Meanwhile, since irritation1 sometimes relieved her, the betrothed2 of Mr. Mudge found herself indebted to that admirer for amounts of it perfectly3 proportioned to her fidelity4. She always walked with him on Sundays, usually in the Regent’s Park, and quite often, once or twice a month he took her, in the Strand5 or thereabouts, to see a piece that was having a run. The productions he always preferred were the really good ones — Shakespeare, Thompson or some funny American thing; which, as it also happened that she hated vulgar plays, gave him ground for what was almost the fondest of his approaches, the theory that their tastes were, blissfully, just the same. He was for ever reminding her of that, rejoicing over it and being affectionate and wise about it. There were times when she wondered how in the world she could “put up with” him, how she could put up with any man so smugly unconscious of the immensity of her difference. It was just for this difference that, if she was to be liked at all, she wanted to be liked, and if that was not the source of Mr. Mudge’s admiration6, she asked herself what on earth could be? She was not different only at one point, she was different all round; unless perhaps indeed in being practically human, which her mind just barely recognised that he also was. She would have made tremendous concessions7 in other quarters: there was no limit for instance to those she would have made to Captain Everard; but what I have named was the most she was prepared to do for Mr. Mudge. It was because he was different that, in the oddest way, she liked as well as deplored8 him; which was after all a proof that the disparity, should they frankly9 recognise it, wouldn’t necessarily be fatal. She felt that, oleaginous — too oleaginous — as he was, he was somehow comparatively primitive10: she had once, during the portion of his time at Cocker’s that had overlapped11 her own, seen him collar a drunken soldier, a big violent man who, having come in with a mate to get a postal-order cashed, had made a grab at the money before his friend could reach it and had so determined12, among the hams and cheeses and the lodgers13 from Thrupp’s, immediate14 and alarming reprisals15, a scene of scandal and consternation16. Mr. Buckton and the counter-clerk had crouched17 within the cage, but Mr. Mudge had, with a very quiet but very quick step round the counter, an air of masterful authority she shouldn’t soon forget, triumphantly18 interposed in the scrimmage, parted the combatants and shaken the delinquent19 in his skin. She had been proud of him at that moment, and had felt that if their affair had not already been settled the neatness of his execution would have left her without resistance.
Their affair had been settled by other things: by the evident sincerity20 of his passion and by the sense that his high white apron21 resembled a front of many floors. It had gone a great way with her that he would build up a business to his chin, which he carried quite in the air. This could only be a question of time; he would have all Piccadilly in the pen behind his ear. That was a merit in itself for a girl who had known what she had known. There were hours at which she even found him good-looking, though, frankly there could be no crown for her effort to imagine on the part of the tailor or the barber some such treatment of his appearance as would make him resemble even remotely a man of the world. His very beauty was the beauty of a grocer, and the finest future would offer it none too much room consistently to develop. She had engaged herself in short to the perfection of a type, and almost anything square and smooth and whole had its weight for a person still conscious herself of being a mere22 bruised23 fragment of wreckage24. But it contributed hugely at present to carry on the two parallel lines of her experience in the cage and her experience out of it. After keeping quiet for some time about this opposition25 she suddenly — one Sunday afternoon on a penny chair in the Regent’s Park — broke, for him, capriciously, bewilderingly, into an intimation of what it came to. He had naturally pressed more and more on the point of her again placing herself where he could see her hourly, and for her to recognise that she had as yet given him no sane26 reason for delay he had small need to describe himself as unable to make out what she was up to. As if, with her absurd bad reasons, she could have begun to tell him! Sometimes she thought it would be amusing to let him have them full in the face, for she felt she should die of him unless she once in a while stupefied him; and sometimes she thought it would be disgusting and perhaps even fatal. She liked him, however, to think her silly, for that gave her the margin27 which at the best she would always require; and the only difficulty about this was that he hadn’t enough imagination to oblige her. It produced none the less something of the desired effect — to leave him simply wondering why, over the matter of their reunion, she didn’t yield to his arguments. Then at last, simply as if by accident and out of mere boredom28 on a day that was rather flat, she preposterously29 produced her own. “Well, wait a bit. Where I am I still see things.” And she talked to him even worse, if possible, than she had talked to Jordan.
Little by little, to her own stupefaction, she caught that he was trying to take it as she meant it and that he was neither astonished nor angry. Oh the British tradesman — this gave her an idea of his resources! Mr. Mudge would be angry only with a person who, like the drunken soldier in the shop, should have an unfavourable effect on business. He seemed positively30 to enter, for the time and without the faintest flash of irony31 or ripple32 of laughter, into the whimsical grounds of her enjoyment33 of Cocker’s custom, and instantly to be casting up whatever it might, as Mrs. Jordan had said, lead to. What he had in mind was not of course what Mrs. Jordan had had: it was obviously not a source of speculation34 with him that his sweetheart might pick up a husband. She could see perfectly that this was not for a moment even what he supposed she herself dreamed of. What she had done was simply to give his sensibility another push into the dim vast of trade. In that direction it was all alert, and she had whisked before it the mild fragrance35 of a “connexion.” That was the most he could see in any account of her keeping in, on whatever roundabout lines, with the gentry36; and when, getting to the bottom of this, she quickly proceeded to show him the kind of eye she turned on such people and to give him a sketch37 of what that eye discovered, she reduced him to the particular prostration38 in which he could still be amusing to her.
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irritation
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| n.激怒，恼怒，生气 | |
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betrothed
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| n. 已订婚者 动词betroth的过去式和过去分词 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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fidelity
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| n.忠诚，忠实；精确 | |
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strand
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| vt.使（船）搁浅，使（某人）困于（某地） | |
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admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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concessions
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| n.（尤指由政府或雇主给予的）特许权( concession的名词复数 )；承认；减价；（在某地的）特许经营权 | |
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deplored
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| v.悲叹，痛惜，强烈反对( deplore的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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overlapped
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| _adj.重叠的v.部分重叠( overlap的过去式和过去分词 )；（物体）部份重叠；交叠；（时间上）部份重叠 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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lodgers
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| n.房客，租住者( lodger的名词复数 ) | |
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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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reprisals
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| n.报复（行为）( reprisal的名词复数 ) | |
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consternation
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| n.大为吃惊，惊骇 | |
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crouched
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| v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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triumphantly
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| ad.得意洋洋地；得胜地；成功地 | |
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delinquent
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| adj.犯法的，有过失的；n.违法者 | |
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sincerity
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| n.真诚，诚意；真实 | |
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apron
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| n.围裙；工作裙 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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bruised
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| [医]青肿的，瘀紫的 | |
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wreckage
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| n.（失事飞机等的）残骸，破坏，毁坏 | |
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opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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sane
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| adj.心智健全的，神志清醒的，明智的，稳健的 | |
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margin
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| n.页边空白；差额；余地，余裕；边，边缘 | |
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boredom
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| n.厌烦，厌倦，乏味，无聊 | |
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preposterously
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| adv.反常地；荒谬地；荒谬可笑地；不合理地 | |
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positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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irony
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| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
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ripple
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| n.涟波，涟漪，波纹，粗钢梳；vt.使...起涟漪，使起波纹； vi.呈波浪状，起伏前进 | |
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33
enjoyment
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| n.乐趣；享有；享用 | |
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speculation
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| n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机 | |
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fragrance
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| n.芬芳，香味，香气 | |
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gentry
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| n.绅士阶级，上层阶级 | |
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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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prostration
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| n. 平伏, 跪倒, 疲劳 | |
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