There was another reflection that Madame Grandoni made, as her interview with her dejected friend prolonged itself. She could make it the more freely as, besides being naturally quick and appreciative20, she had always, during her Roman career, in the dear old days (mingled with bitterness as they had been for her), lived with artists, arch?ologists, ingenious strangers, people who abounded21 in good talk, threw out ideas and played with them. It came over her that, really, even if things had not come to that particular crisis, Christina’s active, various, ironical22 mind, with all its audacities23 and impatiences, could not have tolerated for long the simple dullness of the Prince’s company. The old lady had said to him, on meeting him, “Of course, what you want to know immediately is whether she has sent you a message. No, my poor friend, I must tell you the truth. I asked her for one, but she told me that she had nothing whatever, of any kind, to say to you. She knew I was coming out to see you. I haven’t done so en cachette. She doesn’t like it, but she accepts the necessity for this once, since you have made the mistake, as she considers it, of approaching her again. We talked about you, last night, after your note came to me – for five minutes; that is, I talked, and Christina was good enough to listen. At the end she said this (what I shall tell you) with perfect calmness, and the appearance of being the most reasonable woman in the world. She didn’t ask me to repeat it to you, but I do so because it is the only substitute I can offer you for a message. ‘I try to occupy my life, my mind, to create interests, in the odious24 position in which I find myself; I endeavour to get out of myself, my small personal disappointments and troubles, by the aid of such poor faculties25 as I possess. There are things in the world more interesting, after all, and I hope to succeed in giving my attention to them. It appears to me not too much to ask that the Prince, on his side, should make the same conscientious26 effort – and leave me alone!’ Those were your wife’s remarkable words; they are all I have to give you.”
After she had given them Madame Grandoni felt a pang27 of regret; the Prince turned upon her a face so white, bewildered and wounded. It had seemed to her that they might form a wholesome28 admonition, but it was now impressed upon her that, as coming from his wife, they were cruel, and she herself felt almost cruel for having repeated them. What they amounted to was an exquisite29 taunt30 of his mediocrity – a mediocrity which was, after all, not a crime. How could the Prince occupy himself, what interests could he create, and what faculties, gracious heaven, did he possess? He was as ignorant as a fish, and as narrow as his hat-band. His expression became pitiful; it was as if he dimly measured the insult, felt it more than saw it – felt that he could not plead incapacity without putting the Princess largely in the right. He gazed at Madame Grandoni, his face worked, and for a moment she thought he was going to burst into tears. But he said nothing – perhaps because he was afraid of that – so that suffering silence, during which she gently laid her hand upon his own, remained his only answer. He might doubtless do so much he didn’t, that when Christina touched upon this she was unanswerable. The old lady changed the subject: told him what a curious country England was, in so many ways; offered information as to their possible movements during the summer and autumn, which, within a day or two, had become slightly clearer. But at last, abruptly31, as if he had not heard her, he inquired, appealingly, who the young man was who had come in the day he called, just as he was going.
Madame Grandoni hesitated a moment. “He was the Princess’s bookbinder.”
“Her bookbinder? Do you mean her lover?”
“Prince, how can you dream she will ever live with you again?” the old lady asked, in reply to this.
“Why, then, does she have him in her drawing-room – announced like an ambassador, carrying a hat in his hand like mine? Where were his books, his bindings? I shouldn’t say this to her,” the Prince added, as if the declaration justified32 him.
“I told you the other day that she is making studies of the people – the lower orders. The young man you saw is a study.” Madame Grandoni could not help laughing out as she gave her explanation this turn; but her mirth elicited33 no echo from her interlocutor.
“I have thought that over – over and over; but the more I think the less I understand. Would it be your idea that she is quite crazy? I must tell you I don’t care if she is!”
“We are all quite crazy, I think,” said Madame Grandoni; “but the Princess no more than the rest of us. No, she must try everything; at present she is trying democracy and socialism.”
“Santo Dio!” murmured the young man. “And what do they say here when they see her bookbinder?”
“They haven’t seen him, and perhaps they won’t. But if they do, it won’t matter, because here everything is forgiven. That a person should be singular is all they want. A bookbinder will do as well as anything else.”
The Prince mused34 a while, and then he said, “How can she bear the dirt, the bad smell?”
“I don’t know what you are talking about. If you mean the young man you saw at the house (I may tell you, by the way, that it was only the first time he had been there, and that the Princess had only seen him once) – if you mean the little bookbinder, he isn’t dirty, especially what we should call. The people of that kind, here, are not like our dear Romans. Every one has a sponge, as big as your head; you can see them in the shops.”
“They are full of gin; their faces are purple,” said the Prince; after which he immediately asked, “If she had only seen him once, how could he have come into her drawing-room that way?”
The old lady looked at him with a certain severity. “Believe, at least, what I say, my poor friend! Never forget that this was how you spoiled your affairs most of all – by treating a person (and such a person!) as if, as a matter of course, she lied. Christina has many faults, but she hasn’t that one; that’s why I can live with her. She will speak the truth always.”
It was plainly not agreeable to the Prince to be reminded so sharply of his greatest mistake, and he flushed a little as Madame Grandoni spoke35. But he did not admit his error, and she doubted whether he even perceived it. At any rate he remarked rather grandly, like a man who has still a good deal to say for himself, “There are things it is better to conceal36.”
“It all depends on whether you are afraid. Christina never is. Oh, I admit that she is very strange, and when the entertainment of watching her, to see how she will carry out some of her inspirations, is not stronger than anything else, I lose all patience with her. When she doesn’t fascinate she can only exasperate37. But, as regards yourself, since you are here, and as I may not see you again for a long time, or perhaps ever (at my age – I’m a hundred and twenty!), I may as well give you the key of certain parts of your wife’s conduct. It may make it seem to you a little less fantastic. At the bottom, then, of much that she does is the fact that she is ashamed of having married you.”
“Less fantastic?” the young man repeated, staring.
“You may say that there can be nothing more eccentric than that. But you know – or, if not, it isn’t for want of her having told you – that the Princess considers that in the darkest hour of her life she sold herself for a title and a fortune. She regards her doing so as such a horrible piece of frivolity38 that she can never, for the rest of her days, be serious enough to make up for it.”
“Yes, I know that she pretends to have been forced. And does she think she’s so serious now?”
“The young man you saw the other day thinks so,” said the old woman, smiling. “Sometimes she calls it by another name: she says she has thrown herself with passion into being ‘modern’. That sums up the greatest number of things that you and your family are not.”
“Yes, we are not, thank God! Dio mio, Dio mio!” groaned39 the Prince. He seemed so exhausted40 by his reflections that he remained sitting in his chair after his companion, lifting her crumpled41 corpulence out of her own, had proposed that they should walk about a little. She had no ill-nature, but she had already noticed that whenever she was with Christina’s husband the current of conversation made her, as she phrased it, bump against him. After administering these small shocks she always steered42 away, and now, the Prince having at last got up and offered her his arm, she tried again to talk with him of things he could consider without bitterness. She asked him about the health and habits of his uncles, and he replied, for the moment, with the minuteness which he had been taught that in such a case courtesy demanded; but by the time that, at her request, they had returned to the gate nearest to South Street (she wished him to come no farther) he had prepared a question to which she had not opened the way.
“And who and what, then, is this English captain? About him there is a great deal said.”
“This English captain?”
“Godfrey Gerald Cholto – you see I know a good deal about him,” said the Prince, articulating the English names with difficulty.
They had stopped near the gate, on the edge of Park Lane, and a couple of predatory hansoms dashed at them from opposite quarters. “I thought that was coming, and at bottom it is he that has occupied you most!” Madame Grandoni exclaimed, with a sigh. “But in reality he is the last one you need trouble about; he doesn’t count.”
“Why doesn’t he count?”
“I can’t tell you – except that some people don’t, you know. He doesn’t even think he does.”
“Why not, when she receives him always – lets him go wherever she goes?”
“Perhaps that is just the reason. When people give her a chance to get tired of them she takes it rather easily. At any rate, you needn’t be any more jealous of him than you are of me. He’s a convenience, a factotum43, but he works without wages.”
“Isn’t he, then, in love with her?”
“Naturally. He has, however, no hope.”
“Ah, poor gentleman!” said the Prince, lugubriously44.
“He accepts the situation better than you. He occupies himself – as she has strongly recommended him, in my hearing, to do – with other women.”
“Oh, the brute45!” the Prince exclaimed. “At all events, he sees her.”
“Yes, but she doesn’t see him!” laughed Madame Grandoni, as she turned away.
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1
indirectly
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| adv.间接地，不直接了当地 | |
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2
solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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3
haze
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| n.霾，烟雾；懵懂，迷糊；vi.(over)变模糊 | |
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wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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5
equestrian
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| adj.骑马的；n.马术 | |
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6
cavalcades
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| n.骑马队伍，车队( cavalcade的名词复数 ) | |
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7
agitation
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| n.搅动；搅拌；鼓动，煽动 | |
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8
desolate
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| adj.荒凉的，荒芜的；孤独的，凄凉的；v.使荒芜，使孤寂 | |
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9
interpretations
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| n.解释( interpretation的名词复数 )；表演；演绎；理解 | |
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10
depressed
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| adj.沮丧的，抑郁的，不景气的，萧条的 | |
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11
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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12
prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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13
touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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14
remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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15
manly
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| adj.有男子气概的；adv.男子般地，果断地 | |
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16
judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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17
gratuitous
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| adj.无偿的，免费的；无缘无故的，不必要的 | |
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18
valid
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| adj.有确实根据的；有效的；正当的，合法的 | |
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19
accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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20
appreciative
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| adj.有鉴赏力的，有眼力的；感激的 | |
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21
abounded
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| v.大量存在，充满，富于( abound的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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22
ironical
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| adj.讽刺的，冷嘲的 | |
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23
audacities
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| n.大胆( audacity的名词复数 )；鲁莽；胆大妄为；鲁莽行为 | |
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24
odious
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| adj.可憎的，讨厌的 | |
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25
faculties
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| n.能力( faculty的名词复数 )；全体教职员；技巧；院 | |
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26
conscientious
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| adj.审慎正直的，认真的，本着良心的 | |
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27
pang
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| n.剧痛，悲痛，苦闷 | |
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28
wholesome
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| adj.适合；卫生的；有益健康的；显示身心健康的 | |
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29
exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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30
taunt
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| n.辱骂，嘲弄；v.嘲弄 | |
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31
abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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32
justified
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| a.正当的，有理的 | |
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33
elicited
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| 引出，探出( elicit的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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34
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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35
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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36
conceal
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽 | |
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37
exasperate
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| v.激怒，使（疾病）加剧，使恶化 | |
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38
frivolity
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| n.轻松的乐事，兴高采烈；轻浮的举止 | |
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39
groaned
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| v.呻吟( groan的过去式和过去分词 )；发牢骚；抱怨；受苦 | |
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40
exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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41
crumpled
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| adj. 弯扭的, 变皱的 动词crumple的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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42
steered
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| v.驾驶( steer的过去式和过去分词 )；操纵；控制；引导 | |
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43
factotum
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| n.杂役；听差 | |
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44
lugubriously
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45
brute
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| n.野兽，兽性 | |
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