“One would think,” said Miss Lux, turning over with a fastidious fork the vegetable mysteries on her plate, “that on a night of celebration Miss Joliffe would have provided something more alluring2 than a scranbag.”
“It’s because it’s a celebration night that she doesn’t bother,” said Wragg, eating heartily3. “She knows quite well that there is enough good food waiting upstairs to sink a battleship.”
“Not for us, unfortunately. Miss Pym must put something in her pocket for us when she is coming away.”
“I bought some cream puffs4 in Larborough on the way home from the match,” Wragg confessed. “We can have our coffee in my room and have a gorge5.”
Miss Lux looked as if she would have preferred cheese straws, but in spite of her chill incisiveness6 she was a kind person, so she said: “I take that very kindly7 of you, so I do.”
“I thought you would be going to the theatre, or I would have suggested it before.”
“An out-moded convention,” said Miss Lux.
“Don’t you like the theatre?” asked the surprised Lucy, to whom the theatre was still a part of childhood’s magic.
Miss Lux stopped looking with a questioning revulsion at a piece of carrot, and said: “Have you ever considered what you would think of the theatre if you were taken to it for the first time, now, without the referred affection of childhood pantomimes and what not? Would you really find a few dressed-up figures posturing9 in a lighted box entertaining? And the absurd convention of intervals10 — once devoted11 to the promenade12 of toilettes and now perpetuated13 for the benefit of the bar. What other entertainment would permit of such arbitrary interruption? Does one stop in the middle of a symphony to go and have a drink?”
“But a play is made that way,” Lucy protested.
“Yes. As I said; an out-moded convention.”
This dashed Lucy a little, not because of her lingering affection for the theatre, but because she had been so wrong about Miss Lux. She would have said that Miss Lux would be a passionate14 attender of try-out performances in the drearier15 suburbs of plays devoted to a Cause and Effects.
“Well, I nearly went tonight myself,” Wragg said, “just to see Edward Adrian again. I had a terrific rave16 on him when I was a student. I expect he’s a bit passé now. Have you ever seen him?”
“Not on the stage. He used to spend his holidays with us when he was a boy.” Miss Lux ran her fork once more through the heap on her plate and decided17 that there was nothing further worth her attention.
“Used to spend the holidays! At your house?”
“Yes, he went to school with my brother.”
“Good heavens! how absolutely incredible!”
“What is incredible about it?”
“I mean, one just doesn’t think of Edward Adrian as being an ordinary person that people know. Just a schoolboy like anyone else.”
“A very horrid18 little boy.”
“Oh, no!”
“A quite revolting little boy. Always watching himself in mirrors. And possessed19 of a remarkable20 talent for getting the best of everything that was going.” She sounded calm, and clinical, and detached.
“Oh, Catherine, you shatter me.”
“No one I have ever met had the same genius for leaving someone else holding the baby as Teddy Adrian.”
“He has other kinds of genius though, surely,” Lucy ventured.
“He has talent, yes.”
“Do you still see him?” asked Wragg, still a little dazzled to be getting first-hand news of Olympus.
“Only by accident. When my brother died we gave up the house that our parents had had, and there were no more family gatherings22.”
“And you’ve never seen him on the stage?”
“Never.”
“And you didn’t even go a sixpenny bus-ride into Larborough to see him play tonight.”
“I did not. I told you, the theatre bores me inexpressibly.”
“But it’s Shakespeare.”
“Very well, it’s Shakespeare. I would rather sit at home and read him in the company of Doreen Wragg and her cream puffs. You won’t forget to put something in your pocket for us when you leave your feast, will you, Miss Pym? Anything gratefully received by the starving proletariat. Macaroons, Mars bars, blood oranges, left-over sandwiches, squashed sausage rolls —”
“I’ll put a hat round,” promised Lucy. “I’ll pass the hat and quaver: ‘Don’t forget the Staff.’”
But as she lifted the champagne23 bottle out of its melting ice in her wash-bowl she did not feel so gay about it. This party was going to be an ordeal24, there was no denying it. She tied a big bow of ribbon to the neck of the bottle, to make it look festive25 and to take away any suggestion of “bringing her own liquor”; the result was rather like a duchess in a paper cap, but she didn’t think that the simile26 would occur to the students. She had hesitated over her own toilette, being divided between a rough-and-tumble outfit27 suitable to a cushions-on-the-floor gathering21, and the desire to do her hosts honour. She had paid them the compliment of putting on her “lecture” frock, and doing an extra-careful make-up. If Henrietta had taken away from this party by her vagaries28, she, Lucy, would bring all she could to it.
Judging by the noise in other rooms, and the running back and fore8 with kettles, Stewart’s was not the only party in Leys that evening. The corridors smelt29 strongly of coffee, and waves of laughter and talk rose and died away as doors were opened and shut. Even the Juniors seemed to be entertaining; if they had no Posts to celebrate they had the glory of having their first Final behind them. Lucy remembered that she had not found out from The Nut Tart30 how she had fared in that Anatomy31 Final. (“Today’s idea may be nonsense tomorrow, but a clavicle is a clavicle for all time.”) When she passed the students’ notice-board again she must look for Desterro’s name.
She had to knock twice at the door of Number Ten before the sound penetrated32, but when a flushed Stewart opened the door and drew her in a sudden shyness fell on the group, so that they got to their feet in polite silence like well-brought-up children.
“We are so glad to have you,” Stewart was beginning, when Dakers sighted the bottle and all formality was at an end.
“Drink!” she shrieked33. “As I live and breathe, drink! Oh, Miss Pym you are a poppet!”
“I hope that I am not breaking any rules,” Lucy said, remembering that there had been an expression in Miss Joliffe’s eye that she had still not accounted for, “but it seemed to me an occasion for champagne.”
“It’s a triple occasion,” Stewart said. “Dakers and Thomas are celebrating too. It couldn’t be more of an occasion. It was lovely of you to think of the champagne.”
“It will be sacrilege to drink it out of tooth-glasses,” Hasselt said.
“Well, anyhow, we drink it now, as aperitif34. A course by itself. Pass up your glasses everyone. Miss Pym, the chair is for you.”
A basket chair had been imported and lined with a motley collection of cushions; except for the hard chair at the desk it was the only legitimate35 seat in the room, the rest of the party having brought their cushions with them and being now disposed about the floor or piled in relaxed heaps like kittens on the bed. Someone had tied a yellow silk handkerchief over the light so that a golden benevolence36 took the place of the usual hard brightness. The twilight37 beyond the wide-open window made a pale blue back-cloth that would soon be a dark one. It was like any student party of her own college days, but as a picture it had more brilliance38 than her own parties had had. Was it just that the colours of the cushions were gayer? That the guests were better physical types, without lank39 hair, spectacles, and studious pallor?
No, of course it wasn’t that. She knew what it was. There was no cigarette smoke.
“O’Donnell isn’t here yet,” Thomas said, collecting tooth-glasses from the guests and laying them on the cloth that covered the desk.
“I expect she’s helping40 Rouse to put up the boom,” a Disciple41 said.
“She can’t be,” a second Disciple said, “it’s Saturday.”
“Even a P.T.I. stops work on a Sunday,” said a third.
“Even Rouse,” commented the fourth.
“Is Miss Rouse still practising rotatory travelling?” Lucy asked.
“Oh, yes,” they said. “She will be, up to the day of the Dem.”
“And when does she find time?”
“She goes when she is dressed in the morning. Before first class.”
“Six o’clock,” said Lucy. “Horrible.”
“It’s no worse than any other time,” they said. “At least one is fresh, and there is no hurry, and you can have the gym. to yourself. Besides, it’s the only possible time. The boom has to be put away before first class.”
“She doesn’t have to go,” Stewart said, “the knack42 has come back. But she is terrified she will lose it again before the Dem.”
“I can understand that, my dear,” Dakers said. “Think what an immortal43 fool one would feel hanging like a sick monkey from the boom, with all the élite looking on, and Fr?ken simply stabbing one with that eye of hers. My dear, death would be a happy release. If Donnie isn’t doing her usual chore for Rouse, where is she? She’s the only one not here.”
“Poor Don,” Thomas said, “she hasn’t got a post yet.” Thomas with her junior-of-three in Wales was feeling like a millionaire.
“Don’t worry over Don,” Hasselt said, “the Irish always fall on their feet.”
But Miss Pym was looking round for Innes, and not finding her. Nor was Beau there.
Stewart, seeing her wandering eye, interpreted the question in it and said: “Beau and Innes wanted me to tell you how sorry they were to miss the party, and to hope that you would be their guest at another one before the end of term.”
“Beau will be giving one for Innes,” Hasselt said. “To celebrate Arlinghurst.”
“As a matter of fact, we’re all giving a party for Innes,” a Disciple said.
“A sort of general jamboree,” said a second Disciple.
“It’s an honour for College, after all,” said a third.
“You’ll come to that, won’t you, Miss Pym,” said a fourth, making it a statement rather than a question.
“Nothing would please me more,” Lucy said. And then, glad to skate away from such thin ice: “What has happened to Beau and Innes?”
“Beau’s people turned up unexpectedly and took them off to the theatre in Larborough,” Stewart said.
“That’s what it is to own a Rolls,” Thomas said, quite without envy. “You just dash around England as the fit takes you. When my people want to move they have to yoke44 up the old grey mare45 — a brown cob, actually — and trot46 twenty miles before they reach any place at all.”
“Farmers?” Lucy asked, seeing the lonely narrow Welsh road winding47 through desolation.
“No, my father is a clergyman. But we have to keep a horse to work the place, and we can’t have a horse and a car too.”
“Oh, well,” said a Disciple arranging herself more comfortably on the bed, “who wants to go to the theatre anyhow?”
“Of all the boring ways of spending an evening,” said a second.
“Sitting with one’s knees in someone’s back,” said a third.
“With one’s eyes glued to opera glasses,” said a fourth.
“Why opera glasses?” asked Lucy, surprised to find Miss Lux’s attitude repeated in a gathering where sophistication had not yet destroyed a juvenile48 thirst for entertainment.
“What would you see without them?”
“Little dolls walking about in a box.”
“Like something on Brighton pier49.”
“Except that on Brighton pier you can see the expression on the faces.”
They were rather like something from Brighton pier themselves, Lucy thought. A turn. A sort of extended Tweedledum and Tweedledee. They were apparently50 not moved to speech unless one of their number made a remark; when the others felt called upon to produce corroborative51 evidence.
“Me, I’m only too glad to put my feet up and do nothing for a change,” Hasselt said. “I’m breaking in a new pair of ballet shoes for the Dem. and my blisters52 are spectacular.”
“Miss Hasselt,” said Stewart, obviously quoting, “it is a student’s business to preserve her body in a state of fitness at all times.”
“That may be,” said Hasselt, “but I’m not standing53 in a bus for five miles on a Saturday night to go anywhere, least of all to a theatre.”
“Anyhow, it’s only Shakespeare, my dears,” Dakers said. “It is the cause, my soul!’” she burlesqued54, clutching at her breast.
“Edward Adrian, though,” volunteered Lucy, feeling that her beloved theatre must have one champion.
“Who is Edward Adrian?” Dakers asked, in genuine inquiry55.
“He’s that weary-looking creature who looks like a moulting eagle,” Stewart said, too busy about her hostess’s duties to be aware of the reaction on Lucy: that was a horribly vivid summing-up of Edward Adrian, as seen by the unsentimental eyes of modern youth. “We used to be taken to see him when I was at school in Edinburgh.”
“And didn’t you enjoy it?” Lucy asked, remembering that Stewart’s name headed the lists on the notice-board along with Innes’s and Beau’s, and that mental activity would not be for her the chore that it probably was for some of the others.
“Oh, it was better than sitting in a class-room,” Stewart allowed. “But it was all terribly — old-fashioned. Nice to look at, but a bit dreary56. I’m a tooth-glass short.”
“Mine, I suppose,” O’Donnell said, coming in on the words and handing over her glass. “I’m afraid I’m late. I was looking for some shoes that my feet would go into. Forgive these, won’t you, Miss Pym,” she indicated the bedroom slippers57 she was wearing. “My feet have died on me.”
“Do you know who Edward Adrian is?” Lucy asked her.
“Certainly I do,” O’Donnell said. “I’ve had a rave on him ever since I went to see him at the age of twelve in Belfast.”
“You seem to be the only person in this room either to know or to admire him.”
“Ah, the heathen,” said O’Donnell, casting a scornful eye on the gathering — and it seemed to Lucy that O’Donnell was suspiciously bright about the eyes, as if she had been crying. “It’s in Larborough I would be this minute, sitting at his feet, if it wasn’t practically the end of term and I lacked the price of a seat.”
And if, thought Lucy pitying, you hadn’t felt that backing out of this party would be put down to your being the only one present not yet to have a post. She liked the girl who had dried her eyes and thought of the bedroom slipper58 excuse and come gaily59 to the party that was none of hers.
“Well,” said Stewart, busy with the wire of the cork60, “now that O’Donnell is here we can open the bottle.”
“Good heavens, champagne!” O’Donnell said.
The wine came foaming61 into the thick blunt tooth-glasses, and they turned to Lucy expectantly.
“To Stewart in Scotland, to Thomas in Wales, to Dakers at Ling Abbey,” she said.
They drank that.
“And to all our friends between Capetown and Manchester,” Stewart said.
And they drank that too.
“Now, Miss Pym, what will you eat?”
And Lucy settled down happily to enjoy herself. Rouse was not going to be a guest; and she was by some special intervention62 of Providence63 in the shape of rich parents in a Rolls–Royce going to be spared the ordeal of sitting opposite an Innes bursting with happiness that had no vestige64 of foundation.
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1
ken
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| n.视野，知识领域 | |
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alluring
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| adj.吸引人的，迷人的 | |
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heartily
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| adv.衷心地，诚恳地，十分，很 | |
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4
puffs
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| n.吸( puff的名词复数 )；（烟斗或香烟的）一吸；一缕（烟、蒸汽等）；（呼吸或风的）呼v.使喷出( puff的第三人称单数 )；喷着汽（或烟）移动；吹嘘；吹捧 | |
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5
gorge
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| n.咽喉，胃，暴食，山峡；v.塞饱，狼吞虎咽地吃 | |
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incisiveness
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| n.敏锐，深刻 | |
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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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8
fore
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| adv.在前面；adj.先前的；在前部的；n.前部 | |
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9
posturing
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| 做出某种姿势( posture的现在分词 ) | |
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10
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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devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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12
promenade
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| n./v.散步 | |
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perpetuated
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| vt.使永存（perpetuate的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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14
passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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15
drearier
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| 使人闷闷不乐或沮丧的( dreary的比较级 )； 阴沉的； 令人厌烦的； 单调的 | |
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16
rave
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| vi.胡言乱语；热衷谈论；n.热情赞扬 | |
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17
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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18
horrid
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| adj.可怕的；令人惊恐的；恐怖的；极讨厌的 | |
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19
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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gatherings
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| 聚集( gathering的名词复数 )； 收集； 采集； 搜集 | |
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23
champagne
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| n.香槟酒；微黄色 | |
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ordeal
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| n.苦难经历，（尤指对品格、耐力的）严峻考验 | |
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festive
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| adj.欢宴的，节日的 | |
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simile
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| n.直喻，明喻 | |
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outfit
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| n.（为特殊用途的）全套装备，全套服装 | |
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vagaries
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| n.奇想( vagary的名词复数 )；异想天开；异常行为；难以预测的情况 | |
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smelt
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| v.熔解，熔炼；n.银白鱼，胡瓜鱼 | |
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tart
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| adj.酸的；尖酸的，刻薄的；n.果馅饼；淫妇 | |
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anatomy
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| n.解剖学，解剖；功能，结构，组织 | |
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penetrated
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| adj. 击穿的，鞭辟入里的 动词penetrate的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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33
shrieked
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| v.尖叫( shriek的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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aperitif
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| n.饭前酒 | |
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legitimate
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| adj.合法的，合理的，合乎逻辑的；v.使合法 | |
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benevolence
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| n.慈悲，捐助 | |
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twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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38
brilliance
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| n.光辉，辉煌，壮丽，（卓越的）才华，才智 | |
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lank
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| adj.瘦削的；稀疏的 | |
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helping
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| n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的 | |
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disciple
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| n.信徒，门徒，追随者 | |
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42
knack
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| n.诀窍，做事情的灵巧的，便利的方法 | |
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43
immortal
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| adj.不朽的；永生的，不死的；神的 | |
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yoke
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| n.轭；支配；v.给...上轭，连接，使成配偶 | |
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mare
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| n.母马，母驴 | |
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46
trot
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| n.疾走，慢跑；n.老太婆；现成译本；(复数）trots:腹泻（与the 连用）；v.小跑，快步走，赶紧 | |
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47
winding
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| n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈 | |
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48
juvenile
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| n.青少年，少年读物；adj.青少年的，幼稚的 | |
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49
pier
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| n.码头；桥墩，桥柱；[建]窗间壁，支柱 | |
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50
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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51
corroborative
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| adj.确证（性）的，确凿的 | |
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52
blisters
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| n.水疱( blister的名词复数 )；水肿；气泡 | |
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53
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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54
burlesqued
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| v.（嘲弄地）模仿，（通过模仿）取笑( burlesque的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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55
inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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56
dreary
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| adj.令人沮丧的，沉闷的，单调乏味的 | |
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57
slippers
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| n. 拖鞋 | |
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slipper
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| n.拖鞋 | |
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gaily
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| adv.欢乐地，高兴地 | |
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60
cork
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| n.软木，软木塞 | |
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61
foaming
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| adj.布满泡沫的；发泡 | |
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62
intervention
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| n.介入，干涉，干预 | |
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63
providence
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| n.深谋远虑，天道，天意；远见；节约；上帝 | |
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vestige
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| n.痕迹，遗迹，残余 | |
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