And yet, Will liked her. In spite of her open praise, and his blushes, he liked her. The surest way to a poet’s heart is to speak well of his poetry. And besides, he said to himself, Mrs Palmer had discrimination. She noted9 in his verse the metrical variety, the pictorial10 skill, the strong sense of colour?—?just the qualities of his poor muse11 on which he himself most prided himself. No artist cares for praise except for those characteristics of his art which he feels to be his strong ones. Mrs Palmer gave Will that, and he liked the incense12.
Florian had said at St Valentin that Will needed change of air, change of scene, change of company. And at Innsbruck he got them. The pretty American, having found her poet, didn’t mean to let him slip again too soon from her clutches. With the pertinacity13 of her compatriots, she fastened herself at once upon the two young Englishmen. Not obtrusively14, to be sure, not ungracefully, not awkwardly, not as a European woman might have done the same thing, but with that occidental frankness and oblivion of sex which makes up half the charm of the charming American. The very next morning, at the early breakfast, she happened to occupy a small table close by them. They chatted together through the meal; at the end of it Will mentioned, in a casual sort of way that he was going down the street to the shop where Mrs Palmer had bought the coral necklet. The dainty young widow seized her cue. “I am going down that way myself,” she said. “Let me come and show you. I won’t take a minute to run up for my hat. I’m not one of those women who can never go out for a morning stroll without spending half-an-hour before their mirrors, tittivating.” And, in spite of Will’s assurance that he could find the shop very well by himself, she was as good as her word, and insisted on accompanying them.
She had been charming in evening dress; she was more charming still in her girlish straw hat and neat tailor-made costume, as she tripped lightly downstairs to them. Florian, by her side, while they walked through the streets, cast sheep’s eyes askance up at her. Even Will, more mindful of poor Linnet’s desertion, was not wholly insensible to that taking smile, those pearly white teeth, that dainty small nose, those rounded contours. They turned down the road in the direction of the Maria-Theresien Strasse. Will knew of old that quaintest16 and most picturesque17 of European High Streets, with its queer gabled roofs, its rococo18 fa?ades, its medi?val towers, its arcades19 and pillars. But to Florian, it all came with the added charm of novelty. Twice or thrice on their way, the spirit moved him to stop and perorate. Each time, the pretty widow cut him short at once with some quick retort of truly American practicality. At the shop, Will selected a second necklet, exactly like the one Mrs Palmer had chosen. “I gave her nothing before I came away,” he said, turning to Florian, and only indicating by that very indefinite pronoun, the intended recipient20 of his beautiful gift. “One couldn’t give her money. ’Twould have been a positive insult. But this ought to look well on that smooth brown neck of hers.”
“For your sister, of course,” Mrs Palmer said, pointedly21.
“No; not for my sister,” Will admitted, with a quiet smile. “For a girl at the inn we’ve just left at St Valentin.”
Mrs Palmer said “Oh!” ’Twas an American oh. It deprecated the fact?—?and closed the episode. Cosmopolitan22 though she was, it surprised her not a little that Will should allude23 to such persons in a lady’s company. But there! these poets, you know?—?so many things must be condoned24 to them. Because they have loved much, much must be forgiven them. They have licence to break hearts and the most brittle25 of the commandments, with far less chance of blame than their even Christians26.
Will’s transaction completed, Mrs Palmer proceeded to buy a second similar set on her own account, for presentation to the second of the giggling27 inarticulates. “Poor girl!” she said, good-humouredly, “she looked so envious28 last night when I gave the other to Eva Powell, I couldn’t bear to think I’d left her out in the cold. Thirty florins, I think you said? Ah, yes; that’s twelve dollars. Not much to make a poor little girl so happy!”
From this, and various other circumstances which occurred in the course of their first few days at Innsbruck, it began to dawn dimly upon Florian’s open mind that their American friend, though she knew not the Van Rensselaers, the Vanderbilts, and the Livingstones, must have been “comfortably left” by the late Mr Palmer. It was clear she had money for every whim29 and fancy. She took frequent drives, up the Brenner or down the Innthal, in a roomy two-horse carriage specially30 ordered from the livery stables; and she always gave a seat to one at least of the giggling inarticulates; and then, “on the girl’s account, you know,” with good-natured zeal31, asked Will and Florian to take part in the expedition. “It’s so good for them, of course,” she said, “to see a little, when they can, of young men’s society. They’re each of them here with an invalid32 mamma?—?throat and lungs, poor things?—?you know the kind of person; and before I came, they had nobody to talk to, not even one another, for they were far too much afraid of a mutual33 snub ever to utter a syllable34. I’ve tried to bring them out a bit, and make life worth living for them. But without a young man?—?at that age?—?no amusement’s worth anything. Do come, Mr Deverill?—?there’s a good soul, just to humour them.”
And Will and Florian, it must be candidly35 allowed, fell in with a good grace with her philanthropic projects. Though, to be sure, when once the carriage got under way, they seemed much more desirous of amusing the pretty American herself, than of seconding her schemes for drawing out the latent conversational37 powers of the giggling inarticulates, who contented38 themselves chiefly with leaning back in their seats, and listening open-mouthed to Florian’s flamboyant39 disquisitions. That, however, is a detail. Will attempted at first to pay his share of the carriage; but such interference with her plans Mrs Palmer most manfully and successfully resisted. She wanted to give the girls a little outing, she said; Will might come or he might stop; but she wasn’t going to let any other person pay for her well-meant attention to her poor little protégées. To that point she stuck hard, through thick and thin. They must come as her guests if they came as anything.
From this, and sundry40 other events that came under his knowledge by occulter channels, Florian grew strengthened in his idea that the late Mr Palmer, whoever he might have been, had at least “cut up well,” and, what was more to the point, had cut up entirely41 in his widow’s favour. Now this was business; for Florian, incurious as he was by nature where mere42 gossip was concerned, liked to know what was what in the matrimonial market. As he was wont43 to put it sweetly to his friends at the Savile, he wasn’t going to throw himself away on a woman for nothing. He had an income of his own, just sufficient to supply him with the bare necessaries of life?—?such as stalls at the opera and hansoms ad libitum; and, this being so, he had no intention of giving up that singular franchise44 which young men call “their liberty,” except in return for valuable consideration. But if good things were going, he liked at least to know of them; some day, perhaps, if some lady bribed45 him high enough, he might possibly consent to retire by her side into the Philistine46 gloom of wedded47 respectability.
So he pushed his inquiries48 hard into the Vision’s antecedents, wholly without effect, during the first few days of their stay at Innsbruck.
A few nights later, however, as they sat in the salon after a long day’s tramp to the summit of the Patscher Kopf, Florian found himself cast casually49 into conversation with an American old maid, belonging to the most virulent50 type and class of old maidhood?—?“of the cat-kind, catty,” he said afterwards to Will Deverill; one of those remarkable51 persons who have pervaded52 cosmopolitan hotels for years together, and are on intimate terms with the domestic skeletons in every cupboard. Miss Beard, as she was called, favoured Florian at full length with the histories and antecedents of the giggling inarticulates, their papas and mammas, and all their forebears; informing him with much gusto how one of them had paid ninepence in the pound to his creditors53, and another had been cashiered from the navy for embezzlement54. Then she proceeded in the same strain to demolish55 the unprepossessing gentleman of nonconformist exterior56, who had been guilty, it seemed, of the social crime of retail57 business. Miss Beard was inclined, indeed, to believe he was nothing more than a retired58 chemist; but she wasn’t even sure?—?with hushed and bated breath?—?that it mightn’t be as bad as grocery and provisions. All these, and many other unimportant details, Florian’s soul endured, possessing itself in patience for many minutes together, in the fervent59 hope that at last this living encyclop?dia of genealogical knowledge would come round to the character of the Vision of Beauty.
“And Mrs Palmer, who sits opposite me,” he adventured gently after awhile, when Miss Beard reached a pause in her caustic60 comments; “she seems a nice little thing in her way, though, of course, a mere butterfly. She comes from New York. I suppose you know her?”
Miss Beard drew herself up with that offended dignity which only an American woman of the “very best class” can exhibit in perfection when you suspect her of an acquaintance with a person moving in a social grade less exalted61 than the sphere she herself revolves62 in. “I don’t know her,” she said, markedly, “but I know, of course, who she is. She’s the widow of Palmer?—?the well-known Palmer?—?the notorious Palmer, who?—?but there!?—?you’ve been in the States; you must know all about him.”
“Not Palmer the murderer!” Florian exclaimed in surprise. “She’s too young for that, surely.”
“No; not Palmer the murderer,” Miss Beard responded in a very shrill63 voice with considerable acerbity64. “He was at least a gentleman. I can’t say as much for this lady’s husband. She’s the widow of Palmer, the dry-goodsman in Broadway.”
“Oh, indeed,” Florian cried, deeply interested in this discovery?—?for it meant much money. “I remember the place well?—?a palatial65 building in the Renaissance66 style at the corner of a street near the junction67 with Fifth Avenue. These princes of commerce in your Western world represent in our midst to-day the great signiors of the Adriatic who held the gorgeous East in fee, and whose Gothic fa?ades, rich in arch and tracery, still line the long curve of the Grand Canal for us. They are the satraps of finance. The world in our times is ruled once more?—?as in Venice of old, in the heyday68 of its splendour?—?by the signet-ring of the merchant. Palmer was one of these?—?a paladin of silken bales, a Doge Dandolo of Manhattan, a potentate69 in the crowded marts of the Samarcand of the Occident15.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Miss Beard retorted in an acrid70 tone, eyeing him sternly through her pince-nez, “but I say he was a dry-goodsman.”
Florian descended71 at a bound from the open empyrean to the solid earth of commonplace. “Well, at any rate, he was rich,” he said, letting the paladins slide. “He must have died worth millions.”
“His estate was proved,” Miss Beard said, curtly72, “at a sum in dollars which totals out?—?let me see?—?fives into 35?—?ah, yes, to exactly seven hundred and eighty-four thousand pounds sterling73.”
Florian gave a little gasp74. “That’ll do,” he said, with slow emphasis. “And he left it?” he suggested, after a second’s pause, with an interrogative raising of his broad white forehead.
“And he left it, every cent,” Miss Beard responded, “without deduction75 of any sort, to that fly-away little inanity76.”
Florian drew a deep breath. “Then she’s rich,” he said, musing36; “rich beyond the utmost dreams of avarice77.”
“Well, of course she is,” Miss Beard answered, with a sharp little snap, as though every one knew that. “If she wasn’t, could she go tearing about Europe as she does, herself and her maid, buying everything she sees, and making presents right and left?—?to everyone she comes across. She’d give her own soul away if anybody asked her for it. Little empty-headed fool! She’s not fit to be trusted with the use of money. But, of course, one can’t know her, however rich she may be. We draw the line in the States at keeping shop. And, besides, she was never brought up among cultivated people.”
As she spoke78, Florian noted several things silently to himself. He noted, first, that Mrs Palmer spoke the English tongue many degrees more correctly, and more pleasantly as well, than her would-be critic. He noted, second, that her very generosity79 was counted for blame to her by this narrower nature. He noted, third, that in republican America, even more than in monarchical80 and aristocratic England, Mrs Palmer’s cleverness, her information, her reading, her culture, were as dust in the balance in Society’s eyes, compared with the damning and indelible fact that her late lamented81 husband had owned a dry-goods store. But, being a worldly-wise man, Florian noted these things in his own heart alone. Externally, he took no overt82 notice of them. On the contrary, he continued his talk in the same bland83 and honey-sweet tone as ever. “Still, she’d be a catch in her way,” he said, with a condescending84 smile, “for any man who didn’t object to swallow her antecedents.”
“She would,” Miss Beard replied, with austere85 self-respect, “if people care to mix in that sort of society. For myself, I’ve been used to a different kind of life. I couldn’t put up with it.”
Florian was audacious. He posed the one last question he still wished to ask, boldly. “And there’s no awkward clause, I suppose,” he said, without even the apology of a blush, “in her husband’s will, of that nasty so-long-as-my-said-wife-remains-unmarried character?”
Miss Beard took up her Galignani with crushing coldness. She didn’t care to discuss such people’s prospects86 from such a standpoint. Their matrimonial affairs were beneath her notice. For fine old crusted prejudice of a social sort, commend me, so far as my poor knowledge goes, to the members of good New Yorker families. “To the best of my knowledge and belief,” she murmured, acridly87, without raising her eyes, “the property’s left for her own sole use and benefit, without any restriction88. But I’m sure I don’t know. If you want to find out you’d better ask her. I don’t burden my mind with these people’s business.”
Then Florian knew the Vision of Beauty was a catch not to be despised by a man of culture. Such wealth as that, no gentleman could decline, in justice to himself, if she gave him the refusal of it.
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1
fickleness
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| n.易变；无常；浮躁；变化无常 | |
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superseded
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| [医]被代替的，废弃的 | |
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obtrusive
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| adj.显眼的；冒失的 | |
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salon
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| n.[法]沙龙；客厅；营业性的高级服务室 | |
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fugitive
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| adj.逃亡的，易逝的；n.逃犯，逃亡者 | |
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calf
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| n.小牛，犊，幼仔，小牛皮 | |
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bard
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| n.吟游诗人 | |
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modesty
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| n.谦逊，虚心，端庄，稳重，羞怯，朴素 | |
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noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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pictorial
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| adj.绘画的；图片的；n．画报 | |
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muse
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| n.缪斯（希腊神话中的女神），创作灵感 | |
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incense
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| v.激怒；n.香，焚香时的烟，香气 | |
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pertinacity
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| n.执拗，顽固 | |
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obtrusively
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| adv.冒失地，莽撞地 | |
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occident
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| n.西方；欧美 | |
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quaintest
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| adj.古色古香的( quaint的最高级 )；少见的，古怪的 | |
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picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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rococo
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| n.洛可可；adj.过分修饰的 | |
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arcades
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| n.商场( arcade的名词复数 )；拱形走道（两旁有商店或娱乐设施）；连拱廊；拱形建筑物 | |
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recipient
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| a.接受的,感受性强的 n.接受者,感受者,容器 | |
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pointedly
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| adv.尖地，明显地 | |
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cosmopolitan
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| adj.世界性的，全世界的，四海为家的，全球的 | |
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allude
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| v.提及，暗指 | |
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condoned
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| v.容忍，宽恕，原谅( condone的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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brittle
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| adj.易碎的；脆弱的；冷淡的；(声音)尖利的 | |
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Christians
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| n.基督教徒( Christian的名词复数 ) | |
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giggling
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| v.咯咯地笑( giggle的现在分词 ) | |
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envious
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| adj.嫉妒的，羡慕的 | |
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whim
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| n.一时的兴致，突然的念头；奇想，幻想 | |
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specially
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| adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地 | |
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zeal
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| n.热心，热情，热忱 | |
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invalid
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| n.病人，伤残人；adj.有病的，伤残的；无效的 | |
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mutual
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| adj.相互的，彼此的；共同的，共有的 | |
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syllable
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| n.音节；vt.分音节 | |
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candidly
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| adv.坦率地，直率而诚恳地 | |
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musing
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| n. 沉思，冥想 adj. 沉思的, 冥想的 动词muse的现在分词形式 | |
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conversational
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| adj.对话的，会话的 | |
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contented
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| adj.满意的，安心的，知足的 | |
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flamboyant
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| adj.火焰般的，华丽的，炫耀的 | |
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sundry
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| adj.各式各样的，种种的 | |
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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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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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wont
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| adj.习惯于；v.习惯；n.习惯 | |
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franchise
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| n.特许，特权，专营权，特许权 | |
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45
bribed
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| v.贿赂( bribe的过去式和过去分词 )；向（某人）行贿，贿赂 | |
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46
philistine
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| n.庸俗的人；adj.市侩的，庸俗的 | |
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47
wedded
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| adj.正式结婚的；渴望…的，执著于…的v.嫁，娶，（与…）结婚( wed的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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48
inquiries
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| n.调查( inquiry的名词复数 )；疑问；探究；打听 | |
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49
casually
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| adv.漠不关心地，无动于衷地，不负责任地 | |
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50
virulent
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| adj.有毒的，有恶意的，充满敌意的 | |
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51
remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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52
pervaded
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| v.遍及，弥漫( pervade的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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53
creditors
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| n.债权人，债主( creditor的名词复数 ) | |
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54
embezzlement
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| n.盗用，贪污 | |
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55
demolish
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| v.拆毁(建筑物等)，推翻(计划、制度等) | |
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56
exterior
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| adj.外部的，外在的；表面的 | |
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57
retail
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| v./n.零售；adv.以零售价格 | |
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58
retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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59
fervent
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| adj.热的，热烈的，热情的 | |
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caustic
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| adj.刻薄的，腐蚀性的 | |
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61
exalted
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| adj.(地位等)高的，崇高的；尊贵的，高尚的 | |
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revolves
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| v.（使）旋转( revolve的第三人称单数 )；细想 | |
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shrill
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| adj.尖声的；刺耳的；v尖叫 | |
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acerbity
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| n.涩，酸，刻薄 | |
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palatial
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| adj.宫殿般的，宏伟的 | |
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renaissance
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| n.复活，复兴，文艺复兴 | |
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67
junction
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| n.连接，接合；交叉点，接合处，枢纽站 | |
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68
heyday
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| n.全盛时期，青春期 | |
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potentate
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| n.统治者；君主 | |
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70
acrid
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| adj.辛辣的，尖刻的，刻薄的 | |
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71
descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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72
curtly
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| adv.简短地 | |
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73
sterling
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| adj.英币的(纯粹的，货真价实的)；n.英国货币(英镑) | |
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74
gasp
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| n.喘息，气喘；v.喘息；气吁吁他说 | |
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75
deduction
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| n.减除，扣除，减除额；推论，推理，演绎 | |
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76
inanity
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| n.无意义，无聊 | |
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77
avarice
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| n.贪婪；贪心 | |
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78
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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79
generosity
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| n.大度，慷慨，慷慨的行为 | |
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80
monarchical
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| adj. 国王的，帝王的，君主的，拥护君主制的 =monarchic | |
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81
lamented
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| adj.被哀悼的，令人遗憾的v.（为…）哀悼，痛哭，悲伤( lament的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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82
overt
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| adj.公开的，明显的，公然的 | |
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83
bland
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| adj.淡而无味的，温和的，无刺激性的 | |
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84
condescending
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| adj.谦逊的,故意屈尊的 | |
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85
austere
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| adj.艰苦的；朴素的，朴实无华的；严峻的 | |
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86
prospects
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| n.希望，前途(恒为复数) | |
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87
acridly
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| adj.辛辣的；刺鼻的；（性格、态度、言词等）刻薄的；尖刻的 | |
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88
restriction
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| n.限制，约束 | |
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