Farther up they saw in the mid-distance the hounds running hither and thither6, as if there were little or no scent7 that day. Soon divers8 members of the hunt appeared on the scene, and it was evident from their movements that the chase had been stultified9 by general puzzle-headedness as to the whereabouts of the intended victim. In a minute a farmer rode up to the two pedestrians10, panting with acteonic excitement, and Grace being a few steps in advance, he addressed her, asking if she had seen the fox.
“Yes,” said she. “We saw him some time ago — just out there.”
“Did you cry Halloo?”
“We said nothing.”
“Then why the d —— didn’t you, or get the old buffer11 to do it for you?” said the man, as he cantered away.
She looked rather disconcerted at this reply, and observing her father’s face, saw that it was quite red.
“He ought not to have spoken to ye like that!” said the old man, in the tone of one whose heart was bruised12, though it was not by the epithet13 applied14 to himself. “And he wouldn’t if he had been a gentleman. ’Twas not the language to use to a woman of any niceness. You, so well read and cultivated — how could he expect ye to know what tom-boy field-folk are in the habit of doing? If so be you had just come from trimming swedes or mangolds — joking with the rough work-folk and all that — I could have stood it. But hasn’t it cost me near a hundred a year to lift you out of all that, so as to show an example to the neighborhood of what a woman can be? Grace, shall I tell you the secret of it? ’Twas because I was in your company. If a black-coated squire15 or pa’son had been walking with you instead of me he wouldn’t have spoken so.”
“No, no, father; there’s nothing in you rough or ill-mannered!”
“I tell you it is that! I’ve noticed, and I’ve noticed it many times, that a woman takes her color from the man she’s walking with. The woman who looks an unquestionable lady when she’s with a polished-up fellow, looks a mere5 tawdry imitation article when she’s hobbing and nobbing with a homely16 blade. You sha’n’t be treated like that for long, or at least your children sha’n’t. You shall have somebody to walk with you who looks more of a dandy than I— please God you shall!”
“But, my dear father,” she said, much distressed17, “I don’t mind at all. I don’t wish for more honor than I already have!”
“A perplexing and ticklish18 possession is a daughter,” according to Menander or some old Greek poet, and to nobody was one ever more so than to Melbury, by reason of her very dearness to him. As for Grace, she began to feel troubled; she did not perhaps wish there and then to unambitiously devote her life to Giles Winterborne, but she was conscious of more and more uneasiness at the possibility of being the social hope of the family.
“You would like to have more honor, if it pleases me?” asked her father, in continuation of the subject.
Despite her feeling she assented19 to this. His reasoning had not been without its weight upon her.
“Grace,” he said, just before they had reached the house, “if it costs me my life you shall marry well! To-day has shown me that whatever a young woman’s niceness, she stands for nothing alone. You shall marry well.”
He breathed heavily, and his breathing was caught up by the breeze, which seemed to sigh a soft remonstrance20.
She looked calmly at him. “And how about Mr. Winterborne?” she asked. “I mention it, father, not as a matter of sentiment, but as a question of keeping faith.”
The timber-merchant’s eyes fell for a moment. “I don’t know — I don’t know,” he said. “’Tis a trying strait. Well, well; there’s no hurry. We’ll wait and see how he gets on.”
That evening he called her into his room, a snug21 little apartment behind the large parlor22. It had at one time been part of the bakehouse, with the ordinary oval brick oven in the wall; but Mr. Melbury, in turning it into an office, had built into the cavity an iron safe, which he used for holding his private papers. The door of the safe was now open, and his keys were hanging from it.
“Sit down, Grace, and keep me company,” he said. “You may amuse yourself by looking over these.” He threw out a heap of papers before her.
“What are they?” she asked.
“Securities of various sorts.” He unfolded them one by one. “Papers worth so much money each. Now here’s a lot of turnpike bonds for one thing. Would you think that each of these pieces of paper is worth two hundred pounds?”
“No, indeed, if you didn’t say so.”
“’Tis so, then. Now here are papers of another sort. They are for different sums in the three-per-cents. Now these are Port Breedy Harbor bonds. We have a great stake in that harbor, you know, because I send off timber there. Open the rest at your pleasure. They’ll interest ye.”
“Yes, I will, some day,” said she, rising.
“Nonsense, open them now. You ought to learn a little of such matters. A young lady of education should not be ignorant of money affairs altogether. Suppose you should be left a widow some day, with your husband’s title-deeds and investments thrown upon your hands —”
“Don’t say that, father — title-deeds; it sounds so vain!”
“It does not. Come to that, I have title-deeds myself. There, that piece of parchment represents houses in Sherton Abbas.”
“Yes, but —” She hesitated, looked at the fire, and went on in a low voice: “If what has been arranged about me should come to anything, my sphere will be quite a middling one.”
“Your sphere ought not to be middling,” he exclaimed, not in passion, but in earnest conviction. “You said you never felt more at home, more in your element, anywhere than you did that afternoon with Mrs. Charmond, when she showed you her house and all her knick-knacks, and made you stay to tea so nicely in her drawing-room — surely you did!”
“Yes, I did say so,” admitted Grace.
“Was it true?”
“Yes, I felt so at the time. The feeling is less strong now, perhaps.”
“Ah! Now, though you don’t see it, your feeling at the time was the right one, because your mind and body were just in full and fresh cultivation23, so that going there with her was like meeting like. Since then you’ve been biding24 with us, and have fallen back a little, and so you don’t feel your place so strongly. Now, do as I tell ye, and look over these papers and see what you’ll be worth some day. For they’ll all be yours, you know; who have I got to leave ’em to but you? Perhaps when your education is backed up by what these papers represent, and that backed up by another such a set and their owner, men such as that fellow was this morning may think you a little more than a buffer’s girl.”
So she did as commanded, and opened each of the folded representatives of hard cash that her father put before her. To sow in her heart cravings for social position was obviously his strong desire, though in direct antagonism25 to a better feeling which had hitherto prevailed with him, and had, indeed, only succumbed26 that morning during the ramble27.
She wished that she was not his worldly hope; the responsibility of such a position was too great. She had made it for herself mainly by her appearance and attractive behavior to him since her return. “If I had only come home in a shabby dress, and tried to speak roughly, this might not have happened,” she thought. She deplored28 less the fact than the sad possibilities that might lie hidden therein.
Her father then insisted upon her looking over his checkbook and reading the counterfoils29. This, also, she obediently did, and at last came to two or three which had been drawn30 to defray some of the late expenses of her clothes, board, and education.
“I, too, cost a good deal, like the horses and wagons31 and corn,” she said, looking up sorrily.
“I didn’t want you to look at those; I merely meant to give you an idea of my investment transactions. But if you do cost as much as they, never mind. You’ll yield a better return.”
“Don’t think of me like that!” she begged. “A mere chattel32.”
“A what? Oh, a dictionary word. Well, as that’s in your line I don’t forbid it, even if it tells against me,” he said, good-humoredly. And he looked her proudly up and down.
A few minutes later Grammer Oliver came to tell them that supper was ready, and in giving the information she added, incidentally, “So we shall soon lose the mistress of Hintock House for some time, I hear, Maister Melbury. Yes, she’s going off to foreign parts tomorrow, for the rest of the winter months; and be-chok’d if I don’t wish I could do the same, for my wynd-pipe is furred like a flue.”
When the old woman had left the room, Melbury turned to his daughter and said, “So, Grace, you’ve lost your new friend, and your chance of keeping her company and writing her travels is quite gone from ye!”
Grace said nothing.
“Now,” he went on, emphatically, “’tis Winterborne’s affair has done this. Oh yes, ’tis. So let me say one word. Promise me that you will not meet him again without my knowledge.”
“I never do meet him, father, either without your knowledge or with it.”
“So much the better. I don’t like the look of this at all. And I say it not out of harshness to him, poor fellow, but out of tenderness to you. For how could a woman, brought up delicately as you have been, bear the roughness of a life with him?”
She sighed; it was a sigh of sympathy with Giles, complicated by a sense of the intractability of circumstances.
At that same hour, and almost at that same minute, there was a conversation about Winterborne in progress in the village street, opposite Mr. Melbury’s gates, where Timothy Tangs the elder and Robert Creedle had accidentally met.
The sawyer was asking Creedle if he had heard what was all over the parish, the skin of his face being drawn two ways on the matter — towards brightness in respect of it as news, and towards concern in respect of it as circumstance.
“Why, that poor little lonesome thing, Marty South, is likely to lose her father. He was almost well, but is much worse again. A man all skin and grief he ever were, and if he leave Little Hintock for a better land, won’t it make some difference to your Maister Winterborne, neighbor Creedle?”
“Can I be a prophet in Israel?” said Creedle. “Won’t it! I was only shaping of such a thing yesterday in my poor, long-seeing way, and all the work of the house upon my one shoulders! You know what it means? It is upon John South’s life that all Mr. Winterborne’s houses hang. If so be South die, and so make his decease, thereupon the law is that the houses fall without the least chance of absolution into HER hands at the House. I told him so; but the words of the faithful be only as wind!”
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1
denuded
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| adj.[医]变光的，裸露的v.使赤裸( denude的过去式和过去分词 )；剥光覆盖物 | |
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2
twigs
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| 细枝，嫩枝( twig的名词复数 ) | |
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underlying
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| adj.在下面的，含蓄的，潜在的 | |
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4
trotted
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| 小跑，急走( trot的过去分词 )； 匆匆忙忙地走 | |
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5
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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thither
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| adv.向那里；adj.在那边的，对岸的 | |
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7
scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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8
divers
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| adj.不同的；种种的 | |
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9
stultified
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| v.使成为徒劳，使变得无用( stultify的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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pedestrians
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| n.步行者( pedestrian的名词复数 ) | |
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11
buffer
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| n.起缓冲作用的人(或物)，缓冲器；vt.缓冲 | |
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12
bruised
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| [医]青肿的，瘀紫的 | |
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13
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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applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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15
squire
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| n.护卫, 侍从, 乡绅 | |
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16
homely
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| adj.家常的，简朴的；不漂亮的 | |
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17
distressed
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| 痛苦的 | |
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18
ticklish
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| adj.怕痒的；问题棘手的；adv.怕痒地；n.怕痒，小心处理 | |
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19
assented
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| 同意，赞成( assent的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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20
remonstrance
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| n抗议，抱怨 | |
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snug
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| adj.温暖舒适的，合身的，安全的；v.使整洁干净，舒适地依靠，紧贴；n.（英）酒吧里的私房 | |
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22
parlor
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| n.店铺，营业室；会客室，客厅 | |
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23
cultivation
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| n.耕作，培养，栽培（法），养成 | |
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24
biding
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| v.等待，停留( bide的现在分词 )；居住；（过去式用bided）等待；面临 | |
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antagonism
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| n.对抗，敌对，对立 | |
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succumbed
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| 不再抵抗（诱惑、疾病、攻击等）( succumb的过去式和过去分词 )； 屈从； 被压垮； 死 | |
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27
ramble
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| v.漫步，漫谈，漫游；n.漫步，闲谈，蔓延 | |
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28
deplored
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| v.悲叹，痛惜，强烈反对( deplore的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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29
counterfoils
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| n.（支票、票据等的）存根，票根( counterfoil的名词复数 ) | |
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30
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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31
wagons
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| n.四轮的运货马车( wagon的名词复数 )；铁路货车；小手推车 | |
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32
chattel
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| n.动产；奴隶 | |
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