In a corner, beside the steaming brass4 tea-kettle, sat Lillian and Louie, a little lacquer table between them, bending, it seemed, over a casket of jewels. Lillian held up lovingly in her fingers a green-gold necklace, evidently an old one, without stones. “Of course emeralds would be beautiful, Louie, but they seem a little out of scale — to belong to a different scheme of life than any you and Rosamond can live here. You aren’t, after all, outrageously5 rich. When would she wear them?”
“At home, Dearest, with me, at our own dinner-table at Outland! I like the idea of their being out of scale. I’ve never given her any jewels. I’ve waited all this time to give her these. To me, her name spells emeralds.”
Mrs. St. Peter smiled, easily persuaded. “You’ll never be able to keep them. You’ll show them to her.”
“Oh, no, I won’t! They are to stay at the jeweller’s, in Chicago, until we all go down for the birthday party. That’s another secret we have to keep. We have such lots of them!” He bent6 over her hand and kissed it with warmth.
St. Peter swung in over the window rail. “That is always the cue for the husband to enter, isn’t it? What’s this about Chicago, Louie?”
He sat down, and Marsellus brought him some tea, lingering beside his chair. “It must be a secret from Rosie, but you see it happens that the date of your lecture engagement at the University of Chicago is coincident with her birthday, so I have planned that we shall all go down together. And among other diversions, we shall attend your lectures.”
The Professor’s eyebrows7 rose. “Bus-man’s holiday for the ladies, I should say.”
“But not for me. Remember, I wasn’t in your classes, like Scott and Outland. I’d give a good deal if I’d had the chance!” Louie said somewhat plaintively8, “so you must make it up to me.”
“Come if you wish. Lectures seem to me a rather grim treat, Louie.”
“Not to me. With a wink9 of encouragement I’ll go on to Boston with you next winter, when you give the Lowell lectures.”
“Would you, really? Next year’s a long way off. Now I must get clean. I’ve been working in my other-house garden, and I’m scarcely fit to have tea with a beautiful lady and a smartly dressed gentleman. What am I to do about that garden in the end, Lillian? Destroy it? Or leave it to the mercy of the next tenants10?”
As he went upstairs he turned at the bend of the staircase and looked back at them, again bending over their little box. Mrs. St. Peter was wearing the white silk crêpe that had been the most successful of her summer dresses, and an orchid11 velvet12 ribbon about her shining hair. She wouldn’t have made herself look quite so well if Louie hadn’t been coming, he reflected. Or was it that he wouldn’t have noticed it if Louie hadn’t been there? A man long accustomed to admire his wife in general, seldom pauses to admire her in a particular gown or attitude, unless his attention is directed to her by the appreciative13 gaze of another man.
Lillian’s coquetry with her sons-inlaw amused him. He hadn’t foreseen it, and he found it rather the most piquant14 and interesting thing about having married daughters. It had begun with Scott — the younger sister was married before the elder. St. Peter had thought that Scott McGregor was the sort of fellow Lillian always found tiresome15. But no; within a few weeks after Kathleen’s marriage, arch and confidential16 relations began to be evident between them. Even now, when Louie was so much in the foreground, and Scott was touchy17 and jealous, Lillian was very tactful and patient with him.
With Louie, Lillian seemed to be launching into a new career, and Godfrey began to think that he understood his own wife very little. He would have said that she would feel about Louie just as he did; would have cultivated him as a stranger in the town, because he was so unusual and exotic, but without in the least wishing to adopt anyone so foreign into the family circle. She had always been fastidious to an unreasonable18 degree about small niceties of deportment. She could never forgive poor Tom Outland for the angle at which he sometimes held a cigar in his mouth, or for the fact that he never learned to eat salad with ease. At the dinner-table, if Tom, forgetting himself in talk, sometimes dropped back into railroad lunch-counter ways and pushed his plate away from him when he had finished a course, Lillian’s face would become positively19 cruel in its contempt. Irregularities of that sort put her all on edge. But Louie could hurry audibly through his soup, or kiss her resoundingly on the cheek at a faculty20 reception, and she seemed to like it.
Yes, with her sons-inlaw she had begun the game of being a woman all over again. She dressed for them, planned for them, schemed in their interests. She had begun to entertain more than for years past — the new house made a plausible21 pretext22 — and to use her influence and charm in the little anxious social world of Hamilton. She was intensely interested in the success and happiness of these two young men, lived in their careers as she had once done in his. It was splendid, St. Peter told himself. She wasn’t going to have to face a stretch of boredom23 between being a young woman and being a young grandmother. She was less intelligent and more sensible than he had thought her.
When Godfrey came down stairs ready for dinner, Louie was gone. He walked up to the chair where his wife was reading, and took her hand.
“My dear,” he said quite delicately, “I wish you could keep Louie from letting his name go up for the Arts and Letters. It’s not safe yet. He’s not been here long enough. They’re a fussy24 little bunch, and he ought to wait until they know him better.”
“You mean someone will blackball him? Do you really think so? But the Country Club — ”
“Yes, Lillian; the Country Club is a big affair, and needs money. The Arts and Letters is a little group of fellows, and, as I said, fussy.”
“Scott belongs,” said Mrs. St. Peter rebelliously25. “Did he tell you?”
“No, he didn’t, and I shall not tell you who did. But if you’re tactful, you can save Louie’s feelings.”
Mrs. St. Peter closed her book without glancing down at it. A new interest shone in her eyes and made them look quite through and beyond her husband. “I must see what I can do with Scott,” she murmured.
St. Peter turned away to hide a smile. An old student of his, a friend who belonged to “the Outland period,” had told him laughingly that he was sure Scott would blackball Marsellus if his name ever came to the vote. “You know Scott is a kid in some things,” the friend had said. “He’s a little sore at Marsellus, and says a secret ballot26 is the only way he can ever get him where it wouldn’t hurt Mrs. St. Peter.”
While the Professor was eating his soup, he studied his wife’s face in the candlelight. It had changed so much since he found her laughing with Louie, and especially since he had dropped the hint about the Arts and Letters. It had become, he thought, too hard for the orchid velvet in her hair. Her upper lip had grown longer, and stiffened27 as it always did when she encountered opposition28.
“Well,” he reflected, “it will be interesting to see what she can do with Scott. That will make rather a test case.”
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1
puddles
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| n.水坑， （尤指道路上的）雨水坑( puddle的名词复数 ) | |
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hazy
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| adj.有薄雾的，朦胧的；不肯定的，模糊的 | |
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3
maples
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| 槭树，枫树( maple的名词复数 )； 槭木 | |
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4
brass
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| n.黄铜；黄铜器，铜管乐器 | |
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5
outrageously
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| 凶残地； 肆无忌惮地； 令人不能容忍地； 不寻常地 | |
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6
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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7
eyebrows
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| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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8
plaintively
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| adv.悲哀地，哀怨地 | |
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9
wink
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| n.眨眼，使眼色，瞬间；v.眨眼，使眼色，闪烁 | |
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10
tenants
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| n.房客( tenant的名词复数 )；佃户；占用者；占有者 | |
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11
orchid
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| n.兰花，淡紫色 | |
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velvet
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| n.丝绒，天鹅绒；adj.丝绒制的，柔软的 | |
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13
appreciative
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| adj.有鉴赏力的，有眼力的；感激的 | |
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14
piquant
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| adj.辛辣的，开胃的，令人兴奋的 | |
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15
tiresome
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| adj.令人疲劳的，令人厌倦的 | |
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16
confidential
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| adj.秘（机）密的，表示信任的，担任机密工作的 | |
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17
touchy
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| adj.易怒的；棘手的 | |
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18
unreasonable
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| adj.不讲道理的，不合情理的，过度的 | |
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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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faculty
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| n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员 | |
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21
plausible
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| adj.似真实的，似乎有理的，似乎可信的 | |
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22
pretext
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| n.借口，托词 | |
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23
boredom
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| n.厌烦，厌倦，乏味，无聊 | |
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24
fussy
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| adj.为琐事担忧的，过分装饰的，爱挑剔的 | |
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25
rebelliously
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| adv.造反地，难以控制地 | |
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26
ballot
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| n.（不记名）投票，投票总数，投票权；vi.投票 | |
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27
stiffened
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| 加强的 | |
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28
opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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