I wondered dimly if she meant that as a challenge. I helped myself to a biscuit thing that looked neither poisonous nor sandy. “You are one of the most puzzling human
“Do you find me so hard to understand?” she said.
“You are dreadfully complex.” I bit at the biscuit thing, and found it full of a kind of creamy bird-lime. (I wonder why women will arrange these unpleasant
surprises for me—I sickened of sweets twenty years ago.)
“How so?” she was saying, and smiling her most brilliant smile.
I have no doubt she thought we were talking rather nicely. “Oh!” said I, and waved the cream biscuit thing. “You challenge me to dissect2 you.”
“Well?”
360“I’m afraid you are very satirical,” she said, with a touch of disappointment. She is always saying that when our conversation has become absolutely idiotic—as
it invariably does. I felt an inevitable4 desire to quote bogus Latin to her. It seemed the very language for her.
“Ah!” she said, colouring a little, and turned to pour hot water into the teapot, looking very prettily6 at me over her arm as she did so.
“That is one of the truest things that has ever been said of sympathy,” I remarked. “Don’t you think so?”
“Sympathy,” she said, “is a very wonderful thing, and a very precious thing.”
“You speak,” said I (with a cough behind my hand), “as though you knew what it was to be lonely.”
“There is solitude7 even in a crowd,” she said, and looked round at the six other people—three discreet8 pairs—who were in the room.
“I, too,” I was beginning, but Hopdangle came with a teacup, and seemed inclined to linger. He belongs to the “Nice Boy” class, and gives himself ridiculous airs
of familiarity with grown-up people. Then the Giffens went.
“Do you know, I always take such an interest in your work,” she was saying to me, when her husband(confound him!) came into the room.
361He was a violent discord9. He wore a short brown jacket and carpet slippers10, and three of his waistcoat buttons were (as usual) undone11. “Got any tea left, Millie?”
he said, and came and sat down in the arm-chair beside the table.
“How do, Delalune?” he said to the man in the corner. “Damned hot, Bellows12,” he remarked to me, subsiding13 creakily.
She poured some more hot water into the teapot. (Why must charming married women always have these husbands?)
“It is very hot,” I said.
There was a perceptible pause. He is one of those rather adipose14 people, who are not disconcerted by conversational15 gaps. “Are you, too, working at Argon?” I said.
He is some kind of chemical investigator16, I know.
He began at once to explain the most horribly complex things about elements to me. She gave him his tea, and rose and went and talked to the other people about
autotypes. “Yes,” I said, not hearing what he was saying.
“‘No’ would be more appropriate,” he said. “You are absent-minded, Bellows. Not in love, I hope—at your age?”
Really, I am not thirty, but a certain perceptible thinness in my hair may account for his invariably regarding me as a contemporary. But he should understand that
nowadays the beginnings of baldness merely mark the virile17 epoch18. 362“I say, Millie,” he said, out loud and across the room, “you haven’t been collecting Bellows
here—have you?”
She looked round startled, and I saw a pained look come into her eyes. “For the bazaar19?” she said. “Not yet, dear.” It seemed to me that she shot a glance of
“My wife,” he said, “has two distinctive21 traits. She is a born poetess and a born collector. I ought to warn you.”
“I did not know,” said I, “that she rhymed.”
“I was speaking more of the imaginative quality, the temperament22 that finds a splendour in the grass, a glory in the flower, that clothes the whole world in a
vestiture of interpretation23.”
“Indeed!” I said. I felt she was watching us anxiously. He could not, of course, suspect. But I was relieved to fancy he was simply talking nonsense.
“The magnificent figures of heroic, worshipful, and mysterious womanhood naturally appeal to her—Cleopatra, Messalina, Beatrice, the Madonna, and so forth24.”
“And she is writing—”
“No, she is acting25. That is the real poetry of women and children. A platonic26 Cleopatra of infinite variety, spotless reputation, and a large following. Her make-
believe is wonderful. She would use Falstaff for Romeo without a twinge, if 363no one else was at hand. She could exert herself to break the heart of a soldier. I
assure you, Bellows—”
“I want some more tea,” he said to her. “You misunderstood me about the collecting, Millie.”
“What were you saying about Cleopatra?” she said, trying, I think, to look sternly at him.
“Scandal,” he said. “But about the collecting, Bellows—”
“You must come to this bazaar,” she interrupted.
“I shall be delighted,” I said, boldly. “Where is it, and when?”
“About this collecting,” he began.
“It is in aid of that delightful28 orphanage29 at Wimblingham,” she explained, and gave me an animated30 account of the charity. He emptied his second cup of tea. “May I
have a third cup?” he said.
The two girls signalled departure, and her attention was distracted. “She collects—and I will confess she does it with extraordinary skill—the surreptitious
addresses—”
“John,” she said over her shoulder, “I wish you would tell Miss Smithers all those interesting things about Argon.” He gulped31 down his third cup, and rose with the
easy obedience32 of the trained husband. Presently she returned to the tea-things. “Cannot I fill your cup?” she asked. 364“I really hope John was not telling you his
queer notions about me. He says the most remarkable33 things. Quite lately he has got it into his head that he has a formula for my character.”
“I wish I had,” I said, with a sigh.
“And he goes about explaining me to people, as though I was a mechanism34. ‘Scalp collector,’ I think is the favourite phrase. Did he tell you? Don’t you think it
“But he doesn’t understand you,” I said, not grasping his meaning quite at the minute.
She sighed.
“You have,” I said, with infinite meaning, “my sincere sympathy—” I hesitated—“my whole sympathy.”
“Thank you so much,” she said, quite as meaningly. I rose forthwith, and we clasped hands, like souls who strike a compact.
Yet, thinking over what he said afterwards, I was troubled by a fancy that there was the faintest suggestion of a smile of triumph about her lips and mouth. Possibly
it was only an honourable36 pride. I suppose he has poisoned my mind a little. Of course, I should not like to think of myself as one of a fortuitously selected
multitude strung neatly37 together (if one may use the vulgarism) on a piece of string,—a stringful like a boy’s string of chestnuts,—nice old gentlemen, nice boys,
sympathetic and humorous men of thirty, kind fellows, gifted dreamers, and dashing blades, 365all trailing after her. It is confoundedly bad form of him, anyhow, to
guy her visitors. She certainly took it like a saint. Of course, I shall see her again soon, and we shall talk to one another about one another. Something or other
cropped up and prevented my going there on her last Tuesday.
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1
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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dissect
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| v.分割；解剖 | |
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precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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pars
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| n.部，部分；平均( par的名词复数 )；平价；同等；（高尔夫球中的）标准杆数 | |
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prettily
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| adv.优美地；可爱地 | |
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solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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8
discreet
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| adj.(言行)谨慎的；慎重的；有判断力的 | |
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discord
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| n.不和，意见不合，争论，（音乐）不和谐 | |
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slippers
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| n. 拖鞋 | |
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undone
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| a.未做完的，未完成的 | |
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bellows
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| n.风箱；发出吼叫声，咆哮（尤指因痛苦）( bellow的名词复数 )；（愤怒地）说出（某事），大叫v.发出吼叫声，咆哮（尤指因痛苦）( bellow的第三人称单数 )；（愤怒地）说出（某事），大叫 | |
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13
subsiding
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| v.（土地）下陷（因在地下采矿）( subside的现在分词 )；减弱；下降至较低或正常水平；一下子坐在椅子等上 | |
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14
adipose
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| adj.脂肪质的，脂肪多的；n.（储于脂肪组织中的）动物脂肪；肥胖 | |
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conversational
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| adj.对话的，会话的 | |
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investigator
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| n.研究者，调查者，审查者 | |
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virile
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| adj.男性的；有男性生殖力的；有男子气概的；强有力的 | |
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epoch
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| n.(新)时代；历元 | |
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bazaar
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| n.集市，商店集中区 | |
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entreaty
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| n.恳求，哀求 | |
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distinctive
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| adj.特别的，有特色的，与众不同的 | |
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temperament
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| n.气质，性格，性情 | |
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interpretation
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| n.解释，说明，描述；艺术处理 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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platonic
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| adj.精神的；柏拉图（哲学）的 | |
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rustle
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| v.沙沙作响；偷盗(牛、马等)；n.沙沙声声 | |
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delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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orphanage
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| n.孤儿院 | |
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animated
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| adj.生气勃勃的，活跃的，愉快的 | |
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gulped
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| v.狼吞虎咽地吃，吞咽( gulp的过去式和过去分词 )；大口地吸（气）；哽住 | |
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32
obedience
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| n.服从，顺从 | |
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remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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mechanism
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| n.机械装置；机构，结构 | |
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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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honourable
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| adj.可敬的；荣誉的，光荣的 | |
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neatly
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| adv.整洁地，干净地，灵巧地，熟练地 | |
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