But meanwhile it befell that, in London, he was stricken with influenza1 and with subsequent sorrow. The attack was short but sharp — had it lasted Addie would certainly have come to his aid; most of a blight2 really in its secondary stage. The good ladies his sitters — the ladies with the frizzled hair, with the diamond earrings3, with the chins tending to the massive — left for him, at the door of his lodgings4, flowers, soup and love, so that with their assistance he pulled through; but his convalescence5 was slow and his weakness out of proportion to the muffled6 shock. He came out, but he went about lame7; it tired him to paint — he felt as if he had been ill three months. He strolled in Kensington Gardens when he should have been at work; he sat long on penny chairs and helplessly mused8 and mooned. Addie desired him to return to Paris, but there were chances under his hand that he felt he had just wit enough left not to relinquish9. He would have gone for a week to the sea — he would have gone to Brighton; but Mrs. Bracken had to be finished — Mrs. Bracken was so soon to sail. He just managed to finish her in time — the day before the date fixed10 for his breaking ground on a greater business still, the circumvallation of Mrs. Dunn. Mrs. Dunn duly waited on him, and he sat down before her, feeling, however, ere he rose, that he must take a long breath before the attack. While asking himself that night, therefore, where he should best replenish11 his lungs he received from Addie, who had had from Mrs. Bracken a poor report of him, a communication which, besides being of sudden and startling interest, applied12 directly to his case.
His friend wrote to him under the lively emotion of having from one day to another become aware of a new relative, an ancient cousin, a sequestered13 gentlewoman, the sole survival of “the English branch of the family,” still resident, at Flickerbridge, in the “old family home,” and with whom, that he might immediately betake himself to so auspicious15 a quarter for change of air, she had already done what was proper to place him, as she said, in touch. What came of it all, to be brief, was that Granger found himself so placed almost as he read: he was in touch with Miss Wenham of Flickerbridge, to the extent of being in correspondence with her, before twenty-four hours had sped. And on the second day he was in the train, settled for a five-hours’ run to the door of this amiable16 woman who had so abruptly17 and kindly18 taken him on trust and of whom but yesterday he had never so much as heard. This was an oddity — the whole incident was — of which, in the corner of his compartment19, as he proceeded, he had time to take the size. But the surprise, the incongruity20, as he felt, could but deepen as he went. It was a sufficiently21 queer note, in the light, or the absence of it, of his late experience, that so complex a product as Addie should have ANY simple insular22 tie; but it was a queerer note still that she should have had one so long only to remain unprofitably unconscious of it. Not to have done something with it, used it, worked it, talked about it at least, and perhaps even written — these things, at the rate she moved, represented a loss of opportunity under which as he saw her, she was peculiarly formed to wince23. She was at any rate, it was clear, doing something with it now; using it, working it, certainly, already talking — and, yes, quite possibly writing — about it. She was in short smartly making up what she had missed, and he could take such comfort from his own action as he had been helped to by the rest of the facts, succinctly24 reported from Paris on the very morning of his start.
It was the singular story of a sharp split — in a good English house — that dated now from years back. A worthy25 Briton, of the best middling stock, had, during the fourth decade of the century, as a very young man, in Dresden, whither he had been despatched to qualify in German for a stool in an uncle’s counting-house, met, admired, wooed and won an American girl, of due attractions, domiciled at that period with her parents and a sister, who was also attractive, in the Saxon capital. He had married her, taken her to England, and there, after some years of harmony and happiness, lost her. The sister in question had, after her death, come to him and to his young child on a visit, the effect of which, between the pair, eventually defined itself as a sentiment that was not to be resisted. The bereaved26 husband, yielding to a new attachment27 and a new response, and finding a new union thus prescribed, had yet been forced to reckon with the unaccommodating law of the land. Encompassed28 with frowns in his own country, however, marriages of this particular type were wreathed in smiles in his sister’s-in-law, so that his remedy was not forbidden. Choosing between two allegiances he had let the one go that seemed the least close, and had in brief transplanted his possibilities to an easier air. The knot was tied for the couple in New York, where, to protect the legitimacy29 of such other children as might come to them, they settled and prospered30. Children came, and one of the daughters, growing up and marrying in her turn, was, if Frank rightly followed, the mother of his own Addie, who had been deprived of the knowledge of her indeed, in childhood, by death, and been brought up, though without undue31 tension, by a stepmother~-a character breaking out thus anew.
The breach32 produced in England by the invidious action, as it was there held, of the girl’s grandfather, had not failed to widen — all the more that nothing had been done on the American side to close it. Frigidity33 had settled, and hostility34 had been arrested only by indifference35. Darkness therefore had fortunately supervened, and a cousinship completely divided. On either side of the impassable gulf36, of the impenetrable curtain, each branch had put forth37 its leaves — a foliage38 failing, in the American quarter, it was distinct enough to Granger, of no sign or symptom of climate and environment. The graft39 in New York had taken, and Addie was a vivid, an unmistakable flower. At Flickerbridge, or wherever, on the other hand, strange to say, the parent stem had had a fortune comparatively meagre. Fortune, it was true, in the vulgarest sense, had attended neither party. Addie’s immediate14 belongings40 were as poor as they were numerous, and he gathered that Miss Wenham’s pretensions41 to wealth were not so marked as to expose the claim of kinship to the imputation42 of motive43. To this lady’s single identity the original stock had at all events dwindled44, and our young man was properly warned that he would find her shy and solitary45. What was singular was that in these conditions she should desire, she should endure, to receive him. But that was all another story, lucid46 enough when mastered. He kept Addie’s letters, exceptionally copious47, in his lap; he conned48 them at intervals49; he held the threads.
He looked out between whiles at the pleasant English land, an April aquarelle washed in with wondrous50 breadth. He knew the French thing, he knew the American, but he had known nothing of this. He saw it already as the remarkable51 Miss Wenham’s setting. The doctor’s daughter at Flickerbridge, with nippers on her nose, a palette on her thumb and innocence52 in her heart, had been the miraculous53 link. She had become aware even there, in our world of wonders, that the current fashion for young women so equipped was to enter the Parisian lists. Addie had accordingly chanced upon her, on the slopes of Montparnasse, as one of the English girls in one of the thorough-going sets. They had met in some easy collocation and had fallen upon common ground; after which the young woman, restored to Flickerbridge for an interlude and retailing54 there her adventures and impressions, had mentioned to Miss Wenham who had known and protected her from babyhood, that that lady’s own name of Adelaide was, as well as the surname conjoined with it, borne, to her knowledge, in Paris, by an extraordinary American specimen55. She had then recrossed the Channel with a wonderful message, a courteous56 challenge, to her friend’s duplicate, who had in turn granted through her every satisfaction. The duplicate had in other words bravely let Miss Wenham know exactly who she was. Miss Wenham, in whose personal tradition the flame of resentment57 appeared to have been reduced by time to the palest ashes — for whom indeed the story of the great schism58 was now but a legend only needing a little less dimness to make it romantic — Miss Wenham had promptly59 responded by a letter fragrant60 with the hope that old threads might be taken up. It was a relationship that they must puzzle out together, and she had earnestly sounded the other party to it on the subject of a possible visit. Addie had met her with a definite promise; she would come soon, she would come when free, she would come in July; but meanwhile she sent her deputy. Frank asked himself by what name she had described, by what character introduced him to Flickerbridge. He mainly felt on the whole as if he were going there to find out if he were engaged to her. He was at sea really now as to which of the various views Addie herself took of it. To Miss Wenham she must definitely have taken one, and perhaps Miss Wenham would reveal it. This expectation was in fact his excuse for a possible indiscretion.
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influenza
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| n.流行性感冒，流感 | |
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blight
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| n.枯萎病；造成破坏的因素；vt.破坏，摧残 | |
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earrings
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| n.耳环( earring的名词复数 )；耳坠子 | |
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lodgings
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| n. 出租的房舍, 寄宿舍 | |
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convalescence
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| n.病后康复期 | |
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muffled
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| adj.（声音）被隔的；听不太清的；（衣服）裹严的；蒙住的v.压抑，捂住( muffle的过去式和过去分词 )；用厚厚的衣帽包着（自己） | |
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lame
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| adj.跛的，(辩解、论据等)无说服力的 | |
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mused
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| v.沉思，冥想( muse的过去式和过去分词 )；沉思自语说（某事） | |
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relinquish
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| v.放弃，撤回，让与，放手 | |
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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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replenish
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| vt.补充；(把…)装满；(再)填满 | |
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applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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sequestered
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| adj.扣押的；隐退的；幽静的；偏僻的v.使隔绝，使隔离( sequester的过去式和过去分词 )；扣押 | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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auspicious
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| adj.吉利的；幸运的，吉兆的 | |
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amiable
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| adj.和蔼可亲的，友善的，亲切的 | |
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abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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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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compartment
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| n.卧车包房，隔间；分隔的空间 | |
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incongruity
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| n.不协调，不一致 | |
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sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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insular
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| adj.岛屿的，心胸狭窄的 | |
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wince
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| n.畏缩，退避，（因痛苦，苦恼等)面部肌肉抽动；v.畏缩，退缩，退避 | |
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succinctly
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| adv.简洁地；简洁地，简便地 | |
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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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bereaved
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| adj.刚刚丧失亲人的v.使失去（希望、生命等）( bereave的过去式和过去分词)；（尤指死亡）使丧失（亲人、朋友等）；使孤寂；抢走（财物） | |
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attachment
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| n.附属物，附件；依恋；依附 | |
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encompassed
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| v.围绕( encompass的过去式和过去分词 )；包围；包含；包括 | |
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legitimacy
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| n.合法，正当 | |
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prospered
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| 成功，兴旺( prosper的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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undue
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| adj.过分的；不适当的；未到期的 | |
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breach
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| n.违反，不履行；破裂；vt.冲破，攻破 | |
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frigidity
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| n.寒冷；冷淡；索然无味；（尤指妇女的）性感缺失 | |
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hostility
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| n.敌对，敌意；抵制［pl.］交战，战争 | |
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indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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gulf
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| n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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foliage
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| n.叶子，树叶，簇叶 | |
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graft
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| n.移植，嫁接，艰苦工作，贪污；v.移植，嫁接 | |
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belongings
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| n.私人物品，私人财物 | |
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41
pretensions
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| 自称( pretension的名词复数 )； 自命不凡； 要求； 权力 | |
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42
imputation
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| n.归罪，责难 | |
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43
motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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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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solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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46
lucid
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| adj.明白易懂的，清晰的，头脑清楚的 | |
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47
copious
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| adj.丰富的，大量的 | |
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48
conned
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| adj.被骗了v.指挥操舵( conn的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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49
intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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50
wondrous
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| adj.令人惊奇的，奇妙的；adv.惊人地；异乎寻常地；令人惊叹地 | |
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51
remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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52
innocence
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| n.无罪；天真；无害 | |
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53
miraculous
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| adj.像奇迹一样的，不可思议的 | |
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54
retailing
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| n.零售业v.零售(retail的现在分词) | |
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55
specimen
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| n.样本，标本 | |
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56
courteous
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| adj.彬彬有礼的，客气的 | |
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57
resentment
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| n.怨愤，忿恨 | |
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58
schism
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| n.分派，派系，分裂 | |
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promptly
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| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
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fragrant
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| adj.芬香的，馥郁的，愉快的 | |
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