To the man and the woman who stood in one corner of this burial-ground, looking down upon a grave that had been but lately banked with turf, there was an infinite and sordid11 sadness in the scene. Two graves, not ten yards away, had been filled in but the day before, and the grass was caked and stained with yellow clay. Near them stood the black wooden shelter used by the officiating priest in dirty weather. A few wreaths, sodden12, rain-drenched, the flowers already turning brown, seemed to mock the hands that had placed them there.
White headstones everywhere; a few obelisks13; a few plain wooden crosses; rank mounds14 where no name lingered after death. Ever and again the thin clink of the hopeless chapel bell. A gray sky merging15 into a wet, gray landscape. In the valley—Wilton, prostrate16 under mist and smoke.
James Murchison, standing17 bareheaded before Gwen’s grave, gazed at the wet turf with the eyes of a man who saw more beneath it than mere18 lifeless clay. There was nothing of rebellion in the pose of the tall figure—rather, the slight stoop of one poring over some rare book with the reverence19 of him who reads to learn.
For Catherine there was no consciousness of penance20 as she stood beside him, silent and distant-eyed. Her hands were clasped together under her cloak. She stood as one waiting, heart heavy, yet ready to awake to the new life that opens even for those who grieve.
There were not a few such groups scattered21 about this upland burial-ground, colorless, subdued22 figures seen dimly through the drizzling23 mist of rain. Quite near to Murchison a working-man was arranging a few flowers in a large white jam-pot; the grave, by the name on the headstone, was the grave of his wife. A few children, who had wandered up to see some funeral, were playing “touch wood” between the aspens of the main walk. There was an irresponsible callousness24 in their shrill25, slum-hardened voices. To them this place of Death was but a field to play in.
Murchison had turned from Gwen’s grave, and was looking at his wife. There seemed some bond more sacred between them now that they had shared both life and death in the body of their child.
“You are cold, dear.”
He touched her cheek with his hand as he turned up the collar of her cloak. Her hair was wet and a-glisten with the rain, her face cold like the face of one fresh from the breath of an autumn sea.
“Only my skin.”
“The wind is keen, though. It is time we turned back home.”
“Yes.”
“Good-bye, my child.”
He spoke26 the words in a whisper as they moved away from the corner.
Before them, seen dimly through a haze27 of rain, lay the colliery town, a vague splash of darkness in the valley. Here and there a tall chimney stood trailing smoke, or the faint glow of a fire gave a thin opalescence28 to the shell of mist. Sounds, faint and far, yet full of the significance of labor29, drifted up the bleak30 slopes of the hillside, like the sounds from ships sailing a foggy sea. The rattle31 of a train, the shriek32 of a steam-whistle, the slow strokes of some great clock striking the hour.
James Murchison’s eyes were fixed33 upon this town beside the pit mouths, this pool of poverty and toil34, where the eddies35 of effort never ceased upon the surface. It was strange to him, this colliery town, and yet familiar. Always would his manhood yearn36 towards it because of the dear dead, even though its memories were hateful to him, full of the bitterness of ignominy and pain.
Gwen’s death had come to Murchison as a sudden silence, a strange void in the hurrying entities37 of life. It was as though the passing of this child had changed the phenomena38 of existence for him, and given a new rhythm to the pulse of Time. He had become aware of a new setting to life, even as a man who has walked the same road day by day discovers on some winter dawn a fresh and unearthly beauty in the scene. He felt an unsolved newness in his being, a solemnity such as those who have looked upon the dead must feel. And no strong nature can pass through such a phase without creating inward energy and power. Sorrow, like winter, may be but a season of repose39, troubled and drear perhaps, but moving towards the miracle of spring.
Wilton cemetery, with its zinc-roofed chapel, its yellow walls and iron gates, lay behind them, while the dim horizon ran in a gray blur40 along the hills. Husband and wife walked for a time in silence, for each had a burden of deep thought to bear.
It was the man who spoke first, quietly, and with restraint, and yet with something of the fierce spirit of an outcast Cain visible upon his face.
“I have been thinking of what I said to you last night.”
She was looking at him with a brave clearness of the eyes.
“I suppose sensible people would call such a venture—mad.”
“We are often strongest, dear, when we are most mad.”
He swung on beside her, his eyes at gaze.
“The madness of a forlorn hope. No, it is not that. I have not any of the impudence41 of the adventurer. It is something more solemn, more grim, more for a final end.”
“Beloved, I understand.”
“Are you not afraid for me?”
“No, no.”
She put her hand under his arm.
“God give us both courage, dear,” she said.
They had reached the outskirts42 of Wilton, and the ugliness of the place was less visible in these outworks of the town. The streets had something of the quaintness43 of antiquity44 about them, for this was a part of the real Wilton, an old English townlet that had been gripped and strangled by the decapod of the pits.
“About your mother’s money, Kate.”
The rumble45 of a passing van compelled silence for a moment.
“You must retain the whole control.”
“I?”
“Yes.”
He heard a woman’s unwillingness46 in her voice.
“It is my wish, dear. I shall need a certain sum to start with, but my life-insurance can be made a security for that.”
“James!”
Her face reproached him.
“Are we so little married that what is mine is not yours also?”
“It is because you are my wife, Kate, that I consider these things. Your mother was wise, though her instructions do not flatter me. Legally, I cannot touch a single penny.”
She looked troubled, and a little impatient.
“I shall hate the money—if—no, I don’t mean that. But, dear,” and she drew very close to him in the twilight47 of the streets, “it will make no difference. You will not feel—?”
“Feel, Kate?”
“That it is mine, and not yours. You know, dear, what I mean. I don’t want to think—to think that you will feel as though you had to ask.”
They looked, man and wife, into each other’s eyes.
“I shall ask, Kate, because—”
“Because?”
“You are what you are. It will not hurt me to remember that the stuff is yours.”
Now, quite an hour ago a battered48 and moth-eaten cab had deposited a stout49 lady on the doorstep of Clovelly. The stout lady had a round white face that beamed sympathetically from under the arch of a rather grotesque50 bonnet51. A girl, hired for the month, and dressed in a makeshift black frock, had opened the door three inches to Miss Carmagee. There had been a confidential52 discussion between these two, the girl letting the gap between door and door-post increase before the lady in the grotesque bonnet. The doctor and the “missus” were out, and Master Jack53 having tea at a friend’s house in the next street. So much Miss Carmagee had learned before she had been admitted to the little front room.
It was quite dusk when Catherine and her husband turned in at the garden gate. The blinds were down, the gas lit. Murchison opened the front door with his key, remembering, as he ever remembered, the golden head that would shine no more for him in that diminutive54, dreary55 house.
He was hanging his coat on a peg56 in the passage, when he heard a sharp cry from Catherine, who had entered the front room. There was the rustling57 of skirts, the sound of an inarticulate greeting between two eager friends.
No one could have doubted Miss Carmagee’s solid identity. She was resting her hands on Catherine’s shoulders. They had kissed each other like mother and child.
“Why, when did you come? We had no letter. James, James—”
Murchison found them holding hands. There were tears in Miss Carmagee’s mild blue eyes. Warned of her coming, he might have shirked the meeting with the pride of a man too sensitive towards the past. But Miss Carmagee in the flesh, motherly and very gentle, with Catherine’s kisses warm upon her face, stood for nothing that was critical, or chilling to the heart.
He met her with open hands.
“You have taken us by surprise.”
Miss Phyllis’s eyes were on the sad, memory-shadowed face.
“I had to come,” and her voice failed her a little. “I sha’n’t worry you; we are old friends.”
She put up her benign58 and ugly face, as though the privilege of a mother belonged to her by nature.
“I have felt it all so much.”
A flash of infinite yearning59 leaped up and passed in the man’s eyes.
“You must be tired,” he said, clinging to commonplaces. “Have they sent your luggage up?”
Miss Carmagee sank into a chair.
“I left it at the hotel. I’m not going to be a worry.”
“Worry!”
“Of course not, child.”
“Oh—but we must have you here. James—”
“My dear,” and the substantial nature of the old lady’s person seemed to become evident, “I insist on sleeping there to-night. Now, humor me, or I shall feel myself a nuisance.”
Miss Carmagee’s solidity of will made her contention60 impregnable. Moreover, the common-sense view she took of the matter boasted a large element of discretion61. People who live in a small house on one hundred and sixty pounds a year cannot be expected to be prepared for social emergencies. Even a philosopher is limited by the contents of his larder62, and Miss Carmagee was one of those excellent women whose philosophy takes note of the trivial things of life—pots, pans, and linen63, the cold end of mutton, a rice-pudding to supply three. It is truly regrettable that a man’s Promethean spirit should be bound down by such contemptible64 trifles. Yet a tactful refusal to share a suet-pudding may be worth more than the wittiest66 epigram ever made.
Miss Carmagee and Catherine spent an hour alone together that evening, for Murchison had patients waiting for him at Dr. Tugler’s surgery in Wilton High Street. Master Jack had returned from his tea-party, to be hugged, presented with a box of soldiers, a clasp-knife, and a prayer-book, and then hurried off to bed. The soldiers and the knife shared the sheets with him; the prayer-book (amiable aunts forgive!) was left derelict under an arm-chair.
But the great event that night for these two women, such contrasts and yet so alike in the deeper things of the soul, came with that communing together before the fire, the lights turned low, the room in shadow. It was somewhile before Miss Carmagee approached the purpose that had brought her across England with bag and baggage. She was a woman of tact65, and it is not easy to be a partisan67 at times without wounding those whom we wish to help.
The elder woman had hardly broached68 the subject, before Catherine, sitting on a cushion beside Miss Carmagee’s chair, turned from the fire-light with an eager lifting of the head.
“Why, it was only yesterday that James spoke to me of such a plan.”
“To return to us?”
“Yes, and win back what he lost.”
Miss Carmagee saw her way more clearly.
“You know, child, you have many friends.”
“I?”
“Yes, and your husband also. Porteus and I discussed the matter. You must not think us busybodies, dear.”
A kiss was the surest answer.
“I was afraid when James first spoke of it.”
“Afraid?”
“Yes,” and she colored; “it was cowardly of me, but I remembered how we left the place. It will be an ordeal69. We shall have to walk through fire together. But still—”
“Well, child,” and Miss Carmagee let her have her say.
“Still, there is a greatness in the plan that takes my heart. We women love our husbands to be brave. I know what it will mean to James. He says that many people will think him mad.”
Miss Carmagee sat stroking one of Catherine’s hands.
“It is the right kind of madness,” she said, softly.
“To rise above public opinion?”
“Yes, when we are in the right.”
They sat for a while in silence, looking into the fire, Catherine’s head against Miss Carmagee’s shoulder. Above, in the nursery, Jack Murchison was trying his new knife on the rail of a bedroom chair. He had crept out of bed, rummaged70 up some matches, and lit the gas. The boy had no eyes for the empty cot in the far corner of the room. He had not yet grasped what the loss of a life in the home meant.
“I want you to promise me something, dear.”
Miss Carmagee’s hand touched the mother’s hair.
“Yes?”
“I want you to tell me frankly—about the money.”
Catherine looked up into the benign, white face.
“You mean—?”
“I mean, dear, that there is a lot of dusting and polishing to be done before the lawyers allow people to step into their own shoes. I have a pair that I could lend you for a year or so.”
Catherine smiled at the simile71, despite the occasion. Miss Carmagee’s shoes were as large and generous as her heart.
“It is too good of you. They tell me I have inherited property that will bring in an income of seven to eight hundred a year. I don’t think—”
“Well?”
“That we could let you be so generous.”
Miss Carmagee leaned forward in her chair.
“Generous? It is not generous, dear; a mere matter of convenience.”
“You call it merely ‘convenience’?”
“No, child, I ought to call it a blessing72 to me, a true blessing. Don’t you understand that it would make me very happy?”
“Yes, I understand.”
“That’s right.”
“How good and kind you are.”
“Nonsense, dear, nonsense.”
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收听单词发音
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1
wailed
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| v.哭叫，哀号( wail的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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mythical
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| adj.神话的；虚构的；想像的 | |
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cemetery
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| n.坟墓，墓地，坟场 | |
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insignificant
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| adj.无关紧要的，可忽略的，无意义的 | |
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notches
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| n.（边缘或表面上的）V型痕迹( notch的名词复数 )；刻痕；水平；等级 | |
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chisel
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| n.凿子；v.用凿子刻，雕，凿 | |
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encompassed
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| v.围绕( encompass的过去式和过去分词 )；包围；包含；包括 | |
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chapel
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| n.小教堂，殡仪馆 | |
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deity
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| n.神，神性；被奉若神明的人(或物) | |
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hueless
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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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sodden
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| adj.浑身湿透的；v.使浸透；使呆头呆脑 | |
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obelisks
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| n.方尖石塔，短剑号，疑问记号( obelisk的名词复数 ) | |
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mounds
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| 土堆，土丘( mound的名词复数 )； 一大堆 | |
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merging
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| 合并（分类） | |
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prostrate
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| v.拜倒，平卧，衰竭；adj.拜倒的，平卧的，衰竭的 | |
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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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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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reverence
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| n.敬畏，尊敬，尊严；Reverence:对某些基督教神职人员的尊称；v.尊敬，敬畏，崇敬 | |
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penance
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| n.（赎罪的）惩罪 | |
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scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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subdued
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| adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
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drizzling
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| 下蒙蒙细雨，下毛毛雨( drizzle的现在分词 ) | |
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callousness
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shrill
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| adj.尖声的；刺耳的；v尖叫 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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27
haze
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| n.霾，烟雾；懵懂，迷糊；vi.(over)变模糊 | |
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opalescence
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| n.乳白光，蛋白色光；乳光 | |
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labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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bleak
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| adj.(天气)阴冷的；凄凉的；暗淡的 | |
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rattle
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| v.飞奔，碰响；激怒；n.碰撞声；拨浪鼓 | |
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shriek
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| v./n.尖叫，叫喊 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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toil
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| vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事 | |
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eddies
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| （水、烟等的）漩涡，涡流( eddy的名词复数 ) | |
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yearn
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| v.想念；怀念；渴望 | |
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entities
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| 实体对像； 实体，独立存在体，实际存在物( entity的名词复数 ) | |
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phenomena
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| n.现象 | |
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repose
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| v.(使)休息；n.安息 | |
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blur
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| n.模糊不清的事物；vt.使模糊，使看不清楚 | |
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impudence
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| n.厚颜无耻；冒失；无礼 | |
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outskirts
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| n.郊外，郊区 | |
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quaintness
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| n.离奇有趣，古怪的事物 | |
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antiquity
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| n.古老；高龄；古物，古迹 | |
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rumble
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| n.隆隆声；吵嚷；v.隆隆响；低沉地说 | |
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unwillingness
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| n. 不愿意，不情愿 | |
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twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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battered
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| adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损 | |
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grotesque
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| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
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bonnet
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| n.无边女帽；童帽 | |
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confidential
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| adj.秘（机）密的，表示信任的，担任机密工作的 | |
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jack
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| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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diminutive
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| adj.小巧可爱的，小的 | |
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dreary
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| adj.令人沮丧的，沉闷的，单调乏味的 | |
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peg
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| n.木栓，木钉；vt.用木钉钉，用短桩固定 | |
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rustling
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| n. 瑟瑟声，沙沙声 adj. 发沙沙声的 | |
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benign
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| adj.善良的，慈祥的；良性的，无危险的 | |
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yearning
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| a.渴望的；向往的；怀念的 | |
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contention
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| n.争论，争辩，论战；论点，主张 | |
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discretion
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| n.谨慎；随意处理 | |
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larder
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| n.食物贮藏室，食品橱 | |
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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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contemptible
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| adj.可鄙的，可轻视的，卑劣的 | |
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tact
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| n.机敏，圆滑，得体 | |
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wittiest
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| 机智的，言辞巧妙的，情趣横生的( witty的最高级 ) | |
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partisan
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| adj.党派性的；游击队的；n.游击队员；党徒 | |
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broached
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| v.谈起( broach的过去式和过去分词 )；打开并开始用；用凿子扩大（或修光）；（在桶上）钻孔取液体 | |
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ordeal
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| n.苦难经历，（尤指对品格、耐力的）严峻考验 | |
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rummaged
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| 翻找，搜寻( rummage的过去式和过去分词 )； 已经海关检查 | |
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simile
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| n.直喻，明喻 | |
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blessing
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| n.祈神赐福；祷告；祝福，祝愿 | |
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