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The Unconquerable is a short story traditionally credited to Thomas Hardy, though its true authorship has long been the subject of controversy.〔http://www.maggs.com/title/MO34817.asp〕 The story of two friends’ rivalry over a young lady was written around 1910/11 but was never published during Hardy’s lifetime. ==Plot== Philip Fadelle and Roger Wingate had been close friends since boyhood. This friendship continued well into adulthood, even when the scholarly Fadelle and the roguish politician Wingate realized they both had intentions toward the same young woman, Gertrude Norton. Temporarily waylaid on the day that he intended to propose marriage to Gertrude, Fadelle arrives at her house only to find that she had accepted the same proposal from Wingate just hours before. Fadelle maintains his friendship with the married couple throughout the ensuing years, and is thusly distraught when five years after the marriage Wingate is fatally struck down by a sudden illness. He learns from Gertrude that Wingate’s dying wish was to have Fadelle write a commemorative biography about Wingate’s political and business successes. Seeing an opportunity to ingratiate himself to Gertrude – for whom he still has deep yearnings – Wingate constructs a glorious re-telling of his friend’s career. Some time having passed since Wingate’s passing and the commissioning of the biography, Fadelle visits Gertrude, both to present her with the draft of the manuscript and to finally express his romantic intentions toward her. He finds to his dismay that she is still deeply in love with her late husband, and that the glowing portrayal of him in the biography had made this love even more resilient and resistant to any future suitors. During the visit Gertrude shows Fadelle a roomful of Wingate’s letters and documents which she has never gone through and which she suggests to Fadelle might be useful in finishing the biography. In going through the documents Fadelle is shocked to discover that every one of Wingate’s successes throughout his life – including his marriage – was achieved by gross treachery and deceit. Fadelle is subsequently faced with the moral dilemma of either exposing Wingate as the criminal he was – in doing so wresting Gertrude from the grips of her treasured memories of her late husband - or destroying the evidence of Wingate’s amoral life. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Unconquerable」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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