One of her Oxford3 cousins, some years ago, had made her a very pleasant and tantalising present of three books of blank paper, very good hand-made paper, gilt4 edged along the top and bound in green leather. She had resolved at once to write all sorts of things in these books, so many sorts of things, that still the pages remained virgin5. But now was a great occasion. She had brought them with her to Italy. She looked for them and found them and took out one of these little volumes and handled it and turned its pages over. In this new phase of existence she had entered, she found her pleasure in the sense of touch much increased and it seemed to her that her delight in fine and pretty things was greater than it had ever been before. She almost caressed6 the little book and stood before her window holding it with both hands dreaming of the things she would put into it. She saw, though not very distinctly, pregnant aphorisms7 and a kind of index to her knowledge and beliefs spreading over those nice pages. The binding8 was quite beautifully tooled, the leather had a faint, exquisite10 smell and the end paper was creamy, powdered with gold stars, all held together by a diamond mesh11.
She mused12 a great deal about what she would write first, but for a time she could not sit down to think out anything to the writing stage because Catherine would insist on talking to her. Hitherto she and Catherine had got on very well together but without any excesses of directness or intimacy13. She had always accepted the view of her husband and his set that Catherine was “all right” and more sinned against than sinning, but she had never been disposed to wander imaginatively in those romantic tangles14 which made Catherine’s passions, it would seem, so different from her own.
Catherine’s role was to be a gallant15 and splendid beauty, a summoner and a tester of men. Men who were going east turned west at her passing and, for better or worse, were never quite the same men again. She had summoned and tested her wealthy husband until he had become an almost willing respondent, with a co-respondent of no importance, and left her the freest woman in the world. What she did was right; the essential purity of her character was not so much accepted as waved before the world like a flag. She did quite a lot of things. Cynthia had shirked her confidences because among other reasons she felt that it would make her own relations to Philip seem too abject16. But the confidences came.
“I’d like to take you in the car along the upper Corniche and up to Puget-Théniers or Annot to-day,” she said. “It would do us both good. Everybody going has left me — jangling.”
“We might run against your Mr. Sempack,” said Cynthia. “Annot? Aren’t the Verdon gorges17 somewhere there?”
“I don’t see why all the blue mountains of France should be closed to us because Mr. Sempack is wandering about with a knapsack in a bad temper trying to remember something he has never as a matter of fact forgotten.”
Mrs. Rylands made no effort to understand. “We’d have to ask Mr. Plantagenet-Buchan to come,” she remarked.
Lady Catherine by a beautiful grimace18 expressed an extreme aversion to Mr. Plantagenet-Buchan. “This little sitting-room19 of yours is the only refuge. . . . ‘Dear Lady,’ he says. . . . Why doesn’t he go off to that other cultivated American of his at Torre Pellice?”
She became derogatory of Mr. Plantagenet-Buchan.
“I saw him from my window. He was walking along the path to the marble faun and he was waving that hand of his and bowing. All to himself. I suppose he was rehearsing some new remark.”
Her mind went off at a tangent. “Cynthia,” she said. “Do you think a man like Mr. Plantagenet-Buchan ever makes love to women — I mean, really makes love — actually?”
Mrs. Rylands declined to take up the speculation20. Meanwhile Lady Catherine threw out material. “He may be seventy. Of course he’s pickled for fifty-five. He’d say things. Elegant things. Gallantry’s in the man. He’d say everything there had to be said perfectly21 — but then? . . . ” She brooded malignantly22 on possible situations.
“I suppose men go on with the forms of love-making right to the end of their lives — just like a hen runs about when its head’s chopped off.”
She came round through such speculations23 to what was evidently her disturbing preoccupation. “Now Mr. Sempack talks,” she said.
She plunged24. “What do you think of Mr. Sempack, Cynthia? What do you think of him? What do you think of a man like that? There’s an effect of strength and greatness about him. And yet what does he do? Is he a snare25 and a delusion26?”
She seated herself on the end of the sofa, side-saddle fashion with one foot on the floor, and regarded her friend expectantly.
“What are you up to with Mr. Sempack?” said Cynthia.
“Quarrelling.”
Mrs. Rylands would not take that as an answer. She remained quietly interrogative.
“He exasperates27 me,” said Lady Catherine.
“Everyone,” she went on, “seems to look up to him and respect him. Everyone, that is, who’s heard of him. Why? He’s tremendously big and I suppose there’s something big about the way he looks at the world and talks about progress, and treats all we are doing as something that will be all over in no time and that cannot matter in the least, but, after all, what does all this towering precipice28 sort of business amount to? He isn’t really a precipice. I suppose if some one up there in the mountains held him up and demanded his pocket-book, he’d do something about it. He couldn’t just try to pass it off with the remark that robbers would be out-of-date in quite a few centuries’ time and so it didn’t matter. Especially if they hit him or something.”
Mrs. Rylands was smilingly unhelpful.
“I believe he’d hit back,” said Lady Catherine.
“I don’t see why he shouldn’t,” said Mrs. Rylands.
“He’d be clumsy but he might hit hard. He’s one of those queer men who seem to keep strong without exercise. Unless walking is exercise.”
Mrs. Rylands offered no contributions.
“He seems to think women are like raspberries in a garden. You pick one as you go past, but you don’t go out of your way for her.”
“I can’t imagine a Mrs. Sempack.”
“It’s a bit of an exercise,” said Lady Catherine. “Rather like that awful hat of his, she’d be. Or his valise. Put up on the luggage rack, left in the consigne, covered with rags of old labels, jammed down and locked violently with everything inside higgledy-piggledy. And yet —— What is it, Cynthia? There’s something attractive about that man.”
“One or two little things I’ve observed,” reflected Cynthia absently, looking down at the dear green leather book in her hand. Then she regarded her friend.
Lady Catherine coloured slightly. “I admit it,” she said. “I suppose it’s just because he’s so wanting in visible delicacy29. It gives him an effect of being tremendously male. He is that. Don’t you think that’s it, Cynthia? And something about him — as though there were immense forces still to be awakened30. His voice; it’s a good voice. And something that smoulders deep in his eyes.”
Mrs. Rylands suddenly resolved to become aggressive.
“Catherine! Tell me; why did he go away from here?”
“That’s exactly what I want to know. He meant to go for good.”
“That’s why you made me see him.”
“I thought it was your place to see him.”
Mrs. Rylands put her head on one side and regarded her friend critically. “Did you make love to him —much?”
Lady Catherine’s colour became quite bright. “I want to see, my dear, what that man is like awake. I am curious. Like most women. And he hesitates and then runs away — to walk about Gorges! He did — hesitate. But this flight! . . . And here am I— left — with nothing in the world to do! . . . Except of course look after dear little you. Who’re perfectly able to look after yourself.”
Mrs. Rylands smiled with a perfect understanding at her friend. “And talk about him.”
“Well, he interests me.”
“You made love to him — and startled and amazed him. Why did you do it? You didn’t want to be Lady Catherine Sempack?”
“I want to make that man realise his position in the world. Making love — isn’t matrimony. One can be interested.”
It occurred to Lady Catherine that, in view of recent events, she might be wandering near a sore point. But Mrs. Rylands’ next remark showed her fully9 able to cover any sore point that might be endangered.
“Catherine — I don’t want to know about things I’m not supposed to know about — but isn’t there some one in England called Sir Harry31 Fearon-Owen? Who always goes about with his hyphen? Hasn’t he some sort of connexion ——?”
Lady Catherine concealed32 considerable annoyance33 rather imperfectly. She took a moment or so before she replied compactly.
“He’s in England. And he’s busy. Too busy even to write to his friends.”
“He’s preparing to save England from the Communist revolution, isn’t he? He’s one of Colonel Bullace’s great idols34. The Colonel talked about him.”
Lady Catherine allowed herself to be reluctantly drawn35 off the Sempack scent36.
“It’s amazing the things men will take seriously. Do you believe there is any sense in this talk about a revolution? Harry’s great stunt37 is the National Service League. As you probably know. Plans for doing without the workers in all the public services and that sort of thing — if it comes to a fight. I liked him. For a time. He’s a very good sort. And handsome. With a voice. Opera tenor38 blood perhaps — it saves him from being dull. But I can’t go on being in love with a man who’s in love with a Civil War, that nobody in his senses believes will happen.”
Lady Catherine wriggled39 off her sofa end and went to the window. She felt that Cynthia by dragging in Sir Harry had deliberately40 spoilt a good conversation. She still had a lot of speculative41 matter about Sempack in her mind that she would have liked to turn over. She had hardly begun. And the Fearon-Owen affair had got itself a little disjointed and wasn’t any good for talking about.
“These glorious empty days!” she said without any apparent perception of the trees and flowering terraces and sapphire42 sea below.
She stood against the blue for a time quite still.
She came back into the room and hung a shadowy loveliness over her recumbent hostess.
“If I thought there was a word of truth in this Great Rebellion of the Proletariat I’d be off to England by the night train.”
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1
condemned
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| adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
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2
philosophical
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| adj.哲学家的，哲学上的，达观的 | |
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3
Oxford
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| n.牛津（英国城市） | |
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4
gilt
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| adj.镀金的；n.金边证券 | |
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5
virgin
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| n.处女，未婚女子；adj.未经使用的；未经开发的 | |
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6
caressed
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| 爱抚或抚摸…( caress的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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7
aphorisms
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| 格言，警句( aphorism的名词复数 ) | |
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8
binding
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| 有约束力的，有效的，应遵守的 | |
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9
fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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10
exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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11
mesh
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| n.网孔，网丝，陷阱；vt.以网捕捉，啮合，匹配；vi.适合； [计算机]网络 | |
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12
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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13
intimacy
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| n.熟悉，亲密，密切关系，亲昵的言行 | |
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14
tangles
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| （使）缠结， （使）乱作一团( tangle的第三人称单数 ) | |
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15
gallant
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| adj.英勇的，豪侠的；(向女人)献殷勤的 | |
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16
abject
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| adj.极可怜的，卑屈的 | |
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17
gorges
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| n.山峡，峡谷( gorge的名词复数 )；咽喉v.（用食物把自己）塞饱，填饱( gorge的第三人称单数 )；作呕 | |
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18
grimace
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| v.做鬼脸，面部歪扭 | |
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19
sitting-room
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| n.（BrE）客厅，起居室 | |
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20
speculation
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| n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机 | |
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21
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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22
malignantly
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| 怀恶意地； 恶毒地； 有害地； 恶性地 | |
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23
speculations
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| n.投机买卖( speculation的名词复数 )；思考；投机活动；推断 | |
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24
plunged
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| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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25
snare
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| n.陷阱，诱惑，圈套；（去除息肉或者肿瘤的）勒除器；响弦，小军鼓；vt.以陷阱捕获，诱惑 | |
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26
delusion
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| n.谬见，欺骗，幻觉，迷惑 | |
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27
exasperates
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| n.激怒，触怒( exasperate的名词复数 )v.激怒，触怒( exasperate的第三人称单数 ) | |
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28
precipice
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| n.悬崖，危急的处境 | |
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29
delicacy
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| n.精致，细微，微妙，精良；美味，佳肴 | |
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30
awakened
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| v.（使）醒( awaken的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到 | |
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31
harry
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| vt.掠夺，蹂躏，使苦恼 | |
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32
concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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33
annoyance
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| n.恼怒，生气，烦恼 | |
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34
idols
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| 偶像( idol的名词复数 )； 受崇拜的人或物； 受到热爱和崇拜的人或物； 神像 | |
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35
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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36
scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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37
stunt
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| n.惊人表演，绝技，特技；vt.阻碍...发育，妨碍...生长 | |
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38
tenor
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| n.男高音（歌手），次中音（乐器），要旨，大意 | |
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39
wriggled
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| v.扭动，蠕动，蜿蜒行进( wriggle的过去式和过去分词 )；（使身体某一部位）扭动；耍滑不做，逃避（应做的事等） | |
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40
deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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41
speculative
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| adj.思索性的，暝想性的，推理的 | |
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42
sapphire
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| n.青玉，蓝宝石；adj.天蓝色的 | |
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