She met Mrs. Jordan when she could, and learned from her more and more how the great people, under her gentle shake and after going through everything with the mere1 shops, were waking up to the gain of putting into the hands of a person of real refinement2 the question that the shop~people spoke3 of so vulgarly as that of the floral decorations. The regular dealers4 in these decorations were all very well; but there was a peculiar5 magic in the play of taste of a lady who had only to remember, through whatever intervening dusk, all her own little tables, little bowls and little jars and little other arrangements, and the wonderful thing she had made of the garden of the vicarage. This small domain6, which her young friend had never seen, bloomed in Mrs. Jordan’s discourse7 like a new Eden, and she converted the past into a bank of violets by the tone in which she said “Of course you always knew my one passion!” She obviously met now, at any rate, a big contemporary need, measured what it was rapidly becoming for people to feel they could trust her without a tremor8. It brought them a peace that — during the quarter of an hour before dinner in especial — was worth more to them than mere payment could express. Mere payment, none the less, was tolerably prompt; she engaged by the month, taking over the whole thing; and there was an evening on which, in respect to our heroine, she at last returned to the charge. “It’s growing and growing, and I see that I must really divide the work. One wants an associate — of one’s own kind, don’t you know? You know the look they want it all to have? — of having come, not from a florist9, but from one of themselves. Well, I’m sure you could give it — because you are one. Then we should win. Therefore just come in with me.”
“And leave the P.O.?”
“Let the P.O. simply bring you your letters. It would bring you lots, you’d see: orders, after a bit, by the score.” It was on this, in due course, that the great advantage again came up: “One seems to live again with one’s own people.” It had taken some little time (after their having parted company in the tempest of their troubles and then, in the glimmering10 dawn, finally sighted each other again) for each to admit that the other was, in her private circle, her only equal, but the admission came, when it did come, with an honest groan11; and since equality was named, each found much personal profit in exaggerating the other’s original grandeur12. Mrs. Jordan was ten years the older, but her young friend was struck with the smaller difference this now made: it had counted otherwise at the time when, much more as a friend of her mother’s, the bereaved13 lady, without a penny of provision and with stopgaps, like their own, all gone, had, across the sordid14 landing on which the opposite doors of the pair of scared miseries15 opened and to which they were bewilderedly bolted, borrowed coals and umbrellas that were repaid in potatoes and postage-stamps. It had been a questionable16 help, at that time, to ladies submerged, floundering, panting, swimming for their lives, that they were ladies; but such an advantage could come up again in proportion as others vanished, and it had grown very great by the time it was the only ghost of one they possessed17. They had literally18 watched it take to itself a portion of the substance of each that had departed; and it became prodigious19 now, when they could talk of it together, when they could look back at it across a desert of accepted derogation, and when, above all, they could together work up a credulity about it that neither could otherwise work up. Nothing was really so marked as that they felt the need to cultivate this legend much more after having found their feet and stayed their stomachs in the ultimate obscure than they had done in the upper air of mere frequent shocks. The thing they could now oftenest say to each other was that they knew what they meant; and the sentiment with which, all round, they knew it was known had well-nigh amounted to a promise not again to fall apart.
Mrs. Jordan was at present fairly dazzling on the subject of the way that, in the practice of her fairy art, as she called it, she more than peeped in — she penetrated20. There was not a house of the great kind — and it was of course only a question of those, real homes of luxury — in which she was not, at the rate such people now had things, all over the place. The girl felt before the picture the cold breath of disinheritance as much as she had ever felt it in the cage; she knew moreover how much she betrayed this, for the experience of poverty had begun, in her life, too early, and her ignorance of the requirements of homes of luxury had grown, with other active knowledge, a depth of simplification. She had accordingly at first often found that in these colloquies21 she could only pretend she understood. Educated as she had rapidly been by her chances at Cocker’s, there were still strange gaps in her learning — she could never, like Mrs. Jordan, have found her way about one of the “homes.” Little by little, however, she had caught on, above all in the light of what Mrs. Jordan’s redemption had materially made of that lady, giving her, though the years and the struggles had naturally not straightened a feature, an almost super-eminent air. There were women in and out of Cocker’s who were quite nice and who yet didn’t look well; whereas Mrs. Jordan looked well and yet, with her extraordinarily22 protrusive23 teeth, was by no means quite nice. It would seem, mystifyingly, that it might really come from all the greatness she could live with. It was fine to hear her talk so often of dinners of twenty and of her doing, as she said, exactly as she liked with them. She spoke as if, for that matter, she invited the company. “They simply give me the table — all the rest, all the other effects, come afterwards.”
收听单词发音 |
1
mere
|
|
| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
refinement
|
|
| n.文雅；高尚；精美；精制；精炼 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
spoke
|
|
| 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 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
dealers
|
|
| n.商人( dealer的名词复数 )；贩毒者；毒品贩子；发牌者 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
peculiar
|
|
| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
domain
|
|
| n.(活动等)领域，范围；领地，势力范围 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
discourse
|
|
| n.论文，演说；谈话；话语；vi.讲述，著述 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
tremor
|
|
| n.震动，颤动，战栗，兴奋，地震 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
florist
|
|
| n.花商；种花者 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
glimmering
|
|
| n.微光，隐约的一瞥adj.薄弱地发光的v.发闪光，发微光( glimmer的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
groan
|
|
| vi./n.呻吟，抱怨；(发出)呻吟般的声音 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
grandeur
|
|
| n.伟大，崇高，宏伟，庄严，豪华 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
bereaved
|
|
| 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） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
sordid
|
|
| adj.肮脏的，不干净的，卑鄙的，暗淡的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
miseries
|
|
| n.痛苦( misery的名词复数 )；痛苦的事；穷困；常发牢骚的人 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
questionable
|
|
| adj.可疑的，有问题的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
possessed
|
|
| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
literally
|
|
| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
prodigious
|
|
| adj.惊人的，奇妙的；异常的；巨大的；庞大的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
penetrated
|
|
| adj. 击穿的，鞭辟入里的 动词penetrate的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
colloquies
|
|
| n.谈话，对话( colloquy的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
extraordinarily
|
|
| adv.格外地；极端地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
protrusive
|
|
| adj.伸出的，突出的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |