Melbury searched the garden, the parsley-bed, and the orchard2, but could find no trace of her, and then he made inquiries3 at the cottages of such of his workmen as had not gone to bed, avoiding Tangs’s because he knew the young people were to rise early to leave. In these inquiries one of the men’s wives somewhat incautiously let out the fact that she had heard a scream in the wood, though from which direction she could not say.
This set Melbury’s fears on end. He told the men to light lanterns, and headed by himself they started, Creedle following at the last moment with quite a burden of grapnels and ropes, which he could not be persuaded to leave behind, and the company being joined by the hollow-turner and the man who kept the cider-house as they went along.
They explored the precincts of the village, and in a short time lighted upon the man-trap. Its discovery simply added an item of fact without helping4 their conjectures5; but Melbury’s indefinite alarm was greatly increased when, holding a candle to the ground, he saw in the teeth of the instrument some frayings from Grace’s clothing. No intelligence of any kind was gained till they met a woodman of Delborough, who said that he had seen a lady answering to the description her father gave of Grace, walking through the wood on a gentleman’s arm in the direction of Sherton.
“Was he clutching her tight?” said Melbury.
“Well — rather,” said the man.
“Did she walk lame6?”
“Well, ’tis true her head hung over towards him a bit.”
Creedle groaned7 tragically8.
Melbury, not suspecting the presence of Fitzpiers, coupled this account with the man-trap and the scream; he could not understand what it all meant; but the sinister9 event of the trap made him follow on. Accordingly, they bore away towards the town, shouting as they went, and in due course emerged upon the highway.
Nearing Sherton-Abbas, the previous information was confirmed by other strollers, though the gentleman’s supporting arm had disappeared from these later accounts. At last they were so near Sherton that Melbury informed his faithful followers10 that he did not wish to drag them farther at so late an hour, since he could go on alone and inquire if the woman who had been seen were really Grace. But they would not leave him alone in his anxiety, and trudged11 onward12 till the lamplight from the town began to illuminate13 their fronts. At the entrance to the High Street they got fresh scent14 of the pursued, but coupled with the new condition that the lady in the costume described had been going up the street alone.
“Faith! — I believe she’s mesmerized15, or walking in her sleep,” said Melbury.
However, the identity of this woman with Grace was by no means certain; but they plodded16 along the street. Percombe, the hair-dresser, who had despoiled17 Marty of her tresses, was standing18 at his door, and they duly put inquiries to him.
“Ah — how’s Little Hintock folk by now?” he said, before replying. “Never have I been over there since one winter night some three year ago — and then I lost myself finding it. How can ye live in such a one-eyed place? Great Hintock is bad enough — hut Little Hintock — the bats and owls19 would drive me melancholy20-mad! It took two days to raise my sperrits to their true pitch again after that night I went there. Mr. Melbury, sir, as a man’s that put by money, why not retire and live here, and see something of the world?”
The responses at last given by him to their queries21 guided them to the building that offered the best accommodation in Sherton — having been enlarged contemporaneously with the construction of the railway — namely, the Earl of Wessex Hotel.
Leaving the others without, Melbury made prompt inquiry22 here. His alarm was lessened23, though his perplexity was increased, when he received a brief reply that such a lady was in the house.
“Do you know if it is my daughter?” asked Melbury.
The waiter did not.
“Do you know the lady’s name?”
Of this, too, the household was ignorant, the hotel having been taken by brand-new people from a distance. They knew the gentleman very well by sight, and had not thought it necessary to ask him to enter his name.
“Oh, the gentleman appears again now,” said Melbury to himself. “Well, I want to see the lady,” he declared.
A message was taken up, and after some delay the shape of Grace appeared descending24 round the bend of the stair-case, looking as if she lived there, but in other respects rather guilty and frightened.
“Why — what the name —” began her father. “I thought you went out to get parsley!”
“Oh, yes — I did — but it is all right,” said Grace, in a flurried whisper. “I am not alone here. I am here with Edgar. It is entirely25 owing to an accident, father.”
“Edgar! An accident! How does he come here? I thought he was two hundred mile off.”
“Yes, so he is — I mean he has got a beautiful practice two hundred miles off; he has bought it with his own money, some that came to him. But he travelled here, and I was nearly caught in a man-trap, and that’s how it is I am here. We were just thinking of sending a messenger to let you know.”
Melbury did not seem to be particularly enlightened by this explanation.
“You were caught in a man-trap?”
“Yes; my dress was. That’s how it arose. Edgar is up-stairs in his own sitting-room,” she went on. “He would not mind seeing you, I am sure.”
“Oh, faith, I don’t want to see him! I have seen him too often a’ready. I’ll see him another time, perhaps, if ’tis to oblige ‘ee.”
“He came to see me; he wanted to consult me about this large partnership26 I speak of, as it is very promising27.”
“Oh, I am glad to hear it,” said Melbury, dryly.
A pause ensued, during which the inquiring faces and whity-brown clothes of Melbury’s companions appeared in the door-way.
“Then bain’t you coming home with us?” he asked.
“I— I think not,” said Grace, blushing.
“H’m — very well — you are your own mistress,” he returned, in tones which seemed to assert otherwise. “Good-night;” and Melbury retreated towards the door.
“Don’t be angry, father,” she said, following him a few steps. “I have done it for the best.”
“I am not angry, though it is true I have been a little misled in this. However, good-night. I must get home along.”
He left the hotel, not without relief, for to be under the eyes of strangers while he conversed28 with his lost child had embarrassed him much. His search-party, too, had looked awkward there, having rushed to the task of investigation29 — some in their shirt sleeves, others in their leather aprons30, and all much stained — just as they had come from their work of barking, and not in their Sherton marketing31 attire32; while Creedle, with his ropes and grapnels and air of impending33 tragedy, had added melancholy to gawkiness.
“Now, neighbors,” said Melbury, on joining them, “as it is getting late, we’ll leg it home again as fast as we can. I ought to tell you that there has been some mistake — some arrangement entered into between Mr. and Mrs. Fitzpiers which I didn’t quite understand — an important practice in the Midland counties has come to him, which made it necessary for her to join him to-night — so she says. That’s all it was — and I’m sorry I dragged you out.”
“Well,” said the hollow-turner, “here be we six mile from home, and night-time, and not a hoss or four-footed creeping thing to our name. I say, we’ll have a mossel and a drop o’ summat to strengthen our nerves afore we vamp all the way back again? My throat’s as dry as a kex. What d’ye say so’s?”
They all concurred34 in the need for this course, and proceeded to the antique and lampless back street, in which the red curtain of the Three Tuns was the only radiant object. As soon as they had stumbled down into the room Melbury ordered them to be served, when they made themselves comfortable by the long table, and stretched out their legs upon the herring-boned sand of the floor. Melbury himself, restless as usual, walked to the door while he waited for them, and looked up and down the street.
“I’d gie her a good shaking if she were my maid; pretending to go out in the garden, and leading folk a twelve-mile traipse that have got to get up at five o’clock to morrow,” said a bark-ripper; who, not working regularly for Melbury, could afford to indulge in strong opinions.
“I don’t speak so warm as that,” said the hollow-turner, “but if ’tis right for couples to make a country talk about their separating, and excite the neighbors, and then make fools of ’em like this, why, I haven’t stood upon one leg for five-and-twenty year.”
All his listeners knew that when he alluded35 to his foot-lathe in these enigmatic terms, the speaker meant to be impressive; and Creedle chimed in with, “Ah, young women do wax wanton in these days! Why couldn’t she ha’ bode36 with her father, and been faithful?” Poor Creedle was thinking of his old employer.
“But this deceiving of folks is nothing unusual in matrimony,” said Farmer Bawtree. “I knowed a man and wife — faith, I don’t mind owning, as there’s no strangers here, that the pair were my own relations — they’d be at it that hot one hour that you’d hear the poker37 and the tongs38 and the bellows39 and the warming-pan flee across the house with the movements of their vengeance40; and the next hour you’d hear ’em singing ‘The Spotted41 Cow’ together as peaceable as two holy twins; yes — and very good voices they had, and would strike in like professional ballet-singers to one another’s support in the high notes.”
“And I knowed a woman, and the husband o’ her went away for four-and-twenty year,” said the bark-ripper. “And one night he came home when she was sitting by the fire, and thereupon he sat down himself on the other side of the chimney-corner. ‘Well,’ says she, ‘have ye got any news?’ ‘Don’t know as I have,’ says he; ‘have you?’ ‘No,’ says she, ‘except that my daughter by my second husband was married last month, which was a year after I was made a widow by him.’ ‘Oh! Anything else?’ he says. ‘No,’ says she. And there they sat, one on each side of that chimney-corner, and were found by their neighbors sound asleep in their chairs, not having known what to talk about at all.”
“Well, I don’t care who the man is,” said Creedle, “they required a good deal to talk about, and that’s true. It won’t be the same with these.”
“No. He is such a projick, you see. And she is a wonderful scholar too!”
“What women do know nowadays!” observed the hollow-turner. “You can’t deceive ’em as you could in my time.”
“What they knowed then was not small,” said John Upjohn. “Always a good deal more than the men! Why, when I went courting my wife that is now, the skilfulness42 that she would show in keeping me on her pretty side as she walked was beyond all belief. Perhaps you’ve noticed that she’s got a pretty side to her face as well as a plain one?”
“I can’t say I’ve noticed it particular much,” said the hollow-turner, blandly43.
“Well,” continued Upjohn, not disconcerted, “she has. All women under the sun be prettier one side than t’other. And, as I was saying, the pains she would take to make me walk on the pretty side were unending! I warrant that whether we were going with the sun or against the sun, uphill or downhill, in wind or in lewth, that wart44 of hers was always towards the hedge, and that dimple towards me. There was I, too simple to see her wheelings and turnings; and she so artful, though two years younger, that she could lead me with a cotton thread, like a blind ram45; for that was in the third climate of our courtship. No; I don’t think the women have got cleverer, for they was never otherwise.”
“How many climates may there be in courtship, Mr. Upjohn?” inquired a youth — the same who had assisted at Winterborne’s Christmas party.
“Five — from the coolest to the hottest — leastwise there was five in mine.”
“Can ye give us the chronicle of ’em, Mr. Upjohn?”
“Yes — I could. I could certainly. But ’tis quite unnecessary. They’ll come to ye by nater, young man, too soon for your good.”
“At present Mrs. Fitzpiers can lead the doctor as your mis’ess could lead you,” the hollow-turner remarked. “She’s got him quite tame. But how long ’twill last I can’t say. I happened to be setting a wire on the top of my garden one night when he met her on the other side of the hedge; and the way she queened it, and fenced, and kept that poor feller at a distance, was enough to freeze yer blood. I should never have supposed it of such a girl.”
Melbury now returned to the room, and the men having declared themselves refreshed, they all started on the homeward journey, which was by no means cheerless under the rays of the high moon. Having to walk the whole distance they came by a foot-path rather shorter than the highway, though difficult except to those who knew the country well. This brought them by way of Great Hintock; and passing the church-yard they observed, as they talked, a motionless figure standing by the gate.
“I think it was Marty South,” said the hollow-turner, parenthetically.
“I think ’twas; ‘a was always a lonely maid,” said Upjohn. And they passed on homeward, and thought of the matter no more.
It was Marty, as they had supposed. That evening had been the particular one of the week upon which Grace and herself had been accustomed to privately46 deposit flowers on Giles’s grave, and this was the first occasion since his death, eight months earlier, on which Grace had failed to keep her appointment. Marty had waited in the road just outside Little Hintock, where her fellow-pilgrim had been wont47 to join her, till she was weary; and at last, thinking that Grace had missed her and gone on alone, she followed the way to Great Hintock, but saw no Grace in front of her. It got later, and Marty continued her walk till she reached the church-yard gate; but still no Grace. Yet her sense of comradeship would not allow her to go on to the grave alone, and still thinking the delay had been unavoidable, she stood there with her little basket of flowers in her clasped hands, and her feet chilled by the damp ground, till more than two hours had passed.
She then heard the footsteps of Melbury’s men, who presently passed on their return from the search. In the silence of the night Marty could not help hearing fragments of their conversation, from which she acquired a general idea of what had occurred, and where Mrs. Fitzpiers then was.
Immediately they had dropped down the hill she entered the church-yard, going to a secluded48 corner behind the bushes, where rose the unadorned stone that marked the last bed of Giles Winterborne. As this solitary49 and silent girl stood there in the moonlight, a straight slim figure, clothed in a plaitless gown, the contours of womanhood so undeveloped as to be scarcely perceptible, the marks of poverty and toil50 effaced51 by the misty52 hour, she touched sublimity53 at points, and looked almost like a being who had rejected with indifference54 the attribute of sex for the loftier quality of abstract humanism. She stooped down and cleared away the withered55 flowers that Grace and herself had laid there the previous week, and put her fresh ones in their place.
“Now, my own, own love,” she whispered, “you are mine, and on’y mine; for she has forgot ‘ee at last, although for her you died. But I— whenever I get up I’ll think of ‘ee, and whenever I lie down I’ll think of ‘ee. Whenever I plant the young larches56 I’ll think that none can plant as you planted; and whenever I split a gad57, and whenever I turn the cider-wring, I’ll say none could do it like you. If ever I forget your name, let me forget home and Heaven! — But no, no, my love, I never can forget ‘ee; for you was a GOOD man, and did good things!”
The End
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收听单词发音
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1
bide
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| v.忍耐；等候；住 | |
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2
orchard
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| n.果园，果园里的全部果树，(美俚)棒球场 | |
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inquiries
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| n.调查( inquiry的名词复数 )；疑问；探究；打听 | |
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4
helping
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| n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的 | |
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conjectures
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| 推测，猜想( conjecture的名词复数 ) | |
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6
lame
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| adj.跛的，(辩解、论据等)无说服力的 | |
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7
groaned
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| v.呻吟( groan的过去式和过去分词 )；发牢骚；抱怨；受苦 | |
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8
tragically
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| adv. 悲剧地，悲惨地 | |
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9
sinister
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| adj.不吉利的，凶恶的，左边的 | |
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10
followers
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| 追随者( follower的名词复数 )； 用户； 契据的附面； 从动件 | |
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trudged
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| vt.& vi.跋涉，吃力地走（trudge的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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12
onward
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| adj.向前的，前进的；adv.向前，前进，在先 | |
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13
illuminate
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| vt.照亮，照明；用灯光装饰；说明，阐释 | |
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14
scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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15
mesmerized
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| v.使入迷( mesmerize的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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16
plodded
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| v.沉重缓慢地走（路）( plod的过去式和过去分词 )；努力从事；沉闷地苦干；缓慢进行（尤指艰难枯燥的工作） | |
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17
despoiled
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| v.掠夺，抢劫( despoil的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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18
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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owls
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| n.猫头鹰( owl的名词复数 ) | |
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melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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21
queries
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| n.问题( query的名词复数 )；疑问；询问；问号v.质疑，对…表示疑问( query的第三人称单数 )；询问 | |
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22
inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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lessened
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| 减少的，减弱的 | |
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descending
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| n. 下行 adj. 下降的 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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26
partnership
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| n.合作关系，伙伴关系 | |
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27
promising
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| adj.有希望的，有前途的 | |
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28
conversed
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| v.交谈，谈话( converse的过去式 ) | |
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29
investigation
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| n.调查，调查研究 | |
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30
aprons
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| 围裙( apron的名词复数 )； 停机坪，台口（舞台幕前的部份） | |
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marketing
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| n.行销，在市场的买卖，买东西 | |
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attire
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| v.穿衣，装扮[同]array；n.衣着；盛装 | |
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impending
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| a.imminent, about to come or happen | |
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concurred
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| 同意（concur的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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alluded
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| 提及，暗指( allude的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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36
bode
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| v.预示 | |
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37
poker
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| n.扑克；vt.烙制 | |
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38
tongs
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| n.钳；夹子 | |
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39
bellows
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| n.风箱；发出吼叫声，咆哮（尤指因痛苦）( bellow的名词复数 )；（愤怒地）说出（某事），大叫v.发出吼叫声，咆哮（尤指因痛苦）( bellow的第三人称单数 )；（愤怒地）说出（某事），大叫 | |
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40
vengeance
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| n.报复，报仇，复仇 | |
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41
spotted
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| adj.有斑点的，斑纹的，弄污了的 | |
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42
skilfulness
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| 巧妙 | |
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blandly
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| adv.温和地，殷勤地 | |
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44
wart
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| n.疣，肉赘；瑕疵 | |
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45
ram
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| (random access memory)随机存取存储器 | |
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46
privately
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| adv.以私人的身份，悄悄地，私下地 | |
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47
wont
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| adj.习惯于；v.习惯；n.习惯 | |
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48
secluded
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| adj.与世隔绝的；隐退的；偏僻的v.使隔开，使隐退( seclude的过去式和过去分词) | |
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49
solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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50
toil
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| vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事 | |
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51
effaced
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| v.擦掉( efface的过去式和过去分词 )；抹去；超越；使黯然失色 | |
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52
misty
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| adj.雾蒙蒙的，有雾的 | |
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53
sublimity
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| 崇高，庄严，气质高尚 | |
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54
indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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55
withered
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| adj. 枯萎的，干瘪的，（人身体的部分器官）因病萎缩的或未发育良好的 动词wither的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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56
larches
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| n.落叶松（木材）( larch的名词复数 ) | |
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57
gad
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| n.闲逛；v.闲逛 | |
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