You were surprised. I looked at you yet more intently. "Recognise me, only recognise me at last!" was the clamour of my eyes.
But your smile, though cordial (热忱的), had no recognition in it. You kissed me yet again, but you did not recognise me.
I hurried away, for my eyes were filling with tears, and I did not want you to see. In the entry, as I precipitated (猛抛) myself from the room, I almost cannoned into John, your servant.
Embarrassed but zealous (热心的), he got out of my way, and opened the front door for me. Then, in this fugitive (逃亡的) instant, as I looked at him through my tears, a light suddenly flooded the old man's face.
In this fugitive instant, I tell you, he recognised me, the man who had never seen me since my childhood. I was so grateful, that I could have kneeled before him and kissed his hands.
I tore from my muff (暖手筒) the banknotes with which you had scourged (蹂躏) me, and thrust them upon him.
He glanced at me in alarm - for in this instant I think he understood more of me than you have understood in your whole life.
Everyone, everyone, has been eager to spoil me; everyone has loaded me with kindness. But you, only you, forgot me. You, only you, never recognised me.
My boy, our boy, is dead. I have no one left to love; no one in the world, except you.
But what can you be to me - you who have never, never recognised me; you who stepped across me as you might step across a stream, you who trod (践踏) on me as you might tread on a stone;
you who went on your way unheeding (不理会的), while you left me to wait for all eternity (永世)? Once I fancied that I could hold you for my own; that I held you, the elusive, in the child.
But he was your son. In the night, he cruelly slipped away from me on a journey; he has forgotten me, and will never return. I am alone once more, more utterly alone than ever.
I have nothing, nothing from you. No child, no word, no line of writing, no place in your memory. If anyone were to mention my name in your presence, to you it would be the name of a stranger.
Shall I not be glad to die, since I am dead to you? Glad to go away, since you have gone away from me?
Beloved, I am not blaming you. I do not wish to intrude (把…强加) my sorrows into your joyful life. Do not fear that I shall ever trouble you further.
Bear with me for giving way to the longing to cry out my heart to you this once, in the bitter hour when the boy lies dead. Only this once I must talk to you.
Then I shall slip back into obscurity, and be dumb towards you as I have ever been. You will not even hear my cry so long as I continue to live.
Only when I am dead will this heritage (遗产) come to you from one who has loved you more fondly (温柔地) than any other has loved you, from one whom you have never recognised, from one who has always been awaiting your summons (召唤) and whom you have never summoned.
Perhaps, perhaps, when you receive this legacy (遗产) you will call to me; and for the first time I shall be unfaithful to you, for I shall not hear you in the sleep of death.
Neither picture nor token (标志) do I leave you, just as you left me nothing, for never will you recognise me now. That was my fate in life, and it shall be my fate in death likewise (同样).
I shall not summon you in my last hour; I shall go my way leaving you ignorant (不知道的) of my name and my appearance. Death will be easy to me, for you will not feel it from afar.
I could not die if my death were going to give you pain.
I cannot write any more. My head is so heavy; my limbs ache; I am feverish (发热的) I must lie down. Perhaps all will soon be over.
Perhaps, this once, fate will be kind to me, and I shall not have to see them take away my boy… I cannot write any more. Farewell, dear one, farewell. All my thanks go out to you.
What happened was good, in spite of everything. I shall be thankful to you till my last breath. I am so glad that I have told you all.
Now you will know, though you can never fully understand, how much I have loved you; and yet my love will never be a burden (负担) to you. It is my solace (安慰) that I shall not fail you.
Nothing will be changed in your bright and lovely life. Beloved, my death will not harm you. This comforts me.
But who, ah who, will now send you white roses on your birthday? The vase will be empty. No longer will come that breath, that aroma, from my life, which once a year was breathed into your room.
I have one last request - the first, and the last. Do it for my sake. Always on your birthday - a day when one thinks of oneself - get some roses and put them in the vase.
Do it just as others, once a year, have a Mass said for the beloved dead. I no longer believe in God, and therefore I do not want a Mass said for me. I believe in you alone.
I love none but you. Only in you do I wish to go on living - just one day in the year, softly, quietly, as I have always lived near you. Please do this, my darling, please do it… My first request, and my last… Thanks, thanks… I love you, I love you… Farewell…
The letter fell from his nerveless hands. He thought long and deeply.
Yes, he had vague memories of a neighbour's child, of a girl, of a woman in a dancing hall - all was dim (模糊的) and confused, like the flickering and shapeless view of a stone in the bed of a swiftly running stream.
Shadows chased one another across his mind, but would not fuse (融合) into a picture. There were stirrings of memory in the realm of feeling, and still he could not remember.
It seemed to him that he must have dreamed of all these figures, must have dreamed often and vividly - and yet they had only been the phantoms (幻影) of a dream.
His eyes wandered to the blue vase on the writing-table. It was empty. For years it had not been empty on his birthday.
He shuddered (战栗), feeling as if an invisible door had been suddenly opened, a door through which a chill (寒冷的) breeze from another world was blowing into his sheltered room.
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An intimation (暗示) of death came to him, and an intimation of deathless love. Something welled up within him; and the thought of the dead woman stirred in his mind, bodiless and passionate, like the sound of distant music.
The end.
