For years he had secretly nursed the hope of such a change, but had never dared to suggest it to Mrs. Grew, a woman of immutable2 habits. Mr. Grew himself was attached to Wingfield, where he had grown up, prospered3, and become what the local press described as “prominent.” He was attached to his ugly brick house with sandstone trimmings and a cast-iron area-railing neatly5 sanded to match; to the similar row of houses across the street, the “trolley” wires forming a kind of aerial pathway between, and the sprawling6 vista7 closed by the steeple of the church which he and his wife had always attended, and where their only child had been baptized.
It was hard to snap all these threads of association, visual and sentimental8; yet still harder, now that he was alone, to live so far from his boy. Ronald Grew was practising law in New York, and there was no more chance of returning to live at Wingfield than of a river’s flowing inland from the sea. Therefore to be near him his father must move; and it was characteristic of Mr. Grew, and of the situation generally, that the translation, when it took place, was to Brooklyn, and not to New York.
“Why you bury yourself in that hole I can’t think,” had been Ronald’s comment; and Mr. Grew simply replied that rents were lower in Brooklyn, and that he had heard of a house that would suit him. In reality he had said to himself — being the only recipient9 of his own confidences — that if he went to New York he might be on the boy’s mind; whereas, if he lived in Brooklyn, Ronald would always have a good excuse for not popping over to see him every other day. The sociological isolation10 of Brooklyn, combined with its geographical11 nearness, presented in fact the precise conditions for Mr. Grew’s case. He wanted to be near enough to New York to go there often, to feel under his feet the same pavement that Ronald trod, to sit now and then in the same theatres, and find on his breakfast-table the journals which, with increasing frequency, inserted Ronald’s name in the sacred bounds of the society column. It had always been a trial to Mr. Grew to have to wait twenty-four hours to read that “among those present was Mr. Ronald Grew.” Now he had it with his coffee, and left it on the breakfast-table to the perusal12 of a “hired girl” cosmopolitan13 enough to do it justice. In such ways Brooklyn attested14 the advantages of its propinquity to New York, while remaining, as regards Ronald’s duty to his father, as remote and inaccessible15 as Wingfield.
It was not that Ronald shirked his filial obligations, but rather because of his heavy sense of them, that Mr. Grew so persistently16 sought to minimize and lighten them. It was he who insisted, to Ronald, on the immense difficulty of getting from New York to Brooklyn.
“Any way you look at it, it makes a big hole in the day; and there’s not much use in the ragged17 rim4 left. You say you’re dining out next Sunday? Then I forbid you to come over here for lunch. Do you understand me, sir? You disobey at the risk of your father’s malediction18! Where did you say you were dining? With the Waltham Bankshires again? Why, that’s the second time in three weeks, ain’t it? Big blow-out, I suppose? Gold plate and orchids19 — opera singers in afterward20? Well, you’d be in a nice box if there was a fog on the river, and you got hung up half-way over. That’d be a handsome return for the attention Mrs. Bankshire has shown you — singling out a whipper-snapper like you twice in three weeks! (What’s the daughter’s name — Daisy?) No, sir — don’t you come fooling round here next Sunday, or I’ll set the dogs on you. And you wouldn’t find me in anyhow, come to think of it. I’m lunching out myself, as it happens — yes sir, lunching out. Is there anything especially comic in my lunching out? I don’t often do it, you say? Well, that’s no reason why I never should. Who with? Why, with — with old Dr. Bleaker21: Dr. Eliphalet Bleaker. No, you wouldn’t know about him — he’s only an old friend of your mother’s and mine.”
Gradually Ronald’s insistence22 became less difficult to overcome. With his customary sweetness and tact23 (as Mr. Grew put it) he began to “take the hint,” to give in to “the old gentleman’s” growing desire for solitude24.
“I’m set in my ways, Ronny, that’s about the size of it; I like to go tick-ticking along like a clock. I always did. And when you come bouncing in I never feel sure there’s enough for dinner — or that I haven’t sent Maria out for the evening. And I don’t want the neighbors to see me opening my own door to my son. That’s the kind of cringing25 snob26 I am. Don’t give me away, will you? I want ’em to think I keep four or five powdered flunkeys in the hall day and night — same as the lobby of one of those Fifth Avenue hotels. And if you pop over when you’re not expected, how am I going to keep up the bluff27?”
Ronald yielded after the proper amount of resistance — his intuitive sense, in every social transaction, of the proper amount of force to be expended28, was one of the qualities his father most admired in him. Mr. Grew’s perceptions in this line were probably more acute than his son suspected. The souls of short thick-set men, with chubby29 features, mutton-chop whiskers, and pale eyes peering between folds of fat like almond kernels30 in half-split shells — souls thus encased do not reveal themselves to the casual scrutiny31 as delicate emotional instruments. But in spite of the dense32 disguise in which he walked Mr. Grew vibrated exquisitely33 in response to every imaginative appeal; and his son Ronald was perpetually stimulating34 and feeding his imagination.
Ronald in fact constituted his father’s one escape from the impenetrable element of mediocrity which had always hemmed35 him in. To a man so enamoured of beauty, and so little qualified36 to add to its sum total, it was a wonderful privilege to have bestowed37 on the world such a being. Ronald’s resemblance to Mr. Grew’s early conception of what he himself would have liked to look might have put new life into the discredited39 theory of pre-natal influences. At any rate, if the young man owed his beauty, his distinction and his winning manner to the dreams of one of his parents, it was certainly to those of Mr. Grew, who, while outwardly devoting his life to the manufacture and dissemination40 of Grew’s Secure Suspender Buckle41, moved in an enchanted42 inward world peopled with all the figures of romance. In this high company Mr. Grew cut as brilliant a figure as any of its noble phantoms43; and to see his vision of himself suddenly projected on the outer world in the shape of a brilliant popular conquering son, seemed, in retrospect44, to give to that image a belated objective reality. There were even moments when, forgetting his physiognomy, Mr. Grew said to himself that if he’d had “half a chance” he might have done as well as Ronald; but this only fortified45 his resolve that Ronald should do infinitely46 better.
Ronald’s ability to do well almost equalled his gift of looking well. Mr. Grew constantly affirmed to himself that the boy was “not a genius”; but, barring this slight deficiency, he was almost everything that a parent could wish. Even at Harvard he had managed to be several desirable things at once — writing poetry in the college magazine, playing delightfully47 “by ear,” acquitting48 himself honorably in his studies, and yet holding his own in the fashionable sporting set that formed, as it were, the gateway49 of the temple of Society. Mr. Grew’s idealism did not preclude50 the frank desire that his son should pass through that gateway; but the wish was not prompted by material considerations. It was Mr. Grew’s notion that, in the rough and hurrying current of a new civilization, the little pools of leisure and enjoyment51 must nurture52 delicate growths, material graces as well as moral refinements53, likely to be uprooted54 and swept away by the rush of the main torrent55. He based his theory on the fact that he had liked the few “society” people he had met — had found their manners simpler, their voices more agreeable, their views more consonant56 with his own, than those of the leading citizens of Wingfield. But then he had met very few.
Ronald’s sympathies needed no urging in the same direction. He took naturally, dauntlessly, to all the high and exceptional things about which his father’s imagination had so long sheepishly and ineffectually hovered57 — from the start he was what Mr. Grew had dreamed of being. And so precise, so detailed58, was Mr. Grew’s vision of his own imaginary career, that as Ronald grew up, and began to travel in a widening orbit, his father had an almost uncanny sense of the extent to which that career was enacting59 itself before him. At Harvard, Ronald had done exactly what the hypothetical Mason Grew would have done, had not his actual self, at the same age, been working his way up in old Slagden’s button factory — the institution which was later to acquire fame, and even notoriety, as the birthplace of Grew’s Secure Suspender Buckle. Afterward, at a period when the actual Grew had passed from the factory to the bookkeeper’s desk, his invisible double had been reading law at Columbia — precisely60 again what Ronald did! But it was when the young man left the paths laid out for him by the parental61 hand, and cast himself boldly on the world, that his adventures began to bear the most astonishing resemblance to those of the unrealized Mason Grew. It was in New York that the scene of this hypothetical being’s first exploits had always been laid; and it was in New York that Ronald was to achieve his first triumph. There was nothing small or timid about Mr. Grew’s imagination; it had never stopped at anything between Wingfield and the metropolis62. And the real Ronald had the same cosmic vision as his parent. He brushed aside with a contemptuous laugh his mother’s tearful entreaty63 that he should stay at Wingfield and continue the dynasty of the Grew Suspender Buckle. Mr. Grew knew that in reality Ronald winced64 at the Buckle, loathed65 it, blushed for his connection with it. Yet it was the Buckle that had seen him through Groton, Harvard and the Law School, and had permitted him to enter the office of a distinguished66 corporation lawyer, instead of being enslaved to some sordid67 business with quick returns. The Buckle had been Ronald’s fairy godmother — yet his father did not blame him for abhorring68 and disowning it. Mr. Grew himself often bitterly regretted having bestowed his own name on the instrument of his material success, though, at the time, his doing so had been the natural expression of his romanticism. When he invented the Buckle, and took out his patent, he and his wife both felt that to bestow38 their name on it was like naming a battle-ship or a peak of the Andes.
Mrs. Grew had never learned to know better; but Mr. Grew had discovered his error before Ronald was out of school. He read it first in a black eye of his boy’s. Ronald’s symmetry had been marred69 by the insolent70 fist of a fourth former whom he had chastised71 for alluding72 to his father as “Old Buckles;” and when Mr. Grew heard the epithet73 he understood in a flash that the Buckle was a thing to blush for. It was too late then to dissociate his name from it, or to efface74 from the hoardings of the entire continent the picture of two gentlemen, one contorting himself in the abject75 effort to repair a broken brace76, while the careless ease of the other’s attitude proclaimed his trust in the Secure Suspender Buckle. These records were indelible, but Ronald could at least be spared all direct connection with them; and from that day Mr. Grew resolved that the boy should not return to Wingfield.
“You’ll see,” he had said to Mrs. Grew, “he’ll take right hold in New York. Ronald’s got my knack77 for taking hold,” he added, throwing out his chest.
“But the way you took hold was in business,” objected Mrs. Grew, who was large and literal.
Mr. Grew’s chest collapsed78, and he became suddenly conscious of his comic face in its rim of sandy whiskers. “That’s not the only way,” he said, with a touch of wistfulness which escaped his wife’s analysis.
“Well, of course you could have written beautifully,” she rejoined with admiring eyes.
“ Written? Me!” Mr. Grew became sardonic79.
“Why, those letters — weren’t they beautiful, I’d like to know?”
The couple exchanged a glance, innocently allusive80 and amused on the wife’s part, and charged with a sudden tragic81 significance on the husband’s.
“Well, I’ve got to be going along to the office now,” he merely said, dragging himself out of his rocking-chair.
This had happened while Ronald was still at school; and now Mrs. Grew slept in the Wingfield cemetery82, under a life-size theological virtue83 of her own choosing, and Mr. Grew’s prognostications as to Ronald’s ability to “take right hold” in New York were being more and more brilliantly fulfilled.
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1
momentous
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| adj.重要的，重大的 | |
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immutable
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| adj.不可改变的，永恒的 | |
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prospered
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| 成功，兴旺( prosper的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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rim
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| n.(圆物的)边，轮缘；边界 | |
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neatly
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| adv.整洁地，干净地，灵巧地，熟练地 | |
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sprawling
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| adj.蔓生的，不规则地伸展的v.伸开四肢坐[躺]( sprawl的现在分词 )；蔓延；杂乱无序地拓展；四肢伸展坐着（或躺着） | |
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7
vista
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| n.远景，深景，展望，回想 | |
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sentimental
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| adj.多愁善感的，感伤的 | |
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recipient
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| a.接受的,感受性强的 n.接受者,感受者,容器 | |
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isolation
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| n.隔离，孤立，分解，分离 | |
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geographical
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| adj.地理的；地区(性)的 | |
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12
perusal
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| n.细读，熟读；目测 | |
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cosmopolitan
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| adj.世界性的，全世界的，四海为家的，全球的 | |
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attested
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| adj.经检验证明无病的，经检验证明无菌的v.证明( attest的过去式和过去分词 )；证实；声称…属实；使宣誓 | |
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inaccessible
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| adj.达不到的，难接近的 | |
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persistently
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| ad.坚持地；固执地 | |
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ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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malediction
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| n.诅咒 | |
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orchids
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| n.兰花( orchid的名词复数 ) | |
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afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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bleaker
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| 阴冷的( bleak的比较级 )； （状况）无望的； 没有希望的； 光秃的 | |
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insistence
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| n.坚持；强调；坚决主张 | |
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tact
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| n.机敏，圆滑，得体 | |
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solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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cringing
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| adj.谄媚，奉承 | |
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snob
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| n.势利小人，自以为高雅、有学问的人 | |
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bluff
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| v.虚张声势，用假象骗人；n.虚张声势，欺骗 | |
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28
expended
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| v.花费( expend的过去式和过去分词 )；使用（钱等）做某事；用光；耗尽 | |
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chubby
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| adj.丰满的，圆胖的 | |
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kernels
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| 谷粒( kernel的名词复数 )； 仁； 核； 要点 | |
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scrutiny
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| n.详细检查，仔细观察 | |
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dense
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| a.密集的，稠密的，浓密的；密度大的 | |
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exquisitely
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| adv.精致地；强烈地；剧烈地；异常地 | |
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stimulating
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| adj.有启发性的，能激发人思考的 | |
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hemmed
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| 缝…的褶边( hem的过去式和过去分词 )； 包围 | |
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qualified
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| adj.合格的，有资格的，胜任的，有限制的 | |
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bestowed
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| 赠给，授予( bestow的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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bestow
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| v.把…赠与，把…授予；花费 | |
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discredited
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| 不足信的，不名誉的 | |
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dissemination
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| 传播,宣传,传染(病毒) | |
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buckle
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| n.扣子，带扣；v.把...扣住，由于压力而弯曲 | |
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42
enchanted
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| adj. 被施魔法的，陶醉的，入迷的 动词enchant的过去式和过去分词 | |
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43
phantoms
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| n.鬼怪，幽灵( phantom的名词复数 ) | |
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retrospect
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| n.回顾，追溯；v.回顾，回想，追溯 | |
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45
fortified
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| adj. 加强的 | |
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infinitely
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| adv.无限地，无穷地 | |
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delightfully
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| 大喜，欣然 | |
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acquitting
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| 宣判…无罪( acquit的现在分词 )； 使（自己）作出某种表现 | |
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49
gateway
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| n.大门口，出入口，途径，方法 | |
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50
preclude
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| vt.阻止，排除，防止；妨碍 | |
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51
enjoyment
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| n.乐趣；享有；享用 | |
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52
nurture
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| n.养育，照顾，教育；滋养，营养品；vt.养育，给与营养物，教养，扶持 | |
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53
refinements
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| n.（生活）风雅；精炼( refinement的名词复数 )；改良品；细微的改良；优雅或高贵的动作 | |
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54
uprooted
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| v.把（某物）连根拔起( uproot的过去式和过去分词 )；根除；赶走；把…赶出家园 | |
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55
torrent
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| n.激流，洪流；爆发，(话语等的)连发 | |
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consonant
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| n.辅音；adj.[音]符合的 | |
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57
hovered
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| 鸟( hover的过去式和过去分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫 | |
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detailed
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| adj.详细的，详尽的，极注意细节的，完全的 | |
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59
enacting
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| 制定（法律），通过（法案）( enact的现在分词 ) | |
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precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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parental
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| adj.父母的；父的；母的 | |
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metropolis
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| n.首府；大城市 | |
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entreaty
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| n.恳求，哀求 | |
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64
winced
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| 赶紧避开，畏缩( wince的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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65
loathed
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| v.憎恨，厌恶( loathe的过去式和过去分词 )；极不喜欢 | |
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distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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sordid
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| adj.肮脏的，不干净的，卑鄙的，暗淡的 | |
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abhorring
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| v.憎恶( abhor的现在分词 )；（厌恶地）回避；拒绝；淘汰 | |
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69
marred
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| adj. 被损毁, 污损的 | |
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70
insolent
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| adj.傲慢的，无理的 | |
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71
chastised
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| v.严惩（某人）（尤指责打）( chastise的过去式 ) | |
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72
alluding
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| 提及，暗指( allude的现在分词 ) | |
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73
epithet
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| n.（用于褒贬人物等的）表述形容词，修饰语 | |
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74
efface
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| v.擦掉，抹去 | |
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abject
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| adj.极可怜的，卑屈的 | |
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76
brace
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| n. 支柱,曲柄,大括号; v. 绷紧,顶住,(为困难或坏事)做准备 | |
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77
knack
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| n.诀窍，做事情的灵巧的，便利的方法 | |
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collapsed
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| adj.倒塌的 | |
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sardonic
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| adj.嘲笑的，冷笑的，讥讽的 | |
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allusive
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| adj.暗示的；引用典故的 | |
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81
tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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82
cemetery
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| n.坟墓，墓地，坟场 | |
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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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