Perhaps it was better for him as it was; and the blow came to him with a rapidity which created less of suffering than might have followed the slower mode of proceeding12 which he had intended. He was actually making the fifth copy of the letter, rendered necessary by that violent full stop, when Matthew came to him and announced that Miss Thoroughbung was in the drawing-room. "In the house!" ejaculated Mr. Prosper.
"She would come into the hall; and then where was I to put her?"
"Matthew Pike, you will not do for my service." This had been said about once every three months throughout the long course of years in which Matthew had lived with his master.
"Very well, sir. I am to take it for a month's warning, of course." Matthew understood well enough that this was merely an expression of his master's displeasure, and, being anxious for his master's welfare, knew that it was decorous that some decision should be come to at once as to Miss Thoroughbung, and that time should not be lost in his own little personal quarrel. "She is waiting, you know, sir, and she looks uncommon13 irascible. There is the other lady left outside in the carriage."
"Miss Tickle14! Don't let her in, whatever you do. She is the worst. Oh dear! oh dear! Where are my coat and waistcoat, and my braces15? And I haven't brushed my hair. And these slippers16 won't do. What business has she to come at this time of day, without saying a word to anybody?" Then Matthew went to work, and got his master into decent apparel, with as little delay as possible. "After all," said Mr. Prosper, "I don't think I'll see her. Why should I see her?"
"She knows you are at home, sir."
"Why does she know I'm at home? That's your fault. She oughtn't to know anything about it. Oh dear! oh dear! oh dear!" These last ejaculations arose from his having just then remembered the nature of his postscript to Harry Annesley, and the engagement of Joe Thoroughbung to his niece. He made up his mind at the moment,—or thought that he had made up his mind,—that Harry Annesley should not have a shilling as long as he lived. "I am quite out of breath. I cannot see her yet. Go and offer the lady cake and wine, and tell her that you had found me very much indisposed. I think you will have to tell her that I am not well enough to receive her to-day."
"Get it over, sir, and have done with it."
"It's all very well to say have done with it. I shall never have done with it. Because you have let her in to-day she'll think that she can come always. Good Lord! There she is on the stairs! Pick up my slippers." Then the door was opened, and Miss Thoroughbung herself entered the room. It was an up-stairs chamber17, known as Mr. Prosper's own: and from it was the door into his bedroom. How Miss Thoroughbung had learned her way to it he never could guess. But she had come up the stairs as though she had been acquainted with all the intricacies of the house from her childhood.
"Mr. Prosper," she said, "I hope I see you quite well this morning, and that I have not disturbed you at your toilet." That she had done so was evident, from the fact that Matthew, with the dressing-gown and slippers, was seen disappearing into the bedroom.
"I am not very well, thank you," said Mr. Prosper, rising from his chair, and offering her his hand with the coldest possible salutation.
"I am sorry for that,—very. I hope it is not your indisposition which has prevented you from coming to see me. I have been expecting you every day since Soames wrote his last letter. But it's no use pretending any longer. Oh, Peter, Peter!" This use of his Christian18 name struck him absolutely dumb, so that he was unable to utter a syllable19. He should, first of all, have told her that any excuse she had before for calling him by his Christian name was now at an end. But there was no opening for speech such as that. "Well," she continued, "have you got nothing to say to me? You can write flippant letters to other people, and turn me into ridicule20 glibly21 enough."
"I have never done so."
"Did you not write to Joe Thoroughbung, and tell him you had given up all thoughts of having me?"
"Joe!" he exclaimed. His very surprise did not permit him to go farther, at the moment, than this utterance22 of the young man's Christian name.
"Yes, Joe,—Joe Thoroughbung, my nephew, and yours that is to be. Did you not write and tell him that everything was over?"
"I never wrote to young Mr. Thoroughbung in my life. I should not have dreamed of such a correspondence on such a subject."
"Well, he says you did. Or, if you didn't write to Joe himself, you wrote to somebody."
"I may have written to somebody, certainly."
"And told them that you didn't mean to have anything farther to say to me?" That traitor23 Harry had now committed a sin worse that knocking a man down in the middle of the night and leaving him bleeding, speechless, and motionless; worse than telling a lie about it;—worse even than declining to listen to sermons read by his uncle. Harry had committed such a sin that no shilling of allowance should evermore be paid to him. Even at this moment there went through Mr. Prosper's brain an idea that there might be some unmarried female in England besides Miss Puffle and Miss Thoroughbung. "Peter Prosper, why don't you answer like a man, and tell me the honest truth?" He had never before been called Peter Prosper in his whole life.
"Perhaps you had better let me make a communication by letter," he said. At that very moment the all but completed epistle was lying on the table before him, where even her eyes might reach it. In the flurry of the moment he covered it up.
"Perhaps that is the letter which has taken you so long to write?" she said.
"It is the letter."
"Then hand it me over, and save yourself the penny stamp." In his confusion he gave her the letter, and threw himself down on the sofa while she read it. "You have been very careful in choosing your language, Mr. Prosper: 'It will be expedient24 that I should make known to you the entire truth.' Certainly, Mr. Prosper, certainly. The entire truth is the best thing,—next to entire beer, my brother would say." "The horrid25 vulgar woman!" Mr. Prosper ejaculated to himself. "'There seems to have been a complete misunderstanding with regard to that amiable26 lady, Miss Tickle.' No misunderstanding at all. You said you liked her, and I supposed you did. And when I had been living for twenty years with a female companion, who hasn't sixpence in the world to buy a rag with but what she gets from me, was it to be expected that I should turn her out for any man?"
"An annuity27 might have been arranged, Miss Thoroughbung."
"Bother an annuity! That's all you think about feelings! Was she to go and live alone and desolate28 because you wanted some one to nurse you? And then those wretched ponies29. I tell you, Peter Prosper, that let me marry whom I will, I mean to drive a pair of ponies, and am able to do so out of my own money. Ponies, indeed! It's an excuse. Your heart has failed you. You've come to know a woman of spirit, and now you are afraid that she'll be too much for you. I shall keep this letter, though it has not been sent."
"You can do as you please about that, Miss Thoroughbung."
"Oh yes; of course I shall keep it, and shall give it to Messrs. Soames & Simpson. They are most gentlemanlike men, and will be shocked at such conduct as this from the Squire30 of Buston. The letter will be published in the newspapers, of course. It will be very painful to me, no doubt, but I shall owe it to my sex to punish you. When all the county are talking of your conduct to a lady, and saying that no man could have done it, let alone no gentleman, then you will feel it. Miss Tickle,—and a pair of ponies! You expected to get my money and nothing to give for it. Oh, you mean man!"
She must have been aware that every word she spoke31 was a dagger32. There was a careful analysis of his peculiar33 character displayed in every word of reproach which she uttered. Nothing could have wounded him more than the comparison between himself and Soames & Simpson. They were gentlemen! "The vulgarest men in all Buntingford!" he declared to himself, and always ready for any sharp practice. Whereas he was no man, Miss Thoroughbung said,—a mean creature, altogether unworthy to be regarded as a gentleman. He knew himself to be Mr. Prosper of Buston Hall, with centuries of Prospers34 for his ancestors; whereas Soames was the son of a tax-gatherer, and Simpson had come down from London as a clerk from a solicitor's office in the City. And yet it was true that people would talk of him as did Miss Thoroughbung! His cruelty would be in every lady's mouth. And then his stinginess about the ponies would be the gossip of the county for twelve months. And, as he found out what Miss Thoroughbung was, the disgrace of even having wished to marry her loomed35 terribly large before him.
But there was a twinkle of jest in the lady's eyes all the while which he did not perceive, and which, had he perceived it, he could not have understood. Her anger was but simulated wrath36. She, too, had thought that it might be well, under circumstances, if she were to marry Mr. Prosper, but had quite understood that those circumstances might not be forthcoming. "I don't think it will do at all, my dear," she had said to Miss Tickle. "Of course an old bachelor like that won't want to have you."
"I beg you won't think of me for a moment," Miss Tickle had answered, with solemnity.
"Bother! why can't you tell the truth? I'm not going to throw you over, and of course you'd be just nowhere if I did. I shan't break my heart for Mr. Prosper. I know I should be an old fool if I were to marry him; and he is more of an old fool for wanting to marry me. But I did think he wouldn't cut up so rough about the ponies." And then, when no answer came to the last letter from Soames & Simpson, and the tidings reached her, round from the brewery, that Mr. Prosper intended to be off, she was not in the least surprised. But the information, she thought, had come to her in an unworthy manner. So she determined37 to punish the gentleman, and went out to Buston Hall and called him Peter Prosper. We may doubt, however, whether she had ever realized how terribly her scourges38 would wale him.
"And to think that you would let it come round to me in that way, through the young people,—writing about it just as a joke!"
"I never wrote about it like a joke," said Mr. Prosper, almost crying.
"I remember now. It was to your nephew; and of course everybody at the rectory saw it. Of course they were all laughing at you." There was one thing now written in the book of fate, and sealed as certainly as the crack of doom39: no shilling of allowance should ever be paid to Harry Annesley. He would go abroad. He said so to himself as he thought of this, and said also that, if he could find a healthy young woman anywhere, he would marry her, sacrificing every idea of his own happiness to his desire of revenge upon his nephew. This, however, was only the passionate40 feeling of the moment. Matrimony had become altogether so distasteful to him, since he had become intimately acquainted with Miss Thoroughbung, as to make any release in that manner quite impossible to him. "Do you propose to make me any amends41?" asked Miss Thoroughbung.
"Money?" said he.
"Yes; money. Why shouldn't you pay me money? I should like to keep three ponies, and to have Miss Tickle's sister to come and live with me."
"I do not know whether you are in earnest, Miss Thoroughbung."
"Quite in earnest, Peter Prosper. But perhaps I had better leave that matter in the hands of Soames & Simpson,—very gentleman-like men,—and they'll be sure to let you know how much you ought to pay. Ten thousand pounds wouldn't be too much, considering the distress42 to my wounded feelings." Here Miss Thoroughbung put her handkerchief up to her eyes.
There was nothing that he could say. Whether she were laughing at him, as he thought to be most probable, or whether there was some grain of truth in the demand which she made, he found it equally impossible to make any reply. There was nothing that he could say; nor could he absolutely turn her out of the room. But after ten minutes' farther continuation of these amenities43, during which it did at last come home to his brain that she was merely laughing at him, he began to think that he might possibly escape, and leave her there in possession of his chamber.
"If you will excuse me, Miss Thoroughbung, I will retire," he said, rising from the sofa.
"Regularly chaffed out of your own den10!" she said, laughing.
"I do not like this interchange of wit on subjects that are so serious."
"Interchange! There is very little interchange, according to my idea. You haven't said anything witty44. What an idea of interchange the man has!"
"At any rate I will escape from your rudeness."
"Now, Peter Prosper, before you go let me ask you one question. Which of the two has been the rudest to the other? You have come and asked me to marry you, and have evidently wished to back out of it from the moment in which you found that I had ideas of my own about money. And now you call me rude, because I have my little revenge. I have called you Peter Prosper, and you can't stand it. You haven't spirit enough to call me Matty Thoroughbung in reply. But good-bye, Mr. Prosper,—for I never will call you Peter again. As to what I said to you about money, that, of course, is all bosh. I'll pay Soames's bill, and will never trouble you. There's your letter, which, however, would be of no use, because it is not signed. A very stupid letter it is. If you want to write naturally you should never copy a letter. Good-bye, Mr. Prosper—Peter that never shall be." Then she got up and walked out of the room.
Mr. Prosper, when he was left alone, remained for a while nearly paralyzed. That he should have ever entertained the idea of making that woman his wife! Such was his first thought. Then he reflected that he had, in truth, escaped from her more easily than he had hoped, and that she had certainly displayed some good qualities in spite of her vulgarity and impudence45. She did not, at any rate, intend to trouble him any farther. He would never again hear himself called Peter by that terribly loud voice. But his anger became very fierce against the whole family at the rectory. They had ventured to laugh at him, and he could understand that, in their eyes, he had become very ridiculous.
He could see it all,—the manner in which they had made fun of him, and had been jocose46 over his intended marriage. He certainly had not intended to be funny in their eyes. But, while he had been exercising the duty of a stern master over them, and had been aware of his own extreme generosity47 in his efforts to forgive his nephew, that very nephew had been laughing at him, in conjunction with the nephew of her whom he had intended to make his wife! Not a shilling, again, should ever be allowed to Harry Annesley. If it could be so arranged, by any change of circumstances, he might even yet become the father of a family of his own.
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1
prosper
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| v.成功，兴隆，昌盛；使成功，使昌隆，繁荣 | |
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distinctively
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| adv.特殊地，区别地 | |
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harry
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| vt.掠夺，蹂躏，使苦恼 | |
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postscript
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| n.附言，又及；(正文后的)补充说明 | |
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blighted
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| adj.枯萎的，摧毁的 | |
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epithet
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| n.（用于褒贬人物等的）表述形容词，修饰语 | |
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dreaded
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| adj.令人畏惧的；害怕的v.害怕，恐惧，担心( dread的过去式和过去分词) | |
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8
brewery
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| n.啤酒厂 | |
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legitimate
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| adj.合法的，合理的，合乎逻辑的；v.使合法 | |
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den
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| n.兽穴；秘密地方；安静的小房间，私室 | |
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intercourse
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| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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proceeding
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| n.行动，进行，(pl.)会议录，学报 | |
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uncommon
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| adj.罕见的，非凡的，不平常的 | |
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tickle
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| v.搔痒，胳肢；使高兴；发痒；n.搔痒，发痒 | |
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15
braces
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| n.吊带，背带；托架( brace的名词复数 )；箍子；括弧；（儿童）牙箍v.支住( brace的第三人称单数 )；撑牢；使自己站稳；振作起来 | |
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slippers
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| n. 拖鞋 | |
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chamber
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| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
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Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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syllable
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| n.音节；vt.分音节 | |
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ridicule
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| v.讥讽，挖苦；n.嘲弄 | |
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glibly
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| adv.流利地，流畅地；满口 | |
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utterance
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| n.用言语表达，话语，言语 | |
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traitor
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| n.叛徒，卖国贼 | |
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expedient
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| adj.有用的，有利的；n.紧急的办法，权宜之计 | |
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horrid
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| adj.可怕的；令人惊恐的；恐怖的；极讨厌的 | |
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amiable
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| adj.和蔼可亲的，友善的，亲切的 | |
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annuity
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| n.年金；养老金 | |
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28
desolate
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| adj.荒凉的，荒芜的；孤独的，凄凉的；v.使荒芜，使孤寂 | |
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29
ponies
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| 矮种马，小型马( pony的名词复数 )； ￡25 25 英镑 | |
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squire
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| n.护卫, 侍从, 乡绅 | |
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31
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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dagger
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| n.匕首，短剑，剑号 | |
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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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prospers
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| v.成功，兴旺( prosper的第三人称单数 ) | |
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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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wrath
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| n.愤怒，愤慨，暴怒 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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scourges
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| 带来灾难的人或东西，祸害( scourge的名词复数 )； 鞭子 | |
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doom
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| n.厄运，劫数；v.注定，命定 | |
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40
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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amends
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| n. 赔偿 | |
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42
distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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amenities
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| n.令人愉快的事物；礼仪；礼节；便利设施；礼仪( amenity的名词复数 )；便利设施；（环境等的）舒适；（性情等的）愉快 | |
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44
witty
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| adj.机智的，风趣的 | |
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45
impudence
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| n.厚颜无耻；冒失；无礼 | |
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46
jocose
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| adj.开玩笑的，滑稽的 | |
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47
generosity
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| n.大度，慷慨，慷慨的行为 | |
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