The bitter paths wherein I stray,
Thou knowest Who hast made the Fire,
Thou knowest Who hast made the Clay!
— RUDYARD KIPLING.
THE unbalanced joys and sorrows of emotional natures are apt to arouse the pity of the narrow-hearted, and the mild contempt of the obtuse1 of their fellow creatures.
But perhaps it is a mistake to feel compassion2 for persons like Hester, for if they have many evil days and weeks in their usually short lives, they have also moments of sheer bliss3, hours of awed4 contemplation and of exquisite6 rapture7 which possibly in the long run equal the more solid joys of a good income and a good digestion8, nay9, even the perennial10 glow of that happiest of happy temperaments11 which limits the nature of others by its own, which sees no uncomfortable difference between a moral and a legal right, and believes it can measure life with the same admirable accuracy with which it measures its drawing-room curtains.
As Hester and Rachel sat together in the Vicarage drawing-room, Rachel’s faithful dog-like eyes detected no trace of tears in Hester’s dancing, mischievous12 ones. They were alone, for the Bishop13 had dropped Rachel on his way to visit a sick clergyman, and had arranged to call at the Vicarage on his way back.
Hester quickly perceived that Rachel did not wish to talk of herself, and drew a quaint14 picture of her own life at Warpington, which she described "not wisely but too well." But she was faithful to her salt. She said nothing of the Gresleys to which those worthies15 could have objected had they been present. Indeed, she spoke16 of them in what they would have termed “a very proper manner,” of their kindness to her when she had been ill, of how Mr. Gresley had himself brought up her breakfast tray every morning, and how in the spring he had taught her to bicycle.
“But oh! Rachel,” added Hester, “during the last nine months my self-esteem has been perforated with wounds, each large enough to kill the poor creature. My life here has shown me horrible faults in myself of which I never dreamed. I feel as if I had been ironed all over since I came here, and all kinds of ugly words in invisible ink are coming out clear in the process.”
“I am quite alarmed,” said Rachel tranquilly17.
“You ought to be. First of all I did think I cared nothing about food. I don’t remember ever giving it a thought when I lived with Aunt Susan. But here I— I am difficult about it. I do try to eat it, but often I really can’t. And then I leave it on my plate, which is a disgusting habit which always offends me in other people. Now I am as bad as any of them; indeed, it is worse in me because I know poor James is not very rich.”
“I suppose the cooking is vile18?”
“I don’t know. I never noticed what I ate till I came here, so I can’t judge. Perhaps it is not very good. But the dreadful part is that I should mind. I could not have believed it of myself. James and Minna never say anything, but I know it vexes19 them, as of course it must.”
Rachel looked critically at Hester’s innocent, childlike face. When Hester was not a cultivated woman of the world she was a child. There was, alas20! no medium in her character. Rachel noticed how thin her face and hands had become, and the strained look in the eyes. The faint colour in her cheek had a violet tinge21.
She did not waste words on the cookery question. She saw plainly enough that Hester’s weak health was slipping further down the hill.
“And all this time you have been working?”
“If you call it working. I used to call it so once, but I never do now. Yes, I manage about four hours a day. I have made another pleasant discovery about myself, that I have the temper of a fiend if I am interrupted.”
“But surely you told the Gresleys when first you came that you must not be interrupted at certain hours?”
“I did. I did. But of course — it is very natural — they think that rather self-important and silly. I am thought very silly here, Rachel. And James does not mind being interrupted in writing his sermons. And the Pratts have got the habit of running in in the mornings.”
“Who on earth are the Pratts?”
“They are what they call ‘county people.’ Their father made a fortune in oil, and built a house covered with turrets22 near here a few years ago. I used to know Captain Pratt, the son, very slightly in London. I never would dance with him. He used to come to our ‘At Homes,’ but he was never asked to dinner. He is a great ‘parti’ among a certain set down here. His mother and sisters were very kind to me when I came, but I was not so accustomed then as I am now to be treated familiarly and called ‘Hessie,’ which no one has ever called me before, and I am afraid I was not so responsive as I see now I ought to have been. Down here it seems your friends are the people whom you live near, not the ones you like. It seems a curious arrangement. And as the Pratts are James’ and Minna’s greatest friends, I did not wish to offend them. And then, of course, I did offend them mortally at last by losing my temper when they came up to my room to what they called ‘rout me out,’ though I had told them I was busy in the mornings. I was in a very difficult place, and when they came in I did not know who they were, because only the people in the book were real just then. And then when I recognised them, and the scene in my mind which I had been waiting for for weeks was shattered like a pane23 of glass, I became quite giddy and spoke wildly. And then — I was so ashamed afterwards — I burst into tears of rage and despair.”
Even the remembrance was too much. Hester wiped away two large tears on to a dear little handkerchief just large enough to receive them, and went on with a quaver in her voice.
“I was so shocked at myself that I found it quite easy to tell them next day that I was sorry I had lost my temper, but they have not been the same since. Not that I wanted them to be the same. I would rather they were different. But I was anxious to keep on cordial terms with Minna’s friends. She quarrels with them herself, but that is different. I suppose it is inevitable24 if you are on terms of great intimacy25 with people you don’t really care for.”
“At any rate, they have not interrupted you again?”
“N— no. But still, I was often interrupted. Minna has too much to do, and she is not strong just now, and she often sends up one of the children, and I was so nearly fierce with one of them, poor little things, that I felt the risk was becoming too great, so I have left off writing between breakfast and luncheon26, and I get up directly it is light instead. It is light very early now. Only the worst part of it is that I am so tired for the rest of the day that I can hardly drag myself about.”
Rachel said nothing. She seldom commented on the confidences that were made to her. She saw that Hester, always delicate, was making an enormous effort under conditions which would be certain to entail27 disastrous28 effects on her health. The book was sapping her strength like a vampire29, and the Gresleys were evidently exhausting it still further by unconsciously strewing30 her path with difficulties. Rachel did not know them, but she supposed they belonged to that large class whose eyes are holden.
“And the book itself? Is it nearly finished?”
Hester’s face changed. Eagerly, shyly, enthusiastically, she talked to her friend about the book, as a young girl talks of her lover. Everything else was forgotten. Hester’s eyes burned. Her colour came and went. She was transfigured.
The protecting anxious affection died out of Rachel’s face as she looked at Hester, and gave place to a certain wistful, half envious31 admiration32. She had once been shaken by all these emotions herself, years ago, when she was in love. She had regarded them as a revelation while they lasted; and — afterwards — as a steep step, a very steep step upon the stair of life. But she realised now that such as Hester live constantly in the world which the greater number of us can only enter when human passion lends us the key; the world at which, when the gates are shut against us, the coarser minded among us are not ashamed to level their ridicule33 and contempt.
Hester spoke brokenly with awe5 and reverence34 of her book, as of some mighty35 presence, some constraining36 power outside herself. She saw it complete, beautiful, an entrancing vision, inaccessible37 as a sunset.
“I cannot reach up to it. I cannot get near it,” she said. “When I try to write it it is like drawing an angel with spread wings with a bit of charcoal38. I understate everything. Yet I labour day by day travestying it, caricaturing the beautiful thoughts that come into my mind. I make everything commonplace and vulgar by putting it into words. I go alone into the woods and sit for hours quite still with the trees. And gradually I understand and know. And I listen and Nature speaks, really speaks — not a fa?on de parler as some people think who explain to you that you mean this or that by your words which you don’t mean — and her spirit becomes one with my spirit. And I feel I can never again misunderstand her, never again fail to interpret her, never again wander so far away from her that every white anemone39, and every seedling40 fern disowns me, and waits in silence till the alien has gone from among them. And I come home, Rachel, and I try, sometimes I try for half the night, to find words to translate it into. But there are no words, or if there are I cannot find them, and at last I fall back on some coarse simile41, and in my despair I write it down. And Oh! Rachel, the worst is that presently, when I have forgotten what it ought to have been, when the vision fades, I know I shall admire what I have written. It is that that breaks my heart.”
The old, old lament42 of those who worship art, that sternest mistress in the world, fell into the silence of the little drawing-room. Rachel understood it in part only, for she had always vaguely43 felt that Hester idealised Nature, as she idealised her fellow creatures, as she idealised everything, and she did not comprehend why Hester was in despair because she could not speak adequately of life or Nature as she saw them. Rachel thought with bewilderment that that was just what she could do.
At this moment a carriage drew up at the door, and after a long interval44, during which the wrathful voice of the cook could be distinctly heard through the kitchen window recalling “Hemma” to a sense of duty from the backyard, “Hemma” breathlessly ushered45 in the Bishop of Southminster.
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1
obtuse
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| adj.钝的；愚钝的 | |
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2
compassion
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| n.同情，怜悯 | |
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3
bliss
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| n.狂喜，福佑，天赐的福 | |
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4
awed
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| adj.充满敬畏的，表示敬畏的v.使敬畏，使惊惧( awe的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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5
awe
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| n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧 | |
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6
exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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7
rapture
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| n.狂喜；全神贯注；着迷；v.使狂喜 | |
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8
digestion
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| n.消化，吸收 | |
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9
nay
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| adv.不；n.反对票，投反对票者 | |
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10
perennial
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| adj.终年的；长久的 | |
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11
temperaments
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| 性格( temperament的名词复数 )； （人或动物的）气质； 易冲动； （性情）暴躁 | |
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12
mischievous
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| adj.调皮的，恶作剧的，有害的，伤人的 | |
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13
bishop
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| n.主教，（国际象棋）象 | |
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14
quaint
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| adj.古雅的，离奇有趣的，奇怪的 | |
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15
worthies
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| 应得某事物( worthy的名词复数 )； 值得做某事； 可尊敬的； 有（某人或事物）的典型特征 | |
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16
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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17
tranquilly
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| adv. 宁静地 | |
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18
vile
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| adj.卑鄙的，可耻的，邪恶的；坏透的 | |
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19
vexes
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| v.使烦恼( vex的第三人称单数 )；使苦恼；使生气；详细讨论 | |
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20
alas
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| int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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21
tinge
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| vt.(较淡)着色于，染色；使带有…气息；n.淡淡色彩，些微的气息 | |
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22
turrets
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| （六角）转台( turret的名词复数 )； （战舰和坦克等上的）转动炮塔； （摄影机等上的）镜头转台； （旧时攻城用的）塔车 | |
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23
pane
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| n.窗格玻璃，长方块 | |
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24
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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25
intimacy
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| n.熟悉，亲密，密切关系，亲昵的言行 | |
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26
luncheon
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| n.午宴，午餐，便宴 | |
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27
entail
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| vt.使承担，使成为必要，需要 | |
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28
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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29
vampire
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| n.吸血鬼 | |
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30
strewing
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| v.撒在…上( strew的现在分词 )；散落于；点缀；撒满 | |
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31
envious
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| adj.嫉妒的，羡慕的 | |
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32
admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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33
ridicule
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| v.讥讽，挖苦；n.嘲弄 | |
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34
reverence
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| n.敬畏，尊敬，尊严；Reverence:对某些基督教神职人员的尊称；v.尊敬，敬畏，崇敬 | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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36
constraining
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| 强迫( constrain的现在分词 )； 强使； 限制； 约束 | |
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37
inaccessible
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| adj.达不到的，难接近的 | |
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38
charcoal
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| n.炭，木炭，生物炭 | |
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39
anemone
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| n.海葵 | |
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40
seedling
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| n.秧苗，树苗 | |
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41
simile
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| n.直喻，明喻 | |
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42
lament
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| n.悲叹，悔恨，恸哭；v.哀悼，悔恨，悲叹 | |
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43
vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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44
interval
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| n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息 | |
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45
ushered
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| v.引，领，陪同( usher的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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