It was a very pleasant change to a poor unsuccessful schoolmistress to leave her own house, full of battered14 and shabby furniture (she had taken the goodwill15 and furniture of her predecessor16 at a valuation, two or three years before), where the look-out was as gloomy, and the surrounding as squalid, as is often the case in the smaller streets of a country town, and to come bowling17 through the Towers Park in the luxurious carriage sent to meet her; to alight, and feel secure that the well-trained servants would see after her bags and umbrella, and parasol, and cloak, without her loading herself with all these portable articles, as she had had to do while following the wheel-barrow containing her luggage in going to the Ashcombe coach-office that morning; to pass up the deep-piled carpets of the broad shallow stairs into my lady’s own room, cool and deliciously fresh, even on this sultry day, and fragrant18 with great bowls of freshly gathered roses of every shade of colour. There were two or three new novels lying uncut on the table; the daily papers, the magazines. Every chair was an easy-chair of some kind or other; and all covered with French chintz that mimicked19 the real flowers in the garden below. She was familiar with the bedroom called hers, to which she was soon ushered20 by Lady Cumnor’s maid. It seemed to her far more like home than the dingy21 place she had left that morning; it was so natural to her to like dainty draperies and harmonious22 colouring, and fine linen23 and soft raiment. She sate24 down on the arm-chair by the bed-side, and wondered over her fate something in this fashion —
‘One would think it was an easy enough thing to deck a looking-glass like that with muslin and pink ribbons; and yet how hard it is to keep it up! People don’t know how hard it is till they’ve tried as I have. I made my own glass just as pretty when I first went to Ashcombe; but the muslin got dirty, and the pink ribbons faded, and it is so difficult to earn money to renew them; and when one has got the money one hasn’t the heart to spend it all at once. One thinks and one thinks how one can get the most good out of it; and a new gown, or a day’s pleasure, or some hot-house fruit, or some piece of elegance25 that can be seen and noticed in one’s drawing-room, carries the day, and good-by to prettily26 decked looking-glasses. Now here, money is like the air they breathe. No one ever asks or knows how much the washing costs, or what pink ribbon is a yard. Ah! it would be different if they had to earn every penny as I have! They would have to calculate, like me, how to get the most pleasure out of it. I wonder if I am to go on all my life toiling27 and moiling for money? It’s not natural. Marriage is the natural thing; then the husband has all that kind of dirty work to do, and his wife sits in the drawing-room like a lady. I did, when poor Kirkpatrick was alive. Heigho! it’s a sad thing to be a widow.’
Then there was the contrast between the dinners which she had to share with her scholars at Ashcombe — rounds of beef, legs of mutton, great dishes of potatoes, and large barter-puddings, with the tiny meal of exquisitely28 cooked delicacies29, sent up on old Chelsea china, that was served every day to the earl and countess and herself at the Towers. She dreaded30 the end of her holidays as much as the most home-loving of her pupils. But at this time that end was some weeks off, so Clare shut her eyes to the future, and tried to relish31 the present to its fullest extent. A disturbance32 to the pleasant, even course of the summer days came in the indisposition of Lady Cumnor. Her husband had gone back to London, and she and Mrs. Kirkpatrick had been left to the very even tenor33 of life, which was according to my lady’s wish just now. In spite of her languor34 and fatigue35, she had gone through the day when the school visitors came to the Towers, in full dignity, dictating36 clearly all that was to be done, what walks were to be taken, what hothouses to be seen, and when the party were to return to the ‘collation.’ She herself remained indoors, with one or two ladies who had ventured to think that the fatigue or the heat might be too much for them, and who had therefore declined accompanying the ladies in charge of Mrs. Kirkpatrick, or those other favoured few to whom Lord Cumnor was explaining the new buildings in his farm-yard. ‘With the utmost condescension,’ as her hearers afterwards expressed it, Lady Cumnor told them all about her married daughters’ establishments, nurseries, plans for the education of their children, and manner of passing the day. But the exertion37 tired her; and when every one had left, the probability is that she would have gone to lie down and rest, had not her husband made an unlucky remark in the kindness of his heart. He came up to her and put his hand on her shoulder.
‘I’m afraid you’re sadly tired, my lady?’ he said.
She braced38 her muscles, and drew herself up, saying coldly —
‘When I am tired, Lord Cumnor, I will tell you so.’ And her own fatigue showed itself during the rest of the evening in her sitting particularly upright, and declining all offers of easy-chairs or footstools, and refusing the insult of a suggestion that they should all go to bed earlier. She went on in something of this kind of manner as long as Lord Cumnor remained at the Towers. Mrs Kirkpatrick was quite deceived by it, and kept assuring Lord Cumnor that she had never seen dear Lady Cumnor looking better, or so strong and well. But he had an affectionate heart, if a blundering head; and though he could give no reason for his belief, he was almost certain his wife was not well. Yet he was too much afraid of her to send for Mr. Gibson without her permission. His last words to Clare were —
‘It’s such a comfort to leave my lady to you; only don’t you be deluded39 by her ways. She’ll not show she’s ill till she can’t help it. Consult with Bradley,’ (Lady Cumnor’s ‘own woman,’— she disliked the new-fangledness of ‘lady’s-maid,’) ‘and if I were you, I’d send and ask Gibson to call — you might make any kind of a pretence,’— and then the idea he had had in London of the fitness of a match between the two coming into his head just now, he could not help adding — ‘Get him to come and see you, he’s a very agreeable man; Lord Hollingford says there’s no one like him in these parts: and he might be looking at my lady while he was talking to you, and see if he thinks her really ill. And let me know what he says about her.’
But Clare was just as great a coward about doing anything for Lady Cumnor which she had not expressly ordered, as Lord Cumnor himself. She knew she might fall into such disgrace if she sent for Mr. Gibson without direct permission, that she might never be asked to stay at the Towers again; and the life there, monotonous40 in its smoothness of luxury as it might be to some, was exactly to her taste. She in her turn tried to put upon Bradley the duty which Lord Cumnor had put upon her.
‘Mrs. Bradley,’ she said one day, ‘are you quite comfortable about my lady’s health? Lord Cumnor fancied that she was looking worn and ill?’
‘Indeed, Mrs. Kirkpatrick, I don’t think my lady is herself. I can’t persuade myself as she is, though if you was to question me till night I couldn’t tell you why.’
‘Don’t you think you could make some errand to Hollingford, and see Mr. Gibson, and ask him to come round this way some day, and make a call on Lady Cumnor?’
‘It would be as much as my place is worth, Mrs. Kirkpatrick. Till my lady’s dying day, if Providence41 keeps her in her senses, she’ll have everything done her own way, or not at all. There’s only Lady Harriet that can manage her at all, and she not always.’
‘Well, then — we must hope that there is nothing the matter with her; and I dare say there is not. She says there is not, and she ought to know best herself.’
But a day or two after this conversation took place, Lady Cumnor startled Mrs. Kirkpatrick, by saying suddenly —
‘Clare, I wish you’d write a note to Mr. Gibson, saying, I should like to see him this afternoon. I thought he would have called of himself before now. He ought to have done so, to pay his respects.’
Mr. Gibson had been far too busy in his profession to have time for mere42 visits of ceremony, though he knew quite well he was neglecting what was expected of him. But the district of which he may be said to have had medical charge was full of a bad kind of low fever, which took up all his time and thought, and often made him very thankful that Molly was out of the way in the quiet shades of Hamley.
His domestic ‘raws’ had not healed over in the least, though he was obliged to put the perplexities on one side for the time. The last drop — the final straw, had been an impromptu43 visit of Lord Hollingford’s, whom he had met in the town one forenoon. They had had a good deal to say to each other about some new scientific discovery, with the details of which Lord Hollingford was well acquainted, while Mr. Gibson was ignorant and deeply interested. At length Lord Hollingford said suddenly —
‘Gibson, I wonder if you’d give me some lunch; I’ve been a good deal about since my seven-o’clock breakfast, and am getting quite ravenous44.’
Now Mr. Gibson was only too much pleased to show hospitality to one whom he liked and respected so much as Lord Hollingford, and he gladly took him home with him to the early family dinner. But it was just at the time when the cook was sulking at Bethia’s dismissal — and she chose to be unpunctual and careless. There was no successor to Bethia as yet appointed to wait at the meals. So, though Mr. Gibson knew well that bread-and-cheese, cold beef, or the simplest food available, would have been welcome to the hungry lord, he could not get either these things for luncheon45, or even the family dinner, at anything like the proper time, in spite of all his ringing, and as much anger as he liked to show, for fear of making Lord Hollingford uncomfortable. At last dinner was ready, but the poor host saw the want of nicety — almost the want of cleanliness, in all its accompaniments — dingy plate, dull-looking glass, a tablecloth46 that, if not absolutely dirty, was anything but fresh in its splashed and rumpled47 condition, and compared it in his own mind with the dainty delicacy48 with which even a loaf of brown bread was served up at his guest’s home. He did not apologize directly, but, after dinner, just as they were parting, he said —
‘You see a man like me — a widower49 — with a daughter who cannot always be at home — has not the regulated household which would enable me to command the small portions of time I can spend there.’
He made no allusion50 to the comfortless meal of which they had both partaken, though it was full in his mind. Nor was it absent from Lord Hollingford’s, as he made reply —
‘True, true. Yet a man like you ought to be free from any thought of household cares. You ought to have somebody. How old is Miss Gibson?’
‘Seventeen. It’s a very awkward age for a motherless girl.’
‘Yes; very. I have only boys, but it must be very awkward with a girl. Excuse me, Gibson, but we’re talking like friends. Have you never thought of marrying again? It would not be like a first marriage, of course; but if you found a sensible agreeable woman of thirty or so, I really think you couldn’t do better than take her to manage your home, and so save you either discomfort51 or worry; and, besides, she would be able to give your daughter that kind of tender supervision52 which, I fancy, all girls of that age require. It’s a delicate subject, but you’ll excuse my having spoken frankly53.’
Mr. Gibson had thought of this advice several times since it was given; but it was a case of ‘first catch your hare.’ Where was the ‘sensible and agreeable woman of thirty or so?’ Not Miss Browning, nor Miss Phoebe, nor Miss Goodenough. Among his country patients there were two classes pretty distinctly marked: farmers, whose children were unrefined and uneducated; squires54, whose daughters would, indeed think the world was coming to a pretty pass, if they were to marry a country surgeon.
But the first day on which Mr. Gibson paid his visit to Lady Cumnor, he began to think it possible that Mrs. Kirkpatrick was his ‘hare.’ He rode away with slack rein55, thinking over what he knew of her, more than about the prescriptions56 he should write, or the way he was going. He remembered her as a very pretty Miss Clare: the governess who had the scarlet57 fever; that was in his wife’s days, a long time ago; he could hardly understand Mrs. Kirkpatrick’s youthfulness of appearance when he thought how long. Then he heard of her marriage to a curate; and the next day (or so it seemed, he could not recollect58 the exact duration of the interval), of his death. He knew, in some way, that ever since she had been living as a governess in different families; but that she had always been a great favourite with the family at the Towers, for whom, quite independent of their rank, he had a true respect. A year or two ago he had heard that she had taken the good-will of a school at Ashcombe; a small town close to another property of Lord Cumnor’s, in the same county. Ashcombe was a larger estate than that near Hollingford, but the old Manor-house there was not nearly so good a residence as the Towers; so it was given up to Mr. Preston, the land-agent, for the Ashcombe property, just as Mr. Sheepshanks was for that at Hollingford. There were a few rooms at the Manor-house reserved for the occasional visits of the family, otherwise Mr Preston, a handsome young bachelor, had it all to himself. Mr. Gibson knew that Mrs. Kirkpatrick had one child, a daughter, who must be much about the same age as Molly. Of course she had very little, if any, property. But he himself had lived carefully, and had a few thousands well invested; besides which, his professional income was good, and increasing rather than diminishing every year. By the time he had arrived at this point in his consideration of the case, he was at the house of the next patient on his round, and he put away all thought of matrimony and Mrs. Kirkpatrick for the time. Once again, in the course of the day, he remembered with a certain pleasure that Molly had told him some little details connected with her unlucky detention59 at the Towers five or six years ago, which had made him feel at the time as if Mrs. Kirkpatrick had behaved very kindly60 to his little girl. So there the matter rested for the present, as far as he was concerned.
Lady Cumnor was out of health; but not so ill as she had been fancying herself during all those days when the people about her dared not send for the doctor. It was a great relief to her to have Mr. Gibson to decide for her what she was to do; what to eat, drink, avoid. Such decisions ab extra, are sometimes a wonderful relief to those whose habit it has been to decide, not only for themselves, but for every one else; and occasionally the relaxation61 of the strain which a character for infallible wisdom brings with it, does much to restore health. Mrs. Kirkpatrick thought in her secret soul that she had never found it so easy to get on with Lady Cumnor; and Bradley and she had never done singing the praises of Mr. Gibson, ‘who always managed my lady so beautifully.’
Reports were duly sent up to my lord, but he and her daughters were strictly62 forbidden to come down. Lady Cumnor wished to be weak and languid, and uncertain both in body and mind, without family observation. It was a condition so different to anything she had ever been in before, that she was unconsciously afraid of losing her prestige, if she was seen in it. Sometimes she herself wrote the daily bulletins; at other times she bade Clare to do it, but she would always see the letters. Any answers she received from her daughters she used to read herself, occasionally imparting some of their contents to ‘that good Clare.’ But anybody might read my lord’s letters. There was no great fear of family secrets oozing63 out in his sprawling64 lines of affection. But once Mrs. Kirkpatrick came upon a sentence in a letter from Lord Cumnor, which she was reading out loud to his wife, that caught her eye before she came to it, and if she could have skipped it and kept it for private perusal65, she would gladly have done so. My lady was too sharp for her, though. In her opinion ‘Clare was a good creature, but not clever,’ the truth being that she was not always quick at resources, though tolerably unscrupulous in the use of them.
‘Read on. What are you stopping for? There is no bad news, is there, about Agnes? — Give me the letter.’
Lady Cumnor read, half aloud —
‘“How are Clare and Gibson getting on? You despised my advice to help on that affair, but I really think a little match-making would be a very pleasant amusement now that you are shut up in the house; and I cannot conceive any marriage more suitable.”’
‘Oh!’ said Lady Cumnor, laughing, ‘it was awkward for you to come upon that, Clare: I don’t wonder you stopped short. You gave me a terrible fright, though.’
‘Lord Cumnor is so fond of joking,’ said Mrs. Kirkpatrick, a little flurried, yet quite recognizing the truth of his last words — ‘I cannot conceive any marriage more suitable.’ She wondered what Lady Cumnor thought of it. Lord Cumnor wrote as if there was really a chance. It was not an unpleasant idea; it brought a faint smile out upon her face, as she sate by Lady Cumnor, while the latter took her afternoon nap.
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1
luxurious
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| adj.精美而昂贵的；豪华的 | |
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graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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persevere
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| v.坚持，坚忍，不屈不挠 | |
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tints
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| 色彩( tint的名词复数 )； 带白的颜色； （淡色）染发剂； 痕迹 | |
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complexion
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| n.肤色；情况，局面；气质，性格 | |
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varied
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| adj.多样的，多变化的 | |
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sinuous
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| adj.蜿蜒的，迂回的 | |
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inexplicable
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| adj.无法解释的，难理解的 | |
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trickle
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| vi.淌，滴，流出，慢慢移动，逐渐消散 | |
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anecdotes
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| n.掌故，趣闻，轶事( anecdote的名词复数 ) | |
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admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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astonishment
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| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
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recondite
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| adj.深奥的，难解的 | |
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battered
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| adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损 | |
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goodwill
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| n.善意，亲善，信誉，声誉 | |
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predecessor
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| n.前辈，前任 | |
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bowling
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| n.保龄球运动 | |
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fragrant
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| adj.芬香的，馥郁的，愉快的 | |
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mimicked
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| v.（尤指为了逗乐而）模仿( mimic的过去式和过去分词 )；酷似 | |
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ushered
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| v.引，领，陪同( usher的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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dingy
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| adj.昏暗的，肮脏的 | |
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harmonious
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| adj.和睦的，调和的，和谐的，协调的 | |
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linen
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| n.亚麻布，亚麻线，亚麻制品；adj.亚麻布制的，亚麻的 | |
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sate
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| v.使充分满足 | |
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elegance
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| n.优雅；优美，雅致；精致，巧妙 | |
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prettily
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| adv.优美地；可爱地 | |
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toiling
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| 长时间或辛苦地工作( toil的现在分词 )； 艰难缓慢地移动，跋涉 | |
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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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delicacies
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| n.棘手( delicacy的名词复数 )；精致；精美的食物；周到 | |
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dreaded
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| adj.令人畏惧的；害怕的v.害怕，恐惧，担心( dread的过去式和过去分词) | |
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relish
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| n.滋味，享受，爱好，调味品；vt.加调味料，享受，品味；vi.有滋味 | |
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disturbance
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| n.动乱，骚动；打扰，干扰；(身心)失调 | |
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tenor
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| n.男高音（歌手），次中音（乐器），要旨，大意 | |
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languor
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| n.无精力，倦怠 | |
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fatigue
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| n.疲劳，劳累 | |
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dictating
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| v.大声讲或读( dictate的现在分词 )；口授；支配；摆布 | |
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exertion
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| n.尽力，努力 | |
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braced
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| adj.拉牢的v.支住( brace的过去式和过去分词 )；撑牢；使自己站稳；振作起来 | |
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deluded
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| v.欺骗，哄骗( delude的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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monotonous
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| adj.单调的，一成不变的，使人厌倦的 | |
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providence
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| n.深谋远虑，天道，天意；远见；节约；上帝 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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impromptu
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| adj.即席的，即兴的；adv.即兴的(地)，无准备的(地) | |
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ravenous
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| adj.极饿的，贪婪的 | |
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luncheon
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| n.午宴，午餐，便宴 | |
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tablecloth
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| n.桌布，台布 | |
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rumpled
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| v.弄皱，使凌乱( rumple的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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delicacy
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| n.精致，细微，微妙，精良；美味，佳肴 | |
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widower
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| n.鳏夫 | |
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allusion
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| n.暗示，间接提示 | |
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discomfort
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| n.不舒服，不安，难过，困难，不方便 | |
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52
supervision
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| n.监督，管理 | |
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frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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squires
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| n.地主，乡绅( squire的名词复数 ) | |
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rein
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| n.疆绳，统治，支配；vt.以僵绳控制，统治 | |
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prescriptions
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| 药( prescription的名词复数 )； 处方； 开处方； 计划 | |
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scarlet
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| n.深红色，绯红色，红衣；adj.绯红色的 | |
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recollect
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| v.回忆，想起，记起，忆起，记得 | |
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detention
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| n.滞留，停留；拘留，扣留；(教育)留下 | |
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kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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61
relaxation
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| n.松弛，放松；休息；消遣；娱乐 | |
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strictly
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| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
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63
oozing
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| v.（浓液等）慢慢地冒出，渗出( ooze的现在分词 )；使（液体）缓缓流出；（浓液）渗出，慢慢流出 | |
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64
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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65
perusal
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| n.细读，熟读；目测 | |
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