The exact right words, she presently discovered, after trying various ones about living for others, and prayer, and the peace to be found in placing oneself unreservedly in God's hands—to meet all these words Mrs. Wilkins had other words, incoherent and yet, for the moment at least, till one had had more time, difficult to answer—the exact right words were a suggestion that it would do no harm to answer the advertisement. Non-committal. Mere3 inquiry4. And what disturbed Mrs. Arbuthnot about this suggestion was that she did not make it solely5 to comfort Mrs. Wilkins; she made it because of her own strange longing6 for the mediaeval castle.
This was very disturbing. There she was, accustomed to direct, to lead, to advise, to support—except Frederick; she long since had learned to leave Frederick to God—being led herself, being influenced and thrown off her feet, by just an advertisement, by just an incoherent stranger. It was indeed disturbing. She failed to understand her sudden longing for what was, after all, self-indulgence, when for years no such desire had entered her heart.
"There's no harm in simply asking," she said in a low voice, as if the vicar and the Savings7 Bank and all her waiting and dependent poor were listening and condemning8.
"It isn't as if it committed us to anything," said Mrs. Wilkins, also in a low voice, but her voice shook.
They got up simultaneously—Mrs. Arbuthnot had a sensation of surprise that Mrs. Wilkins should be so tall—and went to a writing-table, and Mrs. Arbuthnot wrote to Z, Box 1000, The Times, for particulars. She asked for all particulars, but the only one they really wanted was the one about the rent. They both felt that it was Mrs. Arbuthnot who ought to write the letter and do the business part. Not only was she used to organizing and being practical, but she also was older, and certainly calmer; and she herself had no doubt too that she was wiser. Neither had Mrs. Wilkins any doubt of this; the very way Mrs. Arbuthnot parted her hair suggested a great calm that could only proceed from wisdom.
But if she was wiser, older and calmer, Mrs. Arbuthnot's new friend nevertheless seemed to her to be the one who impelled9. Incoherent, she yet impelled. She appeared to have, apart from her need of help, an upsetting kind of character. She had a curious infectiousness. She led one on. And the way her unsteady mind leaped at conclusions—wrong ones, of course; witness the one that she, Mrs. Arbuthnot, was miserable—the way she leaped at conclusions was disconcerting.
Whatever she was, however, and whatever her unsteadiness, Mrs. Arbuthnot found herself sharing her excitement and her longing; and when the letter had been posted in the letter-box in the hall and actually was beyond getting back again, both she and Mrs. Wilkins felt the same sense of guilt10.
"It only shows," said Mrs. Wilkins in a whisper, as they turned away from the letter-box, "how immaculately good we've been all our lives. The very first time we do anything our husbands don't know about we feel guilty."
"I'm afraid I can't say I've been immaculately good," gently protested Mrs. Arbuthnot, a little uncomfortable at this fresh example of successful leaping at conclusions, for she had not said a word about her feeling of guilt.
"Oh, but I'm sure you have—I see you being good—and that's why you're not happy."
"She shouldn't say things like that," thought Mrs. Arbuthnot. "I must try and help her not to."
Aloud she said gravely, "I don't know why you insist that I'm not happy. When you know me better I think you'll find that I am. And I'm sure you don't mean really that goodness, if one could attain11 it, makes one unhappy."
"Yes, I do," said Mrs. Wilkins. "Our sort of goodness does. We have attained12 it, and we are unhappy. There are miserable sorts of goodness and happy sorts—the sort we'll have at the mediaeval castle, for instance, is the happy sort."
"That is, supposing we go there," said Mrs. Arbuthnot restrainingly. She felt that Mrs. Wilkins needed holding on to. "After all, we've only written just to ask. Anybody may do that. I think it quite likely we shall find the conditions impossible, and even if they were not, probably by to-morrow we shall not want to go."
"I see us there," was Mrs. Wilkins's answer to that.
All this was very unbalancing. Mrs. Arbuthnot, as she presently splashed though the dripping streets on her way to a meeting she was to speak at, was in an unusually disturbed condition of mind. She had, she hoped, shown herself very calm to Mrs. Wilkins, very practical and sober, concealing13 her own excitement. But she was really extraordinarily14 moved, and she felt happy, and she felt guilty, and she felt afraid, and she had all the feelings, though this she did not know, of a woman who was come away from a secret meeting with her lover. That, indeed, was what she looked like when she arrived late on her platform; she, the open-browed, looked almost furtive15 as her eyes fell on the staring wooden faces waiting to hear her try and persuade them to contribute to the alleviation16 of the urgent needs of the Hampstead poor, each one convinced that they needed contributions themselves. She looked as though she were hiding something discreditable but delightful17. Certainly her customary clear expression of candor18 was not there, and its place was taken by a kind of suppressed and frightened pleasedness, which would have led a more worldly-minded audience to the instant conviction of recent and probably impassioned lovemaking.
Beauty, beauty, beauty . . . the words kept ringing in her ears as she stood on the platform talking of sad things to the sparsely19 attended meeting. She had never been to Italy. Was that really what her nest-egg was to be spent on after all? Though she couldn't approve of the way Mrs. Wilkins was introducing the idea of predestination into her immediate20 future, just as if she had no choice, just as if to struggle, or even to reflect, were useless, it yet influenced her. Mrs. Wilkins's eyes had been the eyes of a seer. Some people were like that, Mrs. Arbuthnot knew; and if Mrs. Wilkins had actually seen her at the mediaeval castle it did seem probable that struggling would be a waste of time. Still, to spend her nest-egg on self-indulgence— The origin of this egg had been corrupt21, but she had at least supposed its end was to be creditable. Was she to deflect22 it from its intended destination, which alone had appeared to justify23 her keeping it, and spend it on giving herself pleasure?
Mrs. Arbuthnot spoke24 on and on, so much practiced in the kind of speech that she could have said it all in her sleep, and at the end of the meeting, her eyes dazzled by her secret visions, she hardly noticed that nobody was moved in any way whatever, least of all in the way of contributions.
But the vicar noticed. The vicar was disappointed. Usually his good friend and supporter Mrs. Arbuthnot succeeded better than this. And, what was even more unusual, she appeared, he observed, not even to mind.
"I can't imagine," he said to her as they parted, speaking irritably26, for he was irritated both by the audience and by her, "what these people are coming to. Nothing seems to move them."
"Perhaps they need a holiday," suggested Mrs. Arbuthnot; an unsatisfactory, a queer reply, the vicar thought.
"In February?" he called after her sarcastically27.
"Oh no—not till April," said Mrs. Arbuthnot over her shoulder.
"Very odd," thought the vicar. "Very odd indeed." And he went home and was not perhaps quite Christian28 to his wife.
That night in her prayers Mrs. Arbuthnot asked for guidance. She felt she ought really to ask, straight out and roundly, that the mediaeval castle should already have been taken by some one else and the whole thing thus be settled, but her courage failed her. Suppose her prayer were to be answered? No; she couldn't ask it; she couldn't risk it. And after all—she almost pointed25 this out to God—if she spent her present nest-egg on a holiday she could quite soon accumulate another. Frederick pressed money on her; and it would only mean, while she rolled up a second egg, that for a time her contributions to the parish charities would be less. And then it could be the next nest-egg whose original corruption29 would be purged30 away by the use to which it was finally put.
For Mrs. Arbuthnot, who had no money of her own, was obliged to live on the proceeds of Frederick's activities, and her very nest-egg was the fruit, posthumously31 ripened32, of ancient sin. The way Frederick made his living was one of the standing33 distresses34 of her life. He wrote immensely popular memoirs36, regularly, every year, of the mistresses of kings. There were in history numerous kings who had had mistresses, and there were still more numerous mistresses who had had kings; so that he had been able to publish a book of memoirs during each year of his married life, and even so there were greater further piles of these ladies waiting to be dealt with. Mrs. Arbuthnot was helpless. Whether she liked it or not, she was obliged to live on the proceeds. He gave her a dreadful sofa once, after the success of his Du Barri memoir35, with swollen37 cushions and soft, receptive lap, and it seemed to her a miserable thing that there, in her very home, should flaunt38 this re-incarnation of a dead old French sinner.
Simply good, convinced that morality is the basis of happiness, the fact that she and Frederick should draw their sustenance39 from guilt, however much purged by the passage of centuries, was one of the secret reasons of her sadness. The more the memoired lady had forgotten herself, the more his book about her was read and the more free-handed he was to his wife; and all that he gave her was spent, after adding slightly to her nest-egg—for she did hope and believe that some day people would cease to want to read of wickedness, and then Frederick would need supporting—on helping40 the poor. The parish flourished because, to take a handful at random41, of the ill-behavior of the ladies Du Barri, Montespan, Pompadour, Ninon de l'Enclos, and even of learned Maintenon. The poor were the filter through which the money was passed, to come out, Mrs. Arbuthnot hoped, purified. She could do no more. She had tried in days gone by to think the situation out, to discover the exact right course for her to take, but had found it, as she had found Frederick, too difficult, and had left it, as she had left Frederick, to God. Nothing of this money was spent on her house or dress; those remained, except for the great soft sofa, austere42. It was the poor who profited. Their very boots were stout43 with sins. But how difficult it had been. Mrs. Arbuthnot, groping for guidance, prayed about it to exhaustion44. Ought she perhaps to refuse to touch the money, to avoid it as she would have avoided the sins which were its source? But then what about the parish's boots? She asked the vicar what he thought, and through much delicate language, evasive and cautious, it did finally appear that he was for the boots.
At least she had persuaded Frederick, when first he began his terrible successful career—he only began it after their marriage; when she married him he had been a blameless official attached to the library of the British Museum—to publish the memoirs under another name, so that she was not publicly branded. Hampstead read the books with glee, and had no idea that their writer lived in its midst. Frederick was almost unknown, even by sight, in Hampstead. He never went to any of its gatherings45. Whatever it was he did in the way of recreation was done in London, but he never spoke of what he did or whom he saw; he might have been perfectly46 friendless for any mention he ever made of friends to his wife. Only the vicar knew where the money for the parish came from, and he regarded it, he told Mrs. Arbuthnot, as a matter of honour not to mention it.
And at least her little house was not haunted by the loose lived ladies, for Frederick did his work away from home. He had two rooms near the British Museum, which was the scene of his exhumations, and there he went every morning, and he came back long after his wife was asleep. Sometimes he did not come back at all. Sometimes she did not see him for several days together. Then he would suddenly appear at breakfast, having let himself in with his latchkey the night before, very jovial47 and good-natured and free-handed and glad if she would allow him to give her something—a well-fed man, contented48 with the world; a jolly, full-blooded, satisfied man. And she was always gentle, and anxious that his coffee should be as he liked it.
He seemed very happy. Life, she often thought, however much one tabulated49 was yet a mystery. There were always some people it was impossible to place. Frederick was one of them. He didn't seem to bear the remotest resemblance to the original Frederick. He didn't seem to have the least need of any of the things he used to say were so important and beautiful—love, home, complete communion of thoughts, complete immersion50 in each other's interests. After those early painful attempts to hold him up to the point from which they had hand in hand so splendidly started, attempts in which she herself had got terribly hurt and the Frederick she supposed she had married was mangled51 out of recognition, she hung him up finally by her bedside as the chief subject of her prayers, and left him, except for those, entirely52 to God. She had loved Frederick too deeply to be able now to do anything but pray for him. He had no idea that he never went out of the house without her blessing53 going with him too, hovering54, like a little echo of finished love, round that once dear head. She didn't dare think of him as he used to be, as he had seemed to her to be in those marvelous first days of their love-making, of their marriage. Her child had died; she had nothing, nobody of her own to lavish55 herself on. The poor became her children, and God the object of her love. What could be happier than such a life, she sometimes asked herself; but her face, and particularly her eyes, continued sad.
"Perhaps when we're old . . . perhaps when we are both quite old . . ." she would think wistfully.
点击
收听单词发音
收听单词发音 |
1
miserable
|
|
| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
sanitary
|
|
| adj.卫生方面的，卫生的，清洁的，卫生的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
mere
|
|
| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
inquiry
|
|
| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
solely
|
|
| adv.仅仅，唯一地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
longing
|
|
| n.（for）渴望 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
savings
|
|
| n.存款，储蓄 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
condemning
|
|
| v.（通常因道义上的原因而）谴责( condemn的现在分词 )；宣判；宣布…不能使用；迫使…陷于不幸的境地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
impelled
|
|
| v.推动、推进或敦促某人做某事( impel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
guilt
|
|
| n.犯罪；内疚；过失，罪责 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
attain
|
|
| vt.达到，获得，完成 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
attained
|
|
| （通常经过努力）实现( attain的过去式和过去分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
concealing
|
|
| v.隐藏，隐瞒，遮住( conceal的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
extraordinarily
|
|
| adv.格外地；极端地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
furtive
|
|
| adj.鬼鬼崇崇的，偷偷摸摸的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
alleviation
|
|
| n. 减轻，缓和，解痛物 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
delightful
|
|
| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
candor
|
|
| n.坦白，率真 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
sparsely
|
|
| adv.稀疏地；稀少地；不足地；贫乏地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
immediate
|
|
| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
corrupt
|
|
| v.贿赂，收买；adj.腐败的，贪污的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
deflect
|
|
| v.(使)偏斜，(使)偏离，(使)转向 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
justify
|
|
| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
spoke
|
|
| 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 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
25
pointed
|
|
| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
26
irritably
|
|
| ad.易生气地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
27
sarcastically
|
|
| adv.挖苦地，讽刺地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
28
Christian
|
|
| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
29
corruption
|
|
| n.腐败，堕落，贪污 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
30
purged
|
|
| 清除（政敌等）( purge的过去式和过去分词 )； 涤除（罪恶等）； 净化（心灵、风气等）； 消除（错事等）的不良影响 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
31
posthumously
|
|
| adv.于死后，于身后；于著作者死后出版地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
32
ripened
|
|
| v.成熟，使熟( ripen的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
33
standing
|
|
| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
34
distresses
|
|
| n.悲痛( distress的名词复数 )；痛苦；贫困；危险 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
35
memoir
|
|
| n.[pl.]回忆录，自传；记事录 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
36
memoirs
|
|
| n.回忆录；回忆录传( mem,自oir的名词复数) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
37
swollen
|
|
| adj.肿大的，水涨的；v.使变大，肿胀 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
38
flaunt
|
|
| vt.夸耀，夸饰 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
39
sustenance
|
|
| n.食物，粮食；生活资料；生计 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
40
helping
|
|
| n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
41
random
|
|
| adj.随机的；任意的；n.偶然的(或随便的)行动 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
42
austere
|
|
| adj.艰苦的；朴素的，朴实无华的；严峻的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
44
exhaustion
|
|
| n.耗尽枯竭，疲惫，筋疲力尽，竭尽，详尽无遗的论述 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
45
gatherings
|
|
| 聚集( gathering的名词复数 )； 收集； 采集； 搜集 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
46
perfectly
|
|
| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
47
jovial
|
|
| adj.快乐的，好交际的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
48
contented
|
|
| adj.满意的，安心的，知足的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
49
tabulated
|
|
| 把（数字、事实）列成表( tabulate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
50
immersion
|
|
| n.沉浸；专心 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
51
mangled
|
|
| vt.乱砍（mangle的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
52
entirely
|
|
| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
53
blessing
|
|
| n.祈神赐福；祷告；祝福，祝愿 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
54
hovering
|
|
| 鸟( hover的现在分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
55
lavish
|
|
| adj.无节制的；浪费的；vt.慷慨地给予，挥霍 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |