영어로 읽는 고전 _ 그레이스 리빙스턴 힐의 메리의 비밀
그레이스 리빙스턴 힐의 『메리의 비밀(The Mystery of Mary)』은 20세기 초에 쓰인 장편 소설이다. 이야기는 한 도시의 기차역에서 길을 잃은 채 두려움에 떨고 있는 한 정체불명의 젊은 여성 메리(Mary)와, 그 자리에 우연히 발을 들이게 된 주인공 트라이언 던햄(Tryon Dunham) 사이의 긴장감 넘치는 마주침으로부터 막을 연다. 두 사람의 길이 그렇게 교차하는 순간, 던햄은 어떤 알 수 없는 위험으로부터 도망쳐 나온 듯한 그녀를 차마 못 본 척하지 못한 채 그녀를 돕고 싶다는 강한 충동에 사로잡힌다. 이 작은 만남은 곧 정체와 양심, 그리고 한 사람의 선택이 다른 한 사람의 인생을 어떻게 바꿔 놓을 수 있는가 하는 묵직한 도덕적 물음들을 품은 한 편의 미스터리 로맨스가 펼쳐질 무대를 단숨에 마련한다.
소설의 도입부는 그 자체로 손에 땀을 쥐게 하는 장면들로 가득 채워져 있다. 약속에 약간 늦어 분주한 발걸음으로 기차역에 도착한 던햄은 그곳에서 누군가에게 쫓기는 듯 잔뜩 겁에 질린, 그러나 어디까지나 흐트러짐 없는 자태를 잃지 않은 한 아름다운 여성과 마주치게 된다. 그녀는 떨리는 목소리로 그에게 자신을 안전한 곳까지 잠시만이라도 호위해 달라고 부탁하고, 던햄은 잠시의 망설임 끝에 그 요청을 받아들인다. 위험이 도사리는 듯한 도시의 한복판을 함께 빠져나오면서, 두 사람 사이에는 말로 다 옮길 수 없는 어떤 종류의 신뢰가 천천히 자리 잡기 시작한다.
그러나 이내 그녀가 결코 가벼이 털어놓을 수 없는 사정을 마음 깊이 감춰 두고 있음이 점차 드러나기 시작한다. 그럼에도 던햄은 그녀를 보호해야 한다는 본능에 가까운 마음을 끝내 외면하지 못하고, 위험 부담을 잘 알면서도 그녀를 친구들이 모여 있는 만찬 자리로까지 데려가는 결단을 내린다. 곧 그는 메리에게 단 한 푼의 돈도, 그리고 그날 밤 머물 단 한 칸의 거처도 없다는 사실을 알게 되고, 외부에서 다가오는 보이지 않는 위협과 자신을 둘러싼 사회의 시선 앞에서, 점점 깊어져 가는 메리에 대한 마음을 어찌 다루어야 할지 진지하게 고민하기 시작한다. 이렇듯 도입부는 한 편의 미스터리와 한 편의 로맨스가 동시에 천천히 꽃을 피워 갈 자리를, 차분하면서도 인상 깊은 어조로 우리에게 살며시 펼쳐 보인다.
Classics Read in English _ The Mystery of Mary by Grace Livingston Hill
The Mystery of Mary, an early twentieth-century novel by Grace Livingston Hill, opens with one of the most quietly arresting encounters in her body of work: the sudden meeting, within the bustling halls of a great city railway station, between the steady young protagonist Tryon Dunham and a frightened, lost-looking young woman who gives her name simply as Mary. From the moment their paths cross, Dunham finds himself unable to look away from a stranger who is so plainly fleeing from some unspoken danger, and the protective impulse that rises within him sets in motion a story in which mystery, identity, and small but searching moral choices will steadily be drawn together into one absorbing thread.
The opening movements of the novel are arranged with real narrative tension. Dunham, somewhat late for his appointment and moving briskly through the station, comes upon a beautiful young woman whose every gesture betrays the unmistakable sense of being pursued, even as her composure refuses to fall entirely apart. With a tremor in her voice she asks him, half-stranger though he is, simply to escort her a little way out of harm's reach; and after a brief hesitation he accepts the charge. As the two pick their careful way out of the dangerous edges of the city night, an unspoken trust begins to grow between them — the kind of trust that is born only in shared peril and quietly carried in silence.
It soon becomes plain, however, that Mary is sheltering a secret of an altogether graver order than the present danger alone — a story she cannot easily entrust even to so courteous a protector. And yet Dunham, finding that something far deeper than mere good manners is bound up in his concern for her, refuses to leave her exposed to the night, and at considerable personal risk decides to bring her with him to the dinner gathering of his friends. When he learns shortly afterwards that she has neither a single coin in her purse nor any roof under which to lay her head, the unspoken question that has been forming within him steps forward in its full weight: how is he to reconcile the protective claim she has made upon his conscience with the watching eyes of his social world and the unseen threats that still hover just beyond their door? In these opening pages, with steady and quietly artful hands, Hill prepares the ground upon which a mystery and a romance will, by slow degrees, come into bloom together.
Among the contents
He paused on the platform and glanced at his watch. The train on which he had just arrived was late. It hurried away from the station, and was swallowed up in the blackness of the tunnel, as if it knew its own shortcomings and wished to make up for them.
It was five minutes of six, and as the young man looked back at the long flight of steps that led to the bridge across the tracks, a delicate pencilling of electric light flashed into outline against the city's deepening dusk, emphasizing the lateness of the hour. He had a dinner engagement at seven, and it was yet some distance to his home, where a rapid toilet must be made if he were to arrive on time.
The stairway was long, and there were many people thronging it. A shorter cut led down along the tracks under the bridge, and up the grassy embankment. It would bring him a whole block nearer home, and a line of cabs was standing over at the corner just above the bridge. It was against the rules to walk beside the tracks—there was a large sign to that effect in front of him—but it would save five minutes. He scanned the platform hastily to see if any officials were in sight, then bolted down the darkening tracks.
