Katherine was reading beside the fire, one slim sole tilted3 towards the blaze, and she looked round at Odd as he came in, without moving. Odd’s face wore a curiously4 strained expression, and, under it, seemed thinner, older than usual. He looked even haggard, Katherine thought. She liked his thin face. It satisfied perfectly5 her sense of fitness, as Odd did indeed. It offered no stupidities, no pretences6 of any kind for mockery to fasten on. The clever feminine eye is quick to remark the subtlest signs of fatuity7 or complacency. Katherine’s eye was very clever, and this morning, in looking at Odd, she was conscious of a little inner sigh. Katherine had asked herself more than once of late whether a husband, not only too superior for success, but morally her superior, might not make life a little wearing. Some such thought crossed her mind now as she met his eyes, and she realized that through Allan Hope’s discomfiture8 she herself was as wrongly placed as ever, and Hilda’s drudgery9 as binding10.
Indeed, several thoughts mingled11 with that general sense of malaise.
One was that Allan Hope’s smooth, handsome face was rather fatuous12; the face that knows no doubts is in danger of seeming fatuous to a Katherine.
Another thought held a keen conjecture13 on Peter’s haggard looks.
She put out her hand to him, and, stooping over her, he kissed her with more tenderness than he always showed. Their engagement had left almost untouched the easy unsentimental attitude of earlier days.
“Well,” he said, and Katherine understood and resented somewhat the quick attack of the absorbing subject. She shook her head.
“Bad news, Peter. Bad and very unexpected.”
Odd stood upright and looked at her.
“Bad!” he repeated.
“She refused him,” Katherine said tersely15, and her glance turned once more from the fire to Peter’s face. He looked at her silently.
“She is a foolish baby,” added Katherine.
“She refused him—definitely?”
“Quite. She had to face the music last night, of course. Mamma and papa were rather—shabby—let us say, in their disinterested16 disappointment.” Odd flushed a little at the cool cynicism of Katherine’s tone. “She told me, when I removed her from the battlefield, that she doesn’t love him and never will. So, of course, from every high and mighty17 point of view she is right, quite right.”
Katherine’s eyes returned contemplatively to the fire. Odd was still silent.
“She ought to love him, of course; that is where she is so foolish. I am afraid she has ruined her life. I love you, Peter, and he is every bit as good-looking as you are.” Katherine glanced at him with a sad and whimsical smile. Peter, certainly, was looking rather dazed. He stooped once more and kissed her.
“Thank you for loving me, Katherine.”
“You are welcome. It is a pity, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is”—Peter seated himself on the sofa, where Allan had sat the night before—“an awful pity,” he added. “I am astonished. I thought she cared for him.”
“So did I.”
“She cares for some one else, perhaps.” Odd locked his hands behind his head, and he too stared at the fire.
“There is no one else she could care for. I know Hilda’s outlook too well.”
“And she refused him,” he repeated musingly18.
“Really, Peter, that sounds a little dull—not like you.” Katherine smiled at him.
“I feel dulled. I am awfully19 sorry. It would have been so satisfactory. And what’s to be done now?”
“That is for you to suggest, Peter. My power over Hilda is very limited. You may have more influence.”
“She might come and live with us.”
“That would be very nice,” Katherine assented20, “and it is very dear of you to suggest it.”
Peter was conscious of sudden terrors that prompted him to add with self-scorn—
“What would your mother do?”
“Without her? I don’t know.”
“Of course,” Peter hastened to add, “as far as money goes, you know; you understand, dear, that your mother shall want nothing. But to rob her of the companionship of both daughters?” Peter rose and walked to the window. It needed some heroism21, he thought, to put aside the idea of Hilda living with them; he tried to pride himself on the renunciation, while under the poor crust of self-approbation lurked22 jibing23 depths of consciousness. Heroism would not lie in renunciation, but in living with her. The cowardice24 of his own retreat left him horribly shaken.
Katherine watched him from her chair, calmly.
“But Hilda’s work must cease at once,” he said presently, finding a certain relief in decisive measures. “She won’t show any false pride, I hope, about allowing me to put an end to it.”
“It would be like her,” said Katherine, sliding a sympathetic gloom of voice over the hard reality of her conclusions; conclusions half angry, half sarcastic25. Peter was dull after all. Katherine felt alarmed, humiliated26, and amused, but she steeled herself inwardly to a calm contemplation of facts. She joined him at the window. “What a burden you have taken on your poor shoulders, Peter.” Peter immediately put his arm around her waist, and, though Katherine felt a deeper humiliation27, she saw that alarm was needless; a proof of Peter’s superiority, a proof, too, of his stupidity; as her own most original and clever superiority was proved by the fact of her calm under humiliation. Could she accept that humiliation as the bitter drop in the cup of good things Peter had to offer her? Katherine asked herself the question; it was answered by another. Just how far did the humiliation go? Peter’s infidelity might be mere28 shallow passion, passagère; the fine part might be to feign29 blindness and help him out of it. Attendons summed up Katherine’s mental attitude at the moment.
“Don’t talk to me of burdens, dear Katherine,” said Peter. “Don’t try to spoil my humble30 little pleasure. If I can make you and yours happier, what more can I ask?” He looked at her with kind, tired eyes.
“I won’t thwart31 you, but Hilda will.”
“Hilda will find it difficult when we are married. That must be soon, Katherine.”
Katherine looked pensively32 out of the window.
“We will see,” she replied, with a pretty evasiveness.
It was fine and cold as Odd walked down the Boulevard St. Germain that afternoon. He walked at a tremendous pace, for human nature hopes to cheat thought by physical effort. Indeed, Peter did not think much, and was convinced that his mind was a comparatively happy blank as he paused before the tall house where Hilda was pursuing her avocations33. If he made any definite reflections while he walked up and down between the doorway34 and the next corner, they were on his last few conversations with Hilda; and then on rather abstract points merely. He had drawn35 the child out. He had penetrated36 the reserved mind that acquired for enjoyment37, not for display. He had found out that Hilda knew Italian literature, from Dante to Leopardi, almost as well as he himself did, and loved it just as well. The fiction of Russia and Scandinavia was deeply appreciated by her, and the essayists of France. Her tastes were as delicately discriminative38 as Katherine’s, but lacked that metallic39 assurance of which lately Peter had become rather uncomfortably aware. As for the English tongue, from the old meeting-ground of Chaucer they could range with delightful40 sympathy to Stevenson’s sweet radiance.
Peter thought quite intently of this literary survey and evaded41 any trespassing42 beyond its limits. His reticence43 was not put to a prolonged test. Hilda met him before half-a-dozen trips to the corner were accomplished44. She showed no signs of conscious guilt45, though Peter was not sure that she was not a “foolish baby.”
“Let us walk,” she said, “it is such a lovely day.”
“We will walk at least till the sun goes. We will just have time to catch the sunset on the Seine.”
“Yes; what a lovely day! I wish I were ten, with short skirts, and a hoop46, that I could run and roll.”
“You would like a bicycle ride. Come to-morrow with Katherine and me.”
“I can’t. Don’t think me a prig, but my model is due and I am finishing my picture. Thanks so much; and this walk is almost as good.”
“If Palamon is tired I will carry him, Hilda.”
“Oh, he isn’t tired. See how he pulls at his cord. The sunlight is getting into his veins47. What delicious air.”
“The sunlight is getting into your veins too, Hilda. You are looking a little as you should look.”
Hilda did not ask him how she should look. It was an original characteristic of Hilda’s that she did not seem at all anxious to talk about herself, and Odd continued, looking down at her profile—
“That’s what you ought to have—sunlight. You are a little white flower that has grown in a shadow.” Hilda did not glance up at him; she smiled rather distantly.
“What a sad simile48!”
“Is it a true one, Hilda?”
“I don’t think so. I never thought of myself in that sentimental14 light. I suppose to friendly eyes every life has a certain pathos49.”
“No; some lives are too evidently and merely flaunting50 in the sunlight for even friendly eyes to poetize—to sentimentalize, as you rather unkindly said.”
“Sunlight is poetic52, too.”
“Success and selfishness, and all the commonplaces that make up a happy life, are not poetic.”
“That is rather morbid53, you know—décadent.”
“I don’t imply a fondness for illness and wrongness. Rather the contrary. It is a very beautiful rightness that keeps in the shade to give others the sunshine.”
Hilda’s eyes were downcast, and in her look a certain pale reserve that implied no liking54 for these personalities—personalities that glanced from her to others, as Odd realized.
He paused, and it was only after quite a little silence that Hilda said, with all her gentle quiet—
“You must not imagine that I am unhappy, or that my life has been an unhappy life. It is very good of you to trouble about it, but I can’t claim the rather self-righteously heroic r?le you give me. I think it is others who live in the shadow. I think that any work, however feebly done, is a happy thing. I find so much pleasure in things other people don’t care about.”
“A very nicely delivered little snub, Hilda. You couldn’t have told me to mind my own business more kindly51.” Odd’s humorous look met her glance of astonished self-reproach. He hastened on, “Will you try to find pleasure in a thing most girls do care for? Will you go to the Meltons’ dance on Monday? Katherine told me I must go, this morning, and I said I would try to persuade you.”
“I didn’t mean to snub you.”
“Very well; convince me of it by saying you will come to the dance.”
The girlish pleasure of her face was evident.
“Do you really want me to?”
“It would make me very happy.”
“It is against my rules, you know. I can’t get up at six and go out in the evening besides. But I will make an exception for this once, to show you I wasn’t snubbing you! And, besides, I should love to.” The gayety of her look suddenly fell to hesitation55. “Only I am afraid I can’t. I remember I haven’t any dress.”
“Any dress will do, Hilda.”
“But I haven’t any dress. The gray silk is impossible.”
Peter’s mind made a most unmasculine excursion into the position.
“But you were in London last year. You went to court. You must have had dresses.”
“Yes, but I gave them to Katherine when I came back. I had no need for them. Her own wore out, and mine fit her very well—a little too long and narrow, but that was easily altered. Perhaps the white satin would do, if it wasn’t cut at the bottom; it could be let down again, if it was only turned up. It is trimmed with mousseline de soie, and the flounce would hide the line.”
Peter stared at her look of thoughtful perplexity; he found it horribly touching56. “It might do.”
“It must do. If it doesn’t, another of Katherine’s can be metamorphosized.”
“And you will dance with me? I love dancing, and I don’t know many people. Of course Katherine will see that I am not neglected, but I should like to depend on you; and if I am left sitting alone in a corner, I shall beckon57 to you. Will you be responsible for me?” Her smiling eyes met the badly controlled emotion of his look.
“Hilda, you are quite frivolous58.” Terms of reckless endearment59 were on his lips; he hardly knew how he kept them down. “How shall I man?uvre that you be left sitting alone in corners? Remember that if the miracle occurs I shall come, whether you beckon or no.”
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1
regularity
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| n.规律性，规则性；匀称，整齐 | |
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immunity
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| n.优惠；免除；豁免，豁免权 | |
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tilted
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| v. 倾斜的 | |
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curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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6
pretences
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| n.假装( pretence的名词复数 )；作假；自命；自称 | |
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7
fatuity
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| n.愚蠢，愚昧 | |
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discomfiture
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| n.崩溃；大败；挫败；困惑 | |
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drudgery
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| n.苦工，重活，单调乏味的工作 | |
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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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11
mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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12
fatuous
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| adj.愚昧的；昏庸的 | |
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conjecture
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| n./v.推测，猜测 | |
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sentimental
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| adj.多愁善感的，感伤的 | |
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15
tersely
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| adv. 简捷地, 简要地 | |
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16
disinterested
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| adj.不关心的，不感兴趣的 | |
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17
mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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18
musingly
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| adv.沉思地，冥想地 | |
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19
awfully
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| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
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20
assented
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| 同意，赞成( assent的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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21
heroism
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| n.大无畏精神，英勇 | |
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22
lurked
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| vi.潜伏，埋伏（lurk的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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23
jibing
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| v.与…一致( jibe的现在分词 )；（与…）相符；相匹配 | |
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24
cowardice
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| n.胆小，怯懦 | |
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sarcastic
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| adj.讥讽的，讽刺的，嘲弄的 | |
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26
humiliated
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| 感到羞愧的 | |
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humiliation
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| n.羞辱 | |
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28
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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29
feign
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| vt.假装，佯作 | |
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30
humble
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| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
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31
thwart
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| v.阻挠，妨碍，反对；adj.横(断的) | |
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pensively
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| adv.沉思地，焦虑地 | |
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33
avocations
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| n.业余爱好，嗜好( avocation的名词复数 )；职业 | |
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34
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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35
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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36
penetrated
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| adj. 击穿的，鞭辟入里的 动词penetrate的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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37
enjoyment
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| n.乐趣；享有；享用 | |
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38
discriminative
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| 有判别力 | |
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39
metallic
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| adj.金属的；金属制的；含金属的；产金属的；像金属的 | |
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40
delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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41
evaded
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| 逃避( evade的过去式和过去分词 )； 避开； 回避； 想不出 | |
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42
trespassing
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| [法]非法入侵 | |
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43
reticence
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| n.沉默，含蓄 | |
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44
accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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45
guilt
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| n.犯罪；内疚；过失，罪责 | |
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46
hoop
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| n.（篮球）篮圈，篮 | |
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47
veins
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| n.纹理；矿脉( vein的名词复数 )；静脉；叶脉；纹理 | |
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48
simile
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| n.直喻，明喻 | |
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49
pathos
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| n.哀婉，悲怆 | |
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50
flaunting
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| adj.招摇的，扬扬得意的，夸耀的v.炫耀，夸耀( flaunt的现在分词 )；有什么能耐就施展出来 | |
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51
kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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52
poetic
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| adj.富有诗意的，有诗人气质的，善于抒情的 | |
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53
morbid
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| adj.病的；致病的；病态的；可怕的 | |
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54
liking
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| n.爱好；嗜好；喜欢 | |
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55
hesitation
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| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
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56
touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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57
beckon
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| v.(以点头或打手势)向...示意，召唤 | |
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58
frivolous
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| adj.轻薄的；轻率的 | |
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59
endearment
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| n.表示亲爱的行为 | |
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