Soon, however, my thoughts, relieved of the pressure that had crushed them into a single groove2 during the last few days, turned to the events of the night of poor Vincey’s death, and again I asked myself what it all meant, and wondered if I should hear anything more of the matter, and if I did not, what it would be my duty to do with the curious iron chest. I sat there and thought and thought till I began to grow quite disturbed over the whole occurrence: the mysterious midnight visit, the prophecy of death so shortly to be fulfilled, the solemn oath that I had taken, and which Vincey had called on me to answer to in another world than this. Had the man committed suicide? It looked like it. And what was the quest of which he spoke3? The circumstances were uncanny, so much so that, though I am by no means nervous, or apt to be alarmed at anything that may seem to cross the bounds of the natural, I grew afraid, and began to wish I had nothing to do with them. How much more do I wish it now, over twenty years afterwards!
As I sat and thought, there came a knock at the door, and a letter, in a big blue envelope, was brought in to me. I saw at a glance that it was a lawyer’s letter, and an instinct told me that it was connected with my trust. The letter, which I still have, runs thus:—
“Sir,—Our client, the late M. L. Vincey, Esq., who died on the 9th instant in —— College, Cambridge, has left behind him a Will, of which you will please find copy enclosed and of which we are the executors. Under this Will you will perceive that you take a life-interest in about half of the late Mr. Vincey’s property, now invested in Consols, subject to your acceptance of the guardianship4 of his only son, Leo Vincey, at present an infant, aged5 five. Had we not ourselves drawn6 up the document in question in obedience7 to Mr. Vincey’s clear and precise instructions, both personal and written, and had he not then assured us that he had very good reasons for what he was doing, we are bound to tell you that its provisions seem to us of so unusual a nature, that we should have bound to call the attention of the Court of Chancery to them, in order that such steps might be taken as seemed desirable to it, either by contesting the capacity of the testator or otherwise, to safeguard the interests of the infant. As it is, knowing that the testator was a gentleman of the highest intelligence and acumen8, and that he has absolutely no relations living to whom he could have confided9 the guardianship of the child, we do not feel justified10 in taking this course.
“Awaiting such instructions as you please to send us as regards the delivery of the infant and the payment of the proportion of the dividends11 due to you,
“We remain, Sir, faithfully yours,
“Geoffrey and Jordan.
“Horace L. Holly12, Esq.”
I put down the letter, and ran my eye through the Will, which appeared, from its utter unintelligibility13, to have been drawn on the strictest legal principles. So far as I could discover, however, it exactly bore out what my friend Vincey had told me on the night of his death. So it was true after all. I must take the boy. Suddenly I remembered the letter which Vincey had left with the chest. I fetched and opened it. It only contained such directions as he had already given to me as to opening the chest on Leo’s twenty-fifth birthday, and laid down the outlines of the boy’s education, which was to include Greek, the higher Mathematics, and Arabic. At the end there was a postscript14 to the effect that if the boy died under the age of twenty-five, which, however, he did not believe would be the case, I was to open the chest, and act on the information I obtained if I saw fit. If I did not see fit, I was to destroy all the contents. On no account was I to pass them on to a stranger.
As this letter added nothing material to my knowledge, and certainly raised no further objection in my mind to entering on the task I had promised my dead friend to undertake, there was only one course open to me—namely, to write to Messrs. Geoffrey and Jordan, and express my acceptance of the trust, stating that I should be willing to commence my guardianship of Leo in ten days’ time. This done I went to the authorities of my college, and, having told them as much of the story as I considered desirable, which was not very much, after considerable difficulty succeeded in persuading them to stretch a point, and, in the event of my having obtained a fellowship, which I was pretty certain I had done, allow me to have the child to live with me. Their consent, however, was only granted on the condition that I vacated my rooms in college and took lodgings15. This I did, and with some difficulty succeeded in obtaining very good apartments quite close to the college gates. The next thing was to find a nurse. And on this point I came to a determination. I would have no woman to lord it over me about the child, and steal his affections from me. The boy was old enough to do without female assistance, so I set to work to hunt up a suitable male attendant. With some difficulty I succeeded in hiring a most respectable round-faced young man, who had been a helper in a hunting-stable, but who said that he was one of a family of seventeen and well-accustomed to the ways of children, and professed16 himself quite willing to undertake the charge of Master Leo when he arrived. Then, having taken the iron box to town, and with my own hands deposited it at my banker’s, I bought some books upon the health and management of children and read them, first to myself, and then aloud to Job—that was the young man’s name—and waited.
At length the child arrived in the charge of an elderly person, who wept bitterly at parting with him, and a beautiful boy he was. Indeed, I do not think that I ever saw such a perfect child before or since. His eyes were grey, his forehead was broad, and his face, even at that early age, clean cut as a cameo, without being pinched or thin. But perhaps his most attractive point was his hair, which was pure gold in colour and tightly curled over his shapely head. He cried a little when his nurse finally tore herself away and left him with us. Never shall I forget the scene. There he stood, with the sunlight from the window playing upon his golden curls, his fist screwed over one eye, whilst he took us in with the other. I was seated in a chair, and stretched out my hand to him to induce him to come to me, while Job, in the corner, was making a sort of clucking noise, which, arguing from his previous experience, or from the analogy of the hen, he judged would have a soothing17 effect, and inspire confidence in the youthful mind, and running a wooden horse of peculiar18 hideousness19 backwards20 and forwards in a way that was little short of inane21. This went on for some minutes, and then all of a sudden the lad stretched out both his little arms and ran to me.
“I like you,” he said: “you is ugly, but you is good.”
Ten minutes afterwards he was eating large slices of bread and butter, with every sign of satisfaction; Job wanted to put jam on to them, but I sternly reminded him of the excellent works that we had read, and forbade it.
In a very little while (for, as I expected, I got my fellowship) the boy became the favourite of the whole College—where, all orders and regulations to the contrary notwithstanding, he was continually in and out—a sort of chartered libertine22, in whose favour all rules were relaxed. The offerings made at his shrine23 were simply without number, and I had serious difference of opinion with one old resident Fellow, now long dead, who was usually supposed to be the crustiest man in the University, and to abhor24 the sight of a child. And yet I discovered, when a frequently recurring25 fit of sickness had forced Job to keep a strict look-out, that this unprincipled old man was in the habit of enticing26 the boy to his rooms and there feeding him upon unlimited27 quantities of brandy-balls, and making him promise to say nothing about it. Job told him that he ought to be ashamed of himself, “at his age, too, when he might have been a grandfather if he had done what was right,” by which Job understood had got married, and thence arose the row.
But I have no space to dwell upon those delightful28 years, around which memory still fondly hovers29. One by one they went by, and as they passed we two grew dearer and yet more dear to each other. Few sons have been loved as I love Leo, and few fathers know the deep and continuous affection that Leo bears to me.
The child grew into the boy, and the boy into the young man, while one by one the remorseless years flew by, and as he grew and increased so did his beauty and the beauty of his mind grow with him. When he was about fifteen they used to call him Beauty about the College, and me they nicknamed the Beast. Beauty and the Beast was what they called us when we went out walking together, as we used to do every day. Once Leo attacked a great strapping30 butcher’s man, twice his size, because he sang it out after us, and thrashed him, too—thrashed him fairly. I walked on and pretended not to see, till the combat got too exciting, when I turned round and cheered him on to victory. It was the chaff31 of the College at the time, but I could not help it. Then when he was a little older the undergraduates found fresh names for us. They called me Charon, and Leo the Greek god! I will pass over my own appellation32 with the humble33 remark that I was never handsome, and did not grow more so as I grew older. As for his, there was no doubt about its fitness. Leo at twenty-one might have stood for a statue of the youthful Apollo. I never saw anybody to touch him in looks, or anybody so absolutely unconscious of them. As for his mind, he was brilliant and keen-witted, but not a scholar. He had not the dulness necessary for that result. We followed out his father’s instructions as regards his education strictly34 enough, and on the whole the results, especially in the matters of Greek and Arabic, were satisfactory. I learnt the latter language in order to help to teach it to him, but after five years of it he knew it as well as I did—almost as well as the professor who instructed us both. I always was a great sportsman—it is my one passion—and every autumn we went away somewhere shooting or fishing, sometimes to Scotland, sometimes to Norway, once even to Russia. I am a good shot, but even in this he learnt to excel me.
When Leo was eighteen I moved back into my rooms, and entered him at my own College, and at twenty-one he took his degree—a respectable degree, but not a very high one. Then it was that I, for the first time, told him something of his own story, and of the mystery that loomed35 ahead. Of course he was very curious about it, and of course I explained to him that his curiosity could not be gratified at present. After that, to pass the time away, I suggested that he should get himself called to the Bar; and this he did, reading at Cambridge, and only going up to London to eat his dinners.
I had only one trouble about him, and that was that every young woman who came across him, or, if not every one, nearly so, would insist on falling in love with him. Hence arose difficulties which I need not enter into here, though they were troublesome enough at the time. On the whole, he behaved fairly well; I cannot say more than that.
And so the time went by till at last he reached his twenty-fifth birthday, at which date this strange and, in some ways, awful history really begins.
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1
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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groove
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| n.沟，槽；凹线，（刻出的）线条，习惯 | |
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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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guardianship
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| n. 监护, 保护, 守护 | |
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aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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6
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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obedience
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| n.服从，顺从 | |
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acumen
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| n.敏锐，聪明 | |
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confided
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| 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） | |
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justified
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| a.正当的，有理的 | |
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dividends
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| 红利( dividend的名词复数 )； 股息； 被除数； （足球彩票的）彩金 | |
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12
holly
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| n.[植]冬青属灌木 | |
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unintelligibility
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| 不可懂度，不清晰性 | |
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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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lodgings
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| n. 出租的房舍, 寄宿舍 | |
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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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soothing
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| adj.慰藉的；使人宽心的；镇静的 | |
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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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hideousness
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backwards
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| adv.往回地，向原处，倒，相反，前后倒置地 | |
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inane
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| adj.空虚的，愚蠢的，空洞的 | |
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libertine
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| n.淫荡者；adj.放荡的，自由思想的 | |
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shrine
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| n.圣地，神龛，庙；v.将...置于神龛内，把...奉为神圣 | |
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abhor
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| v.憎恶；痛恨 | |
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recurring
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| adj.往复的，再次发生的 | |
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enticing
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| adj.迷人的；诱人的 | |
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unlimited
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| adj.无限的，不受控制的，无条件的 | |
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delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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hovers
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| 鸟( hover的第三人称单数 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫 | |
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strapping
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| adj. 魁伟的, 身材高大健壮的 n. 皮绳或皮带的材料, 裹伤胶带, 皮鞭 动词strap的现在分词形式 | |
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chaff
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| v.取笑，嘲笑；n.谷壳 | |
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32
appellation
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| n.名称，称呼 | |
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humble
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| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
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strictly
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| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
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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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