What, in that blest abode6, would Marthe be doing when they came on her? Involuntarily Roland pictured their meeting as a replica7, and saw her again at embroidery8 in the salon9 with its Indian hangings. But one always paints these things wrong. The reality was even better. For there was no duenna of a mother with her, merely a rustic10 groom11, when, mounted on a beautiful black thoroughbred, she suddenly trotted12 round a bend of the road. . . .
“If that is not my little sister!” exclaimed Artamène spurring forward; and Roland, uncovering, pulled up his horse.
In the dappled sunlight, under the chestnuts, brother greeted sister, bending from the saddle. Roland thought he had never seen anything more beautiful. He was near enough to hear the joy and the anxiety in Mlle de la Vergne’s voice, her stream of enquiries. Then Artamène looked back and beckoned13.
“Let me present M. le Vicomte de Céligny, whom you have already met, ma s?ur, in a new r?le—that of the trusty garde-malade. Since I cannot dispense14 with his services he comes to stay with us for a few days.”
The little hand which Marthe, pulling off her gauntlet, surrendered with a smile to his salute15, was it not even more shapely, more satin-soft to the lips than when it had dropped the embroidery needle to submit to the same reverential greeting? And she herself, in her long blue habit, her man’s high-crowned buckled16 hat, seemed even more desirable than in high-waisted white, yellow-sprigged muslin of that afternoon in the salon!
And so they rode slowly along, Marthe in the middle, and talked of their adventures. The wind blew a fold of the long habit against Roland’s foot. Except on the day when he had joined the Marquis de Kersaint, M. de Céligny had never been so happy in his life—for his rapture18 on the occasion of the Marquis’s appearance at Kerlidec had been clouded by his grandfather’s hostility19. Now there was nothing to stain this perfect joy, and Roland was too deeply enthralled20 even to envy the solicitous21 glances which Marthe threw at her brother’s be-slinged left arm.
Sad that out of happiness may spring trouble! If the seeds of Roland’s escapade were not exactly sown during that short ride the ground was at any rate prepared for their reception.
Mme de la Vergne, warned by the herald23, was on the perron to greet them. Artamène flung himself off his horse and ran up the steps, and, while the good lady embraced her son, Roland had the bliss24 of dismounting Mlle de la Vergne—of receiving her for one brief second in his arms as she slipped like a feather from the saddle. Then followed his own reception by Mme de la Vergne, small and fair and so unlike her daughter; and he found himself being thanked—thanked!—for accompanying her son hither.
“Maman,” sang Marthe to the harpsichord25 that evening, “Maman, d?tes-moi ce qu’on sent quand on aime, Est-ce plaisir, est-ce tourment? Je suis tout26 le jour dans une peine extrême, Et la nuit je ne sais comment!”
Was she? No! But Roland, that night, could not sleep for exaltation.
Artamène, by his mother’s desire, remained in bed next morning. A surgeon had been summoned to view his arm.
“Come and feed the poultry27, Monsieur de Céligny—or are you too proud?” suggested Mlle de la Vergne after breakfast. “We are very rustic here, you must know, for we are short of farm servants.”
Roland, who would have swept a pigsty28 at her bidding, followed her as to some high festival. The hens who drove clucking round his feet might have been the doves of Venus. And the pigeons did indeed sweep in a cloud over Marthe, and ate out of her hand. Roland feared they pecked too hard.
When Artamène appeared he found them sitting in the lime arbour.
“I have none to tell,” answered Roland. “It is you, mon cher, with your wound and your sling22 and your surgeon, who have the beau r?le.”
“And all wasted on a sister!” observed the hero with a grin.
“M. de Céligny has been telling me,” said Marthe, “the strange story about the old lady and the treasure of Mirabel. Do you believe it?”
“I believed it sufficiently30 to try to get sent after the treasure,” replied her brother. “So, taking a mean advantage of my slumbers31, did Roland.”
Marthe turned her brilliant dark eyes from one to the other. Artamène shook his head.
“Our request was not favourably32 received.”
“O, what a pity!” sighed Mlle de la Vergne.
Flecks33 of sunlight came through the linden-leaves on to her dark hair, bringing out unsuspected warmth in its ebony, and on to a red stone on her finger.
“There is a ruby34 necklace there,” said Roland suddenly, his eyes moving from her ringlets to her hand. “And hundreds of louis in pistoles of the time of Louis XIII. So the plan said. Oh, if we could only have gone!”
“Oh, no!” said both the young men together. “Presently, when M. de Kersaint has got the authority of the Duc de Trélan, wherever he may be, he will send some one after it.”
“Some one—whom?”
“I should think very probably M. de Brencourt,” replied Roland.
“And he must wait—perhaps for weeks and weeks—before he can start?”
“Yes,” said her brother, “unless the Marquis, who, as M. de Céligny will have told you, is a kinsman36 of M. de Trélan’s, decides to act without his authorisation, which, from what he said, it is quite likely he may do.”
“So that M. de Trélan’s authorisation is not indispensable?”
“No. Only a matter of form, I think. Being an émigré and Mirabel confiscated—he can neither prevent nor forward such an attempt.”
Mlle de la Vergne was silent, pushing at the gravel37 with a little shoe and looking down at it. “Where is Mirabel, did you say?”
“Quite near Paris, I gather,” replied Artamène.
“My dear little sister, what would be the good of that?” asked Artamène, amused.
“I have relatives in Paris,” announced Roland, with sudden and apparent irrelevance39, “two old cousins of my father’s—quiet, unsuspected, unsuspicious old gentlemen.”
The little silence which followed this statement was broken by a whirr of wings as one of Marthe’s pigeons alighted on the gravel outside the arbour, and, looking hard and hopefully at them out of one round, red-circled, unemotional eye, began to walk slowly up and down, jerking its burnished40 neck.
“O, if I were only a man!” exclaimed Mlle de la Vergne, abruptly41, springing to her feet with kindling42 eyes.
“If I only had two arms!” said her brother, following her example, but more slowly.
“But I am a man, and both my arms are sound!” cried Roland, almost brandishing43 those members.
“And you have relatives in Paris who could help you!” said Marthe, turning her eyes on him.
“Well, no, hardly help,” said Roland slowly, thinking of his ancient and peaceful kinsmen44. “But they could give me a roof. . . .”
“And I could give you money to bribe45 anyone who needed bribing,” declared Marthe. “At least, I have my pearls.”
“Oh, curse this arm!” muttered the wounded hero. “Yet, after all, I do not see why I also——”
“No! no!” exclaimed both the others. “No, we know what the surgeon said. That would be the sheerest folly”—as if what they had in their own inflammable heads were cold wisdom.
Artamène leant dejectedly against the side of the arbour. “I don’t see how you could do anything, Roland. You have not the plan of the late lamented46 of the time of Mazarin. You could not go and dig all over a place of that size on chance, even if the Directory gave you permission, which it certainly would not!”
“But I saw the plan!” retorted the Vicomte de Céligny. “I saw it perfectly47 clearly over the Abbé’s shoulder that night. Why, I could draw it now, if I had a pencil. Nobody has one? Well, look here!”
He broke off a twig48 from the lime-tree and began a series of scratches on the gravel, just as a bell clanged from the house to summon them to the midday meal—scratches which Séraphin diligently49 raked out during that repast.
By sunlight and by twilight50 and by lamplight, under the arbour, on the lawn, in the salon, the rough plan made from that fleeting51 glimpse of the original was constructed and reconstructed and discussed. So much were their young heads bent52 over it the next evening that Mme de la Vergne said they looked like conspirators53.
“Ma mère, you are perspicacious,” replied her son. “We are conspirators.” But, not really believing him, she did not pursue the question, and indeed, before she could revert54 to it, Artamène looked very hard at his sister and asked her if she were not going to sing to them.
Roland added his entreaties55, and attended Mlle de la Vergne to the harpsichord.
“What shall I sing?” asked she. “No, I do not need any music, thank you. You must join in the chorus, then, Monsieur, you and Artamène.” And with a mischievous56 smile she broke into the old children’s ronde of La Double Violette:
“J’ai un long voyage à faire,
???Je ne sais qui le fera;
?Si je l’dis à l’alouette
???Tout le monde le saura!
?La violette double double,
?La violette doublera!
“Si je l’dis à l’alouette,
???Tout le monde le saura:
?Rossignol du vert bocage
???Fa?tes-moi ce plaisir-là!”
and when she got to
“Rossignol prend sa volée,
???Au chateau d’amour s’en va,”
she looked at Roland.
Afterwards they sang other songs.
Next day the conspirators met again in the arbour for a final council of war. They could not improve upon the map which the two young men had made—indeed, the question rather was whether they had not already improved it out of all resemblance to the original. Roland’s immediate57 movements were now under discussion. Though it must shorten his visit, they all, even Roland himself, felt that no time was to be lost. M. de Céligny was supposed, of course, to be on his way to Kerlidec and his grandfather.
“But it will be wiser,” said he, “not to go there now. When I return. . . . You see, he might make difficulties about my visiting Paris at all. So I will write to him. . . .”
He would not accept Mlle de la Vergne’s pearls, though he thought it sublime58 of her to offer them. He had plenty of money, he said. And he settled to start next day. Artamène tried to salve his own fierce dejection by resolving to accompany him part of the way.
But, perhaps from the excitement of these deliberations, the Chevalier de la Vergne’s arm became unexpectedly painful during the night. It was out of the question for him even to leave his bed next morning, and, for once in his life, he did not seem wishful to do so. Roland’s offer to delay his departure was, however, declined by him. Mme de la Vergne, supposing their young guest to be setting off for Kerlidec—a point on which he did not undeceive her—hoped that he would visit them again, and when he asked if he might pay his parting respects to Mlle de la Vergne (having already taken a bedside farewell of her brother), replied rather absently that she was probably in the poultry-yard, and that if M. de Céligny would give himself the trouble. . . . For her thoughts were not at the moment with an unchaperoned daughter and what a susceptible59 young man might say to her ere he rode away, but with her son in pain upstairs, and whether the surgeon really understood his case, and if the constant poulticing he had ordered were right. Besides—though this even the inquiring mind of Artamène had never come near guessing—there existed a certain understanding between her and M. de Carné on the subject of Roland and Marthe.
Roland was off before the permission could be revoked60. But Mlle de la Vergne was not in the poultry yard, though matters connected with her pensioners61 had drawn her to the spot where he found her, the miniature bridge which spanned the little stream winding62 through the grounds. From this she was watching with some anxiety the first voyage of a brood of ducklings down that St. Lawrence. Roland was stabbed to the heart. He was going to danger, to prison perhaps, for her—and her mind was set on ducklings!
Erect63 and noble (so he hoped—at any rate booted and spurred) the young man walked towards the bridge. Directly she turned, the surprise and concern on her face healed him.
“What! you are going already, Monsieur de Céligny! I thought it was not to be for another hour, and that you were closeted with Artamène . . . and I might have missed wishing you Godspeed because of these wretched little adventurers!”
“Ah no, Mademoiselle!” said Roland. “Do you think I should have gone like that? I have need of all the benedictions64 you can give me.”
And what she gave him satisfied him fully—only a look, but a look so charged with meaning—and both her hands. There on the tiny bridge he raised them with reverence65 and joy to his lips. Her silence, her faint flush, her movement of surrender, whether it were ultimate or no, dubbed66 him indeed her knight67, going to the ogre’s castle with her colours on his helm—invincible indeed, and supremely68 blest to serve at once his lady and his King.
And unregarded, in that high moment, went the indignant comments of the little yellow navigator under their very feet, who was finding the stream on which his inexperience had embarked69 of an unlooked-for strength and volume.
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收听单词发音
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1
discreet
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| adj.(言行)谨慎的；慎重的；有判断力的 | |
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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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sheathed
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| adj.雕塑像下半身包在鞘中的；覆盖的；铠装的；装鞘了的v.将（刀、剑等）插入鞘( sheathe的过去式和过去分词 )；包，覆盖 | |
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chateau
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| n.城堡，别墅 | |
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chestnuts
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| n.栗子( chestnut的名词复数 )；栗色；栗树；栗色马 | |
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abode
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| n.住处，住所 | |
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replica
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| n.复制品 | |
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embroidery
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| n.绣花，刺绣；绣制品 | |
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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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rustic
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| adj.乡村的，有乡村特色的；n.乡下人，乡巴佬 | |
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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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12
trotted
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| 小跑，急走( trot的过去分词 )； 匆匆忙忙地走 | |
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13
beckoned
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| v.（用头或手的动作）示意，召唤( beckon的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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14
dispense
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| vt.分配，分发；配(药)，发(药)；实施 | |
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15
salute
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| vi.行礼，致意，问候，放礼炮；vt.向…致意，迎接，赞扬；n.招呼，敬礼，礼炮 | |
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16
buckled
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| a. 有带扣的 | |
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17
gallop
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| v./n.(马或骑马等)飞奔；飞速发展 | |
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18
rapture
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| n.狂喜；全神贯注；着迷；v.使狂喜 | |
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19
hostility
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| n.敌对，敌意；抵制［pl.］交战，战争 | |
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enthralled
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| 迷住，吸引住( enthrall的过去式和过去分词 )； 使感到非常愉快 | |
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21
solicitous
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| adj.热切的，挂念的 | |
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22
sling
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| vt.扔；悬挂；n.挂带；吊索，吊兜；弹弓 | |
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herald
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| vt.预示...的来临，预告，宣布，欢迎 | |
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24
bliss
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| n.狂喜，福佑，天赐的福 | |
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harpsichord
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| n.键琴（钢琴前身） | |
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26
tout
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| v.推销，招徕；兜售；吹捧，劝诱 | |
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poultry
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| n.家禽，禽肉 | |
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pigsty
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| n.猪圈，脏房间 | |
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29
enquired
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| 打听( enquire的过去式和过去分词 )； 询问； 问问题； 查问 | |
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30
sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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31
slumbers
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| 睡眠，安眠( slumber的名词复数 ) | |
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32
favourably
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| adv. 善意地，赞成地 =favorably | |
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33
flecks
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| n.斑点，小点( fleck的名词复数 )；癍 | |
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34
ruby
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| n.红宝石，红宝石色 | |
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35
hoard
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| n./v.窖藏，贮存，囤积 | |
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36
kinsman
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| n.男亲属 | |
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37
gravel
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| n.砂跞；砂砾层；结石 | |
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38
pensively
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| adv.沉思地，焦虑地 | |
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39
irrelevance
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| n.无关紧要；不相关；不相关的事物 | |
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40
burnished
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| adj.抛光的，光亮的v.擦亮（金属等），磨光( burnish的过去式和过去分词 )；被擦亮，磨光 | |
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41
abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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42
kindling
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| n. 点火, 可燃物 动词kindle的现在分词形式 | |
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43
brandishing
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| v.挥舞( brandish的现在分词 )；炫耀 | |
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44
kinsmen
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| n.家属，亲属( kinsman的名词复数 ) | |
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45
bribe
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| n.贿赂；v.向…行贿，买通 | |
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46
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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47
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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48
twig
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| n.小树枝，嫩枝；v.理解 | |
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49
diligently
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| ad.industriously;carefully | |
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50
twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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51
fleeting
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| adj.短暂的，飞逝的 | |
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52
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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53
conspirators
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| n.共谋者，阴谋家( conspirator的名词复数 ) | |
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54
revert
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| v.恢复，复归，回到 | |
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55
entreaties
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| n.恳求，乞求( entreaty的名词复数 ) | |
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56
mischievous
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| adj.调皮的，恶作剧的，有害的，伤人的 | |
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57
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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58
sublime
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| adj.崇高的，伟大的；极度的，不顾后果的 | |
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59
susceptible
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| adj.过敏的，敏感的；易动感情的，易受感动的 | |
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60
revoked
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| adj.[法]取消的v.撤销，取消，废除( revoke的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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61
pensioners
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| n.领取退休、养老金或抚恤金的人( pensioner的名词复数 ) | |
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62
winding
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| n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈 | |
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63
erect
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| n./v.树立，建立，使竖立；adj.直立的，垂直的 | |
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64
benedictions
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| n.祝福( benediction的名词复数 )；（礼拜结束时的）赐福祈祷；恩赐；（大写）（罗马天主教）祈求上帝赐福的仪式 | |
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65
reverence
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| n.敬畏，尊敬，尊严；Reverence:对某些基督教神职人员的尊称；v.尊敬，敬畏，崇敬 | |
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66
dubbed
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| v.给…起绰号( dub的过去式和过去分词 )；把…称为；配音；复制 | |
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67
knight
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| n.骑士，武士；爵士 | |
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68
supremely
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| adv.无上地，崇高地 | |
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69
embarked
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| 乘船( embark的过去式和过去分词 )； 装载； 从事 | |
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