She had gone to my husband’s people; it was the best arrangement. We were lucky that it was possible; so many children had to be sent to strangers and hirelings. Since an unfortunate infant must be brought into the world and set adrift, the haven21 of its grandmother and its Aunt Emma and its Aunt Alice certainly seemed providential. I had absolutely no cause for anxiety, as I often told people, wondering that I did not feel a little all the same. Nothing, I knew, could exceed the conscientious devotion of all three Farnham ladies to the child. She would appear upon their somewhat barren horizon as a new and interesting duty, and the small additional income she also represented would be almost nominal22 compensation for the care she would receive. They were excellent persons of the kind that talk about matins and vespers, and attend both. They helped little charities and gave little teas, and wrote little notes, and made deprecating allowance for the eccentricities23 of their titled or moneyed acquaintances. They were the subdued24, smiling, unimaginatively dressed women on a small definite income that you meet at every rectory garden-party in the country, a little snobbish25, a little priggish, wholly conventional, but apart from these weaknesses, sound and simple and dignified26, managing their two small servants with a display of the most exact traditions, and keeping a somewhat vague and belated but constant eye upon the doings of their country as chronicled in a bi-weekly paper. They were all immensely interested in royalty27, and would read paragraphs aloud to each other about how the Princess Beatrice or the Princess Maud had opened a fancy bazaar28, looking remarkably29 well in plain grey poplin trimmed with Irish lace — an industry which, as is well known, the Royal Family has set its heart on rehabilitating30. Upon which Mrs. Farnham’s comment invariably would be, ‘How thoughtful of them, dear!’ and Alice would usually say, ‘Well, if I were a princess, I should like something nicer than plain grey poplin.’ Alice, being the youngest, was not always expected to think before she spoke31. Alice painted in water-colours, but Emma was supposed to have the most common sense.
They took turns in writing to us with the greatest regularity32 about Cecily; only once, I think, did they miss the weekly mail, and that was when she threatened diphtheria and they thought we had better be kept in ignorance. The kind and affectionate terms of these letters never altered except with the facts they described — teething, creeping, measles33, cheeks growing round and rosy34, all were conveyed in the same smooth, pat, and proper phrases, so absolutely empty of any glimpse of the child’s personality that after the first few months it was like reading about a somewhat uninteresting infant in a book. I was sure Cecily was not uninteresting, but her chroniclers were. We used to wade35 through the long, thin sheets and saw how much more satisfactory it would be when Cecily could write to us herself. Meanwhile we noted36 her weekly progress with much the feeling one would have about a far-away little bit of property that was giving no trouble and coming on exceedingly well. We would take possession of Cecily at our convenience; till then, it was gratifying to hear of our unearned increment37 in dear little dimples and sweet little curls.
She was nearly four when I saw her again. We were home on three months’ leave; John had just got his first brevet for doing something which he does not allow me to talk about in the Black Mountain country; and we were fearfully pleased with ourselves. I remember that excitement lasted well up to Port Said. As far as the Canal, Cecily was only one of the pleasures and interests we were going home to: John’s majority was the thing that really gave savour to life. But the first faint line of Europe brought my child to my horizon; and all the rest of the way she kept her place, holding out her little arms to me, beckoning38 me on. Her four motherless years brought compunction to my heart and tears to my eyes; she should have all the compensation that could be. I suddenly realized how ready I was — how ready! — to have her back. I rebelled fiercely against John’s decision that we must not take her with us on our return to the frontier; privately39, I resolved to dispute it, and, if necessary, I saw myself abducting40 the child — my own child. My days and nights as the ship crept on were full of a long ache to possess her; the defrauded41 tenderness of the last four years rose up in me and sometimes caught at my throat. I could think and talk and dream of nothing else. John indulged me as much as was reasonable, and only once betrayed by a yawn that the subject was not for him endlessly absorbing. Then I cried and he apologized. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘it isn’t exactly the same thing. I’m not her mother.’ At which I dried my tears and expanded, proud and pacified42. I was her mother!
Then the rainy little station and Alice, all-embracing in a damp waterproof43, and the drive in the fly, and John’s mother at the gate and a necessary pause while I kissed John’s mother. Dear thing, she wanted to hold our hands and look into our faces and tell us how little we had changed for all our hardships; and on the way to the house she actually stopped to point out some alterations44 in the flower-borders. At last the drawing-room door and the smiling housemaid turning the handle and the unforgettable picture of a little girl, a little girl unlike anything we had imagined, starting bravely to trot45 across the room with the little speech that had been taught her. Half-way she came; I suppose our regards were too fixed46, too absorbed, for there she stopped with a wail47 of terror at the strange faces, and ran straight back to the outstretched arms of her Aunt Emma. The most natural thing in the world, no doubt. I walked over to a chair opposite with my hand-bag and umbrella and sat down — a spectator, aloof48 and silent. Aunt Emma fondled and quieted the child, apologizing for her to me, coaxing49 her to look up, but the little figure still shook with sobs50, hiding its face in the bosom51 that it knew. I smiled politely, like any other stranger, at Emma’s deprecations, and sat impassive, looking at my alleged52 baby breaking her heart at the sight of her mother. It is not amusing even now to remember the anger that I felt. I did not touch her or speak to her; I simply sat observing my alien possession, in the frock I had not made and the sash I had not chosen, being coaxed53 and kissed and protected and petted by its Aunt Emma. Presently I asked to be taken to my room, and there I locked myself in for two atrocious hours. Just once my heart beat high, when a tiny knock came and a timid, docile54 little voice said that tea was ready. But I heard the rustle55 of a skirt, and guessed the directing angel in Aunt Emma, and responded, ‘Thank you, dear, run away and say that I am coming,’ with a pleasant visitor’s inflection which I was able to sustain for the rest of afternoon.
‘She goes to bed at seven,’ said Emma.
‘Oh, does she?’ said I. ‘A very good hour, I should think.’
‘She sleeps in my room,’ said Mrs. Farnham.
‘We give her mutton broth56 very often, but seldom stock soup,’ said Aunt Emma. ‘Mamma thinks it is too stimulating57.’
‘Indeed?’ said I, to all of it.
They took me up to see her in her crib, and pointed58 out, as she lay asleep, that though she had ‘a general look’ of me, her features were distinctively59 Farnham.
‘Won’t you kiss her?’ asked Alice. ‘You haven’t kissed her yet, and she is used to so much affection.’
‘I don’t think I could take such an advantage of her,’ I said.
They looked at each other, and Mrs. Farnham said that I was plainly worn out. I mustn’t sit up to prayers.
If I had been given anything like reasonable time I might have made a fight for it, but four weeks — it took a month each way in those days — was too absurdly little; I could do nothing. But I would not stay at mamma’s. It was more than I would ask of myself, that daily disappointment under the mask of gratified discovery, for long.
I spent an approving, unnatural60 week, in my farcical character, bridling61 my resentment62 and hiding my mortification63 with pretty phrases; and then I went up to town and drowned my sorrows in the summer sales. I took John with me. I may have been Cecily’s mother in theory, but I was John’s wife in fact.
We went back to the frontier, and the regiment saw a lot of service. That meant medals and fun for my husband, but economy and anxiety for me, though I managed to be allowed as close to the firing line as any woman.
Once the Colonel’s wife and I, sitting in Fort Samila, actually heard the rifles of a punitive64 expedition cracking on the other side of the river — that was a bad moment. My man came in after fifteen hours’ fighting, and went sound asleep, sitting before his food with his knife and fork in his hands. But service makes heavy demands besides those on your wife’s nerves. We had saved two thousand rupees, I remember, against another run home, and it all went like powder, in the Mirzai expedition; and the run home diminished to a month in a boarding-house in the hills.
Meanwhile, however, we had begun to correspond with our daughter, in large round words of one syllable65, behind which, of course, was plain the patient guiding hand of Aunt Emma. One could hear Aunt Emma suggesting what would be nice to say, trying to instil66 a little pale affection for the far-off papa and mamma. There was so little Cecily and so much Emma — of course, it could not be otherwise — that I used to take, I fear, but a perfunctory joy in these letters. When we went home again I stipulated67 absolutely that she was to write to us without any sort of supervision68 — the child was ten.
‘But the spelling!’ cried Aunt Emma, with lifted eyebrows69.
‘Her letters aren’t exercises,’ I was obliged to retort; ‘she will do the best she can.’
We found her a docile little girl, with nice manners, a thoroughly70 unobjectionable child. I saw quite clearly that I could not have brought her up so well; indeed, there were moments when I fancied that Cecily, contrasting me with her aunts, wondered a little what my bringing up could have been like. With this reserve of criticism on Cecily’s part, however, we got on very tolerably, largely because I found it impossible to assume any responsibility towards her, and in moments of doubt or discipline referred her to her aunts. We spent a pleasant summer with a little girl in the house whose interest in us was amusing, and whose outings it was gratifying to arrange; but when we went back, I had no desire to take her with us. I thought her very much better where she was.
Then came the period which is filled, in a subordinate degree, with Cecily’s letters. I do not wish to claim more than I ought; they were not my only or even my principal interest in life. It was a long period; it lasted till she was twenty-one. John had had promotion71 in the meantime, and there was rather more money, but he had earned his second brevet with a bullet through one lung, and the doctors ordered our leave to be spent in South Africa. We had photographs, we knew she had grown tall and athletic72 and comely73, and the letters were always very creditable. I had the unusual and qualified74 privilege of watching my daughter’s development from ten to twenty-one, at a distance of four thousand miles, by means of the written word. I wrote myself as provocatively75 as possible; I sought for every string, but the vibration76 that came back across the seas to me was always other than the one I looked for, and sometimes there was none. Nevertheless, Mrs. Farnham wrote me that Cecily very much valued my communications. Once when I had described an unusual excursion in a native state, I learned that she had read my letter aloud to the sewing circle. After that I abandoned description, and confined myself to such intimate personal details as no sewing circle could find amusing. The child’s own letters were simply a mirror of the ideas of the Farnham ladies; that must have been so, it was not altogether my jaundiced eye. Alice and Emma and grandmamma paraded the pages in turn. I very early gave up hope of discoveries in my daughter, though as much of the original as I could detect was satisfactorily simple and sturdy. I found little things to criticize, of course, tendencies to correct; and by return post I criticized and corrected, but the distance and the deliberation seemed to touch my maxims77 with a kind of arid frivolity78, and sometimes I tore them up. One quick, warm-blooded scolding would have been worth a sheaf of them. My studied little phrases could only inoculate79 her with a dislike for me without protecting her from anything under the sun.
However, I found she didn’t dislike me, when John and I went home at last to bring her out. She received me with just a hint of kindness, perhaps, but on the whole very well.
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收听单词发音
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1
varnished
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| 浸渍过的，涂漆的 | |
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sodden
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| adj.浑身湿透的；v.使浸透；使呆头呆脑 | |
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conscientious
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| adj.审慎正直的，认真的，本着良心的 | |
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veranda
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| n.走廊；阳台 | |
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tempted
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| v.怂恿（某人）干不正当的事；冒…的险（tempt的过去分词） | |
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sordid
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| adj.肮脏的，不干净的，卑鄙的，暗淡的 | |
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pretense
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| n.矫饰，做作，借口 | |
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peevish
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| adj.易怒的，坏脾气的 | |
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applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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virtues
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| 美德( virtue的名词复数 )； 德行； 优点； 长处 | |
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regiment
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| n.团，多数，管理；v.组织，编成团，统制 | |
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scorpion
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| n.蝎子，心黑的人，蝎子鞭 | |
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odious
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| adj.可憎的，讨厌的 | |
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prophesy
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| v.预言；预示 | |
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binding
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| 有约束力的，有效的，应遵守的 | |
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arid
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| adj.干旱的；(土地)贫瘠的 | |
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17
curtailed
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| v.截断，缩短( curtail的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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providence
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| n.深谋远虑，天道，天意；远见；节约；上帝 | |
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19
fret
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| v.(使)烦恼；(使)焦急；(使)腐蚀，(使)磨损 | |
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20
wretch
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| n.可怜的人，不幸的人；卑鄙的人 | |
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haven
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| n.安全的地方，避难所，庇护所 | |
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22
nominal
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| adj.名义上的；(金额、租金)微不足道的 | |
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23
eccentricities
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| n.古怪行为( eccentricity的名词复数 )；反常；怪癖 | |
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subdued
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| adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
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snobbish
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| adj.势利的，谄上欺下的 | |
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dignified
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| a.可敬的，高贵的 | |
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royalty
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| n.皇家，皇族 | |
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bazaar
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| n.集市，商店集中区 | |
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remarkably
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| ad.不同寻常地，相当地 | |
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rehabilitating
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| 改造（罪犯等）( rehabilitate的现在分词 )； 使恢复正常生活； 使恢复原状； 修复 | |
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31
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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32
regularity
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| n.规律性，规则性；匀称，整齐 | |
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measles
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| n.麻疹，风疹，包虫病，痧子 | |
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rosy
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| adj.美好的，乐观的，玫瑰色的 | |
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wade
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| v.跋涉，涉水；n.跋涉 | |
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noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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increment
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| n.增值，增价；提薪，增加工资 | |
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38
beckoning
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| adj.引诱人的，令人心动的v.（用头或手的动作）示意，召唤( beckon的现在分词 ) | |
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privately
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| adv.以私人的身份，悄悄地，私下地 | |
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40
abducting
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| 劫持，诱拐( abduct的现在分词 )； 使（肢体等）外展 | |
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defrauded
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| v.诈取，骗取( defraud的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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42
pacified
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| 使（某人）安静( pacify的过去式和过去分词 )； 息怒； 抚慰； 在（有战争的地区、国家等）实现和平 | |
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43
waterproof
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| n.防水材料；adj.防水的；v.使...能防水 | |
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alterations
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| n.改动( alteration的名词复数 )；更改；变化；改变 | |
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45
trot
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| n.疾走，慢跑；n.老太婆；现成译本；(复数）trots:腹泻（与the 连用）；v.小跑，快步走，赶紧 | |
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46
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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47
wail
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| vt./vi.大声哀号，恸哭；呼啸，尖啸 | |
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48
aloof
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| adj.远离的；冷淡的，漠不关心的 | |
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49
coaxing
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| v.哄，用好话劝说( coax的现在分词 )；巧言骗取；哄劝，劝诱；“锻炼”效应 | |
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50
sobs
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| 啜泣（声），呜咽（声）( sob的名词复数 ) | |
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51
bosom
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| n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的 | |
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52
alleged
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| a.被指控的，嫌疑的 | |
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53
coaxed
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| v.哄，用好话劝说( coax的过去式和过去分词 )；巧言骗取；哄劝，劝诱 | |
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54
docile
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| adj.驯服的，易控制的，容易教的 | |
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55
rustle
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| v.沙沙作响；偷盗(牛、马等)；n.沙沙声声 | |
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56
broth
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| n.原(汁)汤(鱼汤、肉汤、菜汤等) | |
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57
stimulating
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| adj.有启发性的，能激发人思考的 | |
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58
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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distinctively
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| adv.特殊地，区别地 | |
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unnatural
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| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
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61
bridling
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| 给…套龙头( bridle的现在分词 )； 控制； 昂首表示轻蔑（或怨忿等）； 动怒，生气 | |
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resentment
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| n.怨愤，忿恨 | |
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mortification
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| n.耻辱，屈辱 | |
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64
punitive
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| adj.惩罚的，刑罚的 | |
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syllable
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| n.音节；vt.分音节 | |
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instil
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| v.逐渐灌输 | |
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stipulated
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| vt.& vi.规定；约定adj.[法]合同规定的 | |
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68
supervision
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| n.监督，管理 | |
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69
eyebrows
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| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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70
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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71
promotion
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| n.提升，晋级；促销，宣传 | |
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72
athletic
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| adj.擅长运动的，强健的；活跃的，体格健壮的 | |
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73
comely
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| adj.漂亮的，合宜的 | |
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qualified
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| adj.合格的，有资格的，胜任的，有限制的 | |
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75
provocatively
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76
vibration
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| n.颤动，振动；摆动 | |
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maxims
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| n.格言，座右铭( maxim的名词复数 ) | |
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78
frivolity
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| n.轻松的乐事，兴高采烈；轻浮的举止 | |
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inoculate
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| v.给...接种，给...注射疫苗 | |
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