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What Maisie Knew by Henry James, Chapter II

Chapter II

In that lively sense of the immediate which is the very air of a child's mind the past, on each occasion, became for her as indistinct as the future: she surrendered herself to the actual with a good faith that might have been touching to either parent. Crudely as they had calculated they were at first justified by the event: she was the little feathered shuttlecock they could fiercely keep flying between them. The evil they had the gift of thinking or pretending to think of each other they poured into her little gravely-gazing soul as into a boundless receptacle, and each of them had doubtless the best conscience in the world as to the duty of teaching her the stern truth that should be her safeguard against the other. She was at the age for which all stories are true and all conceptions are stories. The actual was the absolute, the present alone was vivid. The objurgation for instance launched in the carriage by her mother after she had at her father's bidding punctually performed was a missive that dropped into her memory with the dry rattle of a letter falling into a pillar-box. Like the letter it was, as part of the contents of a well-stuffed post-bag, delivered in due course at the right address. In the presence of these overflowings, after they had continued for a couple of years, the associates of either party sometimes felt that something should be done for what they called "the real good, don't you know?" of the child. The only thing done, however, in general, took place when it was sighingly remarked that she fortunately wasn't all the year round where she happened to be at the awkward moment, and that, furthermore, either from extreme cunning or from extreme stupidity, she appeared not to take things in. The theory of her stupidity, eventually embraced by her parents, corresponded with a great date in her small still life: the complete vision, private but final, of the strange office she filled. It was literally a moral revolution and accomplished in the depths of her nature. The stiff dolls on the dusky shelves began to move their arms and legs; old forms and phrases began to have a sense that frightened her. She had a new feeling, the feeling of danger; on which a new remedy rose to meet it, the idea of an inner self or, in other words, of concealment. She puzzled out with imperfect signs, but with a prodigious spirit, that she had been a centre of hatred and a messenger of insult, and that everything was bad because she had been employed to make it so. Her parted lips locked themselves with the determination to be employed no longer. She would forget everything, she would repeat nothing, and when, as a tribute to the successful application of her system, she began to be called a little idiot, she tasted a pleasure new and keen. When therefore, as she grew older, her parents in turn announced before her that she had grown shockingly dull, it was not from any real contraction of her little stream of life. She spoiled their fun, but she practically added to her own. She saw more and more; she saw too much. It was Miss Overmore, her first governess, who on a momentous occasion had sown the seeds of secrecy; sown them not by anything she said, but by a mere roll of those fine eyes which Maisie already admired. Moddle had become at this time, after alternations of residence of which the child had no clear record, an image faintly embalmed in the remembrance of hungry disappearances from the nursery and distressful lapses in the alphabet, sad embarrassments, in particular, when invited to recognise something her nurse described as "the important letter haitch." Miss Overmore, however hungry, never disappeared: this marked her somehow as of higher rank, and the character was confirmed by a prettiness that Maisie supposed to be extraordinary. Mrs. Farange had described her as almost too pretty, and some one had asked what that mattered so long as Beale wasn't there. "Beale or no Beale," Maisie had heard her mother reply, "I take her because she's a lady and yet awfully poor. Rather nice people, but there are seven sisters at home. What do people mean?" Maisie didn't know what people meant, but she knew very soon all the names of all the sisters; she could say them off better than she could say the multiplication-table. She privately wondered moreover, though she never asked, about the awful poverty, of which her companion also never spoke. Food at any rate came up by mysterious laws; Miss Overmore never, like Moddle, had on an apron, and when she ate she held her fork with her little finger curled out. The child, who watched her at many moments, watched her particularly at that one. "I think you're lovely," she often said to her; even mamma, who was lovely too, had not such a pretty way with the fork. Maisie associated this showier presence with her now being "big," knowing of course that nursery-governesses were only for little girls who were not, as she said, "really" little. She vaguely knew, further, somehow, that the future was still bigger than she, and that a part of what made it so was the number of governesses lurking in it and ready to dart out. Everything that had happened when she was really little was dormant, everything but the positive certitude, bequeathed from afar by Moddle, that the natural way for a child to have her parents was separate and successive, like her mutton and her pudding or her bath and her nap.

"Does he know he lies? "—that was what she had vivaciously asked Miss Overmore on the occasion which was so suddenly to lead to a change in her life. "Does he know—" Miss Overmore stared; she had a stocking pulled over her hand and was pricking at it with a needle which she poised in the act. Her task was homely, but her movement, like all her movements, graceful.

"Why papa." "That he 'lies'?" "That's what mamma says I'm to tell him—'that he lies and he knows he lies.'" Miss Overmore turned very red, though she laughed out till her head fell back; then she pricked again at her muffled hand so hard that Maisie wondered how she could bear it. "Am I to tell him?" the child went on. It was then that her companion addressed her in the unmistakeable language of a pair of eyes of deep dark grey. "I can't say No," they replied as distinctly as possible; "I can't say No, because I'm afraid of your mamma, don't you see? Yet how can I say Yes after your papa has been so kind to me, talking to me so long the other day, smiling and flashing his beautiful teeth at me the time we met him in the Park, the time when, rejoicing at the sight of us, he left the gentlemen he was with and turned and walked with us, stayed with us for half an hour?" Somehow in the light of Miss Overmore's lovely eyes that incident came back to Maisie with a charm it hadn't had at the time, and this in spite of the fact that after it was over her governess had never but once alluded to it. On their way home, when papa had quitted them, she had expressed the hope that the child wouldn't mention it to mamma. Maisie liked her so, and had so the charmed sense of being liked by her, that she accepted this remark as settling the matter and wonderingly conformed to it. The wonder now lived again, lived in the recollection of what papa had said to Miss Overmore: "I've only to look at you to see you're a person I can appeal to for help to save my daughter." Maisie's ignorance of what she was to be saved from didn't diminish the pleasure of the thought that Miss Overmore was saving her. It seemed to make them cling together as in some wild game of "going round."


Chapter II Capitolo II

In that lively sense of the immediate which is the very air of a child's mind the past, on each occasion, became for her as indistinct as the future: she surrendered herself to the actual with a good faith that might have been touching to either parent. 과거와 같이 자녀의 마음의 바로 공기 인 즉각적인 생동감에 대해 미래와는 달리 그녀를 위해 그녀는 분명 해졌다. . Crudely as they had calculated they were at first justified by the event: she was the little feathered shuttlecock they could fiercely keep flying between them. 그들이 계산 한대로 그들은 처음에이 사건에 의해 정당화되었다. The evil they had the gift of thinking or pretending to think of each other they poured into her little gravely-gazing soul as into a boundless receptacle, and each of them had doubtless the best conscience in the world as to the duty of teaching her the stern truth that should be her safeguard against the other. 그들이 생각하거나 서로 생각하는 척하는 악은 그들이 무한한 수용소에있는 것처럼 맹렬히 응시하는 작은 영혼에 쏟아졌으며, 그들 각자는 의심 할 여지없이 세상에서 최고의 양심을 가지고있었습니다. 그녀를 다른 사람으로부터 보호해야 할 엄격한 진리. She was at the age for which all stories are true and all conceptions are stories. 그녀는 모든 이야기가 진실되고 모든 개념이 이야기 인 시대에있었습니다. The actual was the absolute, the present alone was vivid. 실제는 절대 였고 현재는 생생했습니다. The objurgation for instance launched in the carriage by her mother after she had at her father's bidding punctually performed was a missive that dropped into her memory with the dry rattle of a letter falling into a pillar-box. 예를 들어, 아버지가 입찰을 정식으로 수행 한 후 어머니가 마차에서 발사 한 문제는 기둥 상자에 떨어지는 편지의 마른 딸랑이로 기억에 빠진 미사일이었습니다. Like the letter it was, as part of the contents of a well-stuffed post-bag, delivered in due course at the right address. 편지와 마찬가지로, 그것은 잘 채워진 포스트 백의 내용의 일부로, 올바른 주소로 적시에 전달되었습니다. In the presence of these overflowings, after they had continued for a couple of years, the associates of either party sometimes felt that something should be done for what they called "the real good, don't you know?" 이러한 범람이있는 상황에서, 그들이 2 년 동안 지속 된 후에, 어느 한 쪽의 관계자들은 때때로 그들이 "진정한 선, 당신은 모른다"고하는 것에 대해 무언가가 이루어져야한다고 느꼈습니다. of the child. The only thing done, however, in general, took place when it was sighingly remarked that she fortunately wasn't all the year round where she happened to be at the awkward moment, and that, furthermore, either from extreme cunning or from extreme stupidity, she appeared not to take things in. 그러나 일반적으로 유일하게 한 일은 그녀가 운 좋게도 그녀가 어색한 순간에 있었던 곳에서 연중 내내 아니었다는 사실과 극심한 교활함이나 극도의 어리 석음으로 인해 일어났다 그녀는 물건을 가져 가지 않는 것처럼 보였다. The theory of her stupidity, eventually embraced by her parents, corresponded with a great date in her small still life: the complete vision, private but final, of the strange office she filled. 그녀의 어리 석음 이론은 결국 그녀의 부모에 의해 받아 들여졌다. 그녀의 작은 정물에서 그녀가 채운 이상한 사무실에 대한 완전한 비전, 사적이지만 최종적인, 완전한 날짜와 일치했다. It was literally a moral revolution and accomplished in the depths of her nature. 그것은 문자 그대로 도덕적 혁명이었고 그녀의 본성 깊이에서 이루어졌습니다. The stiff dolls on the dusky shelves began to move their arms and legs; old forms and phrases began to have a sense that frightened her. 어스름 한 선반에있는 딱딱한 인형이 팔과 다리를 움직이기 시작했습니다. 오래된 형태와 문구는 그녀를 놀라게하는 감각을 갖기 시작했습니다. She had a new feeling, the feeling of danger; on which a new remedy rose to meet it, the idea of an inner self or, in other words, of concealment. 그녀는 새로운 느낌과 위험을 느꼈다. 새로운 구제책이 그것을 충족시키기 위해 일어났다. She puzzled out with imperfect signs, but with a prodigious spirit, that she had been a centre of hatred and a messenger of insult, and that everything was bad because she had been employed to make it so. 그녀는 불완전한 징조로 혼란 스러웠지만, 증오의 중심이자 모욕의 전령이었고, 모든 것이 나쁘기 때문에 그 일을하게 되었기 때문에 심오했습니다. Her parted lips locked themselves with the determination to be employed no longer. 그녀의 헤어진 입술은 더 이상 사용되지 않기로 결심했다. She would forget everything, she would repeat nothing, and when, as a tribute to the successful application of her system, she began to be called a little idiot, she tasted a pleasure new and keen. 그녀는 모든 것을 잊고 아무 것도 반복하지 않았으며, 시스템을 성공적으로 적용한 것에 대한 찬사로 약간 바보가되기 시작했을 때, 새롭고 예리한 기쁨을 맛 보았습니다. When therefore, as she grew older, her parents in turn announced before her that she had grown shockingly dull, it was not from any real contraction of her little stream of life. 따라서, 그녀가 나이가 들어감에 따라, 부모님은 그녀 앞에서 충격적으로 둔해 졌다고 발표했지만, 그것은 그녀의 작은 삶의 흐름이 실제로 수축 된 것이 아니라고 발표했습니다. She spoiled their fun, but she practically added to her own. 그녀는 그들의 재미를 망쳐 놓았지만 그녀는 실제로 자신을 추가했습니다. She saw more and more; she saw too much. 그녀는 점점 더 많이 보았다. 그녀는 너무 많이 보았다. It was Miss Overmore, her first governess, who on a momentous occasion had sown the seeds of secrecy; sown them not by anything she said, but by a mere roll of those fine eyes which Maisie already admired. 그녀의 첫 번째 통치자 인 오버 모어 양이 잠시 비밀리에 씨를 뿌렸다. 그녀가 한 말이 아니라 Maisie가 이미 존경했던 훌륭한 눈으로 말미암아 그들을 뿌렸습니다. Moddle had become at this time, after alternations of residence of which the child had no clear record, an image faintly embalmed in the remembrance of hungry disappearances from the nursery and distressful lapses in the alphabet, sad embarrassments, in particular, when invited to recognise something her nurse described as "the important letter haitch." Moddle 은이 시점에서 아이가 분명하게 기록하지 않은 거주지 교체 후, 보육원에서 배고픈 실종과 기억에 남는 고통스러운 기억, 슬픈 당황, 특히 인식하도록 초대했을 때 희미하게 방황 한 이미지 그녀의 간호사가 "중요한 편지 습관"이라고 묘사 한 것. Miss Overmore, however hungry, never disappeared: this marked her somehow as of higher rank, and the character was confirmed by a prettiness that Maisie supposed to be extraordinary. 배고프지 만 오버 모어 양은 결코 사라지지 않았다. 이것은 그녀를 어떻게 든 더 높은 순위로 표시했으며, 캐릭터는 Maisie가 특별한 것으로 여겨지는 예뻐서 확인되었다. Mrs. Farange had described her as almost too pretty, and some one had asked what that mattered so long as Beale wasn't there. Farange 부인은 그녀를 거의 너무 예쁘다고 묘사했으며 일부는 Beale이없는 한 중요한 것을 물었습니다. "Beale or no Beale," Maisie had heard her mother reply, "I take her because she's a lady and yet awfully poor. Maisie는 그녀의 어머니의 대답을 들었다. Rather nice people, but there are seven sisters at home. 오히려 좋은 사람들이지만 집에는 일곱 자매가 있습니다. What do people mean?" 사람들은 무엇을 의미합니까? " Maisie didn't know what people meant, but she knew very soon all the names of all the sisters; she could say them off better than she could say the multiplication-table. Maisie는 사람들의 의미를 알지 못했지만 곧 모든 자매의 이름을 모두 알고있었습니다. 그녀는 곱셈 테이블을 말할 수있는 것보다 더 잘 말할 수있었습니다. She privately wondered moreover, though she never asked, about the awful poverty, of which her companion also never spoke. 그녀는 자신이 동반 한 적이없는 끔찍한 빈곤에 대해 묻지 않았지만 개인적으로 궁금해했습니다. Food at any rate came up by mysterious laws; Miss Overmore never, like Moddle, had on an apron, and when she ate she held her fork with her little finger curled out. 어떤 식 으로든 음식은 신비로운 법에 의해 생겨났습니다. 오버 모어 양은 모들처럼 절대로 앞치마를 먹지 않았으며, 밥을 먹었을 때 작은 손가락을 펴고 포크를 잡았습니다. The child, who watched her at many moments, watched her particularly at that one. 여러 순간에 그녀를 본 아이는 특히 그 아이를 보았습니다. "I think you're lovely," she often said to her; even mamma, who was lovely too, had not such a pretty way with the fork. "나는 당신이 사랑 스럽다고 생각합니다."그녀는 종종 그녀에게 말했다. 사랑 스러웠던 맘마조차도 포크와 잘 어울리지 않았습니다. Maisie associated this showier presence with her now being "big," knowing of course that nursery-governesses were only for little girls who were not, as she said, "really" little. Maisie는이 놀랄만 한 존재를 이제 그녀가 "큰"존재와 연관 시켰습니다. 물론 보육원은 그녀가 말한 것처럼 "정말로"작지 않은 어린 소녀들만을위한 것이라는 것을 알고있었습니다. She vaguely knew, further, somehow, that the future was still bigger than she, and that a part of what made it so was the number of governesses lurking in it and ready to dart out. 그녀는 어쨌든 미래가 여전히 그녀보다 더 크다는 것을 모호하게 알았으며, 그렇게 한 것의 일부는 그 안에 숨어 있고 다트를 준비하는 총재의 수였습니다. Everything that had happened when she was really little was dormant, everything but the positive certitude, bequeathed from afar by Moddle, that the natural way for a child to have her parents was separate and successive, like her mutton and her pudding or her bath and her nap. 그녀가 정말로 어렸을 때 일어났던 모든 일은 휴면 상태였습니다. Moddle이 멀리서 물려받은 긍정적 인 성향을 제외한 모든 것, 자녀가 부모를 갖는 자연스러운 방법은 양고기와 푸딩 또는 목욕과 같이 분리되고 연속적이었습니다. 그녀의 낮잠.

"Does he know he lies? "그는 그가 거짓말을 알고 있습니까? "—that was what she had vivaciously asked Miss Overmore on the occasion which was so suddenly to lead to a change in her life. "-그녀는 갑자기 그녀의 삶에 변화를 가져다 줄 기회가되었을 때 오버 모어 선생님에게 생생하게 물었습니다. "Does he know—" Miss Overmore stared; she had a stocking pulled over her hand and was pricking at it with a needle which she poised in the act. 오버 모어 양은 "아는가?" 그녀는 스타킹을 손으로 잡아 당겨 바늘로 찌르고 있었다. Her task was homely, but her movement, like all her movements, graceful. 그녀의 임무는 가정적인 것이었지만 그녀의 움직임은 모든 움직임과 마찬가지로 우아했습니다.

"Why papa." "That he 'lies'?" "That's what mamma says I'm to tell him—'that he lies and he knows he lies.'" Miss Overmore turned very red, though she laughed out till her head fell back; then she pricked again at her muffled hand so hard that Maisie wondered how she could bear it. 오버 모어 양은 매우 빨갛게 변했지만 그녀의 머리가 다시 떨어질 때까지 웃었다. 그 다음 그녀는 그녀의 머플러 손을 너무 세게 찔러 Maisie가 어떻게 그것을 견딜 수 있을지 궁금해했습니다. "Am I to tell him?" "내가 말해 줄까?" the child went on. 아이는 계속했다. It was then that her companion addressed her in the unmistakeable language of a pair of eyes of deep dark grey. 그 때 그녀의 동반자는 진한 회색의 한 쌍의 눈에 대한 틀림없는 언어로 그녀를 연설했습니다. "I can't say No," they replied as distinctly as possible; "I can't say No, because I'm afraid of your mamma, don't you see? "아니요라고 말할 수 없습니다."그들은 가능한 한 명확하게 대답했습니다. "엄마의 말이 두렵기 때문에 아니요라고 말할 수 없습니다. 보이지 않습니까? Yet how can I say Yes after your papa has been so kind to me, talking to me so long the other day, smiling and flashing his beautiful teeth at me the time we met him in the Park, the time when, rejoicing at the sight of us, he left the gentlemen he was with and turned and walked with us, stayed with us for half an hour?" 어떻게 말할 수 있습니까? 당신의 아빠가 나에게 너무 친절하고 다른 날 너무 오래 이야기하고, 우리가 공원에서 그를 만났을 때, 그 광경에서 기뻐할 때, 그의 아름다운 이빨을 내게 웃고 깜박였습니다. 우리와 함께 온 신사를 떠나서 우리와 함께 걸으며 30 분 동안 우리와 함께 있었습니까? " Somehow in the light of Miss Overmore's lovely eyes that incident came back to Maisie with a charm it hadn't had at the time, and this in spite of the fact that after it was over her governess had never but once alluded to it. 어쨌든 오버 모어 양의 사랑스러운 눈에 비추어 당시 당시에는 없었던 매력으로 사건이 Maisie로 돌아 왔습니다. On their way home, when papa had quitted them, she had expressed the hope that the child wouldn't mention it to mamma. Maisie liked her so, and had so the charmed sense of being liked by her, that she accepted this remark as settling the matter and wonderingly conformed to it. The wonder now lived again, lived in the recollection of what papa had said to Miss Overmore: "I've only to look at you to see you're a person I can appeal to for help to save my daughter." Maisie's ignorance of what she was to be saved from didn't diminish the pleasure of the thought that Miss Overmore was saving her. It seemed to make them cling together as in some wild game of "going round."