“Surely you’ll admit that you like having your own bath,” she said, looking past him into the glittering white cubicle2, flooded with electric light, which he had just quitted.
“Whoever said I didn’t? But more than anything else, I like my closets. I like having room for all my clothes, without hanging one coat on top of another, and not having to get down on my marrow-bones and fumble3 in dark corners to find my shoes.”
“Of course you do. And it’s much more dignified4, at your age, to have a room of your own.”
“It’s convenient, certainly, though I hope I’m not so old as to be personally repulsive5?” He glanced into the mirror and straightened his shoulders as if he were trying on a coat.
Mrs. St. Peter laughed, — a pleasant, easy laugh with genuine amusement in it. “No, you are very handsome, my dear, especially in your bath-robe. You grow better-looking and more intolerant all the time.”
“Intolerant?” He put down his shoe and looked up at her. The thing that stuck in his mind constantly was that she was growing more and more intolerant, about everything except her sons-inlaw; that she would probably continue to do so, and that he must school himself to bear it.
“I suppose it’s a natural process,” she went on, “but you ought to try, try seriously, I mean, to curb6 it where it affects the happiness of your daughters. You are too severe with Scott and Louie. All young men have foolish vanities — you had plenty.”
St. Peter sat with his elbows on his knees, leaning forward and playing absently with the tassels7 of his bath-robe. “Why, Lillian, I have exercised the virtue8 of patience with those two young men more than with all the thousands of young ruffians who have gone through my class-rooms. My forbearance is overstrained, it’s gone flat. That’s what’s the matter with me.”
“Oh, Godfrey, how can you be such a poor judge of your own behaviour? But we won’t argue about it now. You’ll put on your dinner coat? And do try to be sympathetic and agreeable to-night.”
Half an hour later Mr. and Mrs. Scott McGregor and Mr. and Mrs. Louie Marsellus arrived, and soon after them the English scholar, Sir Edgar Spilling, so anxious to do the usual thing in America that he wore a morning street suit. He was a gaunt, rugged9, large-boned man of fifty, with long legs and arms, a pear-shaped face, and a drooping10, prewar moustache. His specialty11 was Spanish history, and he had come all the way to Hamilton, from his cousin’s place in Saskatchewan, to enquire12 about some of Doctor St. Peter’s “sources.”
Introductions over, it was the Professor’s son-inlaw, Louie Marsellus, who took Sir Edgar in hand. He remembered having met in China a Walter Spilling, who was, it turned out, a brother of Sir Edgar. Marsellus had also a brother there, engaged in the silk trade. They exchanged opinions on conditions of the Orient, while young McGregor put on his horn-rimmed spectacles and roamed restlessly up and down the library. The two daughters sat near their mother, listening to the talk about China.
Mrs. St. Peter was very fair, pink and gold, — a pale gold, now that she was becoming a little grey. The tints13 of her face and hair and lashes14 were so soft that one did not realize, on first meeting her, how very definitely and decidedly her features were cut, under the smiling infusion15 of colour. When she was annoyed or tired, the lines became severe. Rosamond, the elder daughter, resembled her mother in feature, though her face was heavier.
Her colouring was altogether different; dusky black hair, deep dark eyes, a soft white skin with rich brunette red in her cheeks and lips. Nearly everyone considered Rosamond brilliantly beautiful. Her father, though he was very proud of her, demurred16 from the general opinion. He thought her too tall, with a rather awkward carriage. She stooped a trifle, and was wide in the hips17 and shoulders. She had, he sometimes remarked to her mother, exactly the wide femur and flat shoulder-blade of his old slab-sided Kanuck grandfather. For a tree-hewer they were an asset. But St. Peter was very critical. Most people saw only Rosamond’s smooth black head and white throat, and the red of her curved lips that was like the duskiness of dark, heavy-scented roses.
Kathleen, the younger daughter, looked even younger than she was — had the slender, undeveloped figure then very much in vogue18. She was pale, with light hazel eyes, and her hair was hazel-coloured with distinctly green glints to it. To her father there was something very charming in the curious shadows her wide cheekbones cast over her cheeks, and in the spirited tilt19 of her head. Her figure in profile, he used to tell her, looked just like an interrogation point.
Mrs. St. Peter frankly20 liked having a son-inlaw who could tot up acquaintances with Sir Edgar from the Soudan to Alaska. Scott, she saw, was going to be sulky because Sir Edgar and Marsellus were talking about things beyond his little circle of interests. She made no effort to draw him into the conversation, but let him prowl like a restless leopard21 among the books. The Professor was amiable22, but quiet. When the second maid came to the door and signalled that dinner was ready — dinner was signalled, not announced — Mrs. St. Peter took Sir Edgar and guided him to his seat at her right, while the others found their usual places. After they had finished the soup, she had some difficulty in summoning the little maid to take away the plates, and explained to her guest that the electric bell, under the table, wasn’t connected as yet — they had been in the new house less than a week, and the trials of building were not over.
“Oh? Then if I had happened along a fortnight ago I shouldn’t have found you here? But it must be very interesting, building you own house and arranging it as you like,” he responded.
Marsellus, silenced during the soup, came in with a warm smile and a slight shrug23 of the shoulders. “Building is the word with us, Sir Edgar, my — oh, isn’t it! My wife and I are in the throes of it. We are building a country house, rather an ambitious affair, out on the wooded shores of Lake Michigan. Perhaps you would like to run out in my car and see it? What are your engagements for tomorrow? I can take you out in half an hour, and we can lunch at the Country Club. We have a magnificent site; primeval forest behind us and the lake in front, with our own beach — my father-inlaw, you must know, is a formidable swimmer. We’ve been singularly fortunate in architect, — a young Norwegian, trained in Paris. He’s doing us a Norwegian manor24 house, very harmonious25 with its setting, just the right thing for rugged pine woods and high headlands.”
Sir Edgar seemed most willing to make this excursion, and allowed Marsellus to fix an hour, greatly to the surprise of McGregor, whose look at his wife implied that he entertained serious doubts whether this baronet with walrus26 moustaches amounted to much after all.
The engagement made, Louie turned to Mrs. St. Peter. “And won’t you come too, Dearest? You haven’t been out since we got our wonderful wrought-iron door fittings from Chicago. We found just the right sort of hinge and latch27, Sir Edgar, and had all the others copied from it. None of your Colonial glass knobs for us!”
Mrs. St. Peter sighed. Scott and Kathleen had just glass-knobbed their new bungalow28 throughout, yet she knew Louie didn’t mean to hurt their feelings — it was his heedless enthusiasm that made him often say untactful things.
“We’ve been extremely fortunate in getting all the little things right,” Louie was gladly confiding29 to Sir Edgar. “There’s really not a flaw in the conception. I can say that, because I’m a mere30 onlooker31; the whole thing’s been done by the Norwegian and my wife and Mrs. St. Peter. And,” he put his hand down affectionately upon Mrs. St. Peter’s bare arm, “and we’ve named our place! I’ve already ordered the house stationary32. No, Rosamond, I won’t keep our little secret any longer. It will please your father, as well as your mother. We call our place ‘Outland,’ Sir Edgar.”
He dropped the announcement and drew back. His mother-inlaw rose to it — Spilling could scarcely be expected to understand.
“How splendid, Louie! A real inspiration.”
“Yes, isn’t it? I knew that would go to your hearts.” The Professor had expressed his emotion only by lifting his heavy, sharply uptwisted eyebrow33.
“Let me explain, Sir Edgar,” Marsellus went on eagerly. “We have named our place for Tom Outland, a brilliant young American scientist and inventor, who was killed in Flanders, fighting with the Foreign Legion, the second year of the war, when he was barely thirty years of age. Before he dashed off to the front, this youngster had discovered the principle of the Outland vacuum, worked out the construction of the bulkheaded vacuum that is revolutionizing aviation. He had not only invented it, but, curiously34 enough for such a hot-headed fellow, had taken pains to protect it. He had no time to communicate his discovery or to commercialize it — simply bolted to the front and left the most important discovery of his time to take care of itself.”
Sir Edgar, fork arrested, looked a trifle dazed. “Am I to understand that you are referring to the inventor of the Outland vacuum?”
Louie was delighted. “Exactly that! Of course you would know all about it. My wife was young Outland’s fiancée — is virtually his widow. Before he went to France he made a will in her favour; he had no living relatives, indeed. Toward the close of the war we began to sense the importance of what Outland had been doing in his laboratory — I am an electrical engineer by profession. We called in the assistance of experts and got the idea over from the laboratory to the trade. The monetary35 returns have been and are, of course, large.”
While Louie paused long enough to have some intercourse36 with the roast before it was taken away, Sir Edgar remarked that he himself had been in the Air Service during the war, in the construction department, and that it was most extraordinary to come thus by chance upon the genesis of the Outland vacuum.
“You see,” Louie told him, “Outland got nothing out of it but death and glory. Naturally, we feel terribly indebted. We feel it’s our first duty in life to use that money as he would have wished — we’ve endowed scholarships in his own university here, and that sort of thing. But our house we want to have as a sort of memorial to him. We are going to transfer his laboratory there, if the university will permit, — all the apparatus37 he worked with. We have a room for his library and pictures. When his brother scientists come to Hamilton to look him up, to get information about him, as they are doing now already, at Outland they will find his books and instruments, all the sources of his inspiration.”
“Even Rosamond,” murmured McGregor, his eyes upon his cool green salad. He was struggling with a desire to shout to the Britisher that Marsellus had never so much as seen Tom Outland, while he, McGregor, had been his classmate and friend.
Sir Edgar was as much interested as he was mystified. He had come here to talk about manuscripts shut up in certain mouldering38 monasteries39 in Spain, but he had almost forgotten them in the turn the conversation had taken. He was genuinely interested in aviation and all its problems. He asked few questions, and his comments were almost entirely40 limited to the single exclamation41, “Oh!” But this, from his lips, could mean a great many things; indifference42, sharp interrogation, sympathetic interest, the nervousness of a modest man on hearing disclosures of a delicately personal nature. McGregor, before the others had finished dessert, drew a big cigar from his pocket and lit it at one of the table candles, as the horridest thing he could think of to do.
When they left the dining-room, St. Peter, who had scarcely spoken during dinner, took Sir Edgar’s arm and said to his wife: “If you will excuse us, my dear, we have some technical matters to discuss.” Leading his guest into the library, he shut the door.
Marsellus looked distinctly disappointed. He stood gazing wistfully after them, like a little boy told to go to bed. Louie’s eyes were vividly43 blue, like hot sapphires44, but the rest of his face had little colour — he was a rather mackerel-tinted man. Only his eyes, and his quick, impetuous movements, gave out the zest45 for life with which he was always bubbling. There was nothing Semitic about his countenance46 except his nose — that took the lead. It was not at all an unpleasing feature, but it grew out of his face with masterful strength, well-rooted, like a vigorous oak-tree growing out of a hill-side.
Mrs. St. Peter, always concerned for Louie, asked him to come and look at the new rug in her bedroom. This revived him; he took her arm, and they went upstairs together.
McGregor was left with the two sisters. “Outland, outlandish!” he muttered, while he fumbled47 about for an ashtray48. Rosamond pretended not to hear him, but the dusky red on her cheeks crept a little farther toward her ears.
“Remember, we are leaving early, Scott,” said Kathleen. “You have to finish your editorial to-night.”
“Surely you don’t make him work at night, too?” Rosamond asked. “Doesn’t he have to rest his brain sometimes? Humour is always better if it’s spontaneous.”
“Oh, that’s the trouble with me,” Scott assured her. “Unless I keep my nose to the grindstone, I’m too damned spontaneous and tell the truth, and the public won’t stand for it. It’s not an editorial I have to finish, it’s the daily prose poem I do for the syndicate, for which I get twenty-five beans. This is the motif49:
“‘When your pocket is under-moneyed and your fancy is over-girled, you’ll have to admit while you’re cursing it, it’s a mighty50 darned good old world.’ Bang, bang!”
He threw his cigar-end savagely51 into the fireplace. He knew that Rosamond detested52 his editorials and his jingles53. She had fastidious taste in literature, like her mother — though he didn’t think she had half the general intelligence of his wife. She also, now that she was Tom Outland’s heir, detested to hear sums of money mentioned, especially small sums.
After the good-nights were said, and they were outside the front door, McGregor seized his wife’s elbow and rushed her down the walk to the gate where his Ford54 was parked, breaking out in her ear as they ran: “Now what the hell is a virtual widow? Does he mean a virtuous55 widow, or the reverseous? Bang, bang!”
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1
dressing
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| n.(食物)调料；包扎伤口的用品，敷料 | |
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cubicle
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| n.大房间中隔出的小室 | |
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fumble
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| vi.笨拙地用手摸、弄、接等，摸索 | |
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dignified
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| a.可敬的，高贵的 | |
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repulsive
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| adj.排斥的，使人反感的 | |
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curb
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| n.场外证券市场，场外交易；vt.制止，抑制 | |
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tassels
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| n.穗( tassel的名词复数 )；流苏状物；（植物的）穗；玉蜀黍的穗状雄花v.抽穗， （玉米）长穗须( tassel的第三人称单数 )；使抽穗， （为了使作物茁壮生长）摘去穗状雄花；用流苏装饰 | |
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virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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rugged
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| adj.高低不平的，粗糙的，粗壮的，强健的 | |
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drooping
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| adj. 下垂的，无力的 动词droop的现在分词 | |
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specialty
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| n.(speciality)特性，特质；专业，专长 | |
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enquire
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| v.打听，询问；调查，查问 | |
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tints
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| 色彩( tint的名词复数 )； 带白的颜色； （淡色）染发剂； 痕迹 | |
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lashes
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| n.鞭挞( lash的名词复数 )；鞭子；突然猛烈的一击；急速挥动v.鞭打( lash的第三人称单数 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥 | |
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infusion
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| n.灌输 | |
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demurred
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| v.表示异议，反对( demur的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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hips
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| abbr.high impact polystyrene 高冲击强度聚苯乙烯，耐冲性聚苯乙烯n.臀部( hip的名词复数 )；[建筑学]屋脊；臀围（尺寸）；臀部…的 | |
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Vogue
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| n.时髦，时尚；adj.流行的 | |
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tilt
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| v.(使)倾侧；(使)倾斜；n.倾侧；倾斜 | |
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frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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leopard
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| n.豹 | |
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amiable
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| adj.和蔼可亲的，友善的，亲切的 | |
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shrug
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| v.耸肩(表示怀疑、冷漠、不知等) | |
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manor
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| n.庄园，领地 | |
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harmonious
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| adj.和睦的，调和的，和谐的，协调的 | |
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walrus
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| n.海象 | |
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latch
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| n.门闩，窗闩；弹簧锁 | |
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bungalow
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| n.平房，周围有阳台的木造小平房 | |
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confiding
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| adj.相信人的，易于相信的v.吐露（秘密，心事等）( confide的现在分词 )；（向某人）吐露（隐私、秘密等） | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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onlooker
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| n.旁观者，观众 | |
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stationary
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| adj.固定的，静止不动的 | |
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eyebrow
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| n.眉毛，眉 | |
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curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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monetary
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| adj.货币的，钱的；通货的；金融的；财政的 | |
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intercourse
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| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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apparatus
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| n.装置，器械；器具，设备 | |
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mouldering
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| v.腐朽( moulder的现在分词 )；腐烂，崩塌 | |
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monasteries
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| 修道院( monastery的名词复数 ) | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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exclamation
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| n.感叹号，惊呼，惊叹词 | |
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indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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vividly
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| adv.清楚地，鲜明地，生动地 | |
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44
sapphires
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| n.蓝宝石，钢玉宝石( sapphire的名词复数 )；蔚蓝色 | |
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45
zest
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| n.乐趣；滋味，风味；兴趣 | |
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countenance
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| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
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47
fumbled
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| （笨拙地）摸索或处理（某事物）( fumble的过去式和过去分词 )； 乱摸，笨拙地弄； 使落下 | |
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48
ashtray
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| n.烟灰缸 | |
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49
motif
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| n.(图案的)基本花纹，(衣服的)花边；主题 | |
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50
mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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51
savagely
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| adv. 野蛮地，残酷地 | |
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52
detested
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| v.憎恶，嫌恶，痛恨( detest的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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53
jingles
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| 叮当声( jingle的名词复数 )； 节拍十分规则的简单诗歌 | |
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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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55
virtuous
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| adj.有品德的，善良的，贞洁的，有效力的 | |
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