第 4 节
作者:两块      更新:2022-07-12 16:20      字数:1716
  slowness of the departing train; and Harte had to clamber up the steps of
  the rearmost platform。  His host clambered after; to make sure that he
  was aboard; which done; he dropped to the ground; while Harte drew out of
  the station; blandly smiling; and waving his hand with a cigar in it; in
  picturesque farewell from the platform。
  Then his host realized that he had dropped to the ground barely in time
  to escape being crushed against the side of the archway that sharply
  descended beside the steps of the train; and he went and sat down in that
  handsomest hack; and was for a moment deathly sick at the danger that had
  not realized itself to him in season。  To be sure; he was able; long
  after; to adapt the incident to the exigencies of fiction; and to have a
  character; not otherwise to be conveniently disposed of; actually crushed
  to death between a moving train and such an archway。
  Besides; he had then and always afterward; the immense super…compensation
  of the memories of that visit from one of the most charming personalities
  in the world;
  〃In life's morning march when his bosom was young;〃
  and when infinitely less would have sated him。  Now death has come to
  join its vague conjectures to the broken expectations of life; and that
  blithe spirit is elsewhere。  But nothing can take from him who remains
  the witchery of that most winning presence。  Still it looks smiling from
  the platform of the car; and casts a farewell of mock heartbreak from it。
  Still a gay laugh comes across the abysm of the years that are now
  numbered; and out of somewhere the hearer's sense is rapt with the mellow
  cordial of a voice that was like no other。
  End o