Yet in some ways Herminia had reason to be dissatisfied with her daughter's development. Day by day she watched for signs of the expected apostolate. Was Dolores pressing forward to the mark for the prize of her high calling? Her mother half doubted it. Slowly and regretfully, as the growing girl approached the years when she might be expected to think for herself, Herminia began to perceive that the child of so many hopes, of so many aspirations3, the child pre-destined to regenerate4 humanity, was thinking for herself—in a retrograde direction. Incredible as it seemed to Herminia, in the daughter of such a father and such a mother, Dolores' ideas—nay, worse her ideals—were essentially5 commonplace. Not that she had much opportunity of imbibing6 commonplace opinions from any outside source; she redeveloped them from within by a pure effort of atavism. She had reverted7 to lower types. She had thrown back to the Philistine8.
Heredity of mental and moral qualities is a precarious9 matter. These things lie, as it were, on the topmost plane of character; they smack10 of the individual, and are therefore far less likely to persist in offspring than the deeper-seated and better-established peculiarities11 of the family, the clan12, the race, or the species. They are idiosyncratic. Indeed, when we remember how greatly the mental and moral faculties13 differ from brother to brother, the product of the same two parental14 factors, can we wonder that they differ much more from father to son, the product of one like factor alone, diluted15 by the addition of a relatively16 unknown quality, the maternal17 influence? However this may be, at any rate, Dolores early began to strike out for herself all the most ordinary and stereotyped18 opinions of British respectability. It seemed as if they sprang up in her by unmitigated reversion. She had never heard in the society of her mother's lodgings19 any but the freest and most rational ideas; yet she herself seemed to hark back, of internal congruity20, to the lower and vulgarer moral plane of her remoter ancestry21. She showed her individuality only by evolving for herself all the threadbare platitudes22 of ordinary convention.
Moreover, it is not parents who have most to do with moulding the sentiments and opinions of their children. From the beginning, Dolly thought better of the landlady's views and ideas than of her mother's. When she went to school, she considered the moral standpoint of the other girls a great deal more sensible than the moral standpoint of Herminia's attic23. She accepted the beliefs and opinions of her schoolfellows because they were natural and congenial to her character. In short, she had what the world calls common-sense: she revolted from the unpractical Utopianism of her mother.
From a very early age, indeed, this false note in Dolly had begun to make itself heard. While she was yet quite a child, Herminia noticed with a certain tender but shrinking regret that Dolly seemed to attach undue24 importance to the mere25 upholsteries and equipages of life,—to rank, wealth, title, servants, carriages, jewelry26. At first, to be sure, Herminia hoped this might prove but the passing foolishness of childhood: as Dolly grew up, however, it became clearer each day that the defect was in the grain—that Dolly's whole mind was incurably27 and congenitally aristocratic or snobbish28. She had that mean admiration29 for birth, position, adventitious30 advantages, which is the mark of the beast in the essentially aristocratic or snobbish nature. She admired people because they were rich, because they were high-placed, because they were courted, because they were respected; not because they were good, because they were wise, because they were noble-natured, because they were respect-worthy31.
But even that was not all. In time, Herminia began to perceive with still profounder sorrow that Dolly had no spontaneous care or regard for righteousness. Right and wrong meant to her only what was usual and the opposite. She seemed incapable32 of considering the intrinsic nature of any act in itself apart from the praise or blame meted33 out to it by society. In short, she was sunk in the same ineffable34 slough35 of moral darkness as the ordinary inhabitant of the morass36 of London.
To Herminia this slow discovery, as it dawned bit by bit upon her, put the final thorn in her crown of martyrdom. The child on whose education she had spent so much pains, the child whose success in the deep things of life was to atone37 for her own failure, the child who was born to be the apostle of freedom to her sisters in darkness, had turned out in the most earnest essentials of character a complete disappointment, and had ruined the last hope that bound her to existence.
Bitterer trials remained. Herminia had acted through life to a great extent with the idea ever consciously present to her mind that she must answer to Dolly for every act and every feeling. She had done all she did with a deep sense of responsibility. Now it loomed38 by degrees upon her aching heart that Dolly's verdict would in almost every case be a hostile one. The daughter was growing old enough to question and criticise39 her mother's proceedings40; she was beginning to understand that some mysterious difference marked off her own uncertain position in life from the solid position of the children who surrounded her—the children born under those special circumstances which alone the man-made law chooses to stamp with the seal of its recognition. Dolly's curiosity was shyly aroused as to her dead father's family. Herminia had done her best to prepare betimes for this inevitable41 result by setting before her child, as soon as she could understand it, the true moral doctrine42 as to the duties of parenthood. But Dolly's own development rendered all such steps futile43. There is no more silly and persistent44 error than the belief of parents that they can influence to any appreciable45 extent the moral ideas and impulses of their children. These things have their springs in the bases of character: they are the flower of individuality; and they cannot be altered or affected46 after birth by the foolishness of preaching. Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, you will find soon enough he will choose his own course for himself and depart from it.
Already when Dolly was a toddling47 little mite48 and met her mother's father in the church in Marylebone, it had struck her as odd that while they themselves were so poor and ill-clad, her grandpapa should be such a grand old gentleman of such a dignified49 aspect. As she grew older and older, and began to understand a little more the world she lived in, she wondered yet more profoundly how it could happen, if her grandpapa was indeed the Very Reverend, the Dean of Dunwich, that her mamma should be an outcast from her father's church, and scarcely well seen in the best carriage company. She had learnt that deans are rather grand people—almost as much so as admirals; that they wear shovel-hats to distinguish them from the common ruck of rectors; that they lived in fine houses in a cathedral close; and that they drive in a victoria with a coachman in livery. So much essential knowledge of the church of Christ she had gained for herself by personal observation; for facts like these were what interested Dolly. She couldn't understand, then, why she and her mother should live precariously50 in a very small attic; should never be visited by her mother's brothers, one of whom she knew to be a Prebendary of Old Sarum, while the other she saw gazetted as a Colonel of Artillery51; and should be totally ignored by her mother's sister, Ermyntrude, who lolled in a landau down the sunny side of Bond Street.
At first, indeed, it only occurred to Dolly that her mother's extreme and advanced opinions had induced a social breach52 between herself and the orthodox members of her family. Even that Dolly resented; why should mamma hold ideas of her own which shut her daughter out from the worldly advantages enjoyed to the full by the rest of her kindred? Dolly had no particular religious ideas; the subject didn't interest her; and besides, she thought the New Testament53 talked about rich and poor in much the same unpractical nebulous way that mamma herself did—in fact, she regarded it with some veiled contempt as a rather sentimental54 radical55 publication. But, she considered, for all that, that it was probably true enough as far as the facts and the theology went; and she couldn't understand why a person like mamma should cut herself off contumaciously56 from the rest of the world by presuming to disbelieve a body of doctrine which so many rich and well-gaitered bishops57 held worthy of credence58. All stylish59 society accepted the tenets of the Church of England. But in time it began to occur to her that there might be some deeper and, as she herself would have said, more disgraceful reason for her mother's alienation60 from so respectable a family. For to Dolly, that was disgraceful which the world held to be so. Things in themselves, apart from the world's word, had for her no existence. Step by step, as she grew up to blushing womanhood, it began to strike her with surprise that her grandfather's name had been, like her own, Barton. "Did you marry your cousin, mamma?" she asked Herminia one day quite suddenly.
And Herminia, flushing scarlet61 at the unexpected question, the first with which Dolly had yet ventured to approach that dangerous quicksand, replied with a deadly thrill, "No, my darling. Why do you ask me?"
"Because," Dolly answered abashed62, "I just wanted to know why your name should be Barton, the same as poor grandpapa's."
Herminia didn't dare to say too much just then. "Your dear father," she answered low, "was not related to me in any way."
Dolly accepted the tone as closing the discussion for the present; but the episode only strengthened her underlying63 sense of a mystery somewhere in the matter to unravel64.
In time, Herminia sent her child to a day-school. Though she had always taught Dolly herself as well as she was able, she felt it a matter of duty, as her daughter grew up, to give her something more than the stray ends of time in a busy journalist's moments of leisure. At the school, where Dolly was received without question, on Miss Smith-Water's recommendation, she found herself thrown much into the society of other girls, drawn65 for the most part from the narrowly Mammon-worshipping ranks of London professional society. Here, her native tendencies towards the real religion of England, the united worship of Success and Respectability, were encouraged to the utmost. But she noticed at times with a shy shrinking that some few of the girls had heard vague rumors66 about her mother as a most equivocal person, who didn't accept all the current superstitions67, and were curious to ask her questions as to her family and antecedents. Crimson68 with shame, Dolly parried such enquiries as best she could; but she longed all the more herself to pierce this dim mystery. Was it a runaway69 match?—with the groom70, perhaps, or the footman? Only the natural shamefacedness of a budding girl in prying71 into her mother's most domestic secrets prevented Dolores from asking Herminia some day point-blank all about it.
But she was gradually becoming aware that some strange atmosphere of doubt surrounded her birth and her mother's history. It filled her with sensitive fears and self-conscious hesitations72.
And if the truth must be told, Dolly never really returned her mother's profound affection. It is often so. The love which parents lavish73 upon their children, the children repay, not to parents themselves, but to the next generation. Only when we become fathers or mothers in our turn do we learn what our fathers and mothers have done for us. Thus it was with Dolly. When once the first period of childish dependence74 was over, she regarded Herminia with a smouldering distrust and a secret dislike that concealed75 itself beneath a mask of unfelt caresses76. In her heart of hearts, she owed her mother a grudge77 for not having put her in a position in life where she could drive in a carriage with a snarling78 pug and a clipped French poodle, like Aunt Ermyntrude's children. She grew up, smarting under a sullen79 sense of injustice80, all the deeper because she was compelled to stifle81 it in the profoundest recesses82 of her own heart.
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1
graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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exquisitely
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| adv.精致地；强烈地；剧烈地；异常地 | |
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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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regenerate
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| vt.使恢复，使新生；vi.恢复，再生；adj.恢复的 | |
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essentially
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| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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imbibing
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| v.吸收( imbibe的现在分词 )；喝；吸取；吸气 | |
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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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philistine
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| n.庸俗的人；adj.市侩的，庸俗的 | |
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precarious
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| adj.不安定的，靠不住的；根据不足的 | |
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smack
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| vt.拍，打，掴；咂嘴；vi.含有…意味；n.拍 | |
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peculiarities
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| n. 特质, 特性, 怪癖, 古怪 | |
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clan
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| n.氏族，部落，宗族，家族，宗派 | |
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faculties
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| n.能力( faculty的名词复数 )；全体教职员；技巧；院 | |
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parental
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| adj.父母的；父的；母的 | |
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diluted
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| 无力的，冲淡的 | |
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relatively
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| adv.比较...地，相对地 | |
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maternal
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| adj.母亲的，母亲般的，母系的，母方的 | |
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stereotyped
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| adj.(指形象、思想、人物等)模式化的 | |
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lodgings
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| n. 出租的房舍, 寄宿舍 | |
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congruity
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| n.全等，一致 | |
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ancestry
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| n.祖先，家世 | |
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platitudes
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| n.平常的话，老生常谈，陈词滥调( platitude的名词复数 )；滥套子 | |
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attic
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| n.顶楼，屋顶室 | |
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undue
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| adj.过分的；不适当的；未到期的 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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jewelry
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| n.（jewllery）（总称）珠宝 | |
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incurably
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| ad.治不好地 | |
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snobbish
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| adj.势利的，谄上欺下的 | |
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admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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adventitious
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| adj.偶然的 | |
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worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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meted
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| v.（对某人）施以，给予（处罚等）( mete的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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34
ineffable
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| adj.无法表达的，不可言喻的 | |
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slough
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| v.蜕皮，脱落，抛弃 | |
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morass
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| n.沼泽，困境 | |
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atone
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| v.赎罪，补偿 | |
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loomed
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| v.隐约出现，阴森地逼近( loom的过去式和过去分词 )；隐约出现，阴森地逼近 | |
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criticise
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| v.批评，评论；非难 | |
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proceedings
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| n.进程，过程，议程；诉讼(程序)；公报 | |
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inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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futile
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| adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的 | |
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persistent
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| adj.坚持不懈的，执意的；持续的 | |
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appreciable
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| adj.明显的，可见的，可估量的，可觉察的 | |
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affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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toddling
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| v.（幼儿等）东倒西歪地走( toddle的现在分词 )；蹒跚行走；溜达；散步 | |
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48
mite
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| n.极小的东西；小铜币 | |
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dignified
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| a.可敬的，高贵的 | |
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50
precariously
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| adv.不安全地；危险地；碰机会地；不稳定地 | |
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artillery
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| n.(军)火炮，大炮；炮兵(部队) | |
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52
breach
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| n.违反，不履行；破裂；vt.冲破，攻破 | |
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testament
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| n.遗嘱；证明 | |
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54
sentimental
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| adj.多愁善感的，感伤的 | |
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radical
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| n.激进份子，原子团，根号；adj.根本的，激进的，彻底的 | |
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56
contumaciously
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57
bishops
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| （基督教某些教派管辖大教区的）主教( bishop的名词复数 )； （国际象棋的）象 | |
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credence
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| n.信用，祭器台，供桌，凭证 | |
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stylish
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| adj.流行的，时髦的；漂亮的，气派的 | |
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alienation
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| n.疏远；离间；异化 | |
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61
scarlet
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| n.深红色，绯红色，红衣；adj.绯红色的 | |
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62
abashed
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| adj.窘迫的，尴尬的v.使羞愧，使局促，使窘迫( abash的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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underlying
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| adj.在下面的，含蓄的，潜在的 | |
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unravel
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| v.弄清楚（秘密）；拆开，解开，松开 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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rumors
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| n.传闻( rumor的名词复数 )；[古]名誉；咕哝；[古]喧嚷v.传闻( rumor的第三人称单数 )；[古]名誉；咕哝；[古]喧嚷 | |
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superstitions
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| 迷信，迷信行为( superstition的名词复数 ) | |
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crimson
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| n./adj.深(绯)红色(的)；vi.脸变绯红色 | |
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runaway
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| n.逃走的人，逃亡，亡命者；adj.逃亡的，逃走的 | |
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groom
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| vt.给（马、狗等）梳毛，照料，使...整洁 | |
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prying
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| adj.爱打听的v.打听，刺探（他人的私事）( pry的现在分词 )；撬开 | |
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hesitations
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| n.犹豫( hesitation的名词复数 )；踌躇；犹豫（之事或行为）；口吃 | |
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lavish
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| adj.无节制的；浪费的；vt.慷慨地给予，挥霍 | |
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dependence
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| n.依靠，依赖；信任，信赖；隶属 | |
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concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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caresses
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| 爱抚，抚摸( caress的名词复数 ) | |
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grudge
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| n.不满，怨恨，妒嫉；vt.勉强给，不情愿做 | |
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snarling
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| v.（指狗）吠，嗥叫， （人）咆哮( snarl的现在分词 )；咆哮着说，厉声地说 | |
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sullen
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| adj.愠怒的，闷闷不乐的，(天气等)阴沉的 | |
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injustice
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| n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利 | |
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stifle
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| vt.使窒息；闷死；扼杀；抑止，阻止 | |
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82
recesses
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| n.壁凹( recess的名词复数 )；（工作或业务活动的）中止或暂停期间；学校的课间休息；某物内部的凹形空间v.把某物放在墙壁的凹处( recess的第三人称单数 )；将（墙）做成凹形，在（墙）上做壁龛；休息，休会，休庭 | |
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