“I quite agree—in regard to Griffin’s ghost, or whatever it was—that its appearing first to the little boy, at so tender an age, adds a particular touch. But it’s not the first occurrence of its charming kind that I know to have involved a child. If the child gives the effect another turn of the screw, what do you say to two children—?”
“We say, of course,” somebody exclaimed, “that they give two turns! Also that we want to hear about them.”
I can see Douglas there before the fire, to which he had got up to present his back, looking down at his interlocutor with his hands in his pockets. “Nobody but me, till now, has ever heard. It’s quite too horrible.” This, naturally, was declared by several voices to give the thing the utmost price, and our friend, with quiet art, prepared his triumph by turning his eyes over the rest of us and going on: “It’s beyond everything. Nothing at all that I know touches it.”
“For sheer terror?” I remember asking.
He seemed to say it was not so simple as that; to be really at a loss how to qualify it. He passed his hand over his eyes, made a little wincing7 grimace8. “For dreadful—dreadfulness!”
“Oh, how delicious!” cried one of the women.
He took no notice of her; he looked at me, but as if, instead of me, he saw what he spoke9 of. “For general uncanny ugliness and horror and pain.”
“Well then,” I said, “just sit right down and begin.”
He turned round to the fire, gave a kick to a log, watched it an instant. Then as he faced us again: “I can’t begin. I shall have to send to town.” There was a unanimous groan10 at this, and much reproach; after which, in his preoccupied11 way, he explained. “The story’s written. It’s in a locked drawer—it has not been out for years. I could write to my man and enclose the key; he could send down the packet as he finds it.” It was to me in particular that he appeared to propound12 this—appeared almost to appeal for aid not to hesitate. He had broken a thickness of ice, the formation of many a winter; had had his reasons for a long silence. The others resented postponement13, but it was just his scruples14 that charmed me. I adjured15 him to write by the first post and to agree with us for an early hearing; then I asked him if the experience in question had been his own. To this his answer was prompt. “Oh, thank God, no!”
“And is the record yours? You took the thing down?”
“Nothing but the impression. I took that here”—he tapped his heart. “I’ve never lost it.”
“Then your manuscript—?”
“Is in old, faded ink, and in the most beautiful hand.” He hung fire again. “A woman’s. She has been dead these twenty years. She sent me the pages in question before she died.” They were all listening now, and of course there was somebody to be arch, or at any rate to draw the inference. But if he put the inference by without a smile it was also without irritation16. “She was a most charming person, but she was ten years older than I. She was my sister’s governess,” he quietly said. “She was the most agreeable woman I’ve ever known in her position; she would have been worthy17 of any whatever. It was long ago, and this episode was long before. I was at Trinity, and I found her at home on my coming down the second summer. I was much there that year—it was a beautiful one; and we had, in her off-hours, some strolls and talks in the garden—talks in which she struck me as awfully18 clever and nice. Oh yes; don’t grin: I liked her extremely and am glad to this day to think she liked me, too. If she hadn’t she wouldn’t have told me. She had never told anyone. It wasn’t simply that she said so, but that I knew she hadn’t. I was sure; I could see. You’ll easily judge why when you hear.”
“Because the thing had been such a scare?”
He continued to fix me. “You’ll easily judge,” he repeated: “you will.”
He laughed for the first time. “You are acute. Yes, she was in love. That is, she had been. That came out—she couldn’t tell her story without its coming out. I saw it, and she saw I saw it; but neither of us spoke of it. I remember the time and the place—the corner of the lawn, the shade of the great beeches20 and the long, hot summer afternoon. It wasn’t a scene for a shudder21; but oh—!” He quitted the fire and dropped back into his chair.
“You’ll receive the packet Thursday morning?” I inquired.
“Probably not till the second post.”
“Well then; after dinner—”
“You’ll all meet me here?” He looked us round again. “Isn’t anybody going?” It was almost the tone of hope.
“Everybody will stay!”
“I will”—and “I will!” cried the ladies whose departure had been fixed. Mrs. Griffin, however, expressed the need for a little more light. “Who was it she was in love with?”
“The story will tell,” I took upon myself to reply.
“Oh, I can’t wait for the story!”
“The story won’t tell,” said Douglas; “not in any literal, vulgar way.”
“More’s the pity, then. That’s the only way I ever understand.”
“Won’t you tell, Douglas?” somebody else inquired.
He sprang to his feet again. “Yes—tomorrow. Now I must go to bed. Good night.” And quickly catching22 up a candlestick, he left us slightly bewildered. From our end of the great brown hall we heard his step on the stair; whereupon Mrs. Griffin spoke. “Well, if I don’t know who she was in love with, I know who he was.”
“She was ten years older,” said her husband.
“Forty years!” Griffin put in.
“With this outbreak at last.”
“The outbreak,” I returned, “will make a tremendous occasion of Thursday night;” and everyone so agreed with me that, in the light of it, we lost all attention for everything else. The last story, however incomplete and like the mere24 opening of a serial25, had been told; we handshook and “candlestuck,” as somebody said, and went to bed.
I knew the next day that a letter containing the key had, by the first post, gone off to his London apartments; but in spite of—or perhaps just on account of—the eventual26 diffusion27 of this knowledge we quite let him alone till after dinner, till such an hour of the evening, in fact, as might best accord with the kind of emotion on which our hopes were fixed. Then he became as communicative as we could desire and indeed gave us his best reason for being so. We had it from him again before the fire in the hall, as we had had our mild wonders of the previous night. It appeared that the narrative29 he had promised to read us really required for a proper intelligence a few words of prologue30. Let me say here distinctly, to have done with it, that this narrative, from an exact transcript31 of my own made much later, is what I shall presently give. Poor Douglas, before his death—when it was in sight—committed to me the manuscript that reached him on the third of these days and that, on the same spot, with immense effect, he began to read to our hushed little circle on the night of the fourth. The departing ladies who had said they would stay didn’t, of course, thank heaven, stay: they departed, in consequence of arrangements made, in a rage of curiosity, as they professed32, produced by the touches with which he had already worked us up. But that only made his little final auditory more compact and select, kept it, round the hearth33, subject to a common thrill.
The first of these touches conveyed that the written statement took up the tale at a point after it had, in a manner, begun. The fact to be in possession of was therefore that his old friend, the youngest of several daughters of a poor country parson, had, at the age of twenty, on taking service for the first time in the schoolroom, come up to London, in trepidation34, to answer in person an advertisement that had already placed her in brief correspondence with the advertiser. This person proved, on her presenting herself, for judgment35, at a house in Harley Street, that impressed her as vast and imposing—this prospective37 patron proved a gentleman, a bachelor in the prime of life, such a figure as had never risen, save in a dream or an old novel, before a fluttered, anxious girl out of a Hampshire vicarage. One could easily fix his type; it never, happily, dies out. He was handsome and bold and pleasant, off-hand and gay and kind. He struck her, inevitably38, as gallant39 and splendid, but what took her most of all and gave her the courage she afterward40 showed was that he put the whole thing to her as a kind of favor, an obligation he should gratefully incur41. She conceived him as rich, but as fearfully extravagant—saw him all in a glow of high fashion, of good looks, of expensive habits, of charming ways with women. He had for his own town residence a big house filled with the spoils of travel and the trophies42 of the chase; but it was to his country home, an old family place in Essex, that he wished her immediately to proceed.
He had been left, by the death of their parents in India, guardian43 to a small nephew and a small niece, children of a younger, a military brother, whom he had lost two years before. These children were, by the strangest of chances for a man in his position—a lone28 man without the right sort of experience or a grain of patience—very heavily on his hands. It had all been a great worry and, on his own part doubtless, a series of blunders, but he immensely pitied the poor chicks and had done all he could; had in particular sent them down to his other house, the proper place for them being of course the country, and kept them there, from the first, with the best people he could find to look after them, parting even with his own servants to wait on them and going down himself, whenever he might, to see how they were doing. The awkward thing was that they had practically no other relations and that his own affairs took up all his time. He had put them in possession of Bly, which was healthy and secure, and had placed at the head of their little establishment—but below stairs only—an excellent woman, Mrs. Grose, whom he was sure his visitor would like and who had formerly44 been maid to his mother. She was now housekeeper45 and was also acting46 for the time as superintendent47 to the little girl, of whom, without children of her own, she was, by good luck, extremely fond. There were plenty of people to help, but of course the young lady who should go down as governess would be in supreme48 authority. She would also have, in holidays, to look after the small boy, who had been for a term at school—young as he was to be sent, but what else could be done?—and who, as the holidays were about to begin, would be back from one day to the other. There had been for the two children at first a young lady whom they had had the misfortune to lose. She had done for them quite beautifully—she was a most respectable person—till her death, the great awkwardness of which had, precisely49, left no alternative but the school for little Miles. Mrs. Grose, since then, in the way of manners and things, had done as she could for Flora50; and there were, further, a cook, a housemaid, a dairywoman, an old pony51, an old groom52, and an old gardener, all likewise thoroughly53 respectable.
So far had Douglas presented his picture when someone put a question. “And what did the former governess die of?—of so much respectability?”
Our friend’s answer was prompt. “That will come out. I don’t anticipate.”
“Excuse me—I thought that was just what you are doing.”
“In her successor’s place,” I suggested, “I should have wished to learn if the office brought with it—”
“Necessary danger to life?” Douglas completed my thought. “She did wish to learn, and she did learn. You shall hear tomorrow what she learned. Meanwhile, of course, the prospect36 struck her as slightly grim. She was young, untried, nervous: it was a vision of serious duties and little company, of really great loneliness. She hesitated—took a couple of days to consult and consider. But the salary offered much exceeded her modest measure, and on a second interview she faced the music, she engaged.” And Douglas, with this, made a pause that, for the benefit of the company, moved me to throw in—
“The moral of which was of course the seduction exercised by the splendid young man. She succumbed54 to it.”
He got up and, as he had done the night before, went to the fire, gave a stir to a log with his foot, then stood a moment with his back to us. “She saw him only twice.”
“Yes, but that’s just the beauty of her passion.”
A little to my surprise, on this, Douglas turned round to me. “It was the beauty of it. There were others,” he went on, “who hadn’t succumbed. He told her frankly55 all his difficulty—that for several applicants56 the conditions had been prohibitive. They were, somehow, simply afraid. It sounded dull—it sounded strange; and all the more so because of his main condition.”
“Which was—?”
“That she should never trouble him—but never, never: neither appeal nor complain nor write about anything; only meet all questions herself, receive all moneys from his solicitor57, take the whole thing over and let him alone. She promised to do this, and she mentioned to me that when, for a moment, disburdened, delighted, he held her hand, thanking her for the sacrifice, she already felt rewarded.”
“But was that all her reward?” one of the ladies asked.
“She never saw him again.”
“Oh!” said the lady; which, as our friend immediately left us again, was the only other word of importance contributed to the subject till, the next night, by the corner of the hearth, in the best chair, he opened the faded red cover of a thin old-fashioned gilt-edged album. The whole thing took indeed more nights than one, but on the first occasion the same lady put another question. “What is your title?”
“I haven’t one.”
“Oh, I have!” I said. But Douglas, without heeding58 me, had begun to read with a fine clearness that was like a rendering59 to the ear of the beauty of his author’s hand.
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1
sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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essentially
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| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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apparition
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| n.幽灵，神奇的现象 | |
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dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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soothe
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| v.安慰；使平静；使减轻；缓和；奉承 | |
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scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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wincing
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| 赶紧避开，畏缩( wince的现在分词 ) | |
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8
grimace
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| v.做鬼脸，面部歪扭 | |
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9
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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groan
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| vi./n.呻吟，抱怨；(发出)呻吟般的声音 | |
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preoccupied
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| adj.全神贯注的，入神的；被抢先占有的；心事重重的v.占据（某人）思想，使对…全神贯注，使专心于( preoccupy的过去式) | |
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12
propound
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| v.提出 | |
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postponement
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| n.推迟 | |
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scruples
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| n.良心上的不安( scruple的名词复数 )；顾虑，顾忌v.感到于心不安，有顾忌( scruple的第三人称单数 ) | |
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adjured
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| v.（以起誓或诅咒等形式）命令要求( adjure的过去式和过去分词 )；祈求；恳求 | |
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irritation
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| n.激怒，恼怒，生气 | |
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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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awfully
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| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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beeches
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| n.山毛榉( beech的名词复数 )；山毛榉木材 | |
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shudder
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| v.战粟，震动，剧烈地摇晃；n.战粟，抖动 | |
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catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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reticence
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| n.沉默，含蓄 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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serial
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| n.连本影片，连本电视节目；adj.连续的 | |
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eventual
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| adj.最后的，结局的，最终的 | |
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diffusion
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| n.流布；普及；散漫 | |
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lone
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| adj.孤寂的，单独的；唯一的 | |
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narrative
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| n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的 | |
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prologue
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| n.开场白，序言；开端，序幕 | |
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transcript
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| n.抄本，誊本，副本，肄业证书 | |
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professed
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| 公开声称的，伪称的，已立誓信教的 | |
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hearth
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| n.壁炉炉床，壁炉地面 | |
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trepidation
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| n.惊恐，惶恐 | |
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judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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prospective
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| adj.预期的，未来的，前瞻性的 | |
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inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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gallant
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| adj.英勇的，豪侠的；(向女人)献殷勤的 | |
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afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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incur
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| vt.招致，蒙受，遭遇 | |
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42
trophies
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| n.（为竞赛获胜者颁发的）奖品( trophy的名词复数 )；奖杯；（尤指狩猎或战争中获得的）纪念品；（用于比赛或赛跑名称）奖 | |
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guardian
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| n.监护人；守卫者，保护者 | |
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formerly
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| adv.从前，以前 | |
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housekeeper
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| n.管理家务的主妇，女管家 | |
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46
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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47
superintendent
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| n.监督人，主管，总监；(英国)警务长 | |
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48
supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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50
flora
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| n.(某一地区的)植物群 | |
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pony
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| adj.小型的；n.小马 | |
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52
groom
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| vt.给（马、狗等）梳毛，照料，使...整洁 | |
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53
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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54
succumbed
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| 不再抵抗（诱惑、疾病、攻击等）( succumb的过去式和过去分词 )； 屈从； 被压垮； 死 | |
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55
frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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56
applicants
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| 申请人，求职人( applicant的名词复数 ) | |
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57
solicitor
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| n.初级律师，事务律师 | |
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58
heeding
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| v.听某人的劝告，听从( heed的现在分词 ) | |
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rendering
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| n.表现，描写 | |
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