專四晨讀美文：Sister Carrie

Sister Carrie
Now Carrie was affected by music.
Her nervous composition responded to certain strains,
much as certain strings of a harp vibrate
when a corresponding key of a piano is struck.
She was delicately moulded in sentiment,
and answered with vague ruminations
to certain wistful chords.
They awoke longings for those things which she did not have.
They caused her to cling closer to things she possessed.
One short song the young lady played
in a most soulful and tender mood.
Carrie heard it through the open door from the parlour below.
It was at that hour between afternoon and night
when, for the idle, the wanderer,
things are apt to take on a wistful aspect.
The mind wanders forth on far journeys
and returns with sheaves of withered and departed joys.
Carrie sat at her window looking out.
Drouet had been away since ten in the morning.
She had amused herself with a walk, a book by Bertha M.Clay
which Drouet had left there,
though she did not wholly enjoy the latter,
and by changing her dress for the evening.
Now she sat looking out across the park
as wistful and depressed as the nature
which craves variety and life can be under such circumstances.
As she contemplated her new state,
the strain from the parlour below stole upward.
With it her thoughts became coloured and enmeshed.
She reverted to the things which were best and saddest
within the small limit of her experience.
She became for the moment a repentant.
While she was in this mood Drouet came in,
bringing with him an entirely different atmosphere.
It was dusk and Carrie had neglected to light the lamp.
The fire in the grate, too, had burned low.
"Where are you, Cad?" he said,
using a pet name he had given her.
"Here," she answered.
There was something delicate and lonely in her voice,
but he could not hear it.
He had not the poetry in him
that would seek a woman out under such circumstances
and console her for the tragedy of life.
Instead, he struck a match and lighted the gas.
"Hello," he exclaimed, "you've been crying."
Her eyes were still wet with a few vague tears.
"Pshaw," he said, "you don't want to do that."
He took her hand, feeling in his good-natured egotism
that it was probably lack of his presence
which had made her lonely.
"Come on, now," he went on; "it's all right.
Let's waltz a little to that music."