“Tell me, Seth, if you have noticed any change in Alvira.”
“No, I can’t say that I have. In fact, she seems to me the one person about the place who has not altered a bit.”
“See what eyes men have! Why, she has grown ages older. She goes about now muttering to herself like an old, old woman. And the way she looks at one, sometimes, it is enough to give one the chills. I tell Albert often that I am almost afraid to have her in the house.”
Seth chuckled3 audibly, in good-natured derision. “What a mountain out of a mole4 hill! Why Alvira has glared at people that way, with her little black-bead eyes, ever since I was a boy. She doesn’t mean anything by it,—not the least in the world. The trouble is, Isabel, that you let your imagination run away with you. You are desperately5 lonesome here, and you amuse yourself by conjuring6 up all sorts of tragic7 things. You will have Aunt Sabrina a professional witch next thing you know, and Milton a mystic conspirator8, and this plain old clap-boarded farm house a castle of enchantment9.”
He had never before assumed even this jocose10 air of superiority over his blond sister-in-law, and he closed his sentence in some little trepidation11 lest she should resent it. But no, she received it with meekness12, and only protested mildly against the assumption underneath13.
“No, I am sure there is something in it. She is brooding about Milton. Not in any sentimental14 way, you know, but it used to be understood, I think, that they were to marry, and now he carries himself way above her. Why, I can remember, as long ago as when I visited here that summer, when we were all boys and girls and cousins together, I heard your mother say they would make a match of it some time. But now he avoids the kitchen and her. It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it, for me to be speculating in this way about the love affairs of the servants. But you are driven to it here. You have no idea how grateful one gets to be, here in the country, for the smallest item of human gossip.”
Seth was still considering whether it was possible for him, in careful language, to suggest his own—or rather the Lawton girl’s—view of the Milton-Alvira affair, when Isabel spoke15 again:
“Speaking of gossip, there is something I have been tempted16 half a dozen times to mention to you—something I heard almost every day during the little time that the women round-about were calling on me. You will guess what I mean—the talk about you and Annie.”
Seth did not immediately answer, and she continued:
“Of course, you know, Seth, that I wouldn’t speak of it if I thought it would be distasteful to you. But I know it used to be the idea that you two were marked for each other. I have heard ever so much about it since we have lived here. And yet you don’t seem to me to be at all like lovers—hardly even like affectionate cousins. I think she has rather avoided the house since you have been here, although that, of course, may be only imagination. She is such a dear, good girl, and I am so fond of her, but still I can hardly imagine her as your wife. You don’t mind my speaking about it, do you?”
Seth was still at a loss what to say, or, better, how to say it. While she had been speaking the contrast between the two young women, which had been slumbering17 in his mind for a year, had risen vividly18 before him. The smile, half-deprecating, half-inviting, with which she looked this last question at him, as she laid the everlasting19 embroidery20 down, and leaned slightly forward for a reply, gave the final touch to his vanishing doubts.
“Mind your speaking about it? No, no, Isabel.” He scarcely knew his own voice, it was so full of cooing softness. “I am glad you did—for—for who has a better right? No, there is nothing in the gossip. Our people—my mother, her grandmother—had it in mind once, I believe, but Annie and I have never so much as hinted at it between ourselves. Ever since mother’s death old Mrs. Warren has, however, taken a deep dislike to me—you remember how she forbade Annie to go with us on that fishing trip—but even without that——”
“Ah, I shan’t forget that fishing trip,” Isabel whispered, still with the tender smile.
“Nor I, you may be very sure.” The caressing21 tone of his voice sounded natural to him now. “As I was saying, even if we two young people had once thought of the thing, I fancy it would be different now, anyway. Then, I was going to be a farmer. Now, of course, that is all changed. My career is in the city, in circles where Annie would not be at home. She is a dear, good girl, as you say: nobody knows that better than I do. But you must admit she is—what shall I say?—rural. Now that I have got my foot on the ladder, there is no telling how far I may not climb. It would be simply suicide to marry a wife whom I perhaps would have to carry up with me, a dead weight.”
The youngster was not in the least conscious of the vicious nonsense he was talking. In the magnetic penumbra22 of Isabel’s presence his words seemed surcharged with wisdom and good feeling. And the young woman, too, who was four years his senior, and who should have known better, never suspected the ridiculous aspect of the sentiments to the expression of which she listened with such sweet-faced sympathy. We are such fools upon occasion.
“Besides, there is no reason why I should think of marriage at all, for a long time to come—at least not until I have made my way up in my profession a bit. When the time does come, it will be because I have found my ideal—for I have an ideal, you know, a very exalted23 one.”
He looked at her keenly, blushing as he did so, to discover if she had caught the purport24 of his words; then he addressed himself, with an absence of verbal awkwardness at which he was himself astonished, to making it more clear.
“I mean, Isabel, that my brother has won a prize which would make anything less valuable seem altogether worthless in my eyes. If there is not another woman in the world like my brother Albert’s wife, then I shall never marry.”
“Brother Albert’s wife” looked up at the speaker for an instant—a glance which seemed to him to be made of smiles, sadness, delight, reproach and many other unutterable things; then she bent25 over her work, and he fancied that the pretty fingers trembled a little between the stitches. There was a minute of silence, which seemed a half hour. At last she spoke:
“Does your brother impress you as being a particularly happy man? I won’t ask a similar question about his wife.”
Seth found it necessary to stand up, to do this subject justice. “No!” he answered. “He doesn’t deserve such a wife. But because one man is incapable26 of appreciating a treasure which he has won, it’s no reason why another man shouldn’t—shouldn’t say to himself ‘I will either marry that kind of woman or I’ll marry none.’ Now, is it, Isabel?”
“Perhaps this wife is not altogether the treasure you think she is,” the young woman answered, with the indirection of her sex.
Seth found words entirely27 inadequate28 to express his dissent29. He could only smile at her, as if the doubt were too preposterous30 to be even suggested, and walk up and down in front of her.
Still intent upon her work, and with her head inclined so that he saw only a softened31 angle of face beneath the crown of glowing light-hued hair, she made answer, speaking more slowly than was usual with her, and with frequent pauses:
“I don’t think you know all my story, though it is a part of your family’s history on both sides. You remember my father—a sporting, horse-racing man of the world, and you know that my mother died when I was a baby. You knew me here, one summer, as a visiting cousin, and we played and quarrelled as children do. Now you know me again as your brother’s wife—but that is all. You know nothing of the rest—of how my father, proud about me as he was common in other things, kept me mewed up among governesses and housekeepers32 in one part of the house, while his flash companions rioted in another part; of how my wretched, chafing33 girlhood was spent among servants and tutors, with not so much as a glimpse of the world outside, like any Turkish girl; of how, when your brother, because he was a cousin, did become the one friend of my father’s who might be invited into the drawing room, and be introduced to me, and took a fancy that he would like to marry me, I welcomed even such a chance for emancipation34, and almost cried for joy; and of how I woke up afterward—no, this is what you do not know.” There was a considerable pause here. “And I do not know why I tell this to you now, except that I want you to understand.”
“I do understand, Isabel.”
As a matter of fact he did not understand at all, but he thought he did, which, for present purposes, came to the same thing.
“And you can realize,” she went on, “how I feel at the thought of staying here the rest of my life—or, even if we go elsewhere—of having my life mapped out for me without any regard to my wishes and aspirations35, while you are just pluming36 your wings for soaring, and can fly as high as you like with no one to gainsay37 you. Oh, what it must be to be a man!” She was looking up at him now, with enthusiasm supplanting38 the repining in her eyes. “And you love your work, so, too! You are so clever and capable! You can be anything you like in your profession—and it is impossible that I should ever be anything that I want to be.”
A month ago, when he first came to the farm, this calm assumption of his ability to carve whatever part he desired out of the journalistic cake would have fallen upon Seth like cruel and calculated sarcasm39. As it was, he winced40 a little under its exaggeration, but the substance pleased him. He squared his shoulders unconsciously as he answered:
“Well, I am only at the threshold as yet, but if there is any such thing as doing it, I am going to push my way on. It doesn’t seem so easy always, when you are right in the thick of the fight, but now, after my rest here, I feel like an eagle refreshed. I am full of new ideas and ambitions. I owe a good deal of it to Ansdell, I suppose. You never saw such a fellow for making everybody believe as he does, and take an exalted view of things, and long to be doing something great. John prescribed him to me as a doctor would some medicine, and I took him more or less under protest, but I feel immensely better already.”
Isabel took only a languid interest in the inspiring qualities of this prodigy41, and reverted42 to her own grievance43:
“Yes, you will go and conquer your position. I will stay here and count those miserable44 poplars across the road—did you ever see a more monotonous45 row?—and work anti-macassars for no one to see, and mope my heart out. Why, do you know, I haven’t one single correspondent!”
The full enormity of the situation thus revealed was lost upon Seth, who had never written more than half-a-dozen letters in his life, and did not see why people who did not have to write letters should want to do so. But he said “Indeed!” as compassionately46 as he could.
“No, not one. I did think you might have taken pity on me, but for all the year that you have been away, I have never heard a word from you.”
“I wrote once or twice to Albert,” Seth answered, tentatively, to occupy time until he could turn around in his mind the immense suggestion involved in this complaint.
“Yes, and I used to hear at the breakfast table—‘Oh, by the way, Aunt Sabrina, Seth sends his love to you and Isabel—’ only this and nothing more! What is the good of having a literary man in the family, if he doesn’t write you long, nice letters?” The vista47 which had flashed itself before Seth’s mental vision was filled with dazzling light. He could not mask the exultation48 in his voice as he asked:
“Do you really want me to write to you?”
“You ought not to have waited to be asked,” she said, smiling again. “Yes, you shall write me—and long letters too, mind—as often as you like.” She added after a moment’s pause, in which both had been turning over the same idea, “You needn’t be afraid of writing too often. The bundle from the post office always comes to me in the morning, hours before he gets downstairs. Dana brings it up when he comes back from the cheese-factory, and it never goes into any one’s hands but mine. Beside, henceforth I shall watch for it all the more carefully.”
Next morning Seth prepared once again to leave the homestead, but this time with a light heart and a gay demeanor49. A month’s absence had served so to remodel50 his views of the Chronicle, that he already felt himself to be a personage of importance, in its control. He had been constantly spoken of in the village as “one of the editors” of that journal, and found so much pleasure in the designation that he had come to use it in thinking of himself. He felt himself fired, too, with new enthusiasm and power by his talks with Ansdell, and he believed, not only that he saw where his past errors had lain, but that he knew now the trick of success. Above all, he was to write long letters to Isabel, and receive answers equally long and nice from her, and—this gave him an especial sense of delight—it was all to be a secret between them.
The sun shone brightly, too, after the rain, as if to be in harmony with his mood. Albert was more affable than he had been before, and after breakfast, and while the carriage was being brought around, gave him some cigars for the journey, and a $20 bill for pocket money. These were pleasant preludes51 to a little brotherly conversation.
“I wish you would hurry up and get to have a say on the Chronicle as soon as you can, Seth,” said the lawyer, holding him by the lappel in fraternal fashion. “You can help me there, help me very materially. I am going to be nominated for Congress in this district next year—don’t whisper about it yet, but I’ve got it solid. I haven’t let any grass grow under my feet since I moved here, and they can’t beat me in the Convention. But the Chronicle can do a good deal in the election, and I look to you for that. I am not going to Washington without knowing my business after I get there. There is a big thing on hand, big for me, big for you too. Good-bye now, my boy; I must get upstairs to my writing. You won’t forget!”
No, Seth promised, very cordially and heartily52, he would not forget.
When his traps had been piled again into the carriage, and he said good-bye to his Aunt and to Alvira, no Isabel was to be seen. She had been at breakfast, but had subsequently disappeared. Seth went into the living room—no one was there. He opened the door to the stairs and called out her name—no answer. As he closed the door again, he heard the faintest tinkle53 imaginable from a piano key. He had not thought of the parlor54, which was ordinarily unused, but he hastened to it now. Isabel stood at the instrument, her head bowed; her finger still pressing the key. She turned with a dear little exclamation55, which might be either of surprise or satisfied expectancy56, and held out her hand.
“So you wouldn’t go, after all, without saying good-bye to me!”
“Why, Isabel, you know better!” answered Seth, still very downright for his years. He was actually pained at her having fancied him capable of such a thing, and while he held her hand, he looked at her with mild reproach in his eyes.
“Oh, do I?” she answered, rather inconsequently. Then she sighed, and bowed her fair head again. “Have you given it a thought at all—how lonely it will be after you are gone for—for those who are left behind? I can’t bear to think of it—I came in here because I couldn’t stand and see the horses at the door, and the preparations for your going. It is as if the tomb door were swinging back on me again. I am foolish, I know—” here the words were much hampered57 in their flow by incipient58 sobs—“but if you could realize my position—the awful desolation of it, the—the—” She broke down altogether, and, with the disengaged hand, put her handkerchief to her eyes.
Seth had never seen a young and beautiful woman in tears before, off the stage, but his racial instincts served him in the emergency. He gently took her hand down again, holding them both, now, in his. He told her, again surprising himself by the smoothness and felicity of his words, how delightful59 she had made his visit, how deeply he prized her sympathy and compassionated60 her lot, and how the pangs61 of regret at parting were only solaced62 by the thought that she had permitted him to write. Then he kissed her—and hurried out to the carriage.
The handsome, high-bitted grays made short work of the drive to Thessaly station, where John was waiting to have a parting word, so that Seth scarcely had time to collect his thoughts and settle accounts with himself, before the train started. Three hours later when he got off at Tecumseh, he had progressed no further in his work of striking a moral balance than:
“After all, she is my cousin as well as my sister-in-law.”
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1
desultory
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| adj.散漫的，无方法的 | |
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persistently
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| ad.坚持地；固执地 | |
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chuckled
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| 轻声地笑( chuckle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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mole
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| n.胎块；痣；克分子 | |
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desperately
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| adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地 | |
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conjuring
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| n.魔术 | |
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tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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conspirator
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| n.阴谋者，谋叛者 | |
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enchantment
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| n.迷惑，妖术，魅力 | |
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jocose
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| adj.开玩笑的，滑稽的 | |
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trepidation
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| n.惊恐，惶恐 | |
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meekness
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| n.温顺，柔和 | |
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underneath
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| adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面 | |
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sentimental
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| adj.多愁善感的，感伤的 | |
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15
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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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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slumbering
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| 微睡，睡眠（slumber的现在分词形式） | |
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vividly
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| adv.清楚地，鲜明地，生动地 | |
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everlasting
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| adj.永恒的，持久的，无止境的 | |
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20
embroidery
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| n.绣花，刺绣；绣制品 | |
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caressing
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| 爱抚的，表现爱情的，亲切的 | |
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penumbra
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| n.（日蚀）半影部 | |
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exalted
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| adj.(地位等)高的，崇高的；尊贵的，高尚的 | |
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purport
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| n.意义，要旨，大要；v.意味著，做为...要旨，要领是... | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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inadequate
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| adj.(for,to)不充足的，不适当的 | |
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dissent
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| n./v.不同意，持异议 | |
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preposterous
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| adj.荒谬的，可笑的 | |
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31
softened
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| （使）变软( soften的过去式和过去分词 )； 缓解打击； 缓和； 安慰 | |
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32
housekeepers
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| n.（女）管家( housekeeper的名词复数 ) | |
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33
chafing
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| n.皮肤发炎v.擦热（尤指皮肤）( chafe的现在分词 )；擦痛；发怒；惹怒 | |
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emancipation
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| n.（从束缚、支配下）解放 | |
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aspirations
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| 强烈的愿望( aspiration的名词复数 )； 志向； 发送气音； 发 h 音 | |
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pluming
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| 用羽毛装饰（plume的现在分词形式） | |
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gainsay
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| v.否认，反驳 | |
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supplanting
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| 把…排挤掉，取代( supplant的现在分词 ) | |
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sarcasm
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| n.讥讽，讽刺，嘲弄，反话 （adj.sarcastic） | |
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winced
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| 赶紧避开，畏缩( wince的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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prodigy
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| n.惊人的事物，奇迹，神童，天才，预兆 | |
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42
reverted
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| 恢复( revert的过去式和过去分词 )； 重提； 回到…上； 归还 | |
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grievance
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| n.怨愤，气恼，委屈 | |
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miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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monotonous
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| adj.单调的，一成不变的，使人厌倦的 | |
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compassionately
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| adv.表示怜悯地，有同情心地 | |
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vista
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| n.远景，深景，展望，回想 | |
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48
exultation
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| n.狂喜，得意 | |
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49
demeanor
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| n.行为；风度 | |
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50
remodel
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| v.改造，改型，改变 | |
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51
preludes
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| n.开端( prelude的名词复数 )；序幕；序曲；短篇作品 | |
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52
heartily
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| adv.衷心地，诚恳地，十分，很 | |
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53
tinkle
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| vi.叮当作响；n.叮当声 | |
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54
parlor
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| n.店铺，营业室；会客室，客厅 | |
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55
exclamation
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| n.感叹号，惊呼，惊叹词 | |
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56
expectancy
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| n.期望，预期，（根据概率统计求得）预期数额 | |
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57
hampered
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| 妨碍，束缚，限制( hamper的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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58
incipient
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| adj.起初的，发端的，初期的 | |
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59
delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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60
compassionated
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| v.同情（compassionate的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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61
pangs
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| 突然的剧痛( pang的名词复数 )； 悲痛 | |
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62
solaced
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| v.安慰，慰藉( solace的过去分词 ) | |
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