There was nothing extraordinary in that. To be sure, on the first face and blush of it, Durant had wondered how on earth Mrs. Fazakerly could tolerate the Colonel; but, when he came to think of it, there was no reason why she should not go a great deal farther than [Pg 263] that. The Colonel's dullness would not depress her, she having such an eternal spring of gaiety in herself. She might even find it "soothing," like the neighboring landscape. And as she loved her laughter, it was not improbable that she loved its cause. Then she had the inestimable advantage of knowing the worst of him; her intelligent little eyes had seen him as he was; she could lay a soft finger on all his weak spots. There was this to be said for the Colonel, that he was all on the surface; there was nothing, positively7 nothing, behind him. Besides, Mrs. Fazakerly was not exacting8. She had not lived forty years in the world without knowing the world, and no doubt she knew it too well to ask very much from it. Then the fact remained that the Colonel was an immaculate gentleman, immaculately dressed, and he was not the only item in the program. Coton Manor9 would be thrown in, and there were other agreeable accessories. Mrs. Fazakerly's tastes were all of the expensive sort, and her ambition aimed at something vaster than the mere10 adornment11 of her own person. In her household she displayed a talent, not to say a genius, for luxurious12 order. But a little dinner at the cottage opposite the lodge13 gates had convinced Durant that this elegance14 of hers was of a fragile and perishable15 sort. The peculiar16 genius of Mrs. Fazakerly clamored for material and for boundless17 scope. It could not do itself justice under two thousand a year at the very least. As things stood its exuberance18 was hampered19 both as to actual space (her drawing-room was only eighteen feet by twelve) and as to the more glorious possibilities that depend on income. At Coton Manor she would have a large field and a free hand. Heaven only knew what Mrs. Fazakerly's mind was made up of; but quite evidently it was made up. [Pg 264]
So far so good; but there was less certainty as to the Colonel's attitude. As yet nothing was to be seen, so to speak, but his attitudes, which indeed were extremely entertaining. The little gentleman was balancing himself very deftly20 on the edge of matrimony, and Durant watched with a fearful interest the rash advance and circumspect21 retreat, the oscillating hair's-breadth pause, the perilous22 swerve23, and desperate contortion24 of recovery.
Durant felt for him; he had so much to lose. Under Miss Tancred the working of his household was already brought to such exquisite25 perfection that any change must be for the worse. He had found out what became of Miss Tancred in her mysterious disappearances26. As far as he could see the business of the estate was entirely27 superintended by the lady. He came across her in earnest conversation with the gardener; he met her striding across the fields with the farm-bailiff; he had seen her once on her black mare28 inspecting some buildings on the farthest limit of the property, the obsequious29 builder taking notes of her directions. She was obviously a capable woman, a woman of affairs. He presumed that these matters, with her household and secretarial work, filled up her days; he knew too well that whist accounted for her evenings. He did not know if there was any margin30, any dim intellectual region, out of time, out of space, where Miss Tancred's soul was permitted to disport31 itself in freedom; she seemed to exist merely in order to supply certain deficiencies in the Colonel's nature. Mrs. Fazakerly had once remarked that Frida was "her father's right hand." It would have been truer to have said that she was right hand and left hand, and legs and brain to the student of meteorology. There had evidently been some tacit division of labor32, by which [Pg 265] she did all the thinking and all the work while he did the talking. Thus, to continue Durant's line of argument, the Colonel's comfort was secured to him without an effort on his part (otherwise it would not have been comfort); and when all was said and done Mrs. Fazakerly was a most indifferent player of whist.
Then there was the Colonel's age. Durant knew a man who had taught himself the 'cello33 at fifty-five. But the Colonel was not that sort of adventurous34 dilettante35. Neither was Mrs. Fazakerly exactly like a violoncello, she was more like a piano; while Miss Tancred, from the Colonel's point of view, was like a hurdy-gurdy. Not a difficult instrument the hurdy-gurdy; you have only to keep on turning a handle to make it go. To be sure, you can get rather more out of a piano; but pianos are passionate36 things, ungovernable and slippery to the touch. The Colonel was fond of the humbler instrument that gave him the sense of accomplishment37 without the effort, the joys of the maestro without his labor and his pain.
He was in a double dilemma38. If he had to choose between Miss Tancred and Mrs. Fazakerly his choice would never be made. On the other hand, if he decided39 for both, his comfort would be more insecure than ever. There would be jealousy40 to a dead certainty; in all mixed households that was where the shoe pinched. To pursue that vulgar figure, the Colonel's daughter was like a pair of old and easy shoes made by a good maker41, a maker on whom he could rely; a wife would be like new boots ordered rashly from an unknown firm. They would be his best pair, no doubt, but your best pair is generally the tightest. He had some trying years before him; and well, a man does not put on new boots for a long uphill scramble42.
So the Colonel's breast was torn with internecine43 [Pg 266] warfare44, desire battling with habit, and habit with desire. No wonder if in that awful struggle the fate of one insignificant45 individual counted for nothing. Frida Tancred never had counted.
Durant admitted that his imagination was apt to work in somewhat violent colors, and that there might be a point of view from which the Colonel would tone down into a very harmless and even pathetic figure; for Mrs. Fazakerly he had no terrors. But there was the girl. It was hard to say exactly what he had done to her. Apparently46 he had taken her soul while it was young and squeezable, and had crushed it till it fitted into all his little habits; he had silenced her heart with commonplaces, and dulled her intellect with his incomprehensible fatuity47. And through it all he had been the most innocent little gentleman alive. Oh, yes, he was pathetic enough in his way. He himself was only an instrument in the hands of irrepressible Nature who couples wild soul with tame, hot blood with cold blood, genius with folly48, and makes her sport of their unhappy offspring. And Nature was playing a glorious game with Frida Tancred now.
That was Durant's second idea; the thought that had struck him so unpleasantly after his last interview with her. To put it coarsely, he had a suspicion, a fear, that Miss Tancred was beginning to fall in love with him. He might have known that it would happen. It was just the sort of damnable irony49 most likely to pursue that unfortunate woman. There could be no mistake about it; he knew it; he knew it by many subtle and infallible signs. Somewhere he had heard or read that no nice man ever knows these things. That was all nonsense; or, if it had any meaning at all, it could only mean that no nice man ever shows that [Pg 267] he knows. The fact remained that if he had loved her he would not have known.
For the disagreeable circumstance itself he called Heaven to witness that he had not been to blame. He had been ready to do his part, to fall down and worship the unknown Miss Tancred, the Miss Tancred of his vision. The hour had been ripe, the situation also, and the mood; the woman alone had failed him. Heaven knew he had done nothing to make her care for him. True, he had given her a certain amount of his society; since she found a pleasure in it he would have been a brute50 to deny her that poor diversion, that miserable51 consolation52 for the tedium53 of her existence. Perhaps he had tried too much to be sympathetic; but who again would not have tried? He had given her nothing to go upon. What had he ever given her beyond some infinitesimal portion of his valuable time, at the most some luminous54 hour of insight, or perhaps a little superfluous55 piece of good advice that was of no possible use to himself? For these things she had given herself—given herself away. How ludicrously pathetic some women are! You do them some kindness on an afternoon when you have nothing better to do and they reward you with the devotion of eternity56; for they have no sense of proportion. The awkward thing is that it lays you under an eternal obligation to do something or other for them, you don't know exactly what; an intolerable position for a nice man.
So Durant's first feelings were surprise, annoyance57, and a certain shame. Then he began to feel a little flattered, being perfectly58 sure that Frida Tancred was not the woman to give herself away to any ordinary man. He was the first, the only one, the one in a thousand, who had broken down her implacable reserve. He ended by feeling positively proud of his [Pg 268] power to draw out the soul of a creature so reticent59 and passionless and strange.
His time was not yet up, and the question was: Ought he to go or stay? He would have found or invented some pretext60, and left long ago, but that in him the love of pleasure brought with it an equal fear of giving pain. It would give pain to the Colonel (who, after all, had received him kindly) if he went before his time. By the art of graceful61 evasion62 Durant had escaped many such an old gentleman as the Colonel; but when it came to doing the really disagreeable and ungraceful thing it seemed that his courage failed him.
There was no doubt in Miss Tancred's mind on the delicate point. She was even capable of making a sacrifice to keep him.
He met her one morning riding on her black mare. Miss Tancred looked well on horseback; the habit, the stiff collar, the hard hat, were positively becoming, perhaps because they left no room for decorative63 caprice. She drew up, and Durant ran his hand lovingly over the warm shining neck and shoulders of the mare. Miss Tancred's eyes followed the movements of his hand, then they traveled up his tall figure and down again.
"Your legs are rather long," said she, "and you're heavier than I am; but you can ride her if you like."
"I shouldn't think of it," said Durant, magnificently mendacious64. He had been very early enlightened as to his chances with the mare; but the temptation to ride her had never died in him.
"Unless you ride," she continued, "there is nothing for you to do here. Then you'll be bored to death; and then, I suppose, you'll go?"
"And bury myself? And then?" [Pg 269]
"You won't be buried long. You'll rise again fast enough, somewhere else."
"And what if I do go and do all these things?"
"Well, I don't want you to go—and do them."
She moved on, and he walked beside her, his hand on the mare's mane.
"I can't think why you've stopped so long. Every morning since you came I've been expecting you to go. I thought you'd say your father was dying, or that your partner was ill, and you had urgent business in town. It's what they all do. Do you know, we've asked no end of people down, and they never stay more than three days. They always get letters or telegrams, or something. No, I'm wrong; one man stopped a week. He sprained65 his ankle the first day, and left before he was fit to travel."
(Durant laughed. She really amused him, this ingénue of thirty, with the face of a Sphinx and the conversation of a child.)
"And they never come again. There's something about the place they can not stand."
They were walking leisurely66 together in full sight of Coton Manor. She gazed at it anxiously.
"Does it—does it look so very awful?"
"Well—architecturally speaking—no, of course it doesn't."
"Ah, you're getting used to it. Do you know you'll have been here a fortnight next Monday?"
About the corners of her mouth and eyes there played a dawning humor.
"Come, that sounds as if you did want me to go."
"No it doesn't. How could it? If you don't believe me, here's the proof—you can ride Polly every day if you'll stop another week."
Another week! Most decidedly she had a sense of [Pg 270] the monstrous67 humor of the thing. If she could see it that way she was saved. He had not the heart to kill that happy mood by a coarse refusal; it would have been like grinding his heel on some delicate, struggling thing just lifting its head into life.
Besides, she had really touched him. His legs, as Miss Tancred had observed, were a little long, otherwise Durant had the soul and the physique of a tamer of horses. The sight of Polly filled him with desire that was agony and rapture68; he saw himself controlling the splendid animal; he could feel her under him, bounding, quivering, pulsating69, he himself made one with every movement of her nervous, passionate body. It was too much. Beside that large, full-blooded pleasure, his scruples70 showed colorless and light as air.
That happened on a Friday. He had only two clear days more. He found himself seriously considering the desirability of staying over Monday.
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1
purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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discretion
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| n.谨慎；随意处理 | |
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militia
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| n.民兵，民兵组织 | |
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indignity
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| n.侮辱，伤害尊严，轻蔑 | |
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repulse
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| n.击退，拒绝；vt.逐退，击退，拒绝 | |
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7
positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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exacting
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| adj.苛求的，要求严格的 | |
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9
manor
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| n.庄园，领地 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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adornment
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| n.装饰；装饰品 | |
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luxurious
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| adj.精美而昂贵的；豪华的 | |
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lodge
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| v.临时住宿，寄宿，寄存，容纳；n.传达室，小旅馆 | |
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elegance
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| n.优雅；优美，雅致；精致，巧妙 | |
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15
perishable
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| adj.（尤指食物）易腐的，易坏的 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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boundless
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| adj.无限的；无边无际的；巨大的 | |
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18
exuberance
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| n.丰富；繁荣 | |
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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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deftly
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| adv.灵巧地，熟练地，敏捷地 | |
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circumspect
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| adj.慎重的，谨慎的 | |
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perilous
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| adj.危险的，冒险的 | |
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swerve
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| v.突然转向，背离；n．转向，弯曲，背离 | |
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contortion
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| n.扭弯，扭歪，曲解 | |
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exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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disappearances
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| n.消失( disappearance的名词复数 )；丢失；失踪；失踪案 | |
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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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mare
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| n.母马，母驴 | |
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obsequious
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| adj.谄媚的，奉承的，顺从的 | |
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margin
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| n.页边空白；差额；余地，余裕；边，边缘 | |
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disport
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| v.嬉戏，玩 | |
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labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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33
cello
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| n.大提琴 | |
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adventurous
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| adj.爱冒险的；惊心动魄的，惊险的，刺激的 | |
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dilettante
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| n.半瓶醋，业余爱好者 | |
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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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accomplishment
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| n.完成，成就，（pl.）造诣，技能 | |
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dilemma
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| n.困境，进退两难的局面 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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jealousy
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| n.妒忌，嫉妒，猜忌 | |
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41
maker
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| n.制造者，制造商 | |
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42
scramble
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| v.爬行，攀爬，杂乱蔓延，碎片，片段，废料 | |
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43
internecine
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| adj.两败俱伤的 | |
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warfare
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| n.战争(状态)；斗争；冲突 | |
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45
insignificant
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| adj.无关紧要的，可忽略的，无意义的 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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fatuity
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| n.愚蠢，愚昧 | |
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folly
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| n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话 | |
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irony
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| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
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brute
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| n.野兽，兽性 | |
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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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consolation
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| n.安慰，慰问 | |
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tedium
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| n.单调；烦闷 | |
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luminous
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| adj.发光的，发亮的；光明的；明白易懂的；有启发的 | |
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55
superfluous
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| adj.过多的，过剩的，多余的 | |
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56
eternity
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| n.不朽，来世；永恒，无穷 | |
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annoyance
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| n.恼怒，生气，烦恼 | |
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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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59
reticent
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| adj.沉默寡言的；言不如意的 | |
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60
pretext
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| n.借口，托词 | |
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61
graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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62
evasion
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| n.逃避，偷漏(税) | |
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decorative
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| adj.装饰的，可作装饰的 | |
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mendacious
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| adj.不真的，撒谎的 | |
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sprained
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| v.&n. 扭伤 | |
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leisurely
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| adj.悠闲的；从容的，慢慢的 | |
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monstrous
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| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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68
rapture
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| n.狂喜；全神贯注；着迷；v.使狂喜 | |
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69
pulsating
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| adj.搏动的，脉冲的v.有节奏地舒张及收缩( pulsate的现在分词 )；跳动；脉动；受（激情）震动 | |
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70
scruples
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| n.良心上的不安( scruple的名词复数 )；顾虑，顾忌v.感到于心不安，有顾忌( scruple的第三人称单数 ) | |
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