For it was that cosy3 half-hour after supper when all was at peace in the mansion4; when the late dinner things had all been washed up, the kitchen tidied, and cook had performed the operation which she called setting herself straight—a manifest impossibility, for she was a circular woman of at least sixteen stone weight. All the same, though, she had changed her dress, polished her face till it shone, and then crowned herself with a gorgeous corona5 of lace and bright-hued ribbons and net-work, an edifice6 which she called her cap. The cat sat and purred upon the round smooth centre of the bright steel fender, winked7 at the fire, twitched8 its ears, and purred and ruminated9 at intervals10; for it was fast nearing the hour when it would be shown the door for the night; so that it was getting itself thoroughly11 warmed through. The firelight danced in the bright tin dish-covers hung upon the wall, and then gleamed off, and dodged12 about from bright stewpan to brass13 candlestick, and back again to the clean crockery and the dresser; the old Dutch clock swung its pendulum14 busily to and fro, as if labouring under the mistake that it had nearly done work for the day; and altogether the place looked bright and snug15, and spoke16 of the approaching hour of rest, when cook, having tapped the fire playfully here and there, to the destruction of several golden caverns17 in the centre, and taking up an apparently18 interrupted conversation, said, as above:
“Now, do tell us, there’s a dear man;” when the housemaid gave her head a toss, as much as to say, “What indelicacy!—don’t think I endorse19 that expression!”
Then she smiled with a kind of pitying contempt, for, according to her notions, cook and Edward were courting; and of course, if he chose to prefer a great fat coarse woman like that, he had a right to. An the slim maiden20 of thirty-eight bridled21 and looked almost as hard-faced as Edward himself. For though cook called him a dear man, it almost seemed at first as if she were bantering22 him, till it was taken into consideration that every eye forms its own beauty. In fact, just then Edward looked more hard-faced and grim than ever.
“You will tell us all about it, now won’t you?” said cook, for Edward remained silent.
“’Tain’t likely,” said Edward at last.
“Why not?” said cook.
“There was two buttons off my shirt in the very worst places on Sunday morning.”
“I am sorry!” exclaimed cook.
“Don’t believe it!” said Edward; “and it’s mean and unfair. Didn’t you say, if I’d always get your coals in, you’d always see to my buttons and darn my stockings? And at this present moment there’s a hole as big as a shilling in them as I’ve got on.”
“But it shan’t never occur again, Eddard, if you’ll only tell us; for Mary and me is as interested as can be.”
“O, I don’t care about knowing, if Mr Edward don’t choose to tell,” said the housemaid, with a toss of her head.
“Who’s trying to pick a quarrel now?” retorted Edward; “when missus said we was always to be peaceful and orderly in the kitchen.”
“Not me, I’m sure,” said the housemaid. “I wouldn’t bemean myself to quarrel.”
“Now don’t, dear,” said cook; “Mr Eddard’s agoin’ to tell us all about it, and really, you know, if it ain’t for all the world like chapters out o’ that book as missus had from Mugie’s libery—the one you brought up out of the drawin’-room, and read of a night when we was in bed.”
“Stuff!” said the housemaid tartly23.
“Now, don’t say so, dear,” said the cook, who was particularly suave24 for once in her life. “There she is, just like a herrowine, and a nice-looking one too.”
“Get out! call her good-looking?” said the housemaid.
“Well, ’taint to be denied as she has what some folks would call good looks. Then you see she’s pussycuted by one lover, and another loves her to distraction25, and his father won’t hear of it; and first one comes and then another, and then the father, and frightens the poor dear into fits, and goes away fainting—no, I mean goes away leaving her fainting away, and wanting salts and burnt feathers, and all sorts. Why, it’s for all the world like a real story in a book, that it is; and I declare the way Mr Eddard has told us all about it has been beautiful.”
“There’s soft soap,” growled26 the hard-faced footman, smiling grimly.
“That it ain’t now, I’m sure,” said cook. “It really was beautiful, and almost as good as seeing or reading it all. I’m sure I never lived in a house before where there was such goings on. I declare that bit where you told us about how you took the dandy by the scruff of his neck, and says to him, ‘Now, out you go, or I’ll stuff you up the chimney!’ was as exciting as could be. And so it was where you dragged him across the hall, and pitched him neck and crop down the front steps. I could a’most see it; and we both of us did hear the door slam.”
“Mr Eddard,” who had been slightly adding to the history of Ella’s visitors, smiled a little here, and his face relaxed somewhat from its stern expression.
“Lor’, what a nice clear fire!” said cook, who had detected the melting sign. “Let me hot you a sup of beer in a little stoopan, with a bit of nuckmeg and ginger27, and a spoonful of sugar. Don’t say no, Eddard.”
“Yes, I shall,” said Edward, who was tightening28 up again. “I sha’n’t have none unless you two join with me.”
“Well, if it comes to that,” said cook, “sooner than you should go without, I’ll have the least taste in the world.”
The housemaid shook her head as if despising such excuses; but ten minutes after, when a mug of the hot sweet-scented compound was placed before her by cook, who winked at Edward as she did so, the lady of the dustpan and brush condescended29 to simper, and say, “O, the very idee!” Then she smiled, and at the end of another ten minutes the trio were all smiling as they sat with their feet on the fender, Edward regaling himself and his fellow-servants with an account of what had taken place during the afternoon.
“I should say it was as near as could be three o’clock,” said Edward punctiliously30; “it might have been a little after, though I hadn’t heard it strike, or it might have been a little before: I ain’t certain. Anyhow, it was as near as could be to three o’clock when the front-door bell rings.
“‘Visitor for Miss Bedford,’ I says to myself, laughing like, and meaning it as a joke; for as we’d had one that day, I didn’t of course expect no more.”
“What time was it as Sir Philip Vining went away?” said cook, who was deeply interested.
“O, that was before lunch,” said Edward.
“To be sure, so it was,” said the housemaid.
“Well, I slips on my coat—for I was dusting the glasses over before going to lay the dinner-cloth—and up I goes.”
“And up you goes,” said cook; for Edward had paused to soften31 his hard face with a little more of the stewpan decoction.
“Yes, up I goes, to find it was Mr Charles Vining, looking as bright and happy as could be—quite another man to what he was when he come last week.
“‘Ah,’ I says to myself, ‘you don’t know about your governor being here afore lunch, young man, or you’d be laughing the other side of your mouth.’ But I says aloud:
“‘To see Miss Bedford, sir?’
“‘No, my man,’ he says; and he looked at me very curious and hesitating, as if he’d like to have said ‘yes.’
“‘Show me in to your mistress,’ he says.”
“Now it’s a-coming!” said cook, rocking herself to and fro with excitement, and rubbing her hands softly together.
“Now what’s a-coming, stoopid?” said Edward gruffly. “What d’ye mean?”
“I—I only meant that the interesting bit was now coming—the denowment, you know,” said cook humbly32, and seeking to mollify the insulted narrator by emptying the little stewpan, cloves33, bits of ginger, and all into his mug.
“If you’re so precious clever, you’d better tell it yourself,” growled Edward fiercely, “instead of keeping on interrupting like that. Who’s to go on, I should like to know?”
“O, I’m sure cook didn’t mean nothing, Mr Eddard,” said the interested housemaid. “Do go on!”
“What’s she want to say anything for, if she don’t mean anything then, eh?” grumbled34 Edward. “I hate such ways.”
Cook looked at housemaid, and slightly raised her hands, while the offended dignitary sipped35 and muttered, and muttered and sipped, and his audience waited, not daring to speak, lest they should miss the rest of the expected treat.
“I wouldn’t say another word if I hadn’t begun, that I wouldn’t!” growled the hard-faced one. “Now, then, where’d I got to?”
“‘Show me in to your mistress,’” exclaimed cook; when “Mr Eddard,” turning round upon her very sharply, she shrunk as it were into her shell, and nipped together her lips.
“I tell you what it is,” said Edward viciously; “if I’m to tell this here, I tells it, but I ain’t going to be driven wild with vexatious interruptions. Do you both want to know it, or don’t you?”
“O yes, please, Mr Eddard, we do indeed,” exclaimed the two domestics; “so please go on!”
Thus adjured36, and apparently mollified by the respect paid to him, as much as by the stewpan essence, “Mr Eddard” continued: “Well, I shows him into the breakfast-room, and then goes in to missus, who had just come down from Miss Bedford’s room; and looking all white and troubled, she goes across the hall, and I opens the door for her, and up comes my gentleman with a rush, catches her hand in his, and kisses it.
“‘That’s making yourself at home anyhow, young man,’ I says to myself, backing-out of the room; and I can’t say how it happened, but the corner of the carpet got rucked up, so that I was ever so long before I could get the door shut, and they would keep talking, so that I couldn’t help hearing what they said.”
“And what did they say?” said cook.
“Ain’t I a-coming to it as fast as I can?” said Edward angrily. “What an outrageous37 hurry you always are in with everything, except getting the dinner ready in time!”
“Now don’t be cruel, Mr Eddard,” said the housemaid, tittering, when “Mr Eddard” himself condescended to laugh at what our Scotch38 brethren would call his own “wut,” to the great discomfiture39 of cook, who wanted to fire-up and give them a bit of her mind, but did not dare, for fear of losing the end of the coveted40 history. The consequence of her reticence41, though, was that “Mr Eddard” grew exceedingly amiable42, and went on with his account.
“That door being shut,” he said, with a grim smile, which was meant to be pleasant, but was the very reverse, “I didn’t want to go; for I put it to you now, under the circumstances, was it likely as he’d stay long?”
“Of course not!” said cook.
“Not likely!” said the housemaid.
“Well, then,” continued Edward, “where was the use of me going back to my pantry only to be called directly? So I took his hat and brushed it, and when I’d brushed it and set it down, I set to and brushed it again, and so on half a dozen times, while—it was very foolish of them if they didn’t want other people to hear—they kept on talking louder and louder.
“‘Mr Vining,’ says missus, ‘I must ask you as a gentleman to come no more.’
“‘But, in ’evin’s name,’ he says, ‘what have I done that you should turn upon me like this?’
“‘Nothing,’ says missus; ‘nothing at all. I pity you from the bottom of my heart, as much as I pity that sweet girl; but it cannot be. You must come here no more.’
“‘Are you a woman?’ he says. ‘Have you feeling? Can you form any idea of the pain your words are giving me?’
“‘Yes, yes, yes,’ says missus. ‘Mr Vining, why do you force me to speak? I do not wish to cause trouble, but you drive me to do so.’
“‘Speak, then,’ he says, quite in another voice, ‘unless you wish to drive me mad, or to something worse—’ There, I’m blessed,” continued Edward, breaking short off in his narrative43, and pointing to the cook, “did you ever see such a woman? Why, what are you snivelling about?”
“I—I—I c-c-c-can’t help it, Eddard, when I think of what those poor things must be suffering,” sobbed44 cook, with a liberal application of her apron45 to her eyes.
“Suffer, indeed—such stuff!” said Edward.
“Ah, Eddard,” said cook, turning upon him a languishing46 look, “if I have saved up forty-seven pound ten in the savings47 bank, I’ve a heart still, and know what it is for it to bleed when some one says a hard word to me.”
The housemaid sniffed48.
“I’m a going on,” said Edward, who was evidently moved by the culinary lady’s remarks.
“‘Drive you,’ says Mr Vining, ‘to speak! Why, stay!’ he says excitedly, as if a thought had struck him. ‘Why, yes; I’m sure of it. My father has been here to-day.’
“‘He has,’ says missus solemnly.
“‘It was cowardly and cruel!’ cries Mr Vining, quite shouting now, for his monkey was evidently up. ‘And pray, madam, what is the result of his visit? There, I can answer it myself: Miss Bedford refuses to see me; you decline to receive me into your house.’
“‘Mr Vining,’ says missus softly, and I could fancy that she took his hand, ‘I grieve for you, as I do for that suffering girl.’
“‘What!’ cries Mr Vining, ‘is she ill? Let me—let me see her—only once—for a minute, dear Mrs Brandon! Pray—on my knees I beg it of you! You cannot be so cruel, so hardhearted, as to refuse!’ And then I heard a loud sobbing49 wail50 as of a woman crying, and—There, I’m blest if I go on, if you will keep on snivelling. Why, blame the women, you’re both on you at it!”
“We—we—we—we—we’re—only a-blowin’ our noses,” sobbed the housemaid.
“Never see such noses!” growled Edward, who then continued:
“Well, directly after, as if in a passion, Mr Vining says:
“‘Mrs Brandon, this is cruel and harsh. I left you last week with my hopes raised; to-day you dash them to the ground.’
“‘Mr Vining—Mr Vining!’ she says softly.
“‘I tell you this,’ he says, shouting again; and hearing his words, you could almost see him stamping up and down the breakfast-room—‘I tell you this. Mrs Brandon: the ties of duty are strong, but the ties formed by the heart of a man newly-awakened to love are stronger. To win Ella Bedford, my own love, I will give all—time, hope, everything; I will leave no stone unturned—I will stop at nothing! I see that she has been coerced—that she has been, as it were, cruelly stolen from me by external pressure; and it shall be my task to win her back. I had hoped to have had you on my side; as it is, I must begin my battle by myself. I thank you for your patient hearing of my words; but before I go I tell you this—that till I learn that, by her own act, she gives herself to another, I will never cease from my pursuit.’
“The next minute he was in the hall, and I handed him his hat, brushed as he never had it brushed before; when, even then, upset as he was, he puts his hand in his pocket, and pushed something into my fist.
“‘Sixpence,’ I says to myself, as I shut the door after him, and him a-walking away like mad.”
“Sixpence!” echoed the cook.
“Sixpence!” squeaked51 the housemaid.
“Well, it did feel like it, sutternly,” said Edward; “but it was arf a suffrin’.”
“But what did he mean by never ceasing from the pursuit till she gave herself to another? Would she give herself to another?” said cook, who was very moist of eye.
“No, I should say not—never!” said the housemaid.
And so said, mentally, Charley Vining as, disappointed and half maddened, he galloped52 homeward that afternoon; but the day came when, bitterly laughing to himself, he said otherwise, and hummed with aching heart the words of the old song:
“Shall I, wasting in despair,
Die because a woman’s fair?”
And then he turned over and over in his hand—what?
A wedding-ring!
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1
alias
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| n.化名；别名；adv.又名 | |
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ruminating
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| v.沉思( ruminate的现在分词 )；反复考虑；反刍；倒嚼 | |
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cosy
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| adj.温暖而舒适的，安逸的 | |
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mansion
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| n.大厦，大楼；宅第 | |
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corona
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| n.日冕 | |
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edifice
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| n.宏伟的建筑物(如宫殿，教室) | |
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7
winked
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| v.使眼色( wink的过去式和过去分词 )；递眼色（表示友好或高兴等）；（指光）闪烁；闪亮 | |
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8
twitched
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| vt.& vi.（使）抽动，（使）颤动（twitch的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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9
ruminated
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| v.沉思( ruminate的过去式和过去分词 )；反复考虑；反刍；倒嚼 | |
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10
intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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11
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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12
dodged
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| v.闪躲( dodge的过去式和过去分词 )；回避 | |
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13
brass
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| n.黄铜；黄铜器，铜管乐器 | |
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14
pendulum
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| n.摆，钟摆 | |
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15
snug
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| adj.温暖舒适的，合身的，安全的；v.使整洁干净，舒适地依靠，紧贴；n.（英）酒吧里的私房 | |
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16
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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17
caverns
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| 大山洞，大洞穴( cavern的名词复数 ) | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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endorse
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| vt.(支票、汇票等)背书，背署；批注；同意 | |
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maiden
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| n.少女，处女；adj.未婚的，纯洁的，无经验的 | |
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21
bridled
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| 给…套龙头( bridle的过去式和过去分词 )； 控制； 昂首表示轻蔑（或怨忿等）； 动怒，生气 | |
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22
bantering
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| adj.嘲弄的v.开玩笑，说笑，逗乐( banter的现在分词 )；（善意地）取笑，逗弄 | |
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23
tartly
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| adv.辛辣地，刻薄地 | |
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24
suave
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| adj.温和的；柔和的；文雅的 | |
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25
distraction
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| n.精神涣散，精神不集中，消遣，娱乐 | |
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26
growled
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| v.（动物）发狺狺声， （雷）作隆隆声( growl的过去式和过去分词 )；低声咆哮着说 | |
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27
ginger
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| n.姜，精力，淡赤黄色；adj.淡赤黄色的；vt.使活泼，使有生气 | |
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28
tightening
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| 上紧，固定，紧密 | |
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29
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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30
punctiliously
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31
soften
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| v.(使)变柔软；(使)变柔和 | |
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32
humbly
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| adv. 恭顺地，谦卑地 | |
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33
cloves
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| n.丁香（热带树木的干花，形似小钉子，用作调味品，尤用作甜食的香料）( clove的名词复数 )；蒜瓣(a garlic ~|a ~of garlic) | |
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34
grumbled
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| 抱怨( grumble的过去式和过去分词 )； 发牢骚； 咕哝； 发哼声 | |
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35
sipped
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| v.小口喝，呷，抿( sip的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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36
adjured
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| v.（以起誓或诅咒等形式）命令要求( adjure的过去式和过去分词 )；祈求；恳求 | |
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37
outrageous
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| adj.无理的，令人不能容忍的 | |
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38
scotch
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| n.伤口，刻痕；苏格兰威士忌酒；v.粉碎，消灭，阻止；adj.苏格兰(人)的 | |
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39
discomfiture
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| n.崩溃；大败；挫败；困惑 | |
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40
coveted
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| adj.令人垂涎的；垂涎的，梦寐以求的v.贪求，觊觎(covet的过去分词)；垂涎；贪图 | |
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41
reticence
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| n.沉默，含蓄 | |
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42
amiable
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| adj.和蔼可亲的，友善的，亲切的 | |
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43
narrative
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| n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的 | |
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44
sobbed
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| 哭泣，啜泣( sob的过去式和过去分词 )； 哭诉，呜咽地说 | |
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45
apron
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| n.围裙；工作裙 | |
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46
languishing
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| a. 衰弱下去的 | |
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47
savings
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| n.存款，储蓄 | |
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48
sniffed
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| v.以鼻吸气，嗅，闻( sniff的过去式和过去分词 )；抽鼻子（尤指哭泣、患感冒等时出声地用鼻子吸气）；抱怨，不以为然地说 | |
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49
sobbing
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| <主方>Ⅰ adj.湿透的 | |
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50
wail
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| vt./vi.大声哀号，恸哭；呼啸，尖啸 | |
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51
squeaked
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| v.短促地尖叫( squeak的过去式和过去分词 )；吱吱叫；告密；充当告密者 | |
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52
galloped
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| （使马）飞奔，奔驰( gallop的过去式和过去分词 )； 快速做[说]某事 | |
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