Tony removed his hands from his face. “ With the utmost assurance or rather with the utmost serenity3. But she treats that now as a mere4 detail.”
Rose wondered. “You mean she’s really con2 vinced that she’s sinking? ”
“So she says.”
“But is she, good heavens? Such a thing isn’t a matter of opinion: it’s a fact or it’s not a fact.”
“It’s not a fact,” said Tony Bream. “ How can it be when one has only to see that her strength hasn’t failed? She of course says it . has, but she has a remarkable5 deal of it to show. What’s the vehemence6 with which she expresses herself but a sign of increasing life? It’s excitement, of course partly; but it’s also striking energy.”
“Excitement? ” Rose repeated. “ I thought you ust said she was ‘ serene7.’ ”
Tony hesitated, but he was perfectly8 clear. “She’s calm about what she calls leaving me, bless her heart; she seems to have accepted that prospect9 with the strangest resignation. What she’s uneasy, what she’s in fact still more strangely tormented10 and exalted11 about, is another matter.”
“I see the thing you just mentioned.”
“She takes an interest,” Tony went on, “ she asks questions, she sends messages, she speaks out with all her voice. She’s delighted to know that Mr. Vidal has at last come to you, and she told me to tell you so from her, and to tell him so to tell you both, in fact, how she rejoices that what you’ve so long waited for is now so close at hand.”
Rose took this in with lowered eyes. “ How dear of her! ” she murmured.
“She asked me particularly about Mr. Vidal,” Tony continued “ how he looks, how he strikes me, how you met. She gave me indeed a private message for him.”
Rose faintly smiled. “ A private one? ”
“Oh, only to spare your modesty12: a word to the effect that she answers for you.”
“In what way? ” Rose asked.
“Why, as the charmingest, cleverest, handsomest, in every way most wonderful wife that ever any man will have had.”
“She is wound up! ” Rose laughed. Then she said: “ And all the while what does Nurse think? I don’t mean,” she added with the same slight irony13, “ of whether I shall do for Dennis.”
“Of Julia’s condition? She wants Ramage to come back.”
Rose thought a moment. “ She’s rather a goose, I think she loses her head.”
“So I’ve taken the liberty of telling her.” Tony sat forward, his eyes on the floor, his elbows on his knees and his hands nervously14 rubbing each other. Presently he rose with a jerk. “ What do you suppose she wants me to do? ”
Rose tried to suppose. “ Nurse wants you? ”
“No that ridiculous girl.” Nodding back at his wife’s room, he came and stood before the sofa.
Half reclining again, Rose turned it over, raising her eyes to him. “ Do you really mean something ridiculous? ”
“Under the circumstances grotesque15.”
“Well,” Rose suggested, smiling, “she wants you to allow her to name her successor.”
“Just the contrary! ” Tony seated himself where Dennis Vidal had sat. “ She wants me to promise her she shall have no successor.”
His companion looked at him hard; with her surprise at something in his tone she had just visibly coloured. “ I see.” She was at a momentary16 loss. “Do you call that grotesque? ”
Tony, for an instant, was evidently struck by her surprise; then seeing the reason of it and blushing too a little, “ Not the idea, my dear Rose God forbid! ” he exclaimed. “ What I’m speaking of is the mistake of giving that amount of colour to her insistence17 meeting her as if one accepted the situation as she represents it and were really taking leave of her.
Rose appeared to understand and even to be impressed. “You think that will make her worse? ”
“Why, arranging everything as if she’s going to die! ” Tony sprang up afresh; his trouble was obvious and he fell into the restless pacing that had been his resource all the morning.
His interlocutress watched his agitation18. “Mayn’t it be that if you do just that she’ll, on the contrary, immediately find herself better? ”
Tony wandered, again scratching his head. “From the spirit of contradiction? I’ll do anything in life that will make her happy, or just simply make her quiet: I’ll treat her demand as intensely reasonable even, if it isn’t better to treat it as an ado about nothing. But it stuck in my crop to lend myself, that way, to a death-bed solemnity. Heaven deliver us! ” Half irritated and half anxious, suffer ing from his tenderness a twofold effect, he dropped into another seat with his hands in his pockets and his long legs thrust out
“Does she wish it very solemn? ” Rose asked.
“She’s in dead earnest, poor darling. She wants a promise on my sacred honour a vow19 of the most portentous20 kind.”
Rose was silent a little. “ You didn’t give it? ”
“I turned it off I refused to take any such discussion seriously. I said: ‘ My own darling, how can I meet you on so hateful a basis? Wait till you are dying! ‘ ” He lost himself an instant; then he was again on his feet. “ How in the world can she dream I’m capable? ” He hadn’t
patience even to finish his phrase.
Rose, however, finished it. “ Of taking a second wife? Ah, that’s another affair! ” she sadly exclaimed. “ We’ve nothing to do with that,” she added. “ Ot course you understand poor Julia’s feeling.”
“Her feeling? ” Tony once more stood in front of her.
“Why, what’s at the bottom of her dread21 of your marrying again.”
“Assuredly I do! Mrs, Grantham naturally she’s at the bottom. She has filled Julia with the vision of my perhaps giving our child a step mother.”
“Precisely,” Rose said, “ and if you had known, as I knew it, Julia’s girlhood, you would do justice to the force of that horror. It possesses her whole being she would prefer that the child should die.”
Tony Bream, musing22, shook his head with dark decision. “Well, I would prefer that they neither of them should! ”
“The simplest thing, then, is to give her your word.”
“My ‘ word ‘ isn’t enough,” Tony said: “ she wants mystic rites23 and spells! The simplest thing, moreover, was exactly what I desired to do. My objection to the performance she demands was that this was just what it seemed to me not to be.”
“Try it,” said Rose, smiling.
“To bring her round? ”
“Before the Doctor returns. When he comes, you know, he won’t let you go back to her.”
“Then I’ll go now,” said Tony, already at the door.
Rose had risen from the sofa. “ Be very brief but be very strong.”
“I’ll swear by all the gods that or any other nonsense.” Rose stood there opposite to him with a fine, rich urgency which operated as a detention24. “I see you’re right,” he declared. “ You always are, and I’m always indebted to you.” Then as he opened the door: “ Is there anything else? ”
“Any thing else?”
“I mean that you advise.”
She thought a moment. “ Nothing but that for you to seem to enter thoroughly25 into her idea, to show her you understand it as she understands it herself.”
Tony looked vague. “As she does? ”
“Why, for the lifetime of your daughter.” As he appeared still not fully26 to apprehend27, she risked: “ If you should lose Effie the reason would fail.”
Tony, at this, jerked back his head with a flush. “My dear Rose, you don’t imagine that it’s as a needed vow ”
“That you would give it? ” she broke in. “ Certainly I don’t, any more than I suppose the degree of your fidelity28 to be the ground on which we’re talking. But the thing is to convince Julia, and I said that only because she’ll be more convinced if you strike her as really looking at what you subscribe29 to.”
Tony gave his nervous laugh. “ Don’t you know I always ‘put down my name’ especially to ‘appeals’ in the most reckless way? ” Then abruptly30, in a different tone, as if with a pas sionate need to make it plain, “ I shall never, never, never,” he protested, “ so much as look at another woman! ”
The girl approved with an eager gesture. “You’ve got it, my dear Tony. Say it to her that way! ” But he had already gone, and, turning, she found herself face to face with her lover, who had come back as she spoke31.
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1
compassionately
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| adv.表示怜悯地，有同情心地 | |
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con
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| n.反对的观点，反对者，反对票，肺病；vt.精读，学习，默记；adv.反对地，从反面；adj.欺诈的 | |
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serenity
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| n.宁静，沉着，晴朗 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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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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vehemence
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| n.热切；激烈；愤怒 | |
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serene
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| adj. 安详的，宁静的，平静的 | |
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8
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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10
tormented
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| 饱受折磨的 | |
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exalted
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| adj.(地位等)高的，崇高的；尊贵的，高尚的 | |
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12
modesty
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| n.谦逊，虚心，端庄，稳重，羞怯，朴素 | |
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13
irony
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| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
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14
nervously
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| adv.神情激动地，不安地 | |
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15
grotesque
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| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
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16
momentary
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| adj.片刻的，瞬息的；短暂的 | |
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17
insistence
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| n.坚持；强调；坚决主张 | |
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18
agitation
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| n.搅动；搅拌；鼓动，煽动 | |
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vow
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| n.誓(言)，誓约；v.起誓，立誓 | |
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portentous
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| adj.不祥的，可怕的，装腔作势的 | |
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dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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22
musing
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| n. 沉思，冥想 adj. 沉思的, 冥想的 动词muse的现在分词形式 | |
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23
rites
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| 仪式，典礼( rite的名词复数 ) | |
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24
detention
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| n.滞留，停留；拘留，扣留；(教育)留下 | |
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25
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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apprehend
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| vt.理解，领悟，逮捕，拘捕，忧虑 | |
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28
fidelity
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| n.忠诚，忠实；精确 | |
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29
subscribe
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| vi.(to)订阅，订购；同意；vt.捐助，赞助 | |
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30
abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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31
spoke
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| 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 | |
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