Mr. Hammond went over to the window and looked out at the view. The moon was rising above the amphitheatre of hills, and her rays were silvering the placid5 bosom6 of the lake. Lights were dotted here and there about the valley, telling of village life. The Prince of Wales’s hotel yonder sparkled with its many lights, like a castle in a fairy tale. The stranger had looked upon many a grander scene, but on none more lovely. Here were lake and mountain in little, without the snow-peaks and awful inaccessible7 regions of solitude8 and peril9; homely10 hills that one might climb, placid English vales in which English poets have lived and died.
‘Hammond and I mean to spend a month or six weeks with you, if you can make us comfortable,’ said Maulevrier.
‘I am delighted to hear that you can contemplate11 staying a month anywhere,’ replied her ladyship. ‘Your usual habits are as restless as if your life were a disease. It shall not be my fault if you and Mr. Hammond are uncomfortable at Fellside.’
There was courtesy, but no cordiality in the reply. If Mr. Hammond was a sensitive man, touchily12 conscious of his own obscurity, he must have felt that he was not wanted at Fellside — that he was an excrescence, matter in the wrong place.
Nobody had presented the stranger to Lady Mary. It never entered into Maulevrier’s mind to be ceremonious about his sister Molly. She was so much a part of himself that it seemed as if anyone who knew him must needs know her. Molly sat a little way from the window by which Mr. Hammond was standing13, and looked at him doubtfully, wonderingly, with not altogether a friendly eye, as he stood with his profile turned to her, and his eyes upon the landscape. She was inclined to be jealous of her brother’s friend, who would most likely deprive her of much of that beloved society. Hitherto she had been Maulevrier’s chosen companion, at Fellside — indeed, his sole companion after the dismissal of his tutor. Now this brown, bearded stranger would usurp14 her privileges — those two young men would go roaming over the hills, fishing, otter-hunting, going to distant wrestling matches and leaving her at home. It was a hard thing, and she was prepared to detest15 the interloper. Even to-night she would be a loser by his presence. Under ordinary circumstances she would have gone to the dining-room with Maulevrier, and sat by him and waited upon him as he ate. But she dared not intrude16 herself upon a meal that was to be shared with a stranger.
She looked at John Hammond critically, eager to find fault with his appearence; but unluckily for her present humour there was not much room for fault-finding.
He was tall, broad-shouldered, well-built. His enemies would hardly deny that he was good-looking — nay17, even handsome. The massive regular features were irreproachable18. He was more sunburnt than a gentleman ought to be, Mary thought. She told herself that his good looks were of a vulgar quality, like those of Charles Ford19, the champion wrestler20, whom she saw at the sports the other day. Why did Maulevrier pick up a companion who was evidently not of his own sphere? Hoydenish21, plain-spoken, frank and affectionate as Mary Haselden was, she knew that she belonged to a race apart, that there were circles beneath circles, below her own world, circles which hers could never touch, and she supposed Mr. Hammond to be some waif from one of those nethermost22 worlds — a village doctor’s son, perhaps, or even a tradesman’s — sent to the University by some benevolent23 busybody, and placed at a disadvantage ever afterwards, an unfortunate anomaly, suspended between two worlds like Mahomet’s coffin24.
The butler announced that his lordship’s dinner was served.
‘Come along, Molly,’ said Maulevrier; ‘come and tell me about the terriers, while I eat my dinner.’
Mary hesitated, glanced doubtfully at her grandmother, who made no sign, and then slipped out of the room, hanging fondly on her brother’s arm, and almost forgetting that there was any such person as Mr. Hammond in existence.
When these three were gone Lady Lesbia expressed herself strongly upon Maulevrier’s folly25 in bringing such a person as Mr. Hammond to Fellside.
‘What are we to do with him, grandmother?’ she said, pettishly26. ‘Is he to live with us, and be one of us, a person of whose belongings27 we know positively28 nothing, who owns that his people are common?’
‘My dear, he is your brother’s friend, and we have the right to suppose he is a gentleman.’
‘Not on that account,’ said Lesbia, more sharply than her wont29. ‘Didn’t he make a friend, or almost a friend of Jack30 Howell, the huntsman, and of Ford, the wrestler. I have no confidence in Maulevrier’s ideas of fitness.’
‘We shall find out all about this Mr. Hamleigh — no Hammond — in a day or two,’ replied her ladyship, placidly31; ‘and in the meantime we must tolerate him, and be grateful to him if he reconcile Maulevrier to remaining at Fellside for the next six weeks.’
Lesbia was silent. She did not consider Maulevrier’s presence at Fellside an unmitigated advantage, or, indeed, his presence anywhere. Those two were not sympathetic. Maulevrier made fun of his elder sister’s perfections, chaffed her intolerably about the great man she was going to captivate, in her first season, the great houses in which she was going to reign32. Lesbia despised him for that neglect of all his opportunities of culture which had left him, after the most orthodox and costly33 curriculum, almost as ignorant as a ploughboy. She despised a man whose only delight was in horse and hound, gun and fishing-tackle. Molly would have cared very little for the guns or the fishing-tackle perhaps in the abstract; but she cared for everything that interested Maulevrier, even to the bagful of rats which were let loose in the stable-yard sometimes, for the education of a particularly game fox-terrier.
There was plenty of talk and laughter at the dinner-table, while the Countess and Lady Lesbia conversed34 gravely and languidly in the dimly-lighted drawing-room. The dinner was excellent, and both travellers were ravenous35. They had eaten nothing since breakfast, and had driven from Windermere on the top of the coach in the keen evening air. When the sharp edge of the appetite was blunted, Maulevrier began to talk of his adventures since he and Molly had last met. He had not being dissipating in London all the time — or, indeed, any great part of the time of his absence from Fellside; but Molly had been left in Cimmerian, darkness as to his proceedings36. He never wrote a letter if he could possibly avoid doing so. If it became a vital necessity to him to communicate with anyone he telegraphed, or, in his own language, ‘wired’ to that person; but to sit down at a desk and labour with pen and ink was not within his capacities or his views of his mission in life.
‘If a fellow is to write letters he might as well be a clerk in an office,’ he said, ‘and sit on a high stool.’
Thus it happened that when Maulevrier was away from Fellside, no fair chatelaine of the Middle Ages could be more ignorant of the movements or whereabouts of her crusader knight37 than Mary was of her brother’s goings on. She could but pray for him with fond and faithful prayer, and wait and hope for his return. And now he told her that things had gone badly with him at Epsom, and worse at Ascot, that he had been, as he expressed it, ‘up a tree,’ and that he had gone off to the Black Forest directly the Ascot week was over, and at Rippoldsau he had met his old friend and fellow traveller, Hammond, and they had gone for a walking tour together among the homely villages, the watchmakers, the timber cutters, the pretty peasant girls. They had danced at fairs — and shot at village sports — and had altogether enjoyed the thing. Hammond, who was something of an artist, had sketched38 a good deal. Maulevrier had done nothing but smoke his German pipe and enjoy himself.
‘I was glad to find myself in a world where a horse was an exception and not the rule,’ he said.
‘Oh, how I should love to see the Black Forest!’ cried Mary, who knew the first part of Faust by heart, albeit39 she had never been given permission to read it, ‘the gnomes40 and the witches — der Freischütz — all that is lovely. Of course, you went up the Brocken?’
‘Of course,’ answered Mr. Hammond; ‘Mephistopheles was our valet de place, and we went up among a company of witches riding on broomsticks.’ And then quoted,
‘Seh’ die B?ume hinter B?umen,
Wie sie schnell vorüberrücken,
Und die Klippen, die sich bücken,
Und die langen Felsennasen,
Wie sie schnarchen, wie sie blasen!’
This was the first time he had addressed himself directly to Mary, who sat close to her brother’s side, and never took her eyes from his face, ready to pour out his wine or to change his plate, for the serving-men had been dismissed at the beginning of this unceremonious meal.
Mary looked at the stranger almost as superciliously41 as Lesbia might have done. She was not inclined to be friendly to her brother’s friend.
‘Do you read German?’ she inquired, with a touch of surprise.
‘You had better ask him what language he does not read or speak,’ said her brother. ‘Hammond is an admirable Crichton, my dear — by-the-by, who was admirable Crichton? — knows everything, can twist your little head the right way upon any subject.’
‘Oh,’ thought Mary, ‘highly cultivated, is he? Very proper in a man who was educated on charity to have worked his hardest at the University.’
She was not prepared to think very kindly42 of young men who had been successful in their college career, since poor Maulevrier had made such a dismal43 failure of his, had been gated and sent down, and ploughed, and had everything ignominious44 done to him that could be done, which ignominy had involved an expenditure45 of money that Lady Maulevrier bemoaned46 and lamented47 until this day. Because her brother had not been virtuous48, Mary grudged49 virtuous young men their triumphs and their honours. Great, raw-boned fellows, who have taken their degrees at Scotch50 Universities, come to Oxford51 and Cambridge and sweep the board, Maulevrier had told her, when his own failures demanded explanation. Perhaps this Mr. Hammond had graduated north of the Tweed, and had come southward to rob the native. Mary was not any more inclined to be civil to him because he was a linguist52. He had a pleasant manner, frank and easy, a good voice, a cheery laugh. But she had not yet made up her mind that he was a gentleman.
‘If some benevolent old person were to take a fancy to Charles Ford, the wrestler, and send him to a Scotch University, I daresay he would turn out just as fine a fellow,’ she thought, Ford being somewhat of a favourite as a local hero.
The two young men went off to the billiard-room after they had dined. It was half-past ten by this time, and, of course, Mary did not go with them. She bade her brother good-night at the dining-room door.
‘Good-night, Molly; be sure you are up early to show me the dogs,’ said Maulevrier, after an affectionate kiss.
‘Good-night, Lady Mary,’ said Mr. Hammond, holding out his hand, albeit she had no idea of shaking hands with him.
She allowed her hand to rest for an instant in that strong, friendly grasp. She had not risen to giving a couple of fingers to a person whom she considered her inferior; but she was inclined to snub Mr. Hammond as rather a presuming young man.
‘Well, Jack, what do you think of my beauty sister?’ asked his lordship, as he chose his cue from the well-filled rack.
The lamps were lighted, the table uncovered and ready, Carambole in his place, albeit it was months since any player had entered the room. Everything which concerned Maulevrier’s comfort or pleasure was done as if by magic at Fellside; and Mary was the household fairy whose influence secured this happy state of things.
‘What can any man think except that she is as lovely as the finest of Reynold’s portraits, as that Lady Diana Beauclerk of Colonel Aldridge’s, or the Kitty Fisher, or any example you please to name of womanly loveliness?’
‘Glad to hear it,’ answered Maulevrier, chalking his cue; ‘can’t say I admire her myself — not my style, don’t you know. Too much of my lady Di — too little of poor Kitty. But still, of course, it always pleases a fellow to know that his people are admired; and I know that my grandmother has views, grand views,’ smiling down at his cue. ‘Shall I break?’ and he began with the usual miss in baulk.
‘Thank you,’ said Mr. Hammond, beginning to play. ‘Matrimonial views, of course. Very natural that her ladyship should expect such a lovely creature to make a great match. Is there no one in view? Has there been no family conclave53 — no secret treaty? Is the young lady fancy free?’
‘Perfectly. She has been buried alive here; except parsons and a few decent people whom she is allowed to meet now and then at the houses about here, she has seen nothing of the world. My grandmother has kept Lesbia as close as a nun54. She is not so fond of Molly, and that young person has wild ways of her own, and gives everybody the slip. By-the-by, how do you like my little Moll?’
The adjective was hardly accurate about a young lady who measured five feet six, but Maulevrier had not yet grown out of the ideas belonging to that period when Mary was really his little sister, a girl of twelve, with long hair and short petticoats.
Mr. Hammond was slow to reply. Mary had not made a very strong impression upon him. Dazzled by her sister’s pure and classical beauty, he had no eyes for Mary’s homelier charms. She seemed to him a frank, affectionate girl, not too well-mannered; and that was all he thought of her.
‘I’m afraid Lady Mary does not like me,’ he said, after his shot, which gave him time for reflection.
‘Oh, Molly is rather farouche in her manners; never would train fine, don’t you know. Her ladyship lectured till she was tired, and now Mary runs wild, and I suppose will be left at grass till six months before her presentation, and then they’ll put her on the pillar-reins a bit to give her a better mouth. Good shot, by Jove!’
John Hammond was used to his lordship’s style of conversation, and understood his friend at all times. Maulevrier was not an intellectual companion, and the distance was wide between the two men; but his lordship’s gaiety, good-nature, and acuteness made amends55 for all shortcomings in culture. And then Mr. Hammond may have been one of those good Conservatives who do not expect very much intellectual power in an hereditary56 legislator.
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1
advent
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| n.(重要事件等的)到来，来临 | |
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dwindled
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| v.逐渐变少或变小( dwindle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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avowal
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| n.公开宣称，坦白承认 | |
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insignificance
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| n.不重要；无价值；无意义 | |
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placid
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| adj.安静的，平和的 | |
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bosom
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| n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的 | |
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inaccessible
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| adj.达不到的，难接近的 | |
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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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peril
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| n.(严重的)危险；危险的事物 | |
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homely
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| adj.家常的，简朴的；不漂亮的 | |
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contemplate
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| vt.盘算，计议；周密考虑；注视，凝视 | |
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touchily
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| adv.易动气地；过分敏感地；小心眼地；难以取悦地 | |
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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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usurp
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| vt.篡夺，霸占；vi.篡位 | |
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detest
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| vt.痛恨，憎恶 | |
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16
intrude
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| vi.闯入；侵入；打扰，侵扰 | |
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nay
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| adv.不；n.反对票，投反对票者 | |
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irreproachable
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| adj.不可指责的，无过失的 | |
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Ford
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| n.浅滩，水浅可涉处；v.涉水，涉过 | |
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wrestler
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| n.摔角选手，扭 | |
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hoydenish
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| adj.顽皮的，爱嬉闹的，男孩子气的 | |
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nethermost
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| adj.最下面的 | |
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benevolent
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| adj.仁慈的，乐善好施的 | |
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coffin
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| n.棺材，灵柩 | |
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folly
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| n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话 | |
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pettishly
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belongings
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| n.私人物品，私人财物 | |
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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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wont
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| adj.习惯于；v.习惯；n.习惯 | |
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30
jack
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| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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placidly
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| adv.平稳地，平静地 | |
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reign
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| n.统治时期，统治，支配，盛行；v.占优势 | |
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costly
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| adj.昂贵的，价值高的，豪华的 | |
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conversed
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| v.交谈，谈话( converse的过去式 ) | |
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ravenous
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| adj.极饿的，贪婪的 | |
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proceedings
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| n.进程，过程，议程；诉讼(程序)；公报 | |
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knight
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| n.骑士，武士；爵士 | |
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sketched
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| v.草拟（sketch的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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albeit
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| conj.即使；纵使；虽然 | |
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gnomes
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| n.矮子( gnome的名词复数 )；侏儒；（尤指金融市场上搞投机的）银行家；守护神 | |
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superciliously
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| adv.高傲地；傲慢地 | |
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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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dismal
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| adj.阴沉的，凄凉的，令人忧郁的，差劲的 | |
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ignominious
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| adj.可鄙的，不光彩的，耻辱的 | |
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45
expenditure
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| n.(时间、劳力、金钱等)支出；使用，消耗 | |
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46
bemoaned
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| v.为（某人或某事）抱怨( bemoan的过去式和过去分词 )；悲悼；为…恸哭；哀叹 | |
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47
lamented
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| adj.被哀悼的，令人遗憾的v.（为…）哀悼，痛哭，悲伤( lament的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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48
virtuous
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| adj.有品德的，善良的，贞洁的，有效力的 | |
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49
grudged
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| 怀恨（grudge的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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50
scotch
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| n.伤口，刻痕；苏格兰威士忌酒；v.粉碎，消灭，阻止；adj.苏格兰(人)的 | |
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51
Oxford
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| n.牛津（英国城市） | |
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52
linguist
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| n.语言学家；精通数种外国语言者 | |
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53
conclave
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| n.秘密会议，红衣主教团 | |
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54
nun
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| n.修女，尼姑 | |
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55
amends
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| n. 赔偿 | |
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56
hereditary
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| adj.遗传的，遗传性的，可继承的，世袭的 | |
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