Easy English ↔ Source English
Chapter 24
Source paragraphs anchor each row. Semantically matched easy-English paragraphs stay grouped beside the source they rewrite.
Easy-English paragraphs are matched to the source by meaning; numbering follows the source text.
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01
Easy English
Newland and Ellen ate lunch slowly. Quiet thought filled the spaces between sudden talk. Once they began, they found much to say.
Yet their words often stopped. Then long, silent talks seemed to continue between them. Each understood things that neither spoke.
Newland kept the talk away from his life. He did not plan this. He only feared missing one word of Ellen's story.
She leaned forward across the table. Her chin rested on her joined hands. She told him about the last eighteen months.
Source English
They lunched slowly and meditatively, with mute intervals between rushes of talk; for, the spell once broken, they had much to say, and yet moments when saying became the mere accompaniment to long duologues of silence. Archer kept the talk from his own affairs, not with conscious intention but because he did not want to miss a word of her history; and leaning on the table, her chin resting on her clasped hands, she talked to him of the year and a half since they had met.
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02
Easy English
Ellen grew tired of what people called society. New York was kind to her. Its people almost offered too much welcome.
She would never forget their kindness when she returned. At first, everything there felt new. But that bright first pleasure soon passed.
Ellen felt too different from the others. She could not care about the things they valued. So she decided to try Washington.
People there came from more places. They also held a greater range of ideas. Ellen now expected to make her home there.
She could also make a home for poor Medora. Every other relation lost patience with her. Yet Medora now needed care and protection most.
Without it, she might enter another dangerous marriage.
Source English
She had grown tired of what people called "society"; New York was kind, it was almost oppressively hospitable; she should never forget the way in which it had welcomed her back; but after the first flush of novelty she had found herself, as she phrased it, too "different" to care for the things it cared about--and so she had decided to try Washington, where one was supposed to meet more varieties of people and of opinion. And on the whole she should probably settle down in Washington, and make a home there for poor Medora, who had worn out the patience of all her other relations just at the time when she most needed looking after and protecting from matrimonial perils.
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03
Easy English
"But what about Dr. Carver?" Newland asked. "Do you not fear him? He stayed with you at the Blenkers'."
Source English
"But Dr. Carver--aren't you afraid of Dr. Carver? I hear he's been staying with you at the Blenkers'."
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04
Easy English
Ellen smiled. "The Carver danger is over. Dr. Carver is very clever. He wants a rich wife to pay for his plans."
"Medora only helps him attract attention. She tells everyone that she accepts his ideas."
Source English
She smiled. "Oh, the Carver danger is over. Dr. Carver is a very clever man. He wants a rich wife to finance his plans, and Medora is simply a good advertisement as a convert."
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05
Easy English
"What ideas?"
Source English
"A convert to what?"
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06
Easy English
"Every kind of new and foolish social plan. Still, they interest me. Our friends follow old rules without ever looking at them."
"Worse, those rules came from another country. Why discover America only to copy somewhere else?"
Ellen smiled across the table. "Would Christopher Columbus cross the ocean for this? Would he only attend the opera with the Selfridge Merrys?"
Source English
"To all sorts of new and crazy social schemes. But, do you know, they interest me more than the blind conformity to tradition--somebody else's tradition--that I see among our own friends. It seems stupid to have discovered America only to make it into a copy of another country." She smiled across the table. "Do you suppose Christopher Columbus would have taken all that trouble just to go to the Opera with the Selfridge Merrys?"
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07
Easy English
Newland's face changed color. "Do you say such things to Beaufort?"
Source English
Archer changed colour. "And Beaufort--do you say these things to Beaufort?" he asked abruptly.
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08
Easy English
"I have not seen him for a long time. But I once did, and he understands."
Source English
"I haven't seen him for a long time. But I used to; and he understands."
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09
Easy English
"That is what I always told you. You do not like us. You like Beaufort because he is unlike us."
Newland looked around the plain room. Beyond it lay the bare beach. A line of hard white houses followed the shore.
"We are terribly dull," he said. "We have no character, color, or difference. Why do you not return to Europe?"
Source English
"Ah, it's what I've always told you; you don't like us. And you like Beaufort because he's so unlike us." He looked about the bare room and out at the bare beach and the row of stark white village houses strung along the shore. "We're damnably dull. We've no character, no colour, no variety.--I wonder," he broke out, "why you don't go back?"
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10
Easy English
Ellen's eyes grew dark. Newland expected an angry answer. Instead, she sat quietly and considered his question.
Fear touched him. Perhaps Ellen also wondered why she stayed.
Source English
Her eyes darkened, and he expected an indignant rejoinder. But she sat silent, as if thinking over what he had said, and he grew frightened lest she should answer that she wondered too.
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11
Easy English
At last, she answered. "I believe I stay because of you."
Source English
At length she said: "I believe it's because of you."
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12
Easy English
She spoke without heat or an invitation. Her words offered nothing to Newland's pride. Still, his face burned to his hair.
He did not dare speak or move. Her words seemed like a rare butterfly, a light insect with bright wings. One small motion might frighten it away.
If he remained still, perhaps more would gather around it.
Source English
It was impossible to make the confession more dispassionately, or in a tone less encouraging to the vanity of the person addressed. Archer reddened to the temples, but dared not move or speak: it was as if her words had been some rare butterfly that the least motion might drive off on startled wings, but that might gather a flock about it if it were left undisturbed.
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13
Easy English
"At least, you taught me something," Ellen continued. "Beneath New York's dull surface, very fine feelings live."
"They are gentle and easily hurt. Beside them, people from my other life seem cheap. Even the people I loved most seem so."
She pulled her troubled brows together. "I cannot explain it well. My old life's finest pleasures carried a hard price."
"People paid with mean acts and dirty choices. I never understood that before."
Source English
"At least," she continued, "it was you who made me understand that under the dullness there are things so fine and sensitive and delicate that even those I most cared for in my other life look cheap in comparison. I don't know how to explain myself"--she drew together her troubled brows--"but it seems as if I'd never before understood with how much that is hard and shabby and base the most exquisite pleasures may be paid."
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14
Easy English
Newland wanted to answer sharply. At least she knew those fine pleasures. But the need in her eyes kept him silent.
Source English
"Exquisite pleasures--it's something to have had them!" he felt like retorting; but the appeal in her eyes kept him silent.
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15
Easy English
"I want complete honesty with you and myself," Ellen said. "For a long time, I hoped for this chance."
"I wanted to tell you how you helped me. I wanted to tell you what you made of me."
Source English
"I want," she went on, "to be perfectly honest with you--and with myself. For a long time I've hoped this chance would come: that I might tell you how you've helped me, what you've made of me--"
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16
Easy English
Newland stared under a dark frown. Then he stopped her with a laugh.
"And what do you think you made of me?"
Source English
Archer sat staring beneath frowning brows. He interrupted her with a laugh. "And what do you make out that you've made of me?"
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17
Easy English
Ellen's face lost color. "Of you?"
Source English
She paled a little. "Of you?"
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18
Easy English
"Yes. You shaped me far more than I shaped you. I married one woman because another told me to."
Source English
"Yes: for I'm of your making much more than you ever were of mine. I'm the man who married one woman because another one told him to."
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19
Easy English
A quick warmth crossed her pale face. "You promised not to say such things today."
Source English
Her paleness turned to a fugitive flush. "I thought--you promised--you were not to say such things today."
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20
Easy English
"That is like a woman," Newland said bitterly. "None of you will follow a bad matter to its end."
Source English
"Ah--how like a woman! None of you will ever see a bad business through!"
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21
Easy English
Ellen lowered her voice. "Is your marriage bad for May?"
Source English
She lowered her voice. "is it a bad business--for May?"
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22
Easy English
Newland stood at the window. His fingers beat against its raised lower frame. Every part of him felt Ellen's gentle care for her cousin.
Source English
He stood in the window, drumming against the raised sash, and feeling in every fibre the wistful tenderness with which she had spoken her cousin's name.
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23
Easy English
"We must always think of May," Ellen continued. "You taught me that, did you not?"
Source English
"For that's the thing we've always got to think of--haven't we--by your own showing?" she insisted.
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24
Easy English
"I taught you?" Newland repeated. His empty eyes remained on the sea.
Source English
"My own showing?" he echoed, his blank eyes still on the sea.
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25
Easy English
Ellen carefully followed her thought. "Perhaps giving things up has no value. Perhaps we save no one from pain or broken trust."
"Then everything that brought me home is false. My other life seemed poor because no one cared about such duties."
"If these duties mean nothing, they are only a dream."
Source English
"Or if not," she continued, pursuing her own thought with a painful application, "if it's not worth while to have given up, to have missed things, so that others may be saved from disillusionment and misery--then everything I came home for, everything that made my other life seem by contrast so bare and so poor because no one there took account of them--all these things are a sham or a dream--"
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26
Easy English
Newland turned but stayed beside the window. "Then nothing on earth should stop you from going back. Is that your meaning?"
Source English
He turned around without moving from his place. "And in that case there's no reason on earth why you shouldn't go back?" he concluded for her.
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27
Easy English
Ellen's eyes held him with desperate force. "Is there truly no reason?"
Source English
Her eyes were clinging to him desperately. "Oh, is there no reason?"
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28
Easy English
"Not if you placed every hope on my marriage. My marriage will not give you a fine sight. It cannot keep you here."
Ellen did not answer. Newland continued in a hard voice.
"What use is any of this? You first showed me a real life. In the same moment, you ordered me to continue a false one."
Source English
"Not if you staked your all on the success of my marriage. My marriage," he said savagely, "isn't going to be a sight to keep you here." She made no answer, and he went on: "What's the use? You gave me my first glimpse of a real life, and at the same moment you asked me to go on with a sham one. It's beyond human enduring--that's all."
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29
Easy English
"No person can carry that forever."
"Do not say that," Ellen cried. Tears filled her eyes. "I am carrying it too."
Source English
"Oh, don't say that; when I'm enduring it!" she burst out, her eyes filling.
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30
Easy English
Her arms fell along the table. She left her face completely open to his gaze. It showed her as fully as her whole uncovered body.
Her inner life stood behind it. Newland could not speak. He finally understood everything her face told him.
Source English
Her arms had dropped along the table, and she sat with her face abandoned to his gaze as if in the recklessness of a desperate peril. The face exposed her as much as if it had been her whole person, with the soul behind it: Archer stood dumb, overwhelmed by what it suddenly told him.
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31
Easy English
"You too?" he asked. "During all this time, you too?"
Source English
"You too--oh, all this time, you too?"
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32
Easy English
Ellen gave no spoken answer. Tears crossed the edges of her eyes. They moved slowly down her face.
Source English
For answer, she let the tears on her lids overflow and run slowly downward.
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33
Easy English
Half the room still lay between them. Neither tried to cross it. Newland almost forgot Ellen's body was present.
Then one of her hands caught his eyes. It lay open on the table. He remembered her little house on Twenty-third Street.
There, he watched the same hand to avoid her face. Now his thoughts turned around it like water around a deep hole.
Still, he did not move closer. He knew a love that lived on kisses and touches. This love was closer than his own bones.
A quick touch could not satisfy it. Newland feared destroying the sound of Ellen's words. He wanted their meaning to remain untouched.
One thought gave him peace. He would never again feel completely alone.
Source English
Half the width of the room was still between them, and neither made any show of moving. Archer was conscious of a curious indifference to her bodily presence: he would hardly have been aware of it if one of the hands she had flung out on the table had not drawn his gaze as on the occasion when, in the little Twenty-third Street house, he had kept his eye on it in order not to look at her face. Now his imagination spun about the hand as about the edge of a vortex; but still he made no effort to draw nearer. He had known the love that is fed on caresses and feeds them; but this passion that was closer than his bones was not to be superficially satisfied. His one terror was to do anything which might efface the sound and impression of her words; his one thought, that he should never again feel quite alone.
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34
Easy English
Then the waste of their lives struck him. They stood close, hidden, and safe. Yet separate paths held them like iron chains.
They might as well live on opposite sides of the world.
Source English
But after a moment the sense of waste and ruin overcame him. There they were, close together and safe and shut in; yet so chained to their separate destinies that they might as well have been half the world apart.
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35
Easy English
"What use is this if you will return?" Newland cried.
Beneath those words lay his true question. How could he keep her?
Source English
"What's the use--when you will go back?" he broke out, a great hopeless How on earth can I keep you? crying out to her beneath his words.
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36
Easy English
Ellen remained still with lowered eyes. "I shall not go yet."
Source English
She sat motionless, with lowered lids. "Oh--I shan't go yet!"
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37
Easy English
"Not yet? Then you see a time when you will go?"
Source English
"Not yet? Some time, then? Some time that you already foresee?"
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38
Easy English
Ellen raised her clear eyes. "I promise not to return while you remain strong. I shall stay while we face each other honestly."
Source English
At that she raised her clearest eyes. "I promise you: not as long as you hold out. Not as long as we can look straight at each other like this."
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39
Easy English
Newland fell into his chair. He understood the full meaning. One movement toward Ellen would drive her back.
She would return to the horrors he knew. She might also face dangers he could only imagine. Her answer fixed him to his side of the table.
He accepted that limit like something holy.
Source English
He dropped into his chair. What her answer really said was: "If you lift a finger you'll drive me back: back to all the abominations you know of, and all the temptations you half guess." He understood it as clearly as if she had uttered the words, and the thought kept him anchored to his side of the table in a kind of moved and sacred submission.
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40
Easy English
"What kind of life is that for you?" he said in pain.
Source English
"What a life for you!--" he groaned.
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41
Easy English
"It is enough while it remains part of your life."
Source English
"Oh--as long as it's a part of yours."
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42
Easy English
"And my life remains part of yours?"
Source English
"And mine a part of yours?"
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43
Easy English
Ellen nodded.
Source English
She nodded.
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44
Easy English
"That must be everything for both of us?"
Source English
"And that's to be all--for either of us?"
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45
Easy English
"It is everything, is it not?"
Source English
"Well; it is all, isn't it?"
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46
Easy English
Newland suddenly stood. For one moment, he forgot every rule. He saw only the sweetness of Ellen's face.
Ellen rose too. She did not move to meet him or escape. She stood quietly because the hardest task was over.
She only needed to wait. Newland came close. Ellen held out both hands.
They did not stop him, but guided him. Her hands fell into his. Her open arms kept space between their bodies.
Source English
At that he sprang up, forgetting everything but the sweetness of her face. She rose too, not as if to meet him or to flee from him, but quietly, as though the worst of the task were done and she had only to wait; so quietly that, as he came close, her outstretched hands acted not as a check but as a guide to him. They fell into his, while her arms, extended but not rigid, kept him far enough off to let her surrendered face say the rest.
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47
Easy English
Her given-up face spoke everything else. They stood that way for moments, or perhaps much longer. Silence carried all Ellen needed to say.
Newland understood the one thing that mattered. He must never make this meeting their last. He must leave their future in Ellen's care.
He would ask only that she hold it firmly.
Source English
They may have stood in that way for a long time, or only for a few moments; but it was long enough for her silence to communicate all she had to say, and for him to feel that only one thing mattered. He must do nothing to make this meeting their last; he must leave their future in her care, asking only that she should keep fast hold of it.
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48
Easy English
"Do not be unhappy," Ellen said. Her voice broke as she removed her hands.
"You will not return?" Newland asked. "You will not go back?"
It was the one future he could not bear.
"I will not go back," Ellen said.
Source English
"Don't--don't be unhappy," she said, with a break in her voice, as she drew her hands away; and he answered: "You won't go back--you won't go back?" as if it were the one possibility he could not bear.
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49
Easy English
She turned, opened the door, and led him outside. In the public room, the noisy schoolteachers collected their things. They began moving in broken groups toward the landing.
Source English
"I won't go back," she said; and turning away she opened the door and led the way into the public dining-room.
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50
Easy English
Across the beach, the white steam boat waited at the pier. Sunlight covered the water. Far beyond it, Boston rose through a thin line of grey air.
Source English
The strident school-teachers were gathering up their possessions preparatory to a straggling flight to the wharf; across the beach lay the white steam-boat at the pier; and over the sunlit waters Boston loomed in a line of haze.