THE Town Hall was crowded and exceedingly hot. AsCharity marched into it third in the white muslin fileheaded by Orma Fry, she was conscious mainly of thebrilliant effect of the wreathed columns framing thegreen-carpeted stage toward which she was moving; andof the unfamiliar1 faces turning from the front rows towatch the advance of the procession.
But it was all a bewildering blur2 of eyes and colourstill she found herself standing3 at the back of thestage, her great bunch of asters and goldenrod heldwell in front of her, and answering the nervous glanceof Lambert Sollas, the organist from Mr. Miles'schurch, who had come up from Nettleton to play theharmonium and sat behind it, his conductor's eyerunning over the fluttered girls.
A moment later Mr. Miles, pink and twinkling, emergedfrom the background, as if buoyed4 up on his broad whitegown, and briskly dominated the bowed heads in thefront rows. He prayed energetically and brieflyand then retired5, and a fierce nod from Lambert Sollaswarned the girls that they were to follow at once with"Home, Sweet Home." It was a joy to Charity to sing: itseemed as though, for the first time, her secretrapture might burst from her and flash its defiance6 atthe world. All the glow in her blood, the breath ofthe summer earth, the rustle7 of the forest, the freshcall of birds at sunrise, and the brooding middaylanguors, seemed to pass into her untrained voice,lifted and led by the sustaining chorus.
And then suddenly the song was over, and after anuncertain pause, during which Miss Hatchard's pearl-grey gloves started a furtive8 signalling down the hall,Mr. Royall, emerging in turn, ascended9 the steps of thestage and appeared behind the flower-wreathed desk. Hepassed close to Charity, and she noticed that hisgravely set face wore the look of majesty10 that used toawe and fascinate her childhood. His frock-coat hadbeen carefully brushed and ironed, and the ends of hisnarrow black tie were so nearly even that the tyingmust have cost him a protracted11 struggle. Hisappearance struck her all the more because it was thefirst time she had looked him full in the face sincethe night at Nettleton, and nothing in his graveand impressive demeanour revealed a trace of thelamentable figure on the wharf12.
He stood a moment behind the desk, resting his finger-tips against it, and bending slightly toward hisaudience; then he straightened himself and began.
At first she paid no heed13 to what he was saying: onlyfragments of sentences, sonorous14 quotations15, allusionsto illustrious men, including the obligatory16 tribute toHonorius Hatchard, drifted past her inattentive ears.
She was trying to discover Harney among the notablepeople in the front row; but he was nowhere near MissHatchard, who, crowned by a pearl-grey hat that matchedher gloves, sat just below the desk, supported by Mrs.
Miles and an important-looking unknown lady. Charitywas near one end of the stage, and from where she satthe other end of the first row of seats was cut off bythe screen of foliage17 masking the harmonium. Theeffort to see Harney around the corner of the screen,or through its interstices, made her unconscious ofeverything else; but the effort was unsuccessful, andgradually she found her attention arrested by herguardian's discourse18.
She had never heard him speak in public before,but she was familiar with the rolling music of hisvoice when he read aloud, or held forth19 to theselectmen about the stove at Carrick Fry's. Today hisinflections were richer and graver than she had everknown them: he spoke20 slowly, with pauses that seemed toinvite his hearers to silent participation21 in histhought; and Charity perceived a light of response intheir faces.
He was nearing the end of his address..."Most of you,"he said, "most of you who have returned here today, totake contact with this little place for a brief hour,have come only on a pious22 pilgrimage, and will go backpresently to busy cities and lives full of largerduties. But that is not the only way of coming back toNorth Dormer. Some of us, who went out from here inour youth...went out, like you, to busy cities andlarger duties...have come back in another way--comeback for good. I am one of those, as many of youknow...." He paused, and there was a sense of suspensein the listening hall. "My history is withoutinterest, but it has its lesson: not so much for thoseof you who have already made your lives in otherplaces, as for the young men who are perhapsplanning even now to leave these quiet hills and godown into the struggle. Things they cannot foresee maysend some of those young men back some day to thelittle township and the old homestead: they may comeback for good...." He looked about him, and repeatedgravely: "For GOOD. There's the point I want tomake...North Dormer is a poor little place, almost lostin a mighty23 landscape: perhaps, by this time, it mighthave been a bigger place, and more in scale with thelandscape, if those who had to come back had come withthat feeling in their minds--that they wanted to comeback for GOOD...and not for bad...or just forindifference....
"Gentlemen, let us look at things as they are. Some ofus have come back to our native town because we'dfailed to get on elsewhere. One way or other, thingshad gone wrong with us...what we'd dreamed of hadn'tcome true. But the fact that we had failed elsewhereis no reason why we should fail here. Our veryexperiments in larger places, even if they wereunsuccessful, ought to have helped us to make NorthDormer a larger place...and you young men who arepreparing even now to follow the call of ambition, andturn your back on the old homes--well, let me saythis to you, that if ever you do come back to them it'sworth while to come back to them for their good....Andto do that, you must keep on loving them while you'reaway from them; and even if you come back against yourwill--and thinking it's all a bitter mistake of Fate orProvidence--you must try to make the best of it, and tomake the best of your old town; and after a while--well, ladies and gentlemen, I give you my recipe forwhat it's worth; after a while, I believe you'll beable to say, as I can say today: 'I'm glad I'm here.'
Believe me, all of you, the best way to help the placeswe live in is to be glad we live there."He stopped, and a murmur24 of emotion and surprise ranthrough the audience. It was not in the least whatthey had expected, but it moved them more than whatthey had expected would have moved them. "Hear, hear!"a voice cried out in the middle of the hall. Anoutburst of cheers caught up the cry, and as theysubsided Charity heard Mr. Miles saying to someone nearhim: "That was a MAN talking----" He wiped hisspectacles.
Mr. Royall had stepped back from the desk, andtaken his seat in the row of chairs in front ofthe harmonium. A dapper white-haired gentleman--adistant Hatchard--succeeded him behind the goldenrod,and began to say beautiful things about the old oakenbucket, patient white-haired mothers, and where theboys used to go nutting...and Charity began again tosearch for Harney....
Suddenly Mr. Royall pushed back his seat, and one ofthe maple25 branches in front of the harmonium collapsedwith a crash. It uncovered the end of the first rowand in one of the seats Charity saw Harney, and in thenext a lady whose face was turned toward him, andalmost hidden by the brim of her drooping26 hat. Charitydid not need to see the face. She knew at a glance theslim figure, the fair hair heaped up under the hat-brim, the long pale wrinkled gloves with braceletsslipping over them. At the fall of the branch MissBalch turned her head toward the stage, and in herpretty thin-lipped smile there lingered the reflectionof something her neighbour had been whispering toher....
Someone came forward to replace the fallen branch, andMiss Balch and Harney were once more hidden. But toCharity the vision of their two faces had blottedout everything. In a flash they had shown her the barereality of her situation. Behind the frail27 screen ofher lover's caresses28 was the whole inscrutable mysteryof his life: his relations with other people--withother women--his opinions, his prejudices, hisprinciples, the net of influences and interests andambitions in which every man's life is entangled29. Ofall these she knew nothing, except what he had told herof his architectural aspirations30. She had always dimlyguessed him to be in touch with important people,involved in complicated relations--but she felt it allto be so far beyond her understanding that the wholesubject hung like a luminous31 mist on the farthest vergeof her thoughts. In the foreground, hiding all else,there was the glow of his presence, the light andshadow of his face, the way his short-sighted eyes, ather approach, widened and deepened as if to draw herdown into them; and, above all, the flush of youth andtenderness in which his words enclosed her.
Now she saw him detached from her, drawn32 back into theunknown, and whispering to another girl things thatprovoked the same smile of mischievous33 complicity hehad so often called to her own lips. The feelingpossessing her was not one of jealousy34: she was toosure of his love. It was rather a terror of theunknown, of all the mysterious attractions that musteven now be dragging him away from her, and of her ownpowerlessness to contend with them.
She had given him all she had--but what was it comparedto the other gifts life held for him? She understoodnow the case of girls like herself to whom this kind ofthing happened. They gave all they had, but their allwas not enough: it could not buy more than a fewmoments....
The heat had grown suffocating--she felt it descend35 onher in smothering36 waves, and the faces in the crowdedhall began to dance like the pictures flashed on thescreen at Nettleton. For an instant Mr. Royall'scountenance detached itself from the general blur. Hehad resumed his place in front of the harmonium, andsat close to her, his eyes on her face; and his lookseemed to pierce to the very centre of her confusedsensations....A feeling of physical sickness rushedover her--and then deadly apprehension37. The light ofthe fiery38 hours in the little house swept back on herin a glare of fear....
She forced herself to look away from her guardian,and became aware that the oratory39 of the Hatchardcousin had ceased, and that Mr. Miles was againflapping his wings. Fragments of his perorationfloated through her bewildered brain...."A rich harvestof hallowed memories....A sanctified hour to which, inmoments of trial, your thoughts will prayerfullyreturn....And now, O Lord, let us humbly40 and ferventlygive thanks for this blessed day of reunion, here inthe old home to which we have come back from so far.
Preserve it to us, O Lord, in times to come, in all itshomely sweetness--in the kindliness41 and wisdom of itsold people, in the courage and industry of its youngmen, in the piety42 and purity of this group of innocentgirls----" He flapped a white wing in their direction,and at the same moment Lambert Sollas, with his fiercenod, struck the opening bars of "Auld43 LangSyne."...Charity stared straight ahead of her and then,dropping her flowers, fell face downward at Mr.
Royall's feet.
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1
unfamiliar
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| adj.陌生的，不熟悉的 | |
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blur
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| n.模糊不清的事物；vt.使模糊，使看不清楚 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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4
buoyed
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| v.使浮起( buoy的过去式和过去分词 )；支持；为…设浮标；振奋…的精神 | |
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retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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defiance
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| n.挑战，挑衅，蔑视，违抗 | |
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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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furtive
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| adj.鬼鬼崇崇的，偷偷摸摸的 | |
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ascended
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| v.上升，攀登( ascend的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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majesty
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| n.雄伟，壮丽，庄严，威严；最高权威，王权 | |
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protracted
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| adj.拖延的；延长的v.拖延“protract”的过去式和过去分词 | |
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wharf
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| n.码头，停泊处 | |
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heed
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| v.注意，留意；n.注意，留心 | |
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sonorous
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| adj.响亮的，回响的；adv.圆润低沉地；感人地；n.感人，堂皇 | |
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quotations
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| n.引用( quotation的名词复数 )；[商业]行情（报告）；（货物或股票的）市价；时价 | |
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obligatory
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| adj.强制性的，义务的，必须的 | |
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foliage
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| n.叶子，树叶，簇叶 | |
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discourse
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| n.论文，演说；谈话；话语；vi.讲述，著述 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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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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participation
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| n.参与，参加，分享 | |
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pious
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| adj.虔诚的；道貌岸然的 | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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murmur
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| n.低语，低声的怨言；v.低语，低声而言 | |
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maple
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| n.槭树，枫树，槭木 | |
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drooping
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| adj. 下垂的，无力的 动词droop的现在分词 | |
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frail
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| adj.身体虚弱的；易损坏的 | |
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caresses
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| 爱抚，抚摸( caress的名词复数 ) | |
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entangled
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| adj.卷入的；陷入的；被缠住的；缠在一起的v.使某人（某物/自己）缠绕，纠缠于（某物中），使某人（自己）陷入（困难或复杂的环境中）( entangle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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aspirations
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| 强烈的愿望( aspiration的名词复数 )； 志向； 发送气音； 发 h 音 | |
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luminous
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| adj.发光的，发亮的；光明的；明白易懂的；有启发的 | |
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32
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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33
mischievous
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| adj.调皮的，恶作剧的，有害的，伤人的 | |
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34
jealousy
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| n.妒忌，嫉妒，猜忌 | |
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35
descend
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| vt./vi.传下来，下来，下降 | |
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smothering
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| （使）窒息， （使）透不过气( smother的现在分词 )； 覆盖； 忍住； 抑制 | |
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apprehension
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| n.理解，领悟；逮捕，拘捕；忧虑 | |
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38
fiery
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| adj.燃烧着的，火红的；暴躁的；激烈的 | |
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39
oratory
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| n.演讲术；词藻华丽的言辞 | |
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40
humbly
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| adv. 恭顺地，谦卑地 | |
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41
kindliness
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| n.厚道，亲切，友好的行为 | |
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42
piety
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| n.虔诚，虔敬 | |
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auld
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| adj.老的，旧的 | |
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