"Joe Haldeman - Guardian" - читать интересную книгу автора (Haldeman Joe)

the South in our speech, at least around Northerners; he sounded as Bostonian as any of
the others.
I was afraid that the heavy meal and wine might put me to sleep at the theater,
especially if we rode there in the warm coach, so I asked whether we might walk, and
meet the others there. He readily agreed; it was only a few blocks down Tremont. The
night was brisk and he was much more at ease, witty and almost charming, away from the
others.
I should not have worried about sleeping through the opera, which was Carmen,
new that year to these shores and most exciting. Afterwards, we went back to the Parker
House and had coffee and cakes, and I returned to Wellesley scandalously late, after one
in the morning.
Edward wrote me weekly from Philadelphia, letters that were friendly rather than
romantic, but soon it was obvious what his intentions were, I was afraid that the woman
he was attracted to was not actually me, but rather the consciously forward "modern" girl
I had masqueraded as, and eventually I got up the courage to write him to that effect. He
responded by returning to Boston, ostensibly to meet whoever the actual "me" was.
This was the Easter break of my senior year. We saw each other daily for more
than a week. Savory lunches at the Parker House and other ostentatious places.
In the evenings we had to be chaperoned by his sister, my housemistress, which
was annoying. I felt capable of protecting my own virtue, and besides had had more than
enough of her company.
I might have been grateful for her interference, had I known him as well as I came
to. On the other hand, if he had shown his true colors during that courtship, I never would
have married him.
Sometimes I consider that: what if I had married a nice man instead, and settled
down to a regular life in Boston or Philadelphia, or wherever. The worlds I would have
missed. This world would have been far different, too.
If Gordon had never been born, this world could be a lifeless radioactive ball.
But I didn't have a crystal ball. I was swept away by his attentions and charmed
by his clumsy gallantry—he was much more attractive to me than a more polished, polite
man would have been, with his obvious struggle to do and say the right things, keeping in
check an elemental force that intrigued me.
I was too naive to see that force for what it was: raw sexual desire, and the need
to dominate.
It was an unusually clement spring—I remember a blizzard on Easter morning,
another year—and we ranged all around the area in a nimble calash that he hired and
drove himself. Downtown Boston was a noisome cesspool in the thaw, as always, so
most of our travels were out in the country, going as far as Salem on occasion. We
picnicked and chatted; I learned a lot about the masculine worlds of finance and law, and
he paid polite attention to my ramblings about nature and art and literature.
After ten days, he proposed to me, with a diamond ring that I supposed was worth
more than I owned. He wanted me to come back to Philadelphia with him, right then!—
and was not amused when I was amused, saying that I was not about to go to college for
three and a half years, only to leave with no degree. He argued with some force that I
would never need the degree; I would never need to work. He had come into a fortune at
twenty-one, and it had grown constantly since.
What is clear now is that he wanted to cut short my education so as to limit my
potential for independence. If I could work, I could leave him, though of course in 1879
that would never have entered my mind. Divorce was an exotic thing that degenerate
foreigners did, or free-thinking atheists.