Evelina's marriage took place on the appointed day. It wascelebrated in the evening, in the chantry of the church which thesisters attended, and after it was over the few guests who had beenpresent repaired to the Bunner Sisters' basement, where a weddingsupper awaited them. Ann Eliza, aided by Miss Mellins and Mrs.
Hawkins, and consciously supported by the sentimental1 interest ofthe whole street, had expended2 her utmost energy on the decorationof the shop and the back room. On the table a vase of whitechrysanthemums stood between a dish of oranges and bananas and aniced wedding-cake wreathed with orange-blossoms of the bride's ownmaking. Autumn leaves studded with paper roses festooned the what-not and the chromo of the Rock of Ages, and a wreath of yellowimmortelles was twined about the clock which Evelina revered3 as themysterious agent of her happiness.
At the table sat Miss Mellins, profusely4 spangled and bangled,her head sewing-girl, a pale young thing who had helped withEvelina's outfit5, Mr. and Mrs. Hawkins, with Johnny, their eldestboy, and Mrs. Hochmuller and her daughter.
Mrs. Hochmuller's large blonde personality seemed to pervadethe room to the effacement7 of the less amply-proportioned guests.
It was rendered more impressive by a dress of crimson8 poplin thatstood out from her in organ-like folds; and Linda, whom Ann Elizahad remembered as an uncouth9 child with a sly look about the eyes,surprised her by a sudden blossoming into feminine grace such assometimes follows on a gawky girlhood. The Hochmullers, in fact,struck the dominant10 note in the entertainment. Beside themEvelina, unusually pale in her grey cashmere and white bonnet,looked like a faintly washed sketch11 beside a brilliant chromo; andMr. Ramy, doomed12 to the traditional insignificance13 of thebridegroom's part, made no attempt to rise above his situation.
Even Miss Mellins sparkled and jingled14 in vain in the shadow ofMrs. Hochmuller's crimson bulk; and Ann Eliza, with a sense ofvague foreboding, saw that the wedding feast centred about the twoguests she had most wished to exclude from it. What was said ordone while they all sat about the table she never afterwardrecalled: the long hours remained in her memory as a whirl of highcolours and loud voices, from which the pale presence of Evelinanow and then emerged like a drowned face on a sunset-dabbled sea.
The next morning Mr. Ramy and his wife started for St. Louis,and Ann Eliza was left alone. Outwardly the first strain ofparting was tempered by the arrival of Miss Mellins, Mrs. Hawkinsand Johnny, who dropped in to help in the ungarlanding and tidyingup of the back room. Ann Eliza was duly grateful for theirkindness, but the "talking over" on which they had evidentlycounted was Dead Sea fruit on her lips; and just beyond thefamiliar warmth of their presences she saw the form of Solitude15 ather door.
Ann Eliza was but a small person to harbour so great a guest,and a trembling sense of insufficiency possessed16 her. She had nohigh musings to offer to the new companion of her hearth17. Everyone of her thoughts had hitherto turned to Evelina and shapeditself in homely18 easy words; of the mighty19 speech of silence sheknew not the earliest syllable20.
Everything in the back room and the shop, on the second dayafter Evelina's going, seemed to have grown coldly unfamiliar21. Thewhole aspect of the place had changed with the changed conditionsof Ann Eliza's life. The first customer who opened the shop-doorstartled her like a ghost; and all night she lay tossing on herside of the bed, sinking now and then into an uncertain doze22 fromwhich she would suddenly wake to reach out her hand for Evelina.
In the new silence surrounding her the walls and furniture foundvoice, frightening her at dusk and midnight with strange sighsand stealthy whispers. Ghostly hands shook the window shutters23 orrattled at the outer latch24, and once she grew cold at the sound ofa step like Evelina's stealing through the dark shop to die out onthe threshold. In time, of course, she found an explanation forthese noises, telling herself that the bedstead was warping25, thatMiss Mellins trod heavily overhead, or that the thunder of passingbeer-waggons shook the door-latch; but the hours leading up tothese conclusions were full of the floating terrors that hardeninto fixed26 foreboding. Worst of all were the solitary27 meals, whenshe absently continued to set aside the largest slice of pie forEvelina, and to let the tea grow cold while she waited for hersister to help herself to the first cup. Miss Mellins, coming inon one of these sad repasts, suggested the acquisition of a cat;but Ann Eliza shook her head. She had never been used to animals,and she felt the vague shrinking of the pious28 from creaturesdivided from her by the abyss of soullessness.
At length, after ten empty days, Evelina's first letter came.
"My dear Sister," she wrote, in her pinched Spencerian hand,"it seems strange to be in this great City so far from home alonewith him I have chosen for life, but marriage has its solemn dutieswhich those who are not can never hope to understand, and happierperhaps for this reason, life for them has only simple tasks andpleasures, but those who must take thought for others must beprepared to do their duty in whatever station it has pleased theAlmighty to call them. Not that I have cause to complain, my dearHusband is all love and devotion, but being absent all day at hisbusiness how can I help but feel lonesome at times, as the poetsays it is hard for they that love to live apart, and I oftenwonder, my dear Sister, how you are getting along alone in thestore, may you never experience the feelings of solitude I haveunderwent since I came here. We are boarding now, but soon expectto find rooms and change our place of Residence, then I shall haveall the care of a household to bear, but such is the fate of thosewho join their Lot with others, they cannot hope to escape from theburdens of Life, nor would I ask it, I would not live alway butwhile I live would always pray for strength to do my duty. Thiscity is not near as large or handsome as New York, but had my lotbeen cast in a Wilderness29 I hope I should not repine, such neverwas my nature, and they who exchange their independence for thesweet name of Wife must be prepared to find all is not gold thatglitters, nor I would not expect like you to drift down the streamof Life unfettered and serene30 as a Summer cloud, such is not myfate, but come what may will always find in me a resigned andprayerful Spirit, and hoping this finds you as well as it leavesme, I remain, my dear Sister,"Yours truly,"EVELINA B. RAMY."Ann Eliza had always secretly admired the oratorical31 andimpersonal tone of Evelina's letters; but the few she hadpreviously read, having been addressed to school-mates or distantrelatives, had appeared in the light of literary compositionsrather than as records of personal experience. Now she could notbut wish that Evelina had laid aside her swelling32 periods for astyle more suited to the chronicling of homely incidents. She readthe letter again and again, seeking for a clue to what her sisterwas really doing and thinking; but after each reading she emergedimpressed but unenlightened from the labyrinth33 of Evelina'seloquence.
During the early winter she received two or three more lettersof the same kind, each enclosing in its loose husk of rhetoric34 asmaller kernel35 of fact. By dint36 of patient interlinear study, AnnEliza gathered from them that Evelina and her husband, aftervarious costly37 experiments in boarding, had been reduced to atenement-house flat; that living in St. Louis was more expensivethan they had supposed, and that Mr. Ramy was kept out late atnight (why, at a jeweller's, Ann Eliza wondered?) and found hisposition less satisfactory than he had been led to expect. TowardFebruary the letters fell off; and finally they ceased to come.
At first Ann Eliza wrote, shyly but persistently38, entreatingfor more frequent news; then, as one appeal after another wasswallowed up in the mystery of Evelina's protractedsilence, vague fears began to assail39 the elder sister. PerhapsEvelina was ill, and with no one to nurse her but a man who couldnot even make himself a cup of tea! Ann Eliza recalled the layerof dust in Mr. Ramy's shop, and pictures of domestic disordermingled with the more poignant40 vision of her sister's illness. Butsurely if Evelina were ill Mr. Ramy would have written. He wrotea small neat hand, and epistolary communication was not aninsuperable embarrassment41 to him. The too probable alternative wasthat both the unhappy pair had been prostrated42 by some diseasewhich left them powerless to summon her--for summon her they surelywould, Ann Eliza with unconscious cynicism reflected, if she or hersmall economies could be of use to them! The more she strained hereyes into the mystery, the darker it grew; and her lack ofinitiative, her inability to imagine what steps might be taken totrace the lost in distant places, left her benumbed and helpless.
At last there floated up from some depth of troubled memorythe name of the firm of St. Louis jewellers by whom Mr. Ramy wasemployed. After much hesitation43, and considerable effort, sheaddressed to them a timid request for news of her brother-in-law;and sooner than she could have hoped the answer reached her.
"DEAR MADAM,"In reply to yours of the 29th ult. we beg to state the partyyou refer to was discharged from our employ a month ago. We aresorry we are unable to furnish you wish his address.
"Yours Respectfully,"LUDWIG AND HAMMERBUSCH."Ann Eliza read and re-read the curt44 statement in a stupor45 ofdistress. She had lost her last trace of Evelina. All that nightshe lay awake, revolving47 the stupendous project of going to St.
Louis in search of her sister; but though she pieced together herfew financial possibilities with the ingenuity48 of a brain used tofitting odd scraps49 into patch-work quilts, she woke to the colddaylight fact that she could not raise the money for her fare. Herwedding gift to Evelina had left her without any resources beyondher daily earnings50, and these had steadily51 dwindled52 as the winterpassed. She had long since renounced53 her weekly visit to thebutcher, and had reduced her other expenses to the narrowestmeasure; but the most systematic54 frugality55 had not enabled her toput by any money. In spite of her dogged efforts to maintain theprosperity of the little shop, her sister's absence had alreadytold on its business. Now that Ann Eliza had to carry the bundlesto the dyer's herself, the customers who called in her absence,finding the shop locked, too often went elsewhere. Moreover, afterseveral stern but unavailing efforts, she had had to give up thetrimming of bonnets56, which in Evelina's hands had been the mostlucrative as well as the most interesting part of the business.
This change, to the passing female eye, robbed the shop window ofits chief attraction; and when painful experience had convinced theregular customers of the Bunner Sisters of Ann Eliza's lack ofmillinery skill they began to lose faith in her ability to curl afeather or even "freshen up" a bunch of flowers. The time camewhen Ann Eliza had almost made up her mind to speak to the ladywith puffed57 sleeves, who had always looked at her so kindly58, andhad once ordered a hat of Evelina. Perhaps the lady with puffedsleeves would be able to get her a little plain sewing to do; orshe might recommend the shop to friends. Ann Eliza, with thispossibility in view, rummaged59 out of a drawer the fly-blownremainder of the business cards which the sisters had ordered inthe first flush of their commercial adventure; but when the ladywith puffed sleeves finally appeared she was in deep mourning, andwore so sad a look that Ann Eliza dared not speak. She came in tobuy some spools60 of black thread and silk, and in the doorway61 sheturned back to say: "I am going away to-morrow for a long time. Ihope you will have a pleasant winter." And the door shut on her.
One day not long after this it occurred to Ann Eliza to go toHoboken in quest of Mrs. Hochmuller. Much as she shrank frompouring her distress46 into that particular ear, her anxiety hadcarried her beyond such reluctance62; but when she began tothink the matter over she was faced by a new difficulty. On theoccasion of her only visit to Mrs. Hochmuller, she and Evelina hadsuffered themselves to be led there by Mr. Ramy; and Ann Eliza nowperceived that she did not even know the name of the laundress'ssuburb, much less that of the street in which she lived. But shemust have news of Evelina, and no obstacle was great enough tothwart her.
Though she longed to turn to some one for advice she dislikedto expose her situation to Miss Mellins's searching eye, and atfirst she could think of no other confidant. Then she rememberedMrs. Hawkins, or rather her husband, who, though Ann Eliza hadalways thought him a dull uneducated man, was probably gifted withthe mysterious masculine faculty63 of finding out people's addresses.
It went hard with Ann Eliza to trust her secret even to the mildear of Mrs. Hawkins, but at least she was spared the cross-examination to which the dress-maker would have subjected her. Theaccumulating pressure of domestic cares had so crushed in Mrs.
Hawkins any curiosity concerning the affairs of others that shereceived her visitor's confidence with an almost masculineindifference, while she rocked her teething baby on one arm andwith the other tried to check the acrobatic impulses of the next inage.
"My, my," she simply said as Ann Eliza ended. "Keep stillnow, Arthur: Miss Bunner don't want you to jump up and down on herfoot to-day. And what are you gaping64 at, Johnny? Run right offand play," she added, turning sternly to her eldest6, who, becausehe was the least naughty, usually bore the brunt of her wrathagainst the others.
"Well, perhaps Mr. Hawkins can help you," Mrs. Hawkinscontinued meditatively65, while the children, after scattering66 at herbidding, returned to their previous pursuits like flies settlingdown on the spot from which an exasperated67 hand has swept them.
"I'll send him right round the minute he comes in, and you can tellhim the whole story. I wouldn't wonder but what he can find thatMrs. Hochmuller's address in the d'rectory. I know they've got onewhere he works.""I'd be real thankful if he could," Ann Eliza murmured, risingfrom her seat with the factitious sense of lightness that comesfrom imparting a long-hidden dread68.
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sentimental
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| adj.多愁善感的，感伤的 | |
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expended
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| v.花费( expend的过去式和过去分词 )；使用（钱等）做某事；用光；耗尽 | |
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revered
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| v.崇敬，尊崇，敬畏( revere的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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profusely
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| ad.abundantly | |
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outfit
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| n.（为特殊用途的）全套装备，全套服装 | |
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eldest
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| adj.最年长的，最年老的 | |
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effacement
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| n.抹消，抹杀 | |
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crimson
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| n./adj.深(绯)红色(的)；vi.脸变绯红色 | |
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uncouth
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| adj.无教养的，粗鲁的 | |
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dominant
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| adj.支配的，统治的；占优势的；显性的；n.主因，要素，主要的人(或物)；显性基因 | |
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sketch
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| n.草图；梗概；素描；v.素描；概述 | |
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doomed
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| 命定的 | |
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insignificance
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| n.不重要；无价值；无意义 | |
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jingled
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| 喝醉的 | |
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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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possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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hearth
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| n.壁炉炉床，壁炉地面 | |
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homely
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| adj.家常的，简朴的；不漂亮的 | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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syllable
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| n.音节；vt.分音节 | |
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unfamiliar
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| adj.陌生的，不熟悉的 | |
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doze
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| v.打瞌睡；n.打盹，假寐 | |
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shutters
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| 百叶窗( shutter的名词复数 )； （照相机的）快门 | |
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latch
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| n.门闩，窗闩；弹簧锁 | |
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warping
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| n.翘面，扭曲，变形v.弄弯，变歪( warp的现在分词 )；使（行为等）不合情理，使乖戾， | |
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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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solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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pious
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| adj.虔诚的；道貌岸然的 | |
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wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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serene
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| adj. 安详的，宁静的，平静的 | |
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oratorical
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| adj.演说的，雄辩的 | |
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swelling
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| n.肿胀 | |
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labyrinth
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| n.迷宫；难解的事物；迷路 | |
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rhetoric
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| n.修辞学，浮夸之言语 | |
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kernel
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| n.(果实的)核，仁；(问题)的中心，核心 | |
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dint
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| n.由于，靠；凹坑 | |
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costly
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| adj.昂贵的，价值高的，豪华的 | |
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persistently
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| ad.坚持地；固执地 | |
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assail
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| v.猛烈攻击，抨击，痛斥 | |
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poignant
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| adj.令人痛苦的，辛酸的，惨痛的 | |
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embarrassment
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| n.尴尬；使人为难的人(事物)；障碍；窘迫 | |
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prostrated
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| v.使俯伏，使拜倒( prostrate的过去式和过去分词 )；（指疾病、天气等）使某人无能为力 | |
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hesitation
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| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
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curt
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| adj.简短的，草率的 | |
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stupor
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| v.昏迷；不省人事 | |
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distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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revolving
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| adj.旋转的，轮转式的；循环的v.（使）旋转( revolve的现在分词 )；细想 | |
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ingenuity
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| n.别出心裁；善于发明创造 | |
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scraps
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| 油渣 | |
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earnings
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| n.工资收人；利润，利益，所得 | |
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steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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dwindled
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| v.逐渐变少或变小( dwindle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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renounced
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| v.声明放弃( renounce的过去式和过去分词 )；宣布放弃；宣布与…决裂；宣布摒弃 | |
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54
systematic
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| adj.有系统的，有计划的，有方法的 | |
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55
frugality
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| n.节约，节俭 | |
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56
bonnets
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| n.童帽( bonnet的名词复数 )；（烟囱等的）覆盖物；（苏格兰男子的）无边呢帽；（女子戴的）任何一种帽子 | |
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puffed
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| adj.疏松的v.使喷出( puff的过去式和过去分词 )；喷着汽（或烟）移动；吹嘘；吹捧 | |
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58
kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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rummaged
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| 翻找，搜寻( rummage的过去式和过去分词 )； 已经海关检查 | |
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60
spools
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| n.（绕线、铁线、照相软片等的）管( spool的名词复数 )；络纱；纺纱机；绕圈轴工人v.把…绕到线轴上（或从线轴上绕下来）( spool的第三人称单数 )；假脱机（输出或输入） | |
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doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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reluctance
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| n.厌恶，讨厌，勉强，不情愿 | |
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faculty
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| n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员 | |
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gaping
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| adj.口的；张口的；敞口的；多洞穴的v.目瞪口呆地凝视( gape的现在分词 )；张开，张大 | |
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meditatively
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| adv.冥想地 | |
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66
scattering
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| n.[物]散射；散乱，分散；在媒介质中的散播adj.散乱的；分散在不同范围的；广泛扩散的；（选票）数量分散的v.散射(scatter的ing形式)；散布；驱散 | |
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67
exasperated
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| adj.恼怒的 | |
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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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