Millicent hesitated when Hyacinth proposed to her that they should finish the day together. She smiled, and her splendid eyes rested on his with an air of indulgent interrogation; they seemed to ask whether it were worth her while, in face of his probable incredulity, to mention the real reason why she could not have the pleasure of acceding12 to his delightful13 suggestion. Since he would be sure to deride14 her explanation, would not some trumped-up excuse do as well, since he could knock that about without hurting her? I know not exactly in what sense Miss Henning decided; but she confessed at last that there was an odious15 obstacle to their meeting again later – a promise she had made to go and see a young lady, the forewoman of her department, who was kept in-doors with a bad face, and nothing in life to help her pass the time. She was under a pledge to spend the evening with her, and it was not her way to disappoint an expectation. Hyacinth made no comment on this speech; he received it in silence, looking at the girl gloomily.
“I know what’s passing in your mind!” Millicent suddenly broke out. “Why don’t you say it at once, and give me a chance to contradict it? I oughtn’t to care, but I do care!”
“Stop, stop – don’t let us fight!” Hyacinth spoke16 in a tone of pleading weariness; she had never heard just that accent before.
Millicent considered a moment. “I’ve a mind to play her false. She is a real lady, highly connected, and the best friend I have – I don’t count men,” the girl interpolated, smiling – “and there isn’t one in the world I’d do such a thing for but you.”
“No, keep your promise; don’t play any one false,” said Hyacinth.
“Well, you are a gentleman!” Miss Henning murmured, with a sweetness that her voice occasionally took.
“Especially —” Hyacinth began; but he suddenly stopped.
“Especially what? Something impudent17, I’ll engage! Especially as you don’t believe me?”
“Oh, no! Don’t let’s fight!” he repeated.
“Fight, my darling? I’d fight for you!” Miss Henning declared.
Hyacinth offered himself, after tea, the choice between a visit to Lady Aurora18 and a pilgrimage to Lisson Grove19. He was in a little doubt about the former experiment, having an idea that her ladyship’s family might have returned to Belgrave Square. He reflected, however, that he could not recognise that as a reason for not going to see her; his relations with her were not clandestine20, and she had given him the kindest general invitation. If her august progenitors21 were at home she was probably at dinner with them; he would take that risk. He had taken it before, without disastrous22 results. He was determined not to spend the evening alone, and he would keep the Poupins as a more substantial alternative, in case her ladyship should not be able to receive him.
As soon as the great portal in Belgrave Square was drawn23 open before him, he perceived that the house was occupied and animated24 – if the latter term might properly be applied25 to a place which had hitherto given Hyacinth the impression of a magnificent mausoleum. It was pervaded26 by subdued27 light and tall domestics; Hyacinth found himself looking down a kind of colonnade28 of colossal29 footmen, an array more imposing30 even than the retinue31 of the Princess at Medley32. His inquiry33 died away on his lips, and he stood there struggling with dumbness. It was manifest to him that some high festival was taking place, at which his presence could only be deeply irrelevant34; and when a large official, out of livery, bending over him for a voice that faltered35, suggested, not unencouragingly, that it might be Lady Aurora he wished to see, he replied in a low, melancholy36 accent, “Yes, yes, but it can’t be possible!” The butler took no pains to controvert37 this proposition verbally; he merely turned round, with a majestic38 air of leading the way, and as at the same moment two of the footmen closed the wings of the door behind the visitor, Hyacinth judged that it was his cue to follow him. In this manner, after traversing a passage where, in the perfect silence of the servants, he heard the shorter click of his plebeian39 shoes upon a marble floor, he found himself ushered40 into a small apartment, lighted by a veiled lamp, which, when he had been left there alone, without further remark on the part of his conductor, he recognised as the scene – only now more amply decorated – of one of his former interviews. Lady Aurora kept him waiting a few moments, and then fluttered in with an anxious, incoherent apology. The same transformation41 had taken place in her own appearance as in the aspect of her parental42 halls: she had on a light-coloured, crumpled-looking, faintly-rustling dress; her head was adorned43 with a kind of languid plume44, terminating in little pink tips; and in her hand she carried a pair of white gloves. All her repressed eagerness was in her face, and she smiled as if she wished to anticipate any scruples45 or embarrassments46 on the part of her visitor; frankly47 recognising the brilliancy of her attire48 and the startling implications it might convey. Hyacinth said to her that, no doubt, on perceiving her family had returned to town, he ought to have backed out; he knew that must make a difference in her life. But he had been marched in, in spite of himself, and now it was clear that he had interrupted her at dinner. She answered that no one who asked for her at any hour was ever turned away; she had managed to arrange that, and she was very happy in her success. She didn’t usually dine – there were so many of them, and it took so long. Most of her friends couldn’t come at visiting-hours, and it wouldn’t be right that she shouldn’t ever receive them. On that occasion she had been dining, but it was all over; she was only sitting there because she was going to a party. Her parents were dining out, and she was just in the drawing-room with some of her sisters. When they were alone it wasn’t so long, though it was rather long afterwards, when they went up again. It wasn’t time yet: the carriage wouldn’t come for nearly half an hour. She hadn’t been to an evening thing for months and months, but – didn’t he know? – one sometimes had to do it. Lady Aurora expressed the idea that one ought to be fair all round and that one’s duties were not all of the same species; some of them would come up from time to time that were quite different from the others. Of course it wasn’t just, unless one did all, and that was why she was in for something to-night. It was nothing of consequence; only the family meeting the family, as they might do of a Sunday, at one of their houses. It was there that papa and mamma were dining. Since they had given her that room for any hour she wanted (it was really tremendously convenient), she had determined to do a party now and then, like a respectable young woman, because it pleased them – though why it should, to see her at a place, was more than she could imagine. She supposed it was because it would perhaps keep some people, a little, from thinking she was mad and not safe to be at large – which was of course a sort of thing that people didn’t like to have thought of their belongings49. Lady Aurora explained and expatiated50 with a kind of nervous superabundance; she talked more continuously than Hyacinth had ever heard her do before, and the young man saw that she was not in her natural equilibrium51. He thought it scarcely probable that she was excited by the simple prospect52 of again dipping into the great world she had forsworn, and he presently perceived that he himself had an agitating53 effect upon her. His senses were fine enough to make him feel that he revived certain associations and quickened certain wounds. She suddenly stopped talking, and the two sat there looking at each other, in a kind of occult community of suffering. Hyacinth made several mechanical remarks, explaining, insufficiently54, why he had come, and in the course of a very few moments, quite independently of these observations, it seemed to him that there was a deeper, a measurelessly deep, confidence between them. A tacit confession56 passed and repassed, and each understood the situation of the other. They wouldn’t speak of it – it was very definite that they would never do that; for there was something in their common consciousness that was inconsistent with the grossness of accusation57. Besides, the grievance58 of each was an apprehension59, an instinct of the soul – not a sharp, definite wrong, supported by proof. It was in the air and in their restless pulses, and not in anything that they could exhibit or complain of. Strange enough it seemed to Hyacinth that the history of each should be the counterpart of that of the other. What had each done but lose that which he or she had never had? Things had gone ill with them; but even if they had gone well, if the Princess had not combined with his friend in that manner which made his heart sink and produced an effect exactly corresponding upon that of Lady Aurora – even in this case what would prosperity, what would success, have amounted to? They would have been very barren. He was sure the singular creature before him would never have had a chance to take the unprecedented60 social step for the sake of which she was ready to go forth61 from Belgrave Square for ever; Hyacinth had judged the smallness of Paul Muniment’s appetite for that complication sufficiently55 to have begun really to pity her ladyship long ago. And now, even when he most felt the sweetness of her sympathy, he might wonder what she could have imagined for him in the event of his not having been supplanted62 – what security, what completer promotion63, what honourable64, satisfying sequel. They were unhappy because they were unhappy, and they were right not to rail about that.
“Oh, I like to see you – I like to talk with you,” said Lady Aurora, simply. They talked for a quarter of an hour, and he made her such a visit as any gentleman might have made to any lady. They exchanged remarks about the lateness of the spring, about the loan-exhibition at Burlington House – which Hyacinth had paid his shilling to see – about the question of opening the museums on Sunday, about the danger of too much coddling legislation on behalf of the working-classes. He declared that it gave him great pleasure to see any sign of her amusing herself; it was unnatural65 never to do that, and he hoped that now she had taken a turn she would keep it up. At this she looked down, smiling, at her frugal66 finery, and then she replied, “I dare say I shall begin to go to balls – who knows?”
“That’s what our friends in Audley Court think, you know – that it’s the worst mistake you can make, not to drink deep of the cup while you have it.”
“Oh, I’ll do it, then – I’ll do it for them!” Lady Aurora exclaimed. “I dare say that, as regards all that, I haven’t listened to them enough.” This was the only allusion67 that passed on the subject of the Muniments.
Hyacinth got up – he had stayed long enough, as she was going out; and as he held out his hand to her she seemed to him a heroine. She would try to cultivate the pleasures of her class if the brother and sister in Camberwell thought it right – try even to be a woman of fashion in order to console herself. Paul Muniment didn’t care for her, but she was capable of considering that it might be her duty to regulate her life by the very advice that made an abyss between them. Hyacinth didn’t believe in the success of this attempt; there passed before his imagination a picture of the poor lady coming home and pulling off her feathers for ever, after an evening spent in watching the agitation68 of a ball-room from the outer edge of the circle, with a white, irresponsive face. “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die,” he said, laughing.
“Oh, I don’t mind dying.”
“I think I do,” Hyacinth declared, as he turned away. There had been no mention whatever of the Princess.
It was early enough in the evening for him to risk a visit to Lisson Grove; he calculated that the Poupins would still be sitting up. When he reached their house he found this calculation justified69; the brilliancy of the light in the window appeared to announce that Madame was holding a salon70. He ascended71 to this apartment without delay (it was free to a visitor to open the house-door himself), and, having knocked, obeyed the hostess’s invitation to enter. Poupin and his wife were seated, with a third person, at a table in the middle of the room, round a staring kerosene72 lamp adorned with a globe of clear glass, of which the transparency was mitigated73 only by a circular pattern of bunches of grapes. The third person was his friend Schinkel, who had been a member of the little party that waited upon Hoffendahl. No one said anything as Hyacinth came in; but in their silence the three others got up, looking at him, as he thought, rather strangely.
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1
overdone
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| v.做得过分( overdo的过去分词 )；太夸张；把…煮得太久；（工作等）过度 | |
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abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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vile
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| adj.卑鄙的，可耻的，邪恶的；坏透的 | |
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manifestation
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| n.表现形式；表明；现象 | |
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intimacy
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| n.熟悉，亲密，密切关系，亲昵的言行 | |
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aspirations
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| 强烈的愿望( aspiration的名词复数 )； 志向； 发送气音； 发 h 音 | |
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rosy
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| adj.美好的，乐观的，玫瑰色的 | |
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throb
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| v.震颤，颤动；(急速强烈地)跳动，搏动 | |
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consolation
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| n.安慰，慰问 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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acceding
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| v.（正式）加入( accede的现在分词 )；答应；（通过财产的添附而）增加；开始任职 | |
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delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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deride
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| v.嘲弄，愚弄 | |
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odious
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| adj.可憎的，讨厌的 | |
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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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impudent
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| adj.鲁莽的，卑鄙的，厚颜无耻的 | |
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aurora
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| n.极光 | |
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grove
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| n.林子，小树林，园林 | |
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clandestine
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| adj.秘密的，暗中从事的 | |
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progenitors
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| n.祖先( progenitor的名词复数 )；先驱；前辈；原本 | |
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disastrous
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| adj.灾难性的，造成灾害的；极坏的，很糟的 | |
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23
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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animated
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| adj.生气勃勃的，活跃的，愉快的 | |
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applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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pervaded
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| v.遍及，弥漫( pervade的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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subdued
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| adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
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colonnade
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| n.柱廊 | |
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colossal
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| adj.异常的，庞大的 | |
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imposing
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| adj.使人难忘的，壮丽的，堂皇的，雄伟的 | |
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retinue
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| n.侍从；随员 | |
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medley
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| n.混合 | |
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inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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irrelevant
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| adj.不恰当的，无关系的，不相干的 | |
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35
faltered
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| （嗓音）颤抖( falter的过去式和过去分词 )； 支吾其词； 蹒跚； 摇晃 | |
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36
melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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controvert
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| v.否定；否认 | |
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majestic
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| adj.雄伟的，壮丽的，庄严的，威严的，崇高的 | |
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39
plebeian
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| adj.粗俗的；平民的；n.平民；庶民 | |
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40
ushered
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| v.引，领，陪同( usher的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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41
transformation
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| n.变化；改造；转变 | |
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42
parental
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| adj.父母的；父的；母的 | |
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43
adorned
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| [计]被修饰的 | |
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plume
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| n.羽毛；v.整理羽毛，骚首弄姿，用羽毛装饰 | |
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45
scruples
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| n.良心上的不安( scruple的名词复数 )；顾虑，顾忌v.感到于心不安，有顾忌( scruple的第三人称单数 ) | |
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46
embarrassments
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| n.尴尬( embarrassment的名词复数 )；难堪；局促不安；令人难堪或耻辱的事 | |
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47
frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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48
attire
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| v.穿衣，装扮[同]array；n.衣着；盛装 | |
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49
belongings
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| n.私人物品，私人财物 | |
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50
expatiated
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| v.详述，细说( expatiate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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51
equilibrium
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| n.平衡，均衡，相称，均势，平静 | |
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52
prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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53
agitating
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| 搅动( agitate的现在分词 )； 激怒； 使焦虑不安； （尤指为法律、社会状况的改变而）激烈争论 | |
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54
insufficiently
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| adv.不够地，不能胜任地 | |
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55
sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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56
confession
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| n.自白，供认，承认 | |
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57
accusation
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| n.控告，指责，谴责 | |
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58
grievance
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| n.怨愤，气恼，委屈 | |
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59
apprehension
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| n.理解，领悟；逮捕，拘捕；忧虑 | |
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60
unprecedented
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| adj.无前例的，新奇的 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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62
supplanted
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| 把…排挤掉，取代( supplant的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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63
promotion
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| n.提升，晋级；促销，宣传 | |
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64
honourable
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| adj.可敬的；荣誉的，光荣的 | |
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65
unnatural
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| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
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66
frugal
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| adj.节俭的，节约的，少量的，微量的 | |
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67
allusion
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| n.暗示，间接提示 | |
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68
agitation
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| n.搅动；搅拌；鼓动，煽动 | |
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69
justified
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| a.正当的，有理的 | |
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70
salon
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| n.[法]沙龙；客厅；营业性的高级服务室 | |
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71
ascended
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| v.上升，攀登( ascend的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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72
kerosene
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| n.(kerosine)煤油，火油 | |
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73
mitigated
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| v.减轻，缓和( mitigate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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