why, I knew her, I knew her. She was——"
Devlin laughed pleasantly.
"I'm not trying to start a row," he said. "I think Judy's a nice girl and I like her. I can't understand how a man like Lud Simms could fall madly in love with her, but he did." Then he added: "Most of the women like her."
Dexter looked closely at Devlin, thinking wildly that there must be a reason for this, some insensitivity in the man or some private malice.
"Lots of women fade just like that" Devlin snapped his fingers. "You must have seen it happen. Perhaps I've forgotten how pretty she was at her wedding. I've seen her so much since then, you see. She has nice eyes."
A sort of dulness settled down upon Dexter. For the first time in his life he felt like getting very drunk. He knew that he was laughing loudly at something Devlin had said, but he did not know what it was or why it was funny. When, in a few minutes, Devlin went he lay down on his lounge and looked out the window at the New York sky-line into which the sun was sinking in dull lovely shades of pink and gold.
He had thought that having nothing else to lose he was invulnerable at last—but he knew that he had just lost something more, as surely as if he had married Judy Jones and seen her fade away before his eyes.
The dream was gone. Something had been taken from him. In a sort of panic he pushed the palms of his hands into his eyes and tried to bring up a picture of the waters lapping on Sherry Island and the moonlit veranda, and gingham on the golf-links and the dry sun and the gold color of her neck's soft down. And her mouth damp to his kisses and her eyes plaintive with melancholy and her freshness like new fine linen in the morning. Why, these things were no longer in the world! They had existed and they existed no longer.
For the first time in years the tears were streaming down his face. But they were for himself now. He did not care about mouth and eyes and moving hands. He wanted to care, and he could not care. For he had gone away and he could never go back any more. The gates were closed, the sun was gone down, and there was no beauty but the gray beauty of steel that withstands all time. Even the grief he could have borne was left behind in the country of illusion, of youth, of the richness of life, where his winter dreams had flourished.
"Long ago," he said, "long ago, there was something in me, but now that thing is gone. Now that thing is gone, that thing is gone. I cannot cry. I cannot care. That thing will come back no more."
번역: 박흥서
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Scott Fitzgerald
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