阳光下的罪恶07

II

Linda Marshall was examining her face dispassionately in her bedroom mirror. She disliked herface very much. At this minute it seemed to her to be mostly bones and freckles¹. She noted² withdistaste her heavy bush of soft brown hair (mouse, she called it in her own mind), her greenish-grey eyes, her high cheekbones and the long aggressive line of the chin. Her mouth and teethweren’t perhaps quite so bad—but what were teeth after all? And was that a spot coming on theside of her nose?

She decided³ with relief that it wasn’t a spot. She thought to herself:

“It’s awful to be sixteen—simply awful.”

One didn’t, somehow, know where one was. Linda was as awkward as a young colt and asprickly as a hedgehog. She was conscious the whole time of her ungainliness and of the fact thatshe was neither one thing nor the other. It hadn’t been so bad at school. But now she had leftschool. Nobody seemed to know quite what she was going to do next. Her father talked vaguely⁴ ofsending her to Paris next winter. Linda didn’t want to go to Paris—but then she didn’t want to beat home either. She’d never realized properly, somehow, until now, how very much she dislikedArlena.

Linda’s young face grew tense, her green eyes hardened.

Arlena…

She thought to herself:

“She’s a beast—a beast….”

Stepmothers! It was rotten to have a stepmother, everybody said so. And it was true! Not thatArlena was unkind to her. Most of the time she hardly noticed the girl. But when she did, therewas a contemptuous amusement in her glance, in her words. The finished grace and poise⁵ ofArlena’s movements emphasized Linda’s own adolescent clumsiness. With Arlena about, one felt,shamingly, just how immature⁶ and crude one was.

But it wasn’t that only. No, it wasn’t only that.

Linda groped haltingly in the recess⁷ of her mind. She wasn’t very good at sorting out heremotions and labelling them. It was something that Arlena did to people—to the house—“She’s bad,” thought Linda with decision. “She’s quite, quite bad.”

But you couldn’t even leave it at that. You couldn’t just elevate your nose with a sniff⁸ of moralsuperiority and dismiss her from your mind.

It was something she did to people. Father, now, Father was quite different….

She puzzled over it. Father coming down to take her out from school. Father taking her once fora cruise. And Father at home—with Arlena there. All—all sort of bottled up and not—and notthere.

Linda thought:

“And it’ll go on like this. Day after day—month after month. I can’t bear it.”

Life stretched before her—endless—in a series of days darkened and poisoned by Arlena’spresence. She was childish enough still to have little sense of proportion. A year, to Linda, seemedlike an eternity⁹.

A big dark burning wave of hatred¹⁰ against Arlena surged up in her mind. She thought:

“I’d like to kill her. Oh! I wish she’d die….”

She looked out above the mirror on to the sea below.

This place was really rather fun. Or it could be fun. All those beaches and coves¹¹ and queer littlepaths. Lots to explore. And places where one could go off by oneself and muck about. There werecaves, too, so the Cowan boys had told her.

Linda thought:

“If only Arlena would go away, I could enjoy myself.”

Her mind went back to the evening of their arrival. It had been exciting coming from themainland. The tide had been up over the causeway. They had come in a boat. The hotel had lookedexciting, unusual. And then on the terrace a tall dark woman had jumped up and said:

“Why, Kenneth!”

And her father, looking frightfully surprised, had exclaimed:

“Rosamund!”

Linda considered Rosamund Darnley severely¹² and critically in the manner of youth.

She decided that she approved of Rosamund. Rosamund, she thought, was sensible. And herhair grew nicely—as though it fitted her—most people’s hair didn’t fit them. And her clothes werenice. And she had a kind of funny amused face—as though it were amused at herself, not at you.

Rosamund had been nice to her, Linda. She hadn’t been gushing¹³ or said things. (Under the term of“saying things” Linda grouped a mass of miscellaneous dislikes.) And Rosamund hadn’t looked asthough she thought Linda a fool. In fact she’d treated Linda as though she was a real human being.

Linda so seldom felt like a real human being that she was deeply grateful when anyone appearedto consider her one.

Father, too, had seemed pleased to see Miss Darnley.

Funny—he’d looked quite different, all of a sudden. He’d looked—he’d looked—Linda puzzledit out—why, young, that was it! He’d laughed—a queer boyish laugh. Now Linda came to think ofit, she’d very seldom heard him laugh.

She felt puzzled. It was as though she’d got a glimpse of quite a different person. She thought:

“I wonder what Father was like when he was my age…?”

But that was too difficult. She gave it up.

An idea flashed across her mind.

What fun it would have been if they’d come here and found Miss Darnley here—just she andFather.

A vista¹⁴ opened out just for a minute. Father, boyish and laughing, Miss Darnley, herself—andall the fun one could have on the island—bathing—caves—The blackness shut down again.

Arlena. One couldn’t enjoy oneself with Arlena about. Why not? Well, she, Linda, couldn’tanyway. You couldn’t be happy when there was a person there you—hated. Yes, hated. She hatedArlena.

Very slowly again that black burning wave of hatred rose up again.

Linda’s face went very white. Her lips parted a little. The pupils of her eyes contracted. And herfingers stiffened¹⁵ and clenched¹⁶ themselves….

 

分享到：