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Chapter IV--What Mary Elinor told Me
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 The next morning I got up quite early, and Mrs. Crane, who did too, helped me to assemble my things. She loaned me a suitcase for the bridge jackets and my pin-cushions (which would not go in the trunk!), and then, taking a few of the best flowers from each bouquet1, made them into a small one, which she pinned on me with a lovely little gold-headed pin, which she called a “violet pin.” And all the time we worked together she talked most comfortingly.
“If everything seems right different at first, dear,” she said, as she folded up my nightie and bath-robe, “don’t worry. . . . Things have a way of smoothing out, you know. And you’ll accommodate yourself. I suppose you’re used to being outdoors?”
I responded that I was.
“Then,” she said, and very cheerfully, “think of the walks you can take in New York! The things you can see! The most beautiful buildings, and parks, and dear knows what all, honey! Why, you’ll have a beautiful time!”
“I sort of hope,” I confided2, “that I can get to one of the big league games.” It was hard for me to speak of it, because I did so want to go, and I was afraid it wouldn’t be suitable or something. For, almost invariably, things that are pleasant are not proper to do. I’ve always noticed it.
But Mrs. Crane thought my uncle would take me if I told him how much I cared about going.
“Do you?” I said, and ever so earnestly, for it meant a great deal to me.
“I don’t see how he could help it,” she answered; and then, after kissing me, she told me to hurry on with my dressing3 and come down to breakfast. And I did. As I did my hair (which was, at that time, a very simple operation, and involved three licks of the comb and one rubber strap), I thought of Mrs. Crane, and I did wish I could stay with her, for I began to see that my clothes did look strange, and I knew that she would help me to fix them without laughing at me or them. Bradly-dear had had them made so that I was too aware of them, and so that no one else could overlook them. It is hard to explain, but the trimmings and the dresses didn’t mix, and the braid drew attention to the dresses, and the dresses drew attention to the braid, which was not all moored4 on the level. I anchored a good deal of it myself, and I can tell you that it is far easier to pitch against a left-handed batter5 than to put on a yard of serpentine6 braid, beside being a great deal more interesting.
Just as I had got my dress on and was trying to hook it under the arm, someone tapped, and after my “Come in,” I found it was Mary Elinor. “Bill’s home,” she said first. “He just got in. He’s glad he’s going to meet you. He likes baseball too. I have something to tell you, but I don’t just know how. It is a delicate thing to say and requires womanly tact7, of which I have not much, since father whips us if we tell fibs. That kind of an upbringing is an awful handicap.”
She sat down after this, and began to plait her handkerchief.
“If you feel as if you ought to say it,” I said, “go to it. I won’t mind.” And she did.
“It’s about the bracelet8,” she said. “Mother doesn’t believe in such things, but Aunt Eliza (she’s our cook) knows all about them, and she says that probably the ghost of the first owner has put a ‘hant’ on it. . . .”
“I don’t believe in such stuff,” I answered. “You know how niggers are.”
“I know,” Mary Elinor answered, “but--well, look here, your own mother thought so.”
“Thought what?” I asked, and quickly. I was getting excited, and I wanted her to come to the point.
“Thought Madam Jumel didn’t want anyone to wear her bracelet, and made them unhappy--in some queer way--if they did. Everyone who wears that bracelet has awful things happen to ’em!”
“What?” I asked. I sat down on the foot of the bed.
“Well, mother said your mother said that because she wore it the first time your father kissed her, he died with pneumonia10 before he’d ever seen you. She said that made it.”
“I don’t believe it,” I asserted. I was annoyed. It didn’t sound like Mrs. Crane. Mary Elinor bridled11, and her eyes snapped.
“Then don’t,” she said. “I only thought someone ought to tell you, before something frightful12 happened to you. And I don’t lie, Miss Natalie Page. You can ask my father, because he taught me not to and----”
“I know you don’t,” I answered, “and I’m sorry I said that.” And then I decided13 I’d better hear the story. Beside, I wanted to. So I told her to tell me all about what she knew of it, and she did.
It seems they have a room which they call “the winter room,” and this contains a cosy14 little alcove15, lighted by a high window, which is remote and an ideal reading spot. And one day after Mrs. Crane got Uncle Frank’s letter, the letter about my coming, Mary Elinor happened to be there, reading. It was a book she had read before, and of course she knew what happened next, and so she wasn’t especially interested, and what her mother and father said sort of floated in her consciousness and rooted, she said, before she realized that she was listening. Then, since they hadn’t known she was there, she decided not to enlighten them. She knew that they would be shocked by her presence, and she assured me that she always tried to be considerate. And, she reasoned further, that since she had heard so much, almost involuntarily, there was no use stuffing up her ears, and beside, she was interested.
It was interesting, but I didn’t believe it--then.
Ted9,” Mrs. Crane had said (Doctor Crane’s first name is Theodore), “I want to give Natalie Page that bracelet, but--you know poor Nelly’s foolish fear of it bothers me.”
“Nonsense!” Doctor Crane answered, and Mary Elinor said she knew he was smoking, by the tight way he spoke16.
“I suppose it is,” Mrs. Crane said, “isn’t it?”
“Why, of course it is. . . . Nothing the matter with that bracelet. My dear, how could it affect anything? . . . And as for poor Carter Page’s pneumonia” (Carter Page was my father, and he was an Admiral in the Navy), “he went off with that because of a severe climatic change, a bad sailing, and a weak heart. And of course Nelly was upset both physically17 and mentally by that.”
“But before,” said Mrs. Crane. “You know her little sister--the one who was killed in that Carrol County Hunt--thrown from a horse--well, she’d borrowed this bracelet and wore it that day.”
“My dear,” said Doctor Crane, “that’s simply coincidence. And it certainly proves nothing. . . . I think Nelly’s daughter ought to have it, because of its historic value, and I wouldn’t be bothered for a second by those imaginings.”
Then Mary Elinor heard him scratch a match and relight his pipe. She said that it was really interesting the way she could tell what was going on without seeing it. It was like movies for the blind.
“Suppose,” said Mrs. Crane, “there is something in that sort of thing (although, of course, there isn’t) and I did give this child something that would----”
Then Doctor Crane asked if she needed a tonic18, which is his way of saying that people are cross, or crazy, or nervous.
Mrs. Crane laughed.
“Ted,” she said, “I know I am crazy, but when I remember it----” And then Mary Elinor said her voice became soft as she told this story. . . . I had heard it, but never told this way. And here it is:
I was born while my father was cruising the Pacific. Each day he had hoped to be able to come home, but orders were against him and, like all sailors, he had to abide19 by those and not by the dictates20 of his heart. And so--I grew for three months, and then one day my mother heard that father was to come home and would probably be in port within three or four weeks. Mrs. Crane’s description of that was lovely. And she could describe it, for my mother then lived in the Green Spring Valley with grandpapa, and Mrs. Crane went there often, taking Alix, Barbara, and William. Mary Elinor wasn’t, at that time.
“Excitement, Ted!” said Mrs. Crane. “I wish you might have seen it. . . . But you remember how I told of it----”
“A little.”
“Well, Nelly was the happiest little person I’ve ever seen, and simply delighted over the beautiful baby she had waiting to show her husband. Each day little Natalie (who really was a sweet child) was dressed in her best and ready for display. For Nelly couldn’t realize that three weeks at least must elapse before her big husband could come home to her. And she herself, pretty as ever, would wail21: ‘Dear, do you think I’m as pretty as I was? Carter always thought me pretty, you know. . . . Do you?’ And then, quickly: ‘But if he doesn’t there’s the baby--and she is a beauty!’ . . .”
“Always was a coquette,” said Doctor Crane.
“Yes,” admitted Mrs. Crane. “Nelly knew her husband was wild about her. They really loved each other too much--the other would have been easier if they had been a bit closer to normal caring----”
And then came what I have always known, and been saddened by. For my poor little mother, after getting me all ready for my daddy, and herself all ready for him, too--both of us in our prettiest things--had a wire. And in this she heard that he was dead. And when she heard that she took off the bracelet (I did not know this part of the story) and flung it far from her. And then she fainted. And she never cried at all. Which I can understand.
Well, a few months went on, and, although they said I cared a great deal for her, she didn’t seem to care for anything--even me. And quite naturally, she began to be ill. I suppose that there was nothing left for which life was worth the living. . . . A big mammy took care of me, and my grandpapa loved me a lot, but I am sure, even then, that I wanted my mother most. . . . One day, perhaps six or eight months after my father’s death, my mother asked for the Jumel bracelet. And when they brought it to her (with a dent22 in the side, which had come from her throwing it) she smiled. . . . “I’m going to take it to its jealous owner, Chloe,” she said to my mammy. . . . “Or at least--I will take it where no one else can wear it--and where Madam Jumel will not mind its being worn.” And then again she smiled.
And when she died she had it on her arm, and of course she had meant that she was to be buried in it. But Chloe, my mammy, would not have that. She did not believe in carrying unhappiness to the other world, and, like a great many of her race, believed that you could take things with you--if they went in your coffin23. Which is, of course, silly. For all you really take is love, and the whitest part of your soul. I am sure all jealousies24, and hurts and little things stay here, and I like to believe so. . . . But to get on, old Chloe told my grandfather, and he, a broken-hearted old man, took it off. And then he kissed my mother’s arm, at the spot where the bracelet had made a mark, and he said: “It’s all right now, my little girl, isn’t it? It’s all right now!” For he hoped she was very happy. And then he went off and sat down on the porch, his head sagging25 down on his chest and in his hands the Jumel bracelet. . . .
There were three years which followed, three years in which nothing happened. And then, my grandfather began to lose money. I remember that time, although I was only three and a half. I remember his holding me very tight and pressing his face against my chest; and I remember that I always hugged him and said, “Granddad--dear,” for Chloe, who taught me everything, had said: “Your granddaddy done gotta have a lotta love, honey chile. He done gotta, for he’s lost a lotta love--a powerful lot! . . . .” For two of his daughters and his wife had all gone--within eight years.
And I did love him.
I remember also how, when they brought him in, bleeding, and with his eyes wide open but sightless, how I felt, how I screamed, and how even Chloe could not stop me. . . . Little by little he had lost money. And the small sums had worried him, and he had tried to catch them back with the big ones. And somehow, after a little time of this--there were no big ones. And then--one day in hunting season they found my dear grandfather by a stile, where they thought he had fallen and accidentally discharged his gun, which is, of course, possible. Anyway--he had evidently lain there for a good many hours, and he had bled to death.
And they found the Jumel bracelet in his pocket--flattened and bent26. Looking as if someone had stepped on it, ground it into the earth, and--believed the story!
Chloe took charge of it, and Mrs. Crane saw it when she came out to take charge of me until I should go to Uncle Frank’s. And Mrs. Crane took the bracelet, because she thought no one of our family would want to see it, since even Uncle Frank seemed to believe in the ill omens27 it carried. She had it straightened and made whole again, and sometimes wore it; but not often, since she cared deeply for my mother, and the memories it gave her hurt. And so the bracelet was kept until I got it.
Doctor Crane asked about Aunt Penelope, and how she would feel about it, but Mrs. Crane said she had never believed a word of the tale. She was my mother’s much older half-sister--my grandfather first married a Northern woman, and after she died my mother’s mother.
“It won’t bother Penelope,” said Mrs. Crane. And she laughed. And then, Mary Elinor said, she added: “I wonder how Natalie will get on there, Ted? I imagine that there is a good deal of worldliness and thought of form. I do hope it will be all right, for if she is like her mother she is a dear!”

点击收听单词发音收听单词发音  

1 bouquet pWEzA     
n.花束,酒香
参考例句:
  • This wine has a rich bouquet.这种葡萄酒有浓郁的香气。
  • Her wedding bouquet consisted of roses and ivy.她的婚礼花篮包括玫瑰和长春藤。
2 confided 724f3f12e93e38bec4dda1e47c06c3b1     
v.吐露(秘密,心事等)( confide的过去式和过去分词 );(向某人)吐露(隐私、秘密等)
参考例句:
  • She confided all her secrets to her best friend. 她向她最要好的朋友倾吐了自己所有的秘密。
  • He confided to me that he had spent five years in prison. 他私下向我透露,他蹲过五年监狱。 来自《简明英汉词典》
3 dressing 1uOzJG     
n.(食物)调料;包扎伤口的用品,敷料
参考例句:
  • Don't spend such a lot of time in dressing yourself.别花那么多时间来打扮自己。
  • The children enjoy dressing up in mother's old clothes.孩子们喜欢穿上妈妈旧时的衣服玩。
4 moored 7d8a41f50d4b6386c7ace4489bce8b89     
adj. 系泊的 动词moor的过去式和过去分词形式
参考例句:
  • The ship is now permanently moored on the Thames in London. 该船现在永久地停泊在伦敦泰晤士河边。
  • We shipped (the) oars and moored alongside the bank. 我们收起桨,把船泊在岸边。
5 batter QuazN     
v.接连重击;磨损;n.牛奶面糊;击球员
参考例句:
  • The batter skied to the center fielder.击球手打出一个高飞球到中外野手。
  • Put a small quantity of sugar into the batter.在面糊里放少量的糖。
6 serpentine MEgzx     
adj.蜿蜒的,弯曲的
参考例句:
  • One part of the Serpentine is kept for swimmers.蜿蜒河的一段划为游泳区。
  • Tremolite laths and serpentine minerals are present in places.有的地方出现透闪石板条及蛇纹石。
7 tact vqgwc     
n.机敏,圆滑,得体
参考例句:
  • She showed great tact in dealing with a tricky situation.她处理棘手的局面表现得十分老练。
  • Tact is a valuable commodity.圆滑老练是很有用处的。
8 bracelet nWdzD     
n.手镯,臂镯
参考例句:
  • The jeweler charges lots of money to set diamonds in a bracelet.珠宝匠要很多钱才肯把钻石镶在手镯上。
  • She left her gold bracelet as a pledge.她留下她的金手镯作抵押品。
9 ted 9gazhs     
vt.翻晒,撒,撒开
参考例句:
  • The invaders gut ted the village.侵略者把村中财物洗劫一空。
  • She often teds the corn when it's sunny.天好的时候她就翻晒玉米。
10 pneumonia s2HzQ     
n.肺炎
参考例句:
  • Cage was struck with pneumonia in her youth.凯奇年轻时得过肺炎。
  • Pneumonia carried him off last week.肺炎上星期夺去了他的生命。
11 bridled f4fc5a2dd438a2bb7c3f6663cfac7d22     
给…套龙头( bridle的过去式和过去分词 ); 控制; 昂首表示轻蔑(或怨忿等); 动怒,生气
参考例句:
  • She bridled at the suggestion that she was lying. 她对暗示她在说谎的言论嗤之以鼻。
  • He bridled his horse. 他给他的马套上笼头。
12 frightful Ghmxw     
adj.可怕的;讨厌的
参考例句:
  • How frightful to have a husband who snores!有一个发鼾声的丈夫多讨厌啊!
  • We're having frightful weather these days.这几天天气坏极了。
13 decided lvqzZd     
adj.决定了的,坚决的;明显的,明确的
参考例句:
  • This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
  • There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。
14 cosy dvnzc5     
adj.温暖而舒适的,安逸的
参考例句:
  • We spent a cosy evening chatting by the fire.我们在炉火旁聊天度过了一个舒适的晚上。
  • It was so warm and cosy in bed that Simon didn't want to get out.床上温暖而又舒适,西蒙简直不想下床了。
15 alcove EKMyU     
n.凹室
参考例句:
  • The bookcase fits neatly into the alcove.书架正好放得进壁凹。
  • In the alcoves on either side of the fire were bookshelves.火炉两边的凹室里是书架。
16 spoke XryyC     
n.(车轮的)辐条;轮辐;破坏某人的计划;阻挠某人的行动 v.讲,谈(speak的过去式);说;演说;从某种观点来说
参考例句:
  • They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
  • The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。
17 physically iNix5     
adj.物质上,体格上,身体上,按自然规律
参考例句:
  • He was out of sorts physically,as well as disordered mentally.他浑身不舒服,心绪也很乱。
  • Every time I think about it I feel physically sick.一想起那件事我就感到极恶心。
18 tonic tnYwt     
n./adj.滋补品,补药,强身的,健体的
参考例句:
  • It will be marketed as a tonic for the elderly.这将作为老年人滋补品在市场上销售。
  • Sea air is Nature's best tonic for mind and body.海上的空气是大自然赋予的对人们身心的最佳补品。
19 abide UfVyk     
vi.遵守;坚持;vt.忍受
参考例句:
  • You must abide by the results of your mistakes.你必须承担你的错误所造成的后果。
  • If you join the club,you have to abide by its rules.如果你参加俱乐部,你就得遵守它的规章。
20 dictates d2524bb575c815758f62583cd796af09     
n.命令,规定,要求( dictate的名词复数 )v.大声讲或读( dictate的第三人称单数 );口授;支配;摆布
参考例句:
  • Convention dictates that a minister should resign in such a situation. 依照常规部长在这种情况下应该辞职。 来自《简明英汉词典》
  • He always follows the dictates of common sense. 他总是按常识行事。 来自《简明英汉词典》
21 wail XMhzs     
vt./vi.大声哀号,恸哭;呼啸,尖啸
参考例句:
  • Somewhere in the audience an old woman's voice began plaintive wail.观众席里,一位老太太伤心地哭起来。
  • One of the small children began to wail with terror.小孩中的一个吓得大哭起来。
22 dent Bmcz9     
n.凹痕,凹坑;初步进展
参考例句:
  • I don't know how it came about but I've got a dent in the rear of my car.我不知道是怎么回事,但我的汽车后部有了一个凹痕。
  • That dent is not big enough to be worth hammering out.那个凹陷不大,用不着把它锤平。
23 coffin XWRy7     
n.棺材,灵柩
参考例句:
  • When one's coffin is covered,all discussion about him can be settled.盖棺论定。
  • The coffin was placed in the grave.那口棺材已安放到坟墓里去了。
24 jealousies 6aa2adf449b3e9d3fef22e0763e022a4     
n.妒忌( jealousy的名词复数 );妒羡
参考例句:
  • They were divided by mutual suspicion and jealousies. 他们因为相互猜疑嫉妒而不和。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
  • I am tired of all these jealousies and quarrels. 我厌恶这些妒忌和吵架的语言。 来自辞典例句
25 sagging 2cd7acc35feffadbb3241d569f4364b2     
下垂[沉,陷],松垂,垂度
参考例句:
  • The morale of the enemy troops is continuously sagging. 敌军的士气不断低落。
  • We are sagging south. 我们的船正离开航线向南漂流。
26 bent QQ8yD     
n.爱好,癖好;adj.弯的;决心的,一心的
参考例句:
  • He was fully bent upon the project.他一心扑在这项计划上。
  • We bent over backward to help them.我们尽了最大努力帮助他们。
27 omens 4fe4cb32de8b61bd4b8036d574e4f48a     
n.前兆,预兆( omen的名词复数 )
参考例句:
  • The omens for the game are still not propitious. 这场比赛仍不被看好。 来自辞典例句
  • Such omens betide no good. 这种征兆预示情况不妙。 来自辞典例句


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