“That was very nice, indeed, in you,” she said, with a gravely obliged air. “Pray, take one of my pansies.” And selecting one from her bouquet3, she held it out to him, and Hector Anstruthers, chancing to glance toward them at the moment, had the pleasure of seeing the charming bit of by-play.
It was the misfortune of Miss Crespigny’s admirers that they were rarely quite sure of her. She had an agreeable way of saying one thing, and meaning another; of speaking with the greatest gravity, and at the same time making her hearer feel extremely dubious4 and uncomfortable. She was a brilliant young lady, a sarcastic5 young lady, and this was her mode of dealing6 with young men and women who otherwise might have remained too well satisfied with themselves. Bertie Lyon felt himself 28 somewhat at a loss before her, always. It was not easy to resist her, when she chose to be irresistible7; but he invariably grew hot and cold over her “confounded significant speeches.” And this was one of them. She was making a cut at him for his clumsy compliment, and yet he was compelled to accept her pansy, and fasten it on his coat, as if he was grateful.
Mr. Hector Anstruthers had been installed, by universal consent, that evening, as a sort of young lion, whose gentlemanly roar was worth hearing. Young ladies had heard of him from their brothers, and one or two had seen those lovely little pictures of his last season. Matrons had heard their husbands mention him as a remarkable8 young fellow, who had unexpectedly come into a large property, and yet wrote articles for the papers, and painted, when the mood seized him, for dear life. A really extraordinary young man, and very popular among highly desirable people. “Rather reckless,” they would say, “perhaps, and something of a cynic, as these young swells9 are often apt to be; but, nevertheless, a fine fellow—a fine fellow!” And Anstruthers had condescended10 to make himself very agreeable to the young ladies to whom he was introduced; had danced 29 a little, had talked with great politeness to the elder matrons, and, in short, had rendered himself extremely popular. Indeed, he was so well employed, that, until the latter part of the evening, Lisbeth saw very little of him. Then he appeared suddenly to remember her existence, and dutifully made his way to her side, to ask for a dance, which invitation being rather indifferently accepted, they walked through a quadrille together.
“I hope,” he said, with punctilious11 politeness, “that the Misses Tregarthyn are well.”
“I am sorry to say,” answered Lisbeth, staring at her vis-à-vis, “that I don’t know.”
“Then I must have mistaken you. I understood you to say that you had just received a letter from Miss Clarissa.”
“It was not a mistake,” returned Lisbeth. “I had just received one, but unfortunately they don’t write about themselves. They write about me.”
“Which must necessarily render their letters interesting,” said Anstruthers.
Lisbeth barely deigned12 a slight shrug13 of her shoulders.
“Necessarily,” she replied, “if one is so happily disposed as never to become tired of one’s self.” 30
“It would be rank heresy14 to suppose,” said Anstruthers, “that any of Miss Crespigny’s friends would allow it possible that any one could become tired of Miss Crespigny—even Miss Crespigny herself.”
“This is the third figure, I believe,” was Lisbeth’s sole reply, and the music striking up again, they went on with their dancing.
“He supposes,” said the young lady, scornfully, to herself, “that he can play the grand seigneur with me as he does with other women. I dare say he is congratulating himself on the prospect15 of making me feel sorry some day—me! Are men always simpletons? It really seems so. And it is the women whom we may blame for it. Bah! he was a great deal more worthy16 of respect when he was nothing but a tiresome17, amiable18 young bore. I hate these simpletons who think they have seen the world, and used up their experience.”
She was very hard upon him, as she was rather apt to be hard upon every one but Lisbeth Crespigny. And it is not improbable that she was all the more severe, because he reminded her unpleasantly of things she would have been by no means unwilling19 to forget. Was she so heartless as not to have a secret remembrance of the flush of his first young passion, 31 of his innocent belief in her girlish goodness, of his generous eagerness to ignore all her selfish caprices, of his tender readiness to bear all her cruelty—for she had been cruel, and wantonly cruel, enough, God knows. Was she so utterly20 heartless as to have no memory of his suffering and struggles with his boyish pain, of his passionate21, frantic22 appeal, when she had reached the climax23 of her selfishness and indifference24 to the wrong she might do? Surely, no woman could be so hard, and I will not say that she was, and that she was not inwardly stung this night by the thought that, if he had hardened and grown careless and unbelieving, the chances were that it was she herself who had helped to bring about the change for the worse.
The two young men, Lyon and his friend, spending that night together, had a little conversation on the subject of their entertainment, and it came to pass in this wise.
Accompanying Anstruthers to his chambers25, Lyon, though by no means a sentimental26 individual, carried Miss Crespigny’s gold and purple pansy in his button-hole, and finding it there when he changed his dress coat for one of his friend’s dressing27 gowns, he took it out, and put it in a small slender vase upon the table. 32
Anstruthers had flung himself into an easy-chair, with his chibouque, and through the wreaths of smoke, ascending28 from the fragrant29 weed, he saw what the young man was doing.
“Where did you get that?” he demanded, abruptly30.
“It is one of those things Miss Crespigny wore,” was the modestly triumphant31 reply. “You saw them on her dress, and in her hair, and on her fan. This is a real one, though, out of her bouquet. I believe they call them heart’s-ease.”
“Heart’s-ease be ——,” began Anstruthers, roughly, but he checked himself in time. “She is the sort of a woman to wear heart’s-ease!” he added, with a sardonic32 laugh. “She ought to wear heart’s-ease, and violets, and lilies, and snowdrops, and wild roses in the bud,” with a more bitter laugh for each flower he named. “Such fresh, innocent things suit women of her stamp.”
“I say,” said Lyon, staring at his sneering34 face, amazedly, “what is the matter? You talk as if you had a spite against her. What’s up?”
Anstruther’s sneer33 only seemed to deepen in its intensity35.
“A spite!” he echoed. 33“What is the matter? Oh, nothing—nothing of any consequence. Only I wish she had given her heart’s-ease to me, or I wish you would give it to me, that I might show you what I advise you to do with the pretty things such creatures give you. Toss it into the fire, old fellow, and let it scorch36, and blacken, and writhe37, as if it was a living thing in torment38. Or fling it on the ground, and set your heel upon it, and grind it out of sight.”
“I don’t see what good that would do,” said Lyon, coming to the mantelpiece, and taking down his meerschaum. “You are a queer fellow, Anstruthers. I did not think you knew the girl.”
“I know her?” with a fresh sneer. “I know her well enough.”
“By Jove!” exclaimed Lyon, suddenly, as if a thought had struck him. “Then she did mean something.”
“She generally means something,” returned the other. “Such women invariably do—they mean mischief39.”
“She generally does when she laughs in that way,” Lyon proceeded, incautiously. “She is generally laughing at a man, instead of with him, as she pretends to be. And when she laughed, this evening, and looked in that odd 34 style at you, I thought there was something wrong.”
Anstruthers turned white, the dead white of suppressed passion.
“Laugh!” he said. “She laughed?”
“You see,” explained Lyon, “she had been asking about you; and when I finished telling her what I knew, she looked at you under her eyelashes, as you stood talking to Mrs. Despard, and then she laughed; and when I asked her if she was laughing at you, she said, ‘Ah, no! Not at you, but at another gentleman of the same name, whom she had known a long time ago.’”
It was not the best thing for himself, that Hector Anstruthers could have heard. He had outlived his boyish passion, but he had not lived down the sting of it. Having had his first young faith broken, he had given faith up, as a poor mockery. He had grown cynical40 and sneering. Bah! Why should he cling to his old ideals of truth and purity? What need that he should strive to be worthy of visions such as they had proved themselves? What was truth after all? What was purity, in the end? What had either done for him, when he had striven after and believed in them?
The accidental death of his cousin had made 35 him a rich man, and he had given himself up to his own caprices. He had seen the world, and lived a lifetime during the last few years. What had there been to hold him back? Not love. He had done with that, he told himself. Not hope of any quiet bliss41 to come. If he ever married, he should marry some woman who knew what she was taking when she accepted what he had to offer.
And then he had gradually drifted into his artistic42 and literary pursuits, and his success had roused his vanity. He would be something more than the rest; and, incited43 by this noble motive44, and his real love for the work, he had made himself something more. He had had no higher incentive45 than this vanity, and a fancy for popularity. It was not unpleasant to be pointed46 out as a genius—a man who, having no need to labor47, had the whim48 to labor as hard when the mood seized, as the poorest Bohemian among them, and who would be paid for his work, too. “They will give me praise for nothing,” he would say, sardonically49. “They won’t give me money for nothing. As long as they will pay me, my work means something. When it ceases to be worth a price, it is not worth my time.”
The experience of this evening had been a 36 bad thing altogether for Anstruthers. It had roused in him much of sleeping evil. His meeting with Lisbeth Crespigny had been, as he told her, wholly unexpected. And because it had been unexpected, its effect had double force. He did not want to see her. If he had been aware of her presence in the house he was going to visit, he would have avoided it as he would have avoided the plague. The truth was, that in these days she had, in his mind, become the embodiment of all that was unnatural50, and hard, and false. And meeting her suddenly, face to face, every bitter memory of her had come back to him with a fierce shock. When he had turned, as Mrs. Despard spoke51, and had seen her standing52 in the doorway53, framed in, as it were, with vines and flowers, and tropical plants, he had almost felt that he could turn on his heel and walk out of the room without a word of explanation. She would know well enough what it meant. Being the man he was, his eye had taken in at a glance every artistic effect about her; and she was artistic enough; for when Lisbeth Crespigny was not artistic she was nothing. He saw that the promise of her own undeveloped girlhood had fulfilled itself after its own rare, peculiar54 fashion, doubly and trebly. He saw 37 in her what other men seldom saw at first sight, but always learned afterward55, and his sense of repulsion and anger against her was all the more intense. Having been such a girl, what might she not be as such a woman? Having borne such blossoms, what could the fruit be but hard and bitter at the core? Only his ever-ruling vanity saved him from greeting her with some insane, caustic56 speech. Vanity will serve both men and women a good turn, by chance, sometimes, and his saved him from making a blatant57 idiot of himself—barely saved him. And having got through this, it was not soothing58 to hear that she had stood, in her sly way, and looked at him under her eyelashes, and laughed. He knew how she would laugh. He had heard her laugh at people in that quiet fashion, when she was fifteen, and the sound had always hurt him, through its suggestion of some ungirlish satire59 he could not grasp, and which was not worthy of so perfect a being as he deemed her.
So, he could not help breaking out again in new fury, when Bertie Lyon explained himself. It did not matter so much, breaking out before Lyon. Men could keep each other’s secrets. He flung his pipe aside with a rough word, and began to pace the room. 38
“There is more of devil than woman in her,” he said. “There always was. I’d give a few years of my life,” clenching60 his hand, “to be sure that she would find her match some day.”
“I should think you would be match enough for her,” remarked Lyon, astutely61. “But what has she done to make you so savage62? When were you in love with a woman?”
“Never!” bitterly. “I was in love with her, and she never belonged to the race, not even at fifteen years old. I was in love with her, and she has been the ruin of me.”
“I should scarcely have thought it,” answered Lyon. “You are a pretty respectable wreck63, for your age.”
The young man was not prone64 to heroics himself, and not seeing his friend indulge in them often, he did not regard them with enthusiasm.
This complacency checked Anstruthers. What a frantic fool he was, to let such a trifle upset his boasted cynicism? He flung out another short laugh of defiant65 self-ridicule. He came back to his chair as abruptly as he had left it.
“Bah!” he said. “So I am. You are a wise boy, Lyon, and I am glad you stopped me. I thought I had lived down all this sort 39 of nonsense, but—but I have seen that girl wear pansies before. Heart’s-ease, by Jove! And it gave me a twinge to think of it. Keep that one in the glass over there; keep it as long as you choose, my boy. It will last as long as your fancy for her does, I wager66. Women of the Crespigny stamp don’t wear well. Here, hand me that bottle—Or stay! I’ll ring for my man, and we will have some brandy and soda67, to cool our heated fancies. We are too young to stay up so late; too young and innocent! We ought to have gone to bed long ago, like good boys.”
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1
sweeping
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| adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的 | |
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dense
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| a.密集的，稠密的，浓密的；密度大的 | |
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bouquet
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| n.花束，酒香 | |
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dubious
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| adj.怀疑的，无把握的；有问题的，靠不住的 | |
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sarcastic
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| adj.讥讽的，讽刺的，嘲弄的 | |
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dealing
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| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
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irresistible
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| adj.非常诱人的，无法拒绝的，无法抗拒的 | |
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remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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swells
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| 增强( swell的第三人称单数 )； 肿胀； （使）凸出； 充满（激情） | |
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condescended
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| 屈尊，俯就( condescend的过去式和过去分词 )； 故意表示和蔼可亲 | |
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punctilious
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| adj.谨慎的，谨小慎微的 | |
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deigned
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| v.屈尊，俯就( deign的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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shrug
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| v.耸肩(表示怀疑、冷漠、不知等) | |
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heresy
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| n.异端邪说；异教 | |
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prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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tiresome
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| adj.令人疲劳的，令人厌倦的 | |
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amiable
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| adj.和蔼可亲的，友善的，亲切的 | |
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unwilling
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| adj.不情愿的 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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frantic
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| adj.狂乱的，错乱的，激昂的 | |
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climax
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| n.顶点；高潮；v.(使)达到顶点 | |
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indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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chambers
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| n.房间( chamber的名词复数 )；（议会的）议院；卧室；会议厅 | |
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sentimental
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| adj.多愁善感的，感伤的 | |
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dressing
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| n.(食物)调料；包扎伤口的用品，敷料 | |
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ascending
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| adj.上升的，向上的 | |
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fragrant
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| adj.芬香的，馥郁的，愉快的 | |
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abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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triumphant
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| adj.胜利的，成功的；狂欢的，喜悦的 | |
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sardonic
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| adj.嘲笑的，冷笑的，讥讽的 | |
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sneer
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| v.轻蔑；嘲笑；n.嘲笑，讥讽的言语 | |
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sneering
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| 嘲笑的，轻蔑的 | |
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intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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scorch
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| v.烧焦，烤焦；高速疾驶；n.烧焦处，焦痕 | |
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writhe
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| vt.挣扎，痛苦地扭曲；vi.扭曲，翻腾，受苦；n.翻腾，苦恼 | |
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torment
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| n.折磨；令人痛苦的东西(人)；vt.折磨；纠缠 | |
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mischief
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| n.损害，伤害，危害；恶作剧，捣蛋，胡闹 | |
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cynical
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| adj.(对人性或动机)怀疑的，不信世道向善的 | |
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bliss
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| n.狂喜，福佑，天赐的福 | |
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artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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incited
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| 刺激，激励，煽动( incite的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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incentive
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| n.刺激；动力；鼓励；诱因；动机 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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48
whim
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| n.一时的兴致，突然的念头；奇想，幻想 | |
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sardonically
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| adv.讽刺地，冷嘲地 | |
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50
unnatural
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| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
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51
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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52
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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54
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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55
afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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56
caustic
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| adj.刻薄的，腐蚀性的 | |
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57
blatant
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| adj.厚颜无耻的；显眼的；炫耀的 | |
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soothing
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| adj.慰藉的；使人宽心的；镇静的 | |
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satire
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| n.讽刺，讽刺文学，讽刺作品 | |
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60
clenching
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| v.紧握，抓紧，咬紧( clench的现在分词 ) | |
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astutely
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| adv.敏锐地；精明地；敏捷地；伶俐地 | |
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savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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wreck
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| n.失事，遇难；沉船；vt.(船等)失事，遇难 | |
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prone
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| adj.(to)易于…的，很可能…的；俯卧的 | |
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65
defiant
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| adj.无礼的，挑战的 | |
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wager
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| n.赌注；vt.押注，打赌 | |
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soda
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| n.苏打水；汽水 | |
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