【有声英语文学名著】不会发生在这里（27）

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It Can't Happen Here

by Sinclair Lewis

 

Chapter 27

Mary Greenhill, revenging the murdered Fowler, was the only one of the conspirators¹ who seemed moved more by homicidal hate than by a certain incredulous feeling that it was all a good but slightly absurd game. But to her, hate and the determination to kill were tonic². She soared up from the shadowed pit of grief, and her eyes lighted, her voice had a trembling gayety. She threw away her weeds and came out in defiant³ colors--oh, they had to economize⁴, these days, to put every available penny into the missionary⁵ fund of the New Underground, but Mary had become so fire-drawn that she could wear Sissy's giddiest old frocks.

She had more daring than Julian, or even Buck⁶--indeed led Buck into his riskiest⁷ expeditions.

In mid-afternoon, Buck and Mary, looking very matrimonial, domestically accompanied by David and the rather doubtful Foolish, ambled⁹ through the center of Burlington, where none of them were known--though a number of dogs, city slickers and probably con-dogs, insisted to the rustic¹⁰ and embarrassed Foolish that they had met him somewhere.

It was Buck who muttered "Right!" from time to time, when they were free from being observed, but it was Mary who calmly, a yard or two from M.M.'s or policemen, distributed crumpled¹¹-up copies of:

A Little Sunday-school Life of

JOHN SULLIVAN REEK¹²

Second-class Political Crook¹³, &

Certain Entertaining Pictures of

Col. Dewey Haik, Torturer.

These crumpled pamphlets she took from a specially¹⁴ made inside pocket of her mink¹⁵ coat; one reaching from shoulder to waist. It had been recommended by John Pollikop, whose helpful lady had aforetime used just such a pocket for illicit¹⁶ booze. The crumpling¹⁷ had been done carefully. Seen from two yards away, the pamphlets looked like any waste paper, but each was systematically¹⁸ so wadded up that the words, printed in bold red type, "Haik himself kicked an old man to death" caught the eye. And, lying in corner trash baskets, in innocent toy wagons¹⁹ before hardware stores, among oranges in a fruit store where they had gone to buy David a bar of chocolate, they caught some hundreds of eyes in Burlington that day.

On their way home, with David sitting in front beside Buck and Mary in the back, she cried, "That will stir 'em up! But oh, when Daddy has finished his booklet on Swan--God!"

David peeped back at her. She sat with eyes closed, with hands clenched²⁰.

He whispered to Buck, "I wish Mother wouldn't get so excited."

"She's the finest woman living, Dave."

"I know it, but--She scares me so!"

One scheme Mary devised and carried out by herself. From the magazine counter in Tyson's drugstore, she stole a dozen copies of the Readers' Digest and a dozen larger magazines. When she returned them, they looked untouched, but each of the larger magazines contained a leaflet, "Get Ready to Join Walt Trowbridge," and each Digest had become the cover for a pamphlet: "Lies of the Corpo Press."

To serve as center of their plot, to be able to answer the telephone and receive fugitives²¹ and put off suspicious snoopers twenty-four hours a day, when Buck and the rest might be gone, Lorinda chucked her small remaining interest in the Beulah Valley Tavern²² and became Buck's housekeeper²³, living in the place. There was scandal. But in a day when it was increasingly hard to get enough bread and meat, the town folk had little time to suck scandal like lollipops²⁴, and anyway, who could much suspect this nagging²⁵ uplifter who so obviously preferred tuberculin tests to toying with Corydon in the glade²⁶? And as Doremus was always about, as sometimes he stayed overnight, for the first time these timid lovers had space for passion.

It had never been their loyalty²⁷ to the good Emma--since she was too contented²⁸ to be pitied, too sure of her necessary position in life to be jealous--so much as hatred²⁹ of a shabby hole-and-corner intrigue³⁰ which had made their love cautious and grudging³¹. Neither of them was so simple as to suppose that, even with quite decent people, love is always as monogamic as bread and butter, yet neither of them liked sneaking³².

Her room at Buck's, large and square and light, with old landscape paper showing an endlessness of little mandarins daintily stepping out of sedan chairs beside pools laced with willows³⁴, with a four-poster, a colonial highboy, and a crazy-colored rag carpet, became in two days, so fast did one live now in time of revolution, the best-loved home Doremus had ever known. As eagerly as a young bridegroom he popped into and out of her room, and he was not overly particular about the state of her toilet. And Buck knew all about it and just laughed.

Released now, Doremus saw her as physically³⁵ more alluring³⁶. With parochial superiority, he had noted³⁷, during vacations on Cape³³ Cod³⁸, how often the fluffy³⁹ women of fashion when they stripped to bathing suits were skinny, to him unwomanly, with thin shoulder blades and with backbones⁴⁰ as apparent as though they were chains fastened down their backs. They seemed passionate⁴¹ to him and a little devilish, with their thin restless legs and avid⁸ lips, but he chuckled⁴² as he considered that the Lorinda whose prim⁴³ gray suits and blouses seemed so much more virginal than the gay, flaunting⁴⁴ summer cottons of the Bright Young Things was softer of skin to the touch, much richer in the curve from shoulder to breast.

He rejoiced to know that she was always there in the house, that he could interrupt the high seriousness of a tract⁴⁵ on bond issues to dash out to the kitchen and brazenly⁴⁶ let his arm slide round her waist.

She, the theoretically independent feminist⁴⁷, became flatteringly demanding about every attention. Why hadn't he brought her some candy from town? Would he mind awfully⁴⁸ calling up Julian for her? Why hadn't he remembered to bring her the book he had promised--well, would have promised if she had only remembered to ask him for it? He trotted⁴⁹ on her errands, idiotically happy. Long ago Emma had reached the limit of her imagination in regard to demands. He was discovering that in love it is really more blessed to give than to receive, a proverb about which, as an employer and as a steady fellow whom forgotten classmates regularly tried to touch for loans, he had been very suspicious.

He lay beside her, in the wide four-poster, at dawn, March dawn with the elm branches outside the window ugly and writhing⁵⁰ in the wind, but with the last coals still snapping in the fireplace, and he was utterly⁵¹ content. He glanced at Lorinda, who had on her sleeping face a frown that made her look not older but schoolgirlish, a schoolgirl who was frowning comically over some small woe⁵², and who defiantly⁵³ clutched her old-fashioned lace-bordered pillow. He laughed. They were going to be so adventurous⁵⁴ together! This little printing of pamphlets was only the beginning of their revolutionary activities. They would penetrate⁵⁵ into press circles in Washington and get secret information (he was drowsily⁵⁶ vague about what information they were going to get and how they would ever get it) which would explode the Corpo state. And with the revolution over, they would go to Bermuda, to Martinique--lovers on purple peaks, by a purple sea--everything purple and grand. Or (and he sighed and became heroic as he exquisitely⁵⁷ stretched and yawned in the wide warm bed) if they were defeated, if they were arrested and condemned⁵⁸ by the M.M.'s, they would die together, sneering⁵⁹ at the firing-squad, refusing to have their eyes bandaged, and their fame, like that of Servetus and Matteotti and Professor Ferrer and the Haymarket martyrs⁶⁰, would roll on forever, acclaimed⁶¹ by children waving little flags--

"Gimme a cigarette, darling!"

Lorinda was regarding him with a beady and skeptical⁶² eye.

"You oughtn't to smoke so much!"

"You oughtn't to boss so much! Oh, my darling!" She sat up, kissed his eyes and temples, and sturdily climbed out of bed, seeking her own cigarette.

"Doremus! It's been marvelous to have this companionship with you. But--" She looked a little timid, sitting cross-legged on the rattan-topped stool before the old mahogany dressing⁶³ table--no silver or lace or crystal was there, but only plain wooden hairbrush and scant⁶⁴ luxury of small drugstore bottles. "But darling, this cause--oh, curse that word 'cause'--can't I ever get free of it?--but anyway, this New Underground business seems to me so important, and I know you feel that way too, but I've noticed that since we've settled down together, two awful sentimentalists, you aren't so excited about writing your nice venomous attacks, and I'm getting more cautious about going out distributing tracts⁶⁵. I have a foolish idea I have to save my life, for your sake. And I ought to be only thinking about saving my life for the revolution. Don't you feel that way? Don't you? Don't you?"

Doremus swung his legs out of bed, also lighted an unhygienic cigarette, and said grumpily, "Oh, I suppose so! But--tracts! Your attitude is simply a hold-over of your religious training. That you have a duty toward the dull human race--which probably enjoys being bullied⁶⁶ by Windrip and getting bread and circuses--except for the bread!"

"Of course it's religious, a revolutionary loyalty! Why not? It's one of the few real religious feelings. A rational, unsentimental Stalin is still kind of a priest. No wonder most preachers hate the Reds and preach against 'em! They're jealous of their religious power. But--Oh, we can't unfold the world, this morning, even over breakfast coffee, Doremus! When Mr. Dimick came back here yesterday, he ordered me to Beecher Falls--you know, on the Canadian border--to take charge of the N.U. cell there--ostensibly to open up a tea room for this summer. So, hang it, I've got to leave you, and leave Buck and Sis, and go. Hang it!"

"Linda!"

She would not look at him. She made much, too much, of grinding out her cigarette.

"Linda!"

"Yes?"

"You suggested this to Dimick! He never gave any orders till you suggested it!"

"Well--"

"Linda! Linda! Do you want to get away from me so much? You--my life!"

She came slowly to the bed, slowly sat down beside him. "Yes. Get away from you and get away from myself. The world's in chains, and I can't be free to love till I help tear them off."

"It will never be out of chains!"

"Then I shall never be free to love! Oh, if we could only have run away together for one sweet year, when I was eighteen! Then I would have lived two whole lives. Well, nobody seems to be very lucky at turning the clock back--almost twenty-five years back, too. I'm afraid Now is a fact you can't dodge⁶⁷. And I've been getting so--just this last two weeks, with April coming in--that I can't think of anything but you. Kiss me. I'm going. Today."

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