Easy English ↔ Source English

Chapter 21

Source paragraphs anchor each row. Semantically matched easy-English paragraphs stay grouped beside the source they rewrite.

Easy-1500 · B1 Easy English only 한국어 읽기판

Easy-English paragraphs are matched to the source by meaning; numbering follows the source text.

01

Easy English

A small bright lawn ran toward the great bright sea. Red flowers and dark-leaved plants edged the grass. Brown iron flower pots stood along a turning path. Their flowers hung over the carefully cleaned stones.

Source English

The small bright lawn stretched away smoothly to the big bright sea.
02

Easy English

The Beaufort house stood halfway back from the cliff. Its square wood walls were brown. Yellow and brown lines crossed the metal verandah roof. They were painted to look like a cloth cover.

Source English

The turf was hemmed with an edge of scarlet geranium and coleus, and cast-iron vases painted in chocolate colour, standing at intervals along the winding path that led to the sea, looped their garlands of petunia and ivy geranium above the neatly raked gravel.
03

Easy English

Two large round targets stood before thick bushes. Across the lawn, a real tent faced them. Long seats and garden chairs surrounded it.
Ladies in summer dresses talked with gentlemen in grey coats. From time to time, a slim girl left the tent. Her stiff white dress moved around her as she raised a bow.
She sent an arrow toward one target. The crowd stopped talking to watch. Then its soft voices rose again.

Source English

Half way between the edge of the cliff and the square wooden house (which was also chocolate-coloured, but with the tin roof of the verandah striped in yellow and brown to represent an awning) two large targets had been placed against a background of shrubbery. On the other side of the lawn, facing the targets, was pitched a real tent, with benches and garden-seats about it. A number of ladies in summer dresses and gentlemen in grey frock-coats and tall hats stood on the lawn or sat upon the benches; and every now and then a slender girl in starched muslin would step from the tent, bow in hand, and speed her shaft at one of the targets, while the spectators interrupted their talk to watch the result.
04

Easy English

Newland Archer watched from the house verandah. Bright blue and yellow pots stood beside the shining steps. Each held a sharp green plant.
Blue flowers grew below the verandah, edged with more red ones. Behind him stood open glass doors. Their lace curtains moved in the sea air.
Through them, Newland saw smooth wooden floors shining like glass. Small soft chairs and low tables stood like islands. Silver objects crowded their covers.

Source English

Newland Archer, standing on the verandah of the house, looked curiously down upon this scene. On each side of the shiny painted steps was a large blue china flower-pot on a bright yellow china stand. A spiky green plant filled each pot, and below the verandah ran a wide border of blue hydrangeas edged with more red geraniums. Behind him, the French windows of the drawing-rooms through which he had passed gave glimpses, between swaying lace curtains, of glassy parquet floors islanded with chintz poufs, dwarf armchairs, and velvet tables covered with trifles in silver.
05

Easy English

The Newport Archery Club met at the Beauforts' every August. Archery was the sport of shooting arrows from a bow. Until lately, only croquet competed with it.
Now lawn tennis was becoming more popular. Yet people thought tennis too rough for a social party. Archery let young women show pretty dresses and fine positions.

Source English

The Newport Archery Club always held its August meeting at the Beauforts'. The sport, which had hitherto known no rival but croquet, was beginning to be discarded in favour of lawn-tennis; but the latter game was still considered too rough and inelegant for social occasions, and as an opportunity to show off pretty dresses and graceful attitudes the bow and arrow held their own.
06

Easy English

Newland looked down at the known scene with wonder. Everything continued in its old way. Yet his own feelings about it were completely different.
Newport first made him understand this change. During the winter in New York, he noticed it less. He and May settled into their new house there.
The house was pale green and yellow. A window curved out from the front wall. The entrance hall copied the red and black rooms of old Pompeii.
Newland gladly returned to his daily work at the law office. That habit connected him with his former self. He also chose a fine grey horse for May.
The Wellands gave her a brougham, a small closed carriage. Finding its horse gave Newland real pleasure. His new library gave him even more.
His family doubted every choice for that room. Still, he created the library from his dreams. Dark raised patterns covered the walls.
Eastlake bookcases stood beside honest, heavy chairs and tables. At the Century, he met Ned Winsett again. At the Knickerbocker, he saw his fashionable young friends.
His days held law work and dinners. Sometimes friends ate at the Archer house. On other nights, he went to an opera or play.

Source English

Archer looked down with wonder at the familiar spectacle. It surprised him that life should be going on in the old way when his own reactions to it had so completely changed. It was Newport that had first brought home to him the extent of the change. In New York, during the previous winter, after he and May had settled down in the new greenish-yellow house with the bow-window and the Pompeian vestibule, he had dropped back with relief into the old routine of the office, and the renewal of this daily activity had served as a link with his former self. Then there had been the pleasurable excitement of choosing a showy grey stepper for May's brougham (the Wellands had given the carriage), and the abiding occupation and interest of arranging his new library, which, in spite of family doubts and disapprovals, had been carried out as he had dreamed, with a dark embossed paper, Eastlake book-cases and "sincere" arm-chairs and tables. At the Century he had found Winsett again, and at the Knickerbocker the fashionable young men of his own set; and what with the hours dedicated to the law and those given to dining out or entertaining friends at home, with an occasional evening at the Opera or the play, the life he was living had still seemed a fairly real and inevitable sort of business.
07

Easy English

This life still seemed real and necessary. Newport was different. It meant freedom from every duty and endless holiday play.
Newland wanted to spend summer on Mount Desert. It was a distant island near the coast of Maine. Strong families from Boston and Philadelphia camped there.
Their simple houses stood among woods and water. Reports spoke of wild and beautiful views. Life there sounded almost like a hunter's life.

Source English

But Newport represented the escape from duty into an atmosphere of unmitigated holiday-making. Archer had tried to persuade May to spend the summer on a remote island off the coast of Maine (called, appropriately enough, Mount Desert), where a few hardy Bostonians and Philadelphians were camping in "native" cottages, and whence came reports of enchanting scenery and a wild, almost trapper-like existence amid woods and waters.
08

Easy English

But the Wellands always went to Newport. They owned one of its square houses on the cliffs. Newland found no good reason for May to stay away.
Mrs. Welland gave him another reason. May worked hard over summer clothes in Paris. Why own them if she could not wear them?

Source English

But the Wellands always went to Newport, where they owned one of the square boxes on the cliffs, and their son-in-law could adduce no good reason why he and May should not join them there. As Mrs. Welland rather tartly pointed out, it was hardly worth while for May to have worn herself out trying on summer clothes in Paris if she was not to be allowed to wear them; and this argument was of a kind to which Archer had as yet found no answer.
09

Easy English

Newland still had no answer to that kind of argument. May also failed to understand his dislike of Newport. It seemed a pleasant and sensible summer plan.
She reminded him that he once loved the place. He could not deny it. So he said marriage would make Newport better than ever.
Now he watched the bright lawn at the Beauforts'. A cold feeling passed through him. He knew he would not like Newport at all.

Source English

May herself could not understand his obscure reluctance to fall in with so reasonable and pleasant a way of spending the summer. She reminded him that he had always liked Newport in his bachelor days, and as this was indisputable he could only profess that he was sure he was going to like it better than ever now that they were to be there together. But as he stood on the Beaufort verandah and looked out on the brightly peopled lawn it came home to him with a shiver that he was not going to like it at all.
10

Easy English

This was not dear May's fault. During their travels, they sometimes walked out of step. Back among her usual people, they moved together again.
Newland always knew she would meet his hopes. She did. He married her when his light love affairs began to disgust him.
At that exact time, he met a charming girl. May promised peace, order, and friendship. She also brought a duty he could never escape.
He could not call his choice a mistake. May gave him everything he expected. She was among New York's most beautiful young wives.

Source English

It was not May's fault, poor dear. If, now and then, during their travels, they had fallen slightly out of step, harmony had been restored by their return to the conditions she was used to. He had always foreseen that she would not disappoint him; and he had been right. He had married (as most young men did) because he had met a perfectly charming girl at the moment when a series of rather aimless sentimental adventures were ending in premature disgust; and she had represented peace, stability, comradeship, and the steadying sense of an unescapable duty.
11

Easy English

She was popular, sweet, and sensible. Newland liked being her husband. He never ignored the social rewards of his good fortune.
His madness before the wedding now seemed distant. He trained himself to call it his final foolish trial. The thought of marrying Countess Olenska seemed almost impossible now.
Ellen remained only as one sad ghost among many. Yet removing such thoughts left his mind empty. Each sound seemed to return from its bare walls.

Source English

He could not say that he had been mistaken in his choice, for she had fulfilled all that he had expected. It was undoubtedly gratifying to be the husband of one of the handsomest and most popular young married women in New York, especially when she was also one of the sweetest-tempered and most reasonable of wives; and Archer had never been insensible to such advantages. As for the momentary madness which had fallen upon him on the eve of his marriage, he had trained himself to regard it as the last of his discarded experiments. The idea that he could ever, in his senses, have dreamed of marrying the Countess Olenska had become almost unthinkable, and she remained in his memory simply as the most plaintive and poignant of a line of ghosts.
12

Easy English

That emptiness changed the party below him. The busy guests looked like children playing in a graveyard.

Source English

But all these abstractions and eliminations made of his mind a rather empty and echoing place, and he supposed that was one of the reasons why the busy animated people on the Beaufort lawn shocked him as if they had been children playing in a grave-yard.
13

Easy English

Newland heard women's clothes beside him. Marchioness Manson came through the open window. As always, cloth and hanging ends covered her in wild confusion.
A weak straw hat sat on her head. Many turns of old thin cloth held it there. She carried a tiny black sunshade with a white carved handle.
The little sunshade looked foolish beside her great hat. Medora moved toward Newland under both.

Source English

He heard a murmur of skirts beside him, and the Marchioness Manson fluttered out of the drawing-room window. As usual, she was extraordinarily festooned and bedizened, with a limp Leghorn hat anchored to her head by many windings of faded gauze, and a little black velvet parasol on a carved ivory handle absurdly balanced over her much larger hatbrim.
14

Easy English

"My dear Newland, I did not know you and May arrived! You came only yesterday? Ah, yes, business and professional duties."
"Many husbands can join their wives only for the weekend. I understand perfectly."
She leaned her head and looked through partly closed eyes. "Marriage is one long giving up. I often told my Ellen so."

Source English

"My dear Newland, I had no idea that you and May had arrived! You yourself came only yesterday, you say? Ah, business--business--professional duties ... I understand. Many husbands, I know, find it impossible to join their wives here except for the week-end." She cocked her head on one side and languished at him through screwed-up eyes. "But marriage is one long sacrifice, as I used often to remind my Ellen--"
15

Easy English

Newland's heart stopped with a strange pull. The same thing happened once before. A door seemed to shut between him and the world.
The break lasted only a moment. Soon he heard Medora answering some question from him.

Source English

Archer's heart stopped with the queer jerk which it had given once before, and which seemed suddenly to slam a door between himself and the outer world; but this break of continuity must have been of the briefest, for he presently heard Medora answering a question he had apparently found voice to put.
16

Easy English

"No, I am not staying here," she said. "I am with the Blenkers at Portsmouth. Their lonely country life is wonderful."
"Beaufort kindly sent his famous fast horses this morning. So I could see one of Regina's garden parties. Tonight I return to country life."
"The dear, unusual Blenkers rented an old farmhouse. They gather important and interesting people around them."
Medora lowered herself under her wide hat. A weak red color touched her face.
"Dr. Agathon Carver holds Inner Thought meetings there this week. They are very different from this bright worldly party. But I always live between opposite things."
"To me, sameness is the only death. I always tell Ellen to fear it. Every great wrong grows from sameness."
"But my poor child now hates the world. She has refused every Newport invitation. She even refused her grandmother Mingott."
"I could hardly bring her to the Blenkers. Her life is unhealthy and unnatural. If only she listened while the door was open."
Medora suddenly changed her subject. "Shall we watch this exciting match? I hear your May is shooting."

Source English

"No, I am not staying here, but with the Blenkers, in their delicious solitude at Portsmouth. Beaufort was kind enough to send his famous trotters for me this morning, so that I might have at least a glimpse of one of Regina's garden-parties; but this evening I go back to rural life. The Blenkers, dear original beings, have hired a primitive old farm-house at Portsmouth where they gather about them representative people ..." She drooped slightly beneath her protecting brim, and added with a faint blush: "This week Dr. Agathon Carver is holding a series of Inner Thought meetings there. A contrast indeed to this gay scene of worldly pleasure--but then I have always lived on contrasts! To me the only death is monotony. I always say to Ellen: Beware of monotony; it's the mother of all the deadly sins. But my poor child is going through a phase of exaltation, of abhorrence of the world. You know, I suppose, that she has declined all invitations to stay at Newport, even with her grandmother Mingott? I could hardly persuade her to come with me to the Blenkers', if you will believe it! The life she leads is morbid, unnatural. Ah, if she had only listened to me when it was still possible ... When the door was still open ... But shall we go down and watch this absorbing match? I hear your May is one of the competitors."
17

Easy English

Beaufort crossed the lawn toward them. He was tall and heavy inside a tight London coat. One of his own orchids filled his buttonhole.
Newland did not see him for several months. Beaufort now looked different. The hot light made his red face seem thick and full.
His back remained straight and his shoulders square. Without that strong walk, he would seem old and overfed. His costly clothes now seemed too rich.

Source English

Strolling toward them from the tent Beaufort advanced over the lawn, tall, heavy, too tightly buttoned into a London frock-coat, with one of his own orchids in its buttonhole. Archer, who had not seen him for two or three months, was struck by the change in his appearance. In the hot summer light his floridness seemed heavy and bloated, and but for his erect square-shouldered walk he would have looked like an over-fed and over-dressed old man.
18

Easy English

Many stories about Beaufort filled Newport. That spring, he sailed through the West Indies. His new steam yacht carried him.
People reported seeing a woman like Fanny Ring with him. She appeared beside him at several stops. No one could prove the story.
Builders made the yacht in Scotland. It had rooms for washing covered in small colored stones. Such rich comforts were almost unknown at sea.
People said the yacht cost half a million dollars. After returning, Beaufort gave Regina a great pearl necklace. It looked like a rich payment for his wrongs.
His money should carry such costs. Still, darker talk continued in Fifth Avenue and Wall Street. Some said bad railway deals hurt him.
Others blamed a woman who always demanded more. Each time people said his bank might fail, Beaufort spent more. He built new glass houses for orchids.
He bought more race horses. He added another costly French picture to his gallery. His spending answered every warning.

Source English

There were all sorts of rumours afloat about Beaufort. In the spring he had gone off on a long cruise to the West Indies in his new steam-yacht, and it was reported that, at various points where he had touched, a lady resembling Miss Fanny Ring had been seen in his company. The steam-yacht, built in the Clyde, and fitted with tiled bath-rooms and other unheard-of luxuries, was said to have cost him half a million; and the pearl necklace which he had presented to his wife on his return was as magnificent as such expiatory offerings are apt to be. Beaufort's fortune was substantial enough to stand the strain; and yet the disquieting rumours persisted, not only in Fifth Avenue but in Wall Street. Some people said he had speculated unfortunately in railways, others that he was being bled by one of the most insatiable members of her profession; and to every report of threatened insolvency Beaufort replied by a fresh extravagance: the building of a new row of orchid-houses, the purchase of a new string of race-horses, or the addition of a new Meissonnier or Cabanel to his picture-gallery.
19

Easy English

Beaufort reached Medora and Newland with his usual half-unkind smile. "Hello, Medora. Did those fast horses do their work? Forty minutes?"
"That is not bad. Of course, we needed to protect your nerves."
He greeted Newland and turned back with them. Then he spoke quietly across Medora. Newland did not hear the words.
Medora made one of her strange foreign movements. "What can one do?" she answered in French.

Source English

He advanced toward the Marchioness and Newland with his usual half-sneering smile. "Hullo, Medora! Did the trotters do their business? Forty minutes, eh? ... Well, that's not so bad, considering your nerves had to be spared." He shook hands with Archer, and then, turning back with them, placed himself on Mrs. Manson's other side, and said, in a low voice, a few words which their companion did not catch.
20

Easy English

Beaufort frowned more deeply. Still, he made his face look pleased for Newland.
"You know May will take the first prize," he said.

Source English

The Marchioness replied by one of her queer foreign jerks, and a "Que voulez-vous?" which deepened Beaufort's frown; but he produced a good semblance of a congratulatory smile as he glanced at Archer to say: "You know May's going to carry off the first prize."
21

Easy English

"Then it stays in the family," Medora answered lightly.
They reached the tent. Mrs. Beaufort met them in a cloud of purple cloth. Thin coverings floated around her.

Source English

"Ah, then it remains in the family," Medora rippled; and at that moment they reached the tent and Mrs. Beaufort met them in a girlish cloud of mauve muslin and floating veils.
22

Easy English

May was just leaving the tent. She wore white, with a pale green band around her waist. A ring of green leaves circled her hat.
She looked like Diana again, distant from ordinary life. She looked the same on her engagement night. No thought seemed to mark her clear eyes.
No feeling seemed to touch her heart. Newland knew she could think and feel. Still, life seemed to fall from her without leaving a mark.

Source English

May Welland was just coming out of the tent. In her white dress, with a pale green ribbon about the waist and a wreath of ivy on her hat, she had the same Diana-like aloofness as when she had entered the Beaufort ball-room on the night of her engagement. In the interval not a thought seemed to have passed behind her eyes or a feeling through her heart; and though her husband knew that she had the capacity for both he marvelled afresh at the way in which experience dropped away from her.
23

Easy English

May carried a bow and arrow. She stepped onto the white mark drawn on the grass. Then she raised the bow to her shoulder.
Her position had the grace of an old stone goddess. The watching crowd made a soft sound of pleasure. Newland felt the warm pride of ownership.
That feeling often gave him a short, false peace. Behind May, the other women waited. Mrs. Reggie Chivers and the Merry girls stood there.
Young Thorleys, Dagonets, and Mingotts bent over their scores. Brown and gold heads touched above the papers. Light dresses and flowered hats formed a soft rainbow.
All were young and pretty in the summer light. None moved with May's natural grace. Her muscles grew tight, and her face became happily serious.
She gave her whole mind to the act of strength.

Source English

She had her bow and arrow in her hand, and placing herself on the chalk-mark traced on the turf she lifted the bow to her shoulder and took aim. The attitude was so full of a classic grace that a murmur of appreciation followed her appearance, and Archer felt the glow of proprietorship that so often cheated him into momentary well-being. Her rivals--Mrs. Reggie Chivers, the Merry girls, and divers rosy Thorleys, Dagonets and Mingotts, stood behind her in a lovely anxious group, brown heads and golden bent above the scores, and pale muslins and flower-wreathed hats mingled in a tender rainbow. All were young and pretty, and bathed in summer bloom; but not one had the nymph-like ease of his wife, when, with tense muscles and happy frown, she bent her soul upon some feat of strength.
24

Easy English

"Good God," Lawrence Lefferts said nearby. "Not one holds a bow like she does."
Beaufort answered him. "True, but that is the only kind of target she will ever hit."

Source English

"Gad," Archer heard Lawrence Lefferts say, "not one of the lot holds the bow as she does"; and Beaufort retorted: "Yes; but that's the only kind of target she'll ever hit."
25

Easy English

Newland felt an unreasonable anger. Beaufort's hard joke praised May's goodness. A husband should want others to see that goodness.
A dirty-minded man's lack of interest should prove May's quality. Yet the words sent another cold touch through Newland's heart.
What if perfect goodness was only the lack of something? Perhaps it was a curtain hiding an empty room. Newland watched May hit the exact center.
Her face was warm but calm as she returned. He felt he never lifted that curtain.

Source English

Archer felt irrationally angry. His host's contemptuous tribute to May's "niceness" was just what a husband should have wished to hear said of his wife. The fact that a coarse-minded man found her lacking in attraction was simply another proof of her quality; yet the words sent a faint shiver through his heart. What if "niceness" carried to that supreme degree were only a negation, the curtain dropped before an emptiness? As he looked at May, returning flushed and calm from her final bull's-eye, he had the feeling that he had never yet lifted that curtain.
26

Easy English

The other women and the crowd praised her. May received their words with her finest simple grace. No one could be jealous of her victories.
She would look equally peaceful after losing. But then her eyes found Newland. Her face shone because she saw his pleasure.

Source English

She took the congratulations of her rivals and of the rest of the company with the simplicity that was her crowning grace. No one could ever be jealous of her triumphs because she managed to give the feeling that she would have been just as serene if she had missed them. But when her eyes met her husband's her face glowed with the pleasure she saw in his.
27

Easy English

Mrs. Welland's little carriage waited for them. Its sides were made like a basket. Two ponies stood before it.
May took the reins, and Newland sat beside her. They joined the line of carriages leaving the party.

Source English

Mrs. Welland's basket-work pony-carriage was waiting for them, and they drove off among the dispersing carriages, May handling the reins and Archer sitting at her side.
28

Easy English

Late sunlight still touched the lawns and bushes. Two lines of fine vehicles rolled along Bellevue Avenue. Their well-dressed passengers left the Beauforts or the Ocean Drive.

Source English

The afternoon sunlight still lingered upon the bright lawns and shrubberies, and up and down Bellevue Avenue rolled a double line of victorias, dog-carts, landaus and "vis-à-vis," carrying well-dressed ladies and gentlemen away from the Beaufort garden-party, or homeward from their daily afternoon turn along the Ocean Drive.
29

Easy English

"Shall we visit Granny?" May asked suddenly. "I want to tell her about my prize. We have plenty of time before dinner."

Source English

"Shall we go to see Granny?" May suddenly proposed. "I should like to tell her myself that I've won the prize. There's lots of time before dinner."
30

Easy English

Newland agreed. May turned the ponies down Narragansett Avenue. She crossed Spring Street and drove toward the rocky open land.
Catherine the Great lived in this unfashionable area. She never cared much about custom, and she hated wasting money. In her youth, she built a strange country house on cheap land.
It had many pointed roofs and crossed wooden beams. The house looked over the bay. Short oak trees crowded around its wide verandahs.
A turning road led up to the front door. Iron deer stood beside it. Blue glass balls rested among hills of red flowers.
The front door was dark shining wood. A striped roof covered it. Inside, a narrow hall had black and yellow stars across its floor.
Four small square rooms opened from the hall. Thick papers covered their walls. On each ceiling, an Italian painter placed the gods of old Greece.
Mrs. Mingott now slept in one of those rooms. Her great body made stairs impossible. She spent each day in the room beside it.
She sat in a great chair between an open door and window. Her hand always moved a fan made from a wide leaf. Her great breast held it far from her body.
The moving air reached only the little cloth covers on her chair. Their hanging edges moved, but Catherine did not cool.

Source English

Archer acquiesced, and she turned the ponies down Narragansett Avenue, crossed Spring Street and drove out toward the rocky moorland beyond. In this unfashionable region Catherine the Great, always indifferent to precedent and thrifty of purse, had built herself in her youth a many-peaked and cross-beamed cottage-orné on a bit of cheap land overlooking the bay. Here, in a thicket of stunted oaks, her verandahs spread themselves above the island-dotted waters. A winding drive led up between iron stags and blue glass balls embedded in mounds of geraniums to a front door of highly-varnished walnut under a striped verandah-roof; and behind it ran a narrow hall with a black and yellow star-patterned parquet floor, upon which opened four small square rooms with heavy flock-papers under ceilings on which an Italian house-painter had lavished all the divinities of Olympus. One of these rooms had been turned into a bedroom by Mrs. Mingott when the burden of flesh descended on her, and in the adjoining one she spent her days, enthroned in a large armchair between the open door and window, and perpetually waving a palm-leaf fan which the prodigious projection of her bosom kept so far from the rest of her person that the air it set in motion stirred only the fringe of the anti-macassars on the chair-arms.
31

Easy English

Catherine helped hurry Newland's marriage. Since then, she always treated him like a close friend. Helping him made her feel still closer to him.
She believed wild love caused his hurry. Strong feelings delighted her unless they wasted money. So she greeted Newland with a knowing light in her eyes.
She often made playful remarks about his early marriage. May never seemed to understand them.

Source English

Since she had been the means of hastening his marriage old Catherine had shown to Archer the cordiality which a service rendered excites toward the person served. She was persuaded that irrepressible passion was the cause of his impatience; and being an ardent admirer of impulsiveness (when it did not lead to the spending of money) she always received him with a genial twinkle of complicity and a play of allusion to which May seemed fortunately impervious.
32

Easy English

Catherine closely studied May's prize. A small arrow with a diamond point was fixed to May's dress. Beaufort gave it after the match.
"In my day, a fine gold pin was enough," Catherine said. "Still, Beaufort always pays well for his show."

Source English

She examined and appraised with much interest the diamond-tipped arrow which had been pinned on May's bosom at the conclusion of the match, remarking that in her day a filigree brooch would have been thought enough, but that there was no denying that Beaufort did things handsomely.
33

Easy English

She laughed softly. "This will become a family treasure, my dear. You must leave it to your oldest girl."
She pinched May's white arm. Red color rushed over May's face.
"What did I say to raise that red flag?" Catherine asked. "Will there be no daughters? Only boys?"
May became even redder. Catherine laughed again.
"Can I not say that either? My children want those gods painted off my ceiling. I am thankful someone here can shock nobody."

Source English

"Quite an heirloom, in fact, my dear," the old lady chuckled. "You must leave it in fee to your eldest girl." She pinched May's white arm and watched the colour flood her face. "Well, well, what have I said to make you shake out the red flag? Ain't there going to be any daughters--only boys, eh? Good gracious, look at her blushing again all over her blushes! What--can't I say that either? Mercy me--when my children beg me to have all those gods and goddesses painted out overhead I always say I'm too thankful to have somebody about me that nothing can shock!"
34

Easy English

Newland burst out laughing. May joined him, though her whole face burned.

Source English

Archer burst into a laugh, and May echoed it, crimson to the eyes.
35

Easy English

"Now tell me everything about the party," Catherine said. "That foolish Medora will never give me a clear report."
"Cousin Medora?" May asked. "I thought she was returning to Portsmouth."
"She is, but first she must collect Ellen here. Did you not know Ellen spent today with me?"
Catherine called Ellen's refusal to spend summer there foolish. Yet she stopped arguing with young people fifty years earlier.
"Ellen! Ellen!" she called in her high old voice.

Source English

"Well, now tell me all about the party, please, my dears, for I shall never get a straight word about it out of that silly Medora," the ancestress continued; and, as May exclaimed: "Cousin Medora? But I thought she was going back to Portsmouth?" she answered placidly: "So she is--but she's got to come here first to pick up Ellen. Ah--you didn't know Ellen had come to spend the day with me? Such fol-de-rol, her not coming for the summer; but I gave up arguing with young people about fifty years ago. Ellen--Ellen!" she cried in her shrill old voice, trying to bend forward far enough to catch a glimpse of the lawn beyond the verandah.
36

Easy English

She tried to lean forward and see the lawn. No one answered. Catherine struck the shining floor with her stick.
A brown-skinned maid entered in a bright head cloth. She saw Miss Ellen walking down toward the shore. Catherine turned to Newland.

Source English

There was no answer, and Mrs. Mingott rapped impatiently with her stick on the shiny floor. A mulatto maid-servant in a bright turban, replying to the summons, informed her mistress that she had seen "Miss Ellen" going down the path to the shore; and Mrs. Mingott turned to Archer.
37

Easy English

"Run and bring her back, like a good grandson. This pretty lady can tell me about the party."

Source English

"Run down and fetch her, like a good grandson; this pretty lady will describe the party to me," she said; and Archer stood up as if in a dream.
38

Easy English

Newland rose as if inside a dream. People often said Countess Olenska's name during the last eighteen months. He also knew the chief facts of her life.
Ellen spent the previous summer at Newport. She attended many social events then. In autumn, she gave up the perfect house Beaufort found for her.
She moved to Washington. During winter, people said she shone among foreign public officers there. Such company gave Washington much of its social light.
Newland heard many opposing reports about her. People discussed her looks, speech, ideas, and friends. He listened as if they spoke about someone long dead.
Then Medora said Ellen's name at the match. At once, Ellen became alive to him. Medora's foolish voice opened an old hidden room.
Newland saw Ellen's little room lit by fire. He heard carriage wheels returning along the empty street.
He remembered a story about poor children in Tuscany. They lit dry grass inside a cave beside a road. The sudden light showed old painted figures in a grave.

Source English

He had heard the Countess Olenska's name pronounced often enough during the year and a half since they had last met, and was even familiar with the main incidents of her life in the interval. He knew that she had spent the previous summer at Newport, where she appeared to have gone a great deal into society, but that in the autumn she had suddenly sub-let the "perfect house" which Beaufort had been at such pains to find for her, and decided to establish herself in Washington. There, during the winter, he had heard of her (as one always heard of pretty women in Washington) as shining in the "brilliant diplomatic society" that was supposed to make up for the social short-comings of the Administration. He had listened to these accounts, and to various contradictory reports on her appearance, her conversation, her point of view and her choice of friends, with the detachment with which one listens to reminiscences of some one long since dead; not till Medora suddenly spoke her name at the archery match had Ellen Olenska become a living presence to him again. The Marchioness's foolish lisp had called up a vision of the little fire-lit drawing-room and the sound of the carriage-wheels returning down the deserted street. He thought of a story he had read, of some peasant children in Tuscany lighting a bunch of straw in a wayside cavern, and revealing old silent images in their painted tomb ...
39

Easy English

The path to the shore fell away below the house. It reached a walk beside the water. Trees hung their long branches down like green tears.
Through that thin green cover, Newland saw Lime Rock. A white tower and tiny house stood there. Ida Lewis lived in that house.
She was the brave keeper of a lighthouse. A lighthouse was a tower whose light warned ships at night. Ida Lewis spent her honored old age there.
Beyond it stood Goat Island's low land and ugly public chimneys. The bay spread north in a gold light. Prudence Island and its low oaks lay farther away.
The shores of Conanicut were weak lines in the evening air. A narrow wooden pier reached out from the tree-lined walk. A pier was a wooden path built over water.

Source English

The way to the shore descended from the bank on which the house was perched to a walk above the water planted with weeping willows. Through their veil Archer caught the glint of the Lime Rock, with its white-washed turret and the tiny house in which the heroic light-house keeper, Ida Lewis, was living her last venerable years. Beyond it lay the flat reaches and ugly government chimneys of Goat Island, the bay spreading northward in a shimmer of gold to Prudence Island with its low growth of oaks, and the shores of Conanicut faint in the sunset haze.
40

Easy English

A little summer-house stood at its end. Inside it, a woman leaned against the rail. Her back faced the shore.
Newland stopped as if waking from sleep. The woman was Ellen. Yet he told himself that his past vision was only a dream.
Reality waited in the house above. Mrs. Welland's pony carriage would circle the front drive. May sat under the naked gods with secret hopes.
The Welland house stood across Newport. Mr. Welland was surely dressed for dinner already. He would walk the room with his watch in hand.
His weak stomach made him impatient. Every hour in that house followed a fixed plan. One could always know exactly what happened there.

Source English

From the willow walk projected a slight wooden pier ending in a sort of pagoda-like summer-house; and in the pagoda a lady stood, leaning against the rail, her back to the shore. Archer stopped at the sight as if he had waked from sleep. That vision of the past was a dream, and the reality was what awaited him in the house on the bank overhead: was Mrs. Welland's pony-carriage circling around and around the oval at the door, was May sitting under the shameless Olympians and glowing with secret hopes, was the Welland villa at the far end of Bellevue Avenue, and Mr. Welland, already dressed for dinner, and pacing the drawing-room floor, watch in hand, with dyspeptic impatience--for it was one of the houses in which one always knew exactly what is happening at a given hour.
41

Easy English

"What am I?" Newland thought. "A son-in-law."

Source English

"What am I? A son-in-law--" Archer thought.
42

Easy English

Ellen did not move. Newland stood halfway down the bank for a long moment. Boats of every kind cut lines across the bay.
White sailing boats came and went. Small steam boats passed fishing boats. Noisy boats pulled long black loads of coal behind them.
Ellen seemed held by the same sight. Beyond Fort Adams, the long sunset broke into a thousand fires. Its light caught one small sailboat leaving the bay.
Newland remembered a moment in the play The Shaughraun. Montague kissed Ada Dyas's ribbon. She did not know he was in the room.

Source English

The figure at the end of the pier had not moved. For a long moment the young man stood half way down the bank, gazing at the bay furrowed with the coming and going of sailboats, yacht-launches, fishing-craft and the trailing black coal-barges hauled by noisy tugs. The lady in the summer-house seemed to be held by the same sight. Beyond the grey bastions of Fort Adams a long-drawn sunset was splintering up into a thousand fires, and the radiance caught the sail of a catboat as it beat out through the channel between the Lime Rock and the shore. Archer, as he watched, remembered the scene in the Shaughraun, and Montague lifting Ada Dyas's ribbon to his lips without her knowing that he was in the room.
43

Easy English

"She does not know I am here," Newland thought. "She has not guessed. Would I know if she stood behind me?"
Then he made a private rule. If Ellen turned before the sail crossed Lime Rock, he would go to her. If she did not, he would return.

Source English

"She doesn't know--she hasn't guessed. Shouldn't I know if she came up behind me, I wonder?" he mused; and suddenly he said to himself: "If she doesn't turn before that sail crosses the Lime Rock light I'll go back."
44

Easy English

The little boat moved with the falling water. It passed in front of Lime Rock. For a moment, its sail covered Ida Lewis's house.
Then it crossed the white tower and its warning light. Newland waited. Wide, bright water opened between the island and the boat.

Source English

The boat was gliding out on the receding tide. It slid before the Lime Rock, blotted out Ida Lewis's little house, and passed across the turret in which the light was hung. Archer waited till a wide space of water sparkled between the last reef of the island and the stern of the boat; but still the figure in the summer-house did not move.
45

Easy English

Still, Ellen did not move. Newland turned and climbed the hill.

Source English

He turned and walked up the hill.
46

Easy English

"I am sorry you did not find Ellen," May said later. They drove home through the darkening evening. "I wanted to see her again."
"Perhaps she did not want to see us. She seems so changed."

Source English

"I'm sorry you didn't find Ellen--I should have liked to see her again," May said as they drove home through the dusk. "But perhaps she wouldn't have cared--she seems so changed."
47

Easy English

"Changed?" Newland asked without feeling. He kept his eyes on the ponies' moving ears.

Source English

"Changed?" echoed her husband in a colourless voice, his eyes fixed on the ponies' twitching ears.
48

Easy English

"She cares so little about her friends now," May said. "She gave up New York and her house. She spends time with such strange people."
"Think how uncomfortable the Blenkers' house must be. Ellen says she stays there to protect Medora. She wants to stop another terrible marriage."

Source English

"So indifferent to her friends, I mean; giving up New York and her house, and spending her time with such queer people. Fancy how hideously uncomfortable she must be at the Blenkers'! She says she does it to keep cousin Medora out of mischief: to prevent her marrying dreadful people. But I sometimes think we've always bored her."
49

Easy English

May's fresh voice grew slightly hard. Newland never heard that sound in it before.
"Sometimes I think Ellen always found us dull. After all, perhaps she would be happier with her husband."

Source English

Archer made no answer, and she continued, with a tinge of hardness that he had never before noticed in her frank fresh voice: "After all, I wonder if she wouldn't be happier with her husband."
50

Easy English

Newland suddenly laughed. "Holy innocence!"
May looked at him with a confused frown. He explained his cry.

Source English

He burst into a laugh. "Sancta simplicitas!" he exclaimed; and as she turned a puzzled frown on him he added: "I don't think I ever heard you say a cruel thing before."
51

Easy English

"I never heard you say anything cruel before."
"Cruel?"

Source English

"Cruel?"
52

Easy English

"People say angels enjoy watching the pains of the damned. Yet even angels do not call people happier in hell."

Source English

"Well--watching the contortions of the damned is supposed to be a favourite sport of the angels; but I believe even they don't think people happier in hell."
53

Easy English

"Then it is a pity she married abroad," May said calmly.
Her voice sounded like her mother's with Mr. Welland. Newland felt placed among unreasonable husbands.

Source English

"It's a pity she ever married abroad then," said May, in the placid tone with which her mother met Mr. Welland's vagaries; and Archer felt himself gently relegated to the category of unreasonable husbands.
54

Easy English

They drove down Bellevue Avenue and entered the Wellands' gate. Iron lamps stood on top of its cut wooden posts. Light already shone through the house windows.
As the carriage stopped, Newland saw his father-in-law. Mr. Welland walked across the drawing-room with his watch. He wore the hurt look Newland expected.
That look controlled people better than anger. Newland followed May into the hall. There, his feelings strangely turned around.

Source English

They drove down Bellevue Avenue and turned in between the chamfered wooden gate-posts surmounted by cast-iron lamps which marked the approach to the Welland villa. Lights were already shining through its windows, and Archer, as the carriage stopped, caught a glimpse of his father-in-law, exactly as he had pictured him, pacing the drawing-room, watch in hand and wearing the pained expression that he had long since found to be much more efficacious than anger.
55

Easy English

Usually the rich, heavy Welland house acted like a sleeping drug. Thick carpets softened every step. Watchful servants noticed every need.
Controlled clocks kept speaking of the hour. New cards and invitations always filled the hall table. A chain of tiny rules tied each hour to the next.
It also tied every family member to all others. Beside this order, a freer life seemed unsafe and unreal.
Now the Welland house itself seemed unreal. So did the life Newland must lead there. The short scene above the shore felt more true.
He still stood halfway down that bank inside his mind. The moment felt as close as blood in his body.

Source English

The young man, as he followed his wife into the hall, was conscious of a curious reversal of mood. There was something about the luxury of the Welland house and the density of the Welland atmosphere, so charged with minute observances and exactions, that always stole into his system like a narcotic. The heavy carpets, the watchful servants, the perpetually reminding tick of disciplined clocks, the perpetually renewed stack of cards and invitations on the hall table, the whole chain of tyrannical trifles binding one hour to the next, and each member of the household to all the others, made any less systematised and affluent existence seem unreal and precarious. But now it was the Welland house, and the life he was expected to lead in it, that had become unreal and irrelevant, and the brief scene on the shore, when he had stood irresolute, halfway down the bank, was as close to him as the blood in his veins.
56

Easy English

That night, Newland lay awake beside May. Moonlight crossed the carpet in their large flowered room. He thought of Ellen riding home through the shining beaches.
Beaufort's fast horses carried her through the night.

Source English

All night he lay awake in the big chintz bedroom at May's side, watching the moonlight slant along the carpet, and thinking of Ellen Olenska driving home across the gleaming beaches behind Beaufort's trotters.