Then they had a surprise indeed.
Lisbeth, who had been listening, in a rather absent manner, aroused herself to astonish them.
“I think,” she said, “that if you do not mind making the journey alone, Georgie, I should like to stay in Pen’yllan this winter.”
“In Pen’yllan?” cried Georgie. “All winter, Lisbeth?”
“At Pen’yllan? Here? With us?” cried Miss Millicent, and Miss Hetty, and Miss Clarissa, in chorus.
“Yes,” answered Lisbeth, in her most non-committal fashion. “At Pen’yllan, Aunt 172 Hetty. Here, Aunt Millicent. With you, Aunt Clarissa.”
The Misses Tregarthyn became quite pale. They glanced at each other, and shook their heads, ominously3. This portended4 something dreadful, indeed.
“My love,” faltered6 Miss Clarissa.
“What?” interposed Lisbeth. “Won’t you let me stay? Are you tired of me? I told you that you would be, you know, before I came.”
“Oh, my dear!” protested Miss Clarissa. “How can you? Tired of you? Sister Hetty, sister Millicent! Tired of her?”
“We only thought, my love, that it would be so dull to one used to—to the brilliant vortex of London society,” ended Miss Millicent, rather grandly.
“But if I think that it will not,” said Lisbeth. “I am tired of the ‘brilliant vortex of London society.’”
She got up from her chair, and went and stood by Georgie, at the window, looking out.
“Yes,” she said, almost as if speaking to herself, “I think I should like to stay.”
The end of it was, that she did stay. She wrote to Mrs. Despard, that very day, announcing her intention of remaining. Georgie, in 173 packing her trunks, actually shed a few silent tears among her ruffs and ribbons. To her mind, this was a sad termination to her happy visit. She knew that it must mean something serious, that there must be some powerful motive7 at the bottom of such a resolution. If Lisbeth would only not be so reserved. If it was only a little easier to understand her.
“We shall miss you very much, Lisbeth,” she ventured, mournfully.
“Not more than I shall miss you,” answered Lisbeth, who at the time stood near, watching her as she knelt before the box she was packing.
Georgie paused in her task, to look up doubtfully.
“Then why will you do it?” she said. “You—you must have a reason.”
“Yes,” said Lisbeth, “I have a reason.”
The girl’s eyes still appealed to her; so she went on, with a rather melancholy8 smile:
“I have two reasons—perhaps more. Pen’yllan agrees with me, and I do not want to go back to town yet. I am going to take a rest. I must need one, or Aunt Clarissa would not find so much fault with my appearance. I don’t want to ‘go off on my looks,’ before my time, and you know they are always telling 174 me I am pale and thin. Am I pale and thin, Georgie?”
“Yes,” confessed Georgie, “you are,” and she gave her a troubled look.
“Then,” returned Lisbeth, “there is all the more reason that I should rusticate9. Perhaps, by the spring, I shall be red and fat, like Miss Rosamond Puddifoot,” with a little laugh. “And I shall have taken to tracts10, and soup-kitchens, and given up the world, and wear a yellow bonnet11, and call London a ‘vortex of sinful pleasure,’ as she does. Why, my dear Georgie, what is the matter?”
The fact was, that a certain incongruity12 in her beloved Lisbeth’s looks and tone, had so frightened Georgie, and touched her susceptible13 heart, that the tears had rushed to her eyes, and she was filled with a dolorous14 pity.
“You are not—you are not happy,” she cried all at once. “You are not, or you would not speak in that queer, satirical way. I wish you would be a little—a little more—kind, Lisbeth.”
Lisbeth’s look was a positively15 guilty one.
“Kind!” she exclaimed. “Kind, Georgie!”
Having gone so far, Georgie could not easily draw back, and was fain to go on, though she became conscious that she had placed herself in a very trying position. 175
“It is not kind to keep everything to yourself so closely,” she said, tremulously. “As if we did not care for you, or could not comprehend——”
She stopped, because Lisbeth frightened her again. She became so pale, that it was impossible to say anything more. Her great, dark eyes dilated16, as if with a kind of horror, at something.
“You—you think I have a secret,” she interrupted her, with a hollow-sounding laugh. “And you are determined17 to make a heroine out of me, instead of allowing me to enjoy my ‘nerves’ in peace. You don’t comprehend ‘nerves,’ that is clear. You are running at a red rag, Georgie, my dear. It is astonishing how prone18 you good, tender-hearted people are to run at red rags, and toss, and worry them.”
It was plain that she would never betray herself. She would hold at arm’s-length even the creature who loved her best, and was most worthy19 of her confidence. It was useless to try to win her to any revelation of her feelings.
Georgie fell to at her packing again, with a very melancholy consciousness of the fact, that she had done no good by losing control over her innocent emotions, and might have 176 done harm. It had pained her inexpressibly to see that quick dread5 of self-betrayal, which had announced itself in the sudden loss of color, and the odd expression in her friend’s eyes.
“She does not love me as I love her,” was her pathetic, mental conclusion. “If she did, she would not be so afraid of me.”
When Lisbeth bade her good-by, at the little railway station, the girl’s heart quite failed her.
“What shall I say to mamma and papa?” she asked.
“Tell them that Pen’yllan agrees with me so well that I don’t like to leave it for the present,” was Lisbeth’s answer. “And tell Mrs. Esmond that I will write to her myself.”
“And—” in timid desperation—“and Hector, Lisbeth?”
“Hector?” rather sharply. “Why Hector? What has he to do with the matter? But stay!” shrugging her shoulders. “I suppose it would be only civil. Tell him—tell him—that Aunt Clarissa sends her love, and hopes he will take care of his lungs.”
And yet, though this irreverent speech was her last, and she made it in her most malicious20 manner, the delicate, dark face, and light, small 177 figure, had a strangely desolate21 look to Georgie, as, when the train bore her away, she caught her last farewell glimpse of them on the platform of the small station.
Lisbeth stood before her mirror, that night, slowly brushing up her hair, and feeling the silence of the small chamber22 acutely.
“It would never have done,” she said to herself. “It would never have done at all. This is the better way—better, by far.”
But it was hard enough to face, and it was fantastic enough to think that she had really determined to face it. In a minute or so she sat down, with her brush in her hand, and her hair loose upon her shoulders, to confront the facts once more. She was going to spend her winter at Pen’yllan. She had given up the flesh-pots of Egypt. She was going to breakfast at eight, dine at two when there was no company, take five o’clock tea, and spend the evening with the Misses Tregarthyn. She would stroll in the garden, walk on the beach, and take Miss Clarissa’s medicines meekly23. At this point a new view of the case presented itself to her, and she began to laugh. Mustard baths, and Dr. Puddifoot’s prescriptions24, in incongruous connection with her own personal knowledge of things, appeared all at once so 178 ludicrous, that they got the better of her, and she laughed until she found herself crying; and then, angry as she was at her own weakness, the tears got the better of her, too, for a short time. If she had never been emotional before, she was emotional enough in these days. She could not pride herself upon her immovability now. She felt, constantly, either passionate25 anger against herself, or passionate contempt, or a passionate eagerness to retrieve26 her lost self-respect. What could she do? How could she rescue herself? This would not do! This would not do! She must make some new struggle! This sort of thing she was saying feverishly27 from morning until night.
Secretly she had almost learned to detest28 Pen’yllan. Pen’yllan, she told herself, had been the cause of all her follies29; but it was safer at present than London. If she stayed at Pen’yllan long enough, surely she could wear herself out, or rather wear out her fancies. A less resolute30 young woman would, in all likelihood, have trifled weakly with her danger; but it was not so with Lisbeth. She had not trifled with it from the first: she had held herself stubbornly aloof31 from any little self-indulgence; and now she was harder upon herself than ever. She would have died cheerfully, 179 rather than have betrayed herself, and if she could die, surely she could endure a dull winter.
Her moral condition was so far improved, however, that she did not visit her small miseries32 upon her aunts, as she would have done in the olden days. Her behavior was really creditable, under the circumstances. She played chess with Miss Clarissa in the evening, or read aloud, or sung for them, and began to take a whimsical pleasure in their delight at her condescension33. They were so easily delighted, that she felt many a sting of shame at her former delinquencies. She had an almost morbid34 longing35 “to be good,” like Georgie, and she practiced this being “good” upon the three spinsters, with a persistence36 at which she herself both laughed and cried when she was alone. Her first letter to Georgie puzzled the girl indescribably, and yet touched her somehow. She, who believed her beloved Lisbeth to be perfect among women, could not quite understand the psychological crisis through which she was passing, and yet could not fail to feel that something unusual was happening.
“I take Aunt Clarissa’s medicine with a mild regularity37 which alarms her,” the letter announced. “She thinks I must be going into a 180 consumption, and tearfully consults Dr. Puddifoot in private. The cook is ordered to prepare particularly nourishing soups for dinner, and if my appetite is not something startling, everybody turns pale. And yet all this does not seem to me as good a joke as it would have done years ago. I see another side to it. I wonder how it is that they can be so fond of me. For my part, I am sure I could never have been fond of Lisbeth Crespigny.”
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1
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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ominously
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| adv.恶兆地，不吉利地；预示地 | |
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portended
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| v.预示( portend的过去式和过去分词 )；预兆；给…以警告；预告 | |
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5
dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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faltered
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| （嗓音）颤抖( falter的过去式和过去分词 )； 支吾其词； 蹒跚； 摇晃 | |
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7
motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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9
rusticate
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| v.暂时停学离校；n.被罚休学，定居农村 | |
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tracts
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| 大片土地( tract的名词复数 )； 地带； （体内的）道； （尤指宣扬宗教、伦理或政治的）短文 | |
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bonnet
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| n.无边女帽；童帽 | |
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incongruity
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| n.不协调，不一致 | |
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susceptible
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| adj.过敏的，敏感的；易动感情的，易受感动的 | |
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dolorous
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| adj.悲伤的；忧愁的 | |
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positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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dilated
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| adj.加宽的，扩大的v.（使某物）扩大，膨胀，张大( dilate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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17
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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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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worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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malicious
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| adj.有恶意的，心怀恶意的 | |
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desolate
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| adj.荒凉的，荒芜的；孤独的，凄凉的；v.使荒芜，使孤寂 | |
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chamber
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| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
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meekly
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| adv.温顺地，逆来顺受地 | |
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prescriptions
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| 药( prescription的名词复数 )； 处方； 开处方； 计划 | |
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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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26
retrieve
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| vt.重新得到，收回；挽回，补救；检索 | |
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feverishly
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| adv. 兴奋地 | |
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detest
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| vt.痛恨，憎恶 | |
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follies
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| 罪恶，时事讽刺剧； 愚蠢，蠢笨，愚蠢的行为、思想或做法( folly的名词复数 ) | |
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resolute
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| adj.坚决的，果敢的 | |
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31
aloof
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| adj.远离的；冷淡的，漠不关心的 | |
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32
miseries
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| n.痛苦( misery的名词复数 )；痛苦的事；穷困；常发牢骚的人 | |
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33
condescension
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| n.自以为高人一等，贬低(别人) | |
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morbid
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| adj.病的；致病的；病态的；可怕的 | |
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longing
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| n.（for）渴望 | |
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persistence
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| n.坚持，持续，存留 | |
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regularity
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| n.规律性，规则性；匀称，整齐 | |
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