“So, husband and wife are met again! And what have you to say after so long a time?”
“I’ve nothing to say. Let my deeds speak. I’ve given you year by year fully3 half my income.”
She laughed scornfully, and exclaimed merely—
“Magnificent man!”
“Miserable4 pittance5 it is, but the more miserable, the harder the sacrifice for me. I don’t say I have been able to do much; but I have done more than my means warrant, and I don’t understand what you propose to yourself by laying yourself out to torment6 and embarrass me. What the devil do you follow me about for? Do you think I’m fool enough to be bullied7?”
“A fine question from Charles Vairfield of Wyvern to his wife!” she observed with a pallid8 simper.
“Wife and husband are terms very easily pronounced,” said he.
“And relations very easily made,” she rejoined.
He was leaning with his shoulder against the high mantelpiece, and looking upon her with a countenance9 in which you might have seen disdain10 and fear mingling11 with something of compunction.
“Relations very easily made, and still more easily affected,” he replied. “Come, Bertha, there is no use in quarrelling over points of law. Past is past, as Leonora says. If I have wronged you in anything I am sorry. I’ve tried to make amends12; and though many a fellow would have been tired out long ago, I continue to give you proofs that I am not.”
“That is a sort of benevolence,” she said, in her own language, “which may as well be voluntary, for, if it be not, the magistrates13 will compel it.”
“The magistrates are neither fools nor tyrants14. You’ll make nothing of the magistrates. You have no rights, and you know it.”
“An odd country where a wife has no rights.”
“Come, Bertha, there is no use in picking a quarrel. While you take me quietly you have your share, and a good deal more. You used to be reasonable.”
“A reasonable wife, I suppose, gives up her position, her character, her prospects15, whenever it answers her husband to sacrifice these trifles for his villainous pleasures. Your English wives must be meek17 souls indeed if they like it. I don’t hear they are such lambs though.”
“I’m not going to argue law points, as I said before. Lawyers are the proper persons to do that. You used to be reasonable. Bertha—where’s the good in pushing things to extremes?”
“What a gentle creature you are,” she laughed, “and how persuasive18!”
“I’m a quiet fellow enough, I believe, as men go, but I’m not persuasive, and I know it. I wish I were.”
“Those whom you have persuaded once are not likely to be persuaded again. Your persuasions19 are not always lucky. Are they?”
“You want to quarrel about everything. You want to leave no possible point of agreement.”
“Things are at a bad pass when husband and wife are so.”
Charles looked at her angrily for a moment, and then down to the floor, and he whistled a few bars of a tune20.
“What do you whistle for?” she demanded.
“Come, Bertha, don’t be foolish.”
“You were once a gentleman. It is a blackguard who whistles in reply to a lady’s words,” she said, on a sudden stretching out her hand tremulously, as if in search of some one to grasp.
“Well, don’t mind. Stick to one thing at a time. For God’s sake say what you want, and have done with it.”
“You must acknowledge me before the world for your wife,” she answered with resolute21 serenity22, and raising her face, and shutting her mouth she sniffed23 defiantly24 through her distended25 nostrils26.
“Come, come, Bertha, what good on earth could come of that?”
“Little to you, perhaps.”
“And none to you.”
She laughed savagely27. “That lie won’t do.”
“Bertha, Bertha, we may hate one another if you will. But is it not as well to try whether we can agree upon anything. Let us just for the present talk intelligibly28.”
“You tried to murder me, you arch-villain16.”
“Nonsense,” said he, turning pale, “how can you talk so—how can you? Could I help interposing? You may well be thankful that I did.”
“You tried to murder me,” she screamed.
“You know that’s false. I took the knife from your hand, and by doing so I saved two lives. It was you—not I— who hurt your hand.”
“You villain, you damned villain, I wish I could kill you dead.”
“All the worse for you. Bertha.”
“I wish you were dead and cold in your bed, and my hand on your face to be sure of it.”
“Now you’re growing angry again. I thought we had done with storm and hysterics for a little, and could talk, and perhaps agree upon something, or at all events not waste our few minutes in violence.”
“Violence!—you wretch29, who began it?”
“What can you mean, Bertha?”
“You’ve married that woman. I know it all—I your lawful30 wife living. I’ll have you transported, double-dyed villain.”
“Where’s the good of screaming all this at the top of your voice?” he said, at last growing angry. “You wish you could kill me? I almost wish you could. I’ve been only too good to you, and allowed you to trouble me too long.”
“Ha, ha!—you’d like to put me out of the way?”
“You’ll do that for yourself. Can’t you wait, can’t you listen, can’t you have common reason, just for one moment? What do you want, what do you wish? Do you want every farthing I possess on earth, and to leave me nothing?”
“I’m your wife, and I’ll have my rights.”
“Now listen to me, that’s a question I need not discuss, because you already know what I believe on the subject.”
“You know what your brother Harry31 thinks.”
“I know what it is his interest to think.”
“You daren’t say that if he were here, you coward.”
“And I don’t care a farthing what he thinks.”
“Ha, ha, ha!”
“But if it had been fifty times over, what it never was, a marriage, your own conduct, long ago, would have dissolved it.”
“And you allow you have married that woman?”
“I shan’t talk to you about it; how I shall act, or may act, or have acted is my own affair, and rely upon it I’ll do nothing on the assumption that T ever was married to you.”
Up stood the tall woman, with hands extended toward him, wide open, with a slightly groping motion as if opening a curtain; not a word did she say, but her sightless eyes, which stared full at him, were quivering with that nervous tremor32 which is so unpleasant to see.
She drew breath two or three times at intervals33, long and deep, almost a sob34, and then without speaking or moving more she sat down, looking awfully35 white and wicked.
For a time the old soldier had lost the thread of her discourse36. Charles heard a step not very far off. He thought his unreasonable37 Bertha was about to have a fit, and opening the door he called lustily to Mildred.
It was Mrs. Tarnley.
“Will you get her some water, or whatever she ought to have, I think she is ill, and pray be quick.”
With a dark prying38 look Mildred glanced from one to the other.
“It’s in a mad-house and not here the like of her should be, wi’ them fits and frenzies,” she muttered as she applied39 herself to the resuscitation40 of the Dutchwoman.
On her toilet was a little group of bottles labelled “Sal-volatile,” “Asafoetida,” “Vale-nan.
“I don’t know which is the right one, but this can’t be far wrong,” she remarked, selecting the sal-volatile, and dropping some into the water.
“La! so it was a sort o’ fit. See how stiff she was. Lor’ bless us, I do wish she was under a mad doctor. See how her feet’s stuck out, and her thumbs tight shut in her fists, and her teeth set,” and old Mildred applied the sal-volatile phial to the patient’s nostrils, and gradually got her into a drowsy41, yawning state, in which she seemed to care and comprehend little or nothing of where she was or what had befallen her.
“Tell her I stayed till I saw her better, if she asks, and that I’m coming back again. She says she is hurt.”
“So much the better,” said Mildred; “that will keep her from prowling about the house like a cat or a ghost, as she did, all night, and no good came of it.”
“And will you look to her wrist: she cut it last night, and it is very clumsily tied up, and I’ll come again, tell her.”
So, with a bewildered brain and a dire42 load at his heart, he left the room.
Where was Alice, he thought. He went downstairs and up again by the back stair-case to their room, and there found the wreck43 and disorder44 of the odious45 scene he had witnessed, still undisturbed, and looking somehow more shocking in the sober light of morning.
From this sickening record of the occurrences of last night he turned for a moment to the window, and looked out on the tranquil46 and sylvan47 solitudes48, and then back again upon the disorder which had so nearly marked a scene of murder.
“How do I keep my reason?” thought he; “is there in England so miserable a man? Why should not I end it?”
Between the room where he stood and the angle of that bedroom in which at that moment was the wretch who agitated49 every hour of his existence with dismay, there intervened but eight-and-twenty feet, in that polyhedric and irregular old house. If he had but one tithe50 of her wickedness he had but to take up that poker51, strike through, and brain her as she sat there.
Why was he not a little more or a little less wicked? If the latter, he might never have been in his present fix. If the other, he might find a short way out of the thicket—“hew his way out with a bloody52 axe”— and none but those whose secrecy53 he might rely on be the wiser!
Avaunt, horrible shadows! Such beckoning54 phantoms55 from the abyss were not tempters, but simply terrors. No, he was far more likely to load a pistol, put the muzzle56 in his mouth, and blow his harrassed brains out.
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收听单词发音
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1
malignant
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| adj.恶性的，致命的；恶意的，恶毒的 | |
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irony
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| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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pittance
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| n.微薄的薪水，少量 | |
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torment
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| n.折磨；令人痛苦的东西(人)；vt.折磨；纠缠 | |
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bullied
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| adj.被欺负了v.恐吓，威逼( bully的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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pallid
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| adj.苍白的，呆板的 | |
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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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disdain
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| n.鄙视，轻视；v.轻视，鄙视，不屑 | |
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mingling
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| adj.混合的 | |
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amends
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| n. 赔偿 | |
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magistrates
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| 地方法官，治安官( magistrate的名词复数 ) | |
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tyrants
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| 专制统治者( tyrant的名词复数 )； 暴君似的人； （古希腊的）僭主； 严酷的事物 | |
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prospects
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| n.希望，前途(恒为复数) | |
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villain
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| n.反派演员，反面人物；恶棍；问题的起因 | |
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meek
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| adj.温顺的，逆来顺受的 | |
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persuasive
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| adj.有说服力的，能说得使人相信的 | |
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persuasions
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| n.劝说，说服（力）( persuasion的名词复数 )；信仰 | |
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tune
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| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
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resolute
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| adj.坚决的，果敢的 | |
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serenity
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| n.宁静，沉着，晴朗 | |
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23
sniffed
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| v.以鼻吸气，嗅，闻( sniff的过去式和过去分词 )；抽鼻子（尤指哭泣、患感冒等时出声地用鼻子吸气）；抱怨，不以为然地说 | |
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24
defiantly
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| adv.挑战地，大胆对抗地 | |
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distended
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| v.（使）膨胀，肿胀( distend的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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nostrils
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| 鼻孔( nostril的名词复数 ) | |
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savagely
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| adv. 野蛮地，残酷地 | |
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28
intelligibly
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| adv.可理解地，明了地，清晰地 | |
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wretch
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| n.可怜的人，不幸的人；卑鄙的人 | |
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30
lawful
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| adj.法律许可的，守法的，合法的 | |
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harry
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| vt.掠夺，蹂躏，使苦恼 | |
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32
tremor
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| n.震动，颤动，战栗，兴奋，地震 | |
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intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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sob
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| n.空间轨道的轰炸机；呜咽，哭泣 | |
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awfully
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| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
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discourse
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| n.论文，演说；谈话；话语；vi.讲述，著述 | |
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unreasonable
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| adj.不讲道理的，不合情理的，过度的 | |
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38
prying
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| adj.爱打听的v.打听，刺探（他人的私事）( pry的现在分词 )；撬开 | |
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applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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resuscitation
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| n.复活 | |
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41
drowsy
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| adj.昏昏欲睡的，令人发困的 | |
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dire
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| adj.可怕的，悲惨的，阴惨的，极端的 | |
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wreck
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| n.失事，遇难；沉船；vt.(船等)失事，遇难 | |
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disorder
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| n.紊乱，混乱；骚动，骚乱；疾病，失调 | |
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45
odious
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| adj.可憎的，讨厌的 | |
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46
tranquil
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| adj. 安静的, 宁静的, 稳定的, 不变的 | |
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sylvan
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| adj.森林的 | |
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48
solitudes
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| n.独居( solitude的名词复数 )；孤独；荒僻的地方；人迹罕至的地方 | |
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49
agitated
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| adj.被鼓动的，不安的 | |
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50
tithe
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| n.十分之一税；v.课什一税，缴什一税 | |
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51
poker
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| n.扑克；vt.烙制 | |
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52
bloody
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| adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染 | |
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53
secrecy
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| n.秘密，保密，隐蔽 | |
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54
beckoning
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| adj.引诱人的，令人心动的v.（用头或手的动作）示意，召唤( beckon的现在分词 ) | |
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55
phantoms
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| n.鬼怪，幽灵( phantom的名词复数 ) | |
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56
muzzle
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| n.鼻口部；口套；枪(炮)口；vt.使缄默 | |
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