"We've three real parties too," she said on December 30th, "as well as going to the Chambers4' this afternoon."
"I hardly think Mrs. Chambers will expect you," declared Beatrice, looking out of the window at the dark sky. "It's beginning to snow already, and I believe we shall have a heavy fall."
"Then it must keep off till to-morrow, for we've got to get to North Ditton somehow!" announced Gwen.
Dick's mother had asked the younger Gascoynes to
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tea, and amongst their various invitations it was to this that Gwen looked forward the most. She wanted to see Dick's home, and the collection of birds' eggs and butterflies which he had promised to show her, and his magic lantern, and his microscope, and all the Natural History books of which he had so often spoken. She watched the weather impatiently, and when the snow fell faster and faster, and Beatrice decided5 emphatically that the visit was impossible, she broke into open mutiny.
"It's too bad! We shouldn't take any harm. What an old mollycoddle6 you are, Beatrice!"
"I've a little more sense in my head than you have! With this wind the roads will be deep in drifts. It's quite unfit to go out, especially for you with that nasty cough. I should have you laid up with bronchitis."
"My cold's better," affirmed Gwen, trying not to sound hoarse7; "snow doesn't hurt people. Father's gone out in it!"
"Father was obliged to go—it's quite a different thing for him. I'm sorry you're disappointed, but really, Gwen, don't be so childish! Look at Lesbia, she isn't making such a dreadful fuss!"
"Lesbia never worries about anything, so it's no virtue8 at all!" snarled9 Gwen, knowing perfectly10 well that she was unfair, for Lesbia undoubtedly11 added self-control to her naturally sweet disposition12. "You always hold up Lesbia! You've no right to say we must stop at home, just because you're the eldest13!"
Beatrice sighed. Sometimes she thought this turbulent cuckoo of a younger sister was the cross of her life.
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"It's no use talking in this way, Gwen! Somebody must be in authority, and you'll have to do as you're told."
"I shan't! I don't care! You're only six years older than I am!"
And Gwen flounced out of the room in a rage. She ran upstairs, her eyes smarting with hot tears of temper. She was disgusted with the others for not taking the matter more to heart. How could Lesbia sit reading so calmly, or the boys amuse themselves with their absurd engine?
"They don't care like I do! I wish I could go without them!" she said aloud.
The idea was an excellent one. What fun it would be to go alone, and have Dick all to herself—no tiresome14 youngsters to claim his attention, finger his books, and perhaps break his birds' eggs; not even Lesbia to ask stupid questions about things any ordinary person ought to know. She could easily tell Mrs. Chambers that her sister had thought it too stormy for the little ones to venture, and probably Dr. Chambers would drive her back in the gig.
"After all, Father never told me not to go!" she thought, "and Beatrice is getting a perfect tyrant15; I can't be expected to obey her as if I were an infant. A girl in the Fifth is quite old enough to decide things for herself, especially when she's as tall as I am!"
Gwen changed her dress, put on her best hair ribbon, her brooch, and her locket, then peeped cautiously down the stairs. Although she felt full of self-assertion, she had no wish to risk a further encounter with
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Beatrice. All seemed quiet, so, donning hat and coat, she crept to the cupboard where mackintoshes and galoshes were kept, and armed herself to defy the weather. It was quite an easy matter to slip out by the back door, and in less than ten seconds she was hurrying through the village, chuckling16 at her own daring and cleverness. Thick flakes17 were whirling everywhere: when she looked upwards18 they showed as little dark patches against the neutral-tinted sky, but when they passed the line of vision, each soft lump of crystals gleamed purest white as it joined the ever-deepening mass below. Every gate and stump19 and rubbish heap was a thing of beauty, glorified20 by the ethereal covering of the snow; the dead clumps22 of ragwort by the road side, the withered23 branches of oak, the shrivelled trails of bramble all seemed transformed by the feathery particles into a species of fairyland.
As Gwen left the village, and took the path that led across the moor24, she seemed to walk into a cloud of whiteness that enclosed her and shut her out from all before or behind. She stood still for a moment, and drew in her breath with a sense of intense exhilaration. She was all by herself in the midst of this new-found world of snow, and the very solitude25 had a fascination26. It is good sometimes for the spirit to be alone; strange vague thoughts, half memories, half imaginings, fill the brain like a full high tide; strong impressions, unfelt and unknowable in the distraction27 of human company, force themselves silently yet persistently28 upon us; the corporal and the tangible29 lose their hard outlines and begin to merge30 into the in
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visible—in such moments the soul grows. It is perhaps one of the disadvantages of a large family that the members are apt to lack what one might call spiritual elbow room, the constant close companionship, the fridging and rubbing of the continual, daily, hourly intercourse31, though an excellent discipline for the temper, leaves scant32 opportunity for the development of the individuality. Gwen could not have explained this in the least, but as she stood in the still quiet of the falling snow, she felt as if all the little fretting33 cares and worries and squabbles and anxieties dropped away into a subordinate place, and she were viewing life with another range of vision, where the proportions of things were quite changed.
She walked on, almost as if she were in a dream, without even the sound of a footstep to break the intense silence. She was now on the open wold, where there were neither hedges nor walls, but only a few stones to mark the road from the sedgy, heathery expanse of moor that stretched on either side. Gwen knew the way so thoroughly34 that she thought she could have followed it blindfold35. Every rock and boulder36 and bush were familiar, and as a rule were so many points along the daily path to school. Now, however, all the well-known landmarks37 seemed to have a strange similarity, and to be merging38 into one great white waste, in which tree stump was indistinguishable from stone or gorse clump21. The light was fading rapidly, for the clouds went on gathering39, and the flakes came down ever thicker and faster. So far Gwen had gone on with the utmost confidence, but now she stopped and entertained a doubt. She did
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not recognize the boulder on her right, and the juniper bush on her left was surely strange.
"I verily believe I've come wrong somehow," she muttered. "There's nothing for it but to turn back."
She could see her own footsteps in the snow behind, and for some hundreds of yards she traced them; then they began to get fainter and fainter, and presently they were hidden entirely40 by the new-fallen flakes. The road was completely obliterated41, there was nothing round her but shapeless indefinite whiteness. Then it dawned upon Gwen's soul that she was lost, lost hopelessly on the bare wold, where she might wander for miles without seeing the gleam of a farmhouse42 window or hearing even the bark of a shepherd's dog. The solitude that before had seemed so inspiring, suddenly became oppressive loneliness. What was she to do? Tramp on and on, perhaps in a circle, till she could go no farther? Already it was heavy walking, and under the rocks and bushes the drifts were deepening. Yet it would never do to sit down in the snow. Tired as she was, she must keep moving, and while the faintest gleam of daylight lasted she must try and find some guide-post to civilization.
"I wish I'd brought Jingles43. I never thought of him," she sighed, longing44 regretfully for the shaggy Irish terrier that acted watchdog at the Parsonage. "I wonder how soon they'll miss me at home? Not till tea-time, I expect, and then they'll probably think I'm at the Chambers'. Beatrice would guess where I'd gone. How furiously angry she'll be!"
For the first time a little awkward uncomfortable inward suggestion began to croak45 that elder sisters
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are occasionally right, and may even be wiser in their generation than tall girls who have entered the Fifth. Gwen's cough, which had been hacking46 all day, came on much worse, and began to hurt her chest: she wished she had brought her thick muffler. It was a subject of perennial47 dispute between herself and Beatrice, and she often discarded it simply because the latter told her to put it on. She hated to appear mollycoddlish, and sometimes indeed did very silly things out of sheer foolhardiness. At present she was bitterly cold. The snow had sifted48 inside her galoshes, and made her feet wet, and the chilly49 wind was creeping down her neck and up her sleeves, and whirling frozen flakes at her face. No cheery tea in the Chambers' drawing-room, and no delightful50 chat with Dick afterwards about photography and magic lanterns.
"The fact of the matter is that I've been an idiot!" she confessed to herself. "Anybody with an ounce of sense would have known it was too snowy to cross the wold. I ought to have gone round by the high road. I seemed to turn across here just out of habit."
Gwen could not tell how long she stumbled about. It felt like interminable hours as she wearily dragged herself along, watching the sky grow darker, and the landscape more and more blurred51, till she could scarcely distinguish which was snow and which was sky. At last her aching limbs absolutely refused to carry her any farther, and she crouched52 under the shelter of a big juniper bush that overhung a piece of rock. Here at least she was out of the biting, freezing wind. The comparative warmth made her feel sleepy. She roused herself with an effort. To sleep in the
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snow, she knew, was fatal, so she fell to rubbing her hands and feet to try and restore the circulation. All at once she started up and shouted aloud.
In the distance she had heard a short, sharp yelp53, and she reasoned that where there was a dog, a man might possibly be following. Again and again she called, till, to her intense relief, a "Hallo!" came in answer, and she made out a snowy form moving in her direction. The dog found her first; it bounded at her, whining54 and sniffing55 at her skirts, then rushed away barking loudly to inform its master of her whereabouts.
"Can you tell me where I am? I've got lost!" cried Gwen, wading56 through a drift in her eagerness to meet her rescuer.
"Why, you're close to our house—Rawlins' farm. Who is it? I can't see in the dark. Miss Gascoyne? Why, whatever are you doing here all alone?"
He might well ask, Gwen thought, but she ignored the question. She knew the man, for he was a parishioner, and two of his boys sang in the choir57 at church.
"Can you tell me how to get home?" she said, with chattering58 teeth and watering eyes.
"Better come and have a sup o' tea first; you look clemmed wi' the cold," he returned. "We'll tak' you back after wi' the lantern. It's nobbut a step to the farm."
He whistled to the dog and moved on, and Gwen stumbled after him, wondering how she had missed seeing the house when it was so near. She scarcely knew whether to pose in the light of a heroine or a
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culprit as she walked into Mrs. Rawlins' kitchen, but decided to give as guarded an account of the matter as she could. There would be explanations in plenty when she returned to the Parsonage. She was very glad to sit and thaw59 by the fire and drink hot tea, despite the difficulty of fencing with Mrs. Rawlins' questions, that good dame60 being consumed with curiosity, and not restrained by any feelings of delicacy61 from catechizing her guest.
"Yes. No, I wasn't coming back from school, it's the holidays—yes, I'm generally with one of my sisters—no, I wasn't delivering Parish Magazines, we sent yours by Charlie—yes, I expect my father will be missing me. Thanks very much for the tea; I think I must be going now," said Gwen, gulping62 her second cup and making a move.
"Here's the lantern, Jim," said Mrs. Rawlins to her husband, "and take Miss Gascoyne round by the road; 'tain't fit to venture over the moor. It's scarce a night for a Christian63 to be out—and her with that churchyard cough, too! Goodness, gracious, how it's blowing!"
Gwen reached home so spent and exhausted64 with her long tramp through the snow, that she had only wits enough left wearily to thank Mr. Rawlins for his escort, and to stumble in at the front door. Winnie ran forward with a cry of relief, and shouted to Beatrice the welcome news of the arrival.
"Don't ask me anything! Oh, I just want to go to bed; I'm done!" wailed65 Gwen, subsiding66 on to the nearest chair.
Beatrice took the hint, and refrained from any
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reproaches till she had tucked up the prodigal67 in warmed blankets, with a hot bottle at her feet, and seen her consume a basin full of steaming bread and milk. Then she observed:
"I suppose you know Father and half the village are out hunting for you with lanterns? They raised the Boy Scouts68 and broke up the Band of Hope meeting. They telephoned to the Police Station at North Ditton too. I expect you're rather proud of yourself!"
And Gwen turned her face to the wall and sobbed69 and coughed till she nearly choked.
Next afternoon a very miserable-looking object, with watering eyes and a swollen70 cheek sat wrapped in a shawl by the fire in Father's study. Gwen had made her peace with Beatrice and had been forgiven, but she was still "eating the husks" of her escapade in the shape of a thoroughly bad cold and a touch of toothache. She refused to stay in bed, yet the noise of the family sitting-room71 made her head throb72, so finally Father had taken pity upon her, and allowed her to bring her troubles into his sanctum. He had said very little about the events of the day before, but Gwen knew exactly what he must be thinking. She mopped her eyes with her handkerchief, and tried to believe it was her toothache that was making her cry. After a long time she said huskily, à propos of nothing in particular:
"THINGS GO SO HARDLY WITH ME SOMEHOW, DAD." "THINGS GO SO HARDLY WITH ME SOMEHOW, DAD."
"Things always go so hardly with me, somehow, Dad! I don't know how it is. I generally seem unlucky, both at school and at home. I suppose it's partly me, but if things were easier, I'd be better. I should, really."
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Father did not reply: he was busy addressing the motto-cards that he was sending to his parishioners for the New Year. He handed one to her silently.
And Gwen read:
"O do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers; pray for powers equal to your tasks. Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle. But you shall be a miracle. Every day you shall wonder at yourself, at the richness of life which has come to you by the Grace of God."
—Phillips Brooks73.
Gwen sat staring hard into the fire.
"I'll hang this up in my bedroom, Dad," she said presently.
"Do; you'll find it worth thinking about," replied Father, as he blotted74 the thirty-fourth envelope.
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1
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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wrung
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| 绞( wring的过去式和过去分词 )； 握紧（尤指别人的手）； 把（湿衣服）拧干； 绞掉（水） | |
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appreciation
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| n.评价；欣赏；感谢；领会，理解；价格上涨 | |
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chambers
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| n.房间( chamber的名词复数 )；（议会的）议院；卧室；会议厅 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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mollycoddle
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| v.溺爱，娇养 | |
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hoarse
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| adj.嘶哑的，沙哑的 | |
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virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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snarled
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| v.（指狗）吠，嗥叫， （人）咆哮( snarl的过去式和过去分词 )；咆哮着说，厉声地说 | |
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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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undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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disposition
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| n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署 | |
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eldest
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| adj.最年长的，最年老的 | |
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tiresome
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| adj.令人疲劳的，令人厌倦的 | |
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tyrant
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| n.暴君，专制的君主，残暴的人 | |
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chuckling
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| 轻声地笑( chuckle的现在分词 ) | |
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flakes
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| 小薄片( flake的名词复数 )； （尤指）碎片； 雪花； 古怪的人 | |
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upwards
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| adv.向上，在更高处...以上 | |
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stump
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| n.残株，烟蒂，讲演台；v.砍断，蹒跚而走 | |
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glorified
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| 美其名的，变荣耀的 | |
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clump
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| n.树丛，草丛；vi.用沉重的脚步行走 | |
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clumps
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| n.（树、灌木、植物等的）丛、簇( clump的名词复数 )；（土、泥等）团；块；笨重的脚步声v.（树、灌木、植物等的）丛、簇( clump的第三人称单数 )；（土、泥等）团；块；笨重的脚步声 | |
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withered
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| adj. 枯萎的，干瘪的，（人身体的部分器官）因病萎缩的或未发育良好的 动词wither的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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moor
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| n.荒野，沼泽；vt.(使)停泊；vi.停泊 | |
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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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fascination
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| n.令人着迷的事物，魅力，迷恋 | |
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distraction
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| n.精神涣散，精神不集中，消遣，娱乐 | |
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persistently
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| ad.坚持地；固执地 | |
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tangible
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| adj.有形的，可触摸的，确凿的，实际的 | |
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merge
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| v.(使)结合，(使)合并，(使)合为一体 | |
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intercourse
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| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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scant
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| adj.不充分的，不足的；v.减缩，限制，忽略 | |
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fretting
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| n. 微振磨损 adj. 烦躁的, 焦虑的 | |
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thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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blindfold
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| vt.蒙住…的眼睛；adj.盲目的；adv.盲目地；n.蒙眼的绷带[布等]； 障眼物，蒙蔽人的事物 | |
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boulder
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| n.巨砾；卵石，圆石 | |
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landmarks
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| n.陆标( landmark的名词复数 )；目标；（标志重要阶段的）里程碑 ~ (in sth)；有历史意义的建筑物（或遗址） | |
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merging
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| 合并（分类） | |
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gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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obliterated
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| v.除去( obliterate的过去式和过去分词 )；涂去；擦掉；彻底破坏或毁灭 | |
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farmhouse
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| n.农场住宅（尤指主要住房） | |
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jingles
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| 叮当声( jingle的名词复数 )； 节拍十分规则的简单诗歌 | |
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longing
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| n.（for）渴望 | |
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croak
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| vi.嘎嘎叫，发牢骚 | |
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hacking
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| n.非法访问计算机系统和数据库的活动 | |
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perennial
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| adj.终年的；长久的 | |
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48
sifted
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| v.筛( sift的过去式和过去分词 )；筛滤；细查；详审 | |
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chilly
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| adj.凉快的，寒冷的 | |
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50
delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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51
blurred
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| v.（使）变模糊( blur的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）难以区分；模模糊糊；迷离 | |
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52
crouched
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| v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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53
yelp
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| vi.狗吠 | |
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54
whining
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| n. 抱怨，牢骚 v. 哭诉，发牢骚 | |
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55
sniffing
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| n.探查法v.以鼻吸气，嗅，闻( sniff的现在分词 )；抽鼻子（尤指哭泣、患感冒等时出声地用鼻子吸气）；抱怨，不以为然地说 | |
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56
wading
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| （从水、泥等）蹚，走过，跋( wade的现在分词 ) | |
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choir
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| n.唱诗班，唱诗班的席位，合唱团，舞蹈团；v.合唱 | |
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58
chattering
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| n. （机器振动发出的）咔嗒声，(鸟等)鸣，啁啾 adj. 喋喋不休的，啾啾声的 动词chatter的现在分词形式 | |
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59
thaw
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| v.（使）融化，（使）变得友善；n.融化，缓和 | |
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60
dame
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| n.女士 | |
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61
delicacy
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| n.精致，细微，微妙，精良；美味，佳肴 | |
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62
gulping
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| v.狼吞虎咽地吃，吞咽( gulp的现在分词 )；大口地吸（气）；哽住 | |
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63
Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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64
exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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65
wailed
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| v.哭叫，哀号( wail的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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66
subsiding
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| v.（土地）下陷（因在地下采矿）( subside的现在分词 )；减弱；下降至较低或正常水平；一下子坐在椅子等上 | |
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67
prodigal
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| adj.浪费的，挥霍的，放荡的 | |
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68
scouts
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| 侦察员[机，舰]( scout的名词复数 )； 童子军； 搜索； 童子军成员 | |
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69
sobbed
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| 哭泣，啜泣( sob的过去式和过去分词 )； 哭诉，呜咽地说 | |
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70
swollen
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| adj.肿大的，水涨的；v.使变大，肿胀 | |
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71
sitting-room
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| n.（BrE）客厅，起居室 | |
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72
throb
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| v.震颤，颤动；(急速强烈地)跳动，搏动 | |
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73
brooks
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| n.小溪( brook的名词复数 ) | |
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74
blotted
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| 涂污( blot的过去式和过去分词 )； （用吸墨纸）吸干 | |
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