That a girl like Margaret Berkeley could have become involved in a love affair and an actual betrothal6 with a man like Daniel Leitzel, while apparently7 inexplicable8, becomes, in view of her unique history and present circumstances, not only plausible9, but almost inevitable10.
Her entanglement11 with him may be dated from a certain evening just twenty-four hours before she met or even heard of him, when a little episode, trivial enough in itself, opened her eyes to an ugly fact in her relation with her sister to which she had been rather persistently12 blind.
She had been radiantly happy all that day because of the unusual circumstance that she had something delightful13 to anticipate for the evening. Her godmother, who lived in Charleston, had 'phoned out to Berkeley Hill to invite her to go with her to see Nazimova in "Hedda Gabler"; and as Margaret had seen only three plays in all the twenty-five years of her life (though she had avidly14 read every classic drama in the English and French languages) she was greatly excited at the prospect3 before her. So barren had her girlhood been of youthful pleasures, so sombre and uneventful her daily routine, and so repressed every natural, restless instinct toward brightness and happiness, that the idea of seeing a great dramatic performance loomed15 big before her as an intoxicating16 delight. All day, alone in her isolated17 suburban18 home, in charge of her elder sister's three small children and of the two rather decrepit19 negro servants of the great old place, she had gone tripping and singing about the house. She had been quite unable to settle down to the prosaic20 work of mending the week's laundry, or of wrestling with the intricacies of Henry James' difficult style in "The Golden Bowl" in which, the night before, she had been passionately21 absorbed.
She could scarcely wait for her sister Harriet to come home from town, where she was attending a young matrons' luncheon22 party, so eager was she to tell her of the treat she was going to have.
"She will be so glad for me. I've scarcely been outside the hedge for a month, and she has been having such a gay time herself—she's so popular. She'll be so glad I'm going!" she repeated to herself, trying to ignore the doubt in her heart on that point.
But when at half-past four in the afternoon Harriet returned, the blow fell upon Margaret.
"Harriet, dear!" she exultantly23 greeted her sister with her splendid news the moment the latter came into the house, "Aunt Virginia is going to take me to see Nazimova to-night! Oh!" She laughed aloud, and danced about the spacious24 hall in her delight, while her sister, a very comely25 young matron of thirty-five, leisurely26 removed her wraps.
"But Walter and I are going," Harriet casually27 remarked as she tossed her cloak over a carved, high-backed chair. "The editor of the Bulletin gave Walter two tickets as part payment for some legal business Walter did for him. Of course you and I can't both be away from the children. Has the baby had her five o'clock bottle?"
"It isn't quite five yet."
"Will you see that she gets it, dearie? I'm so dead tired, I'll have to rest before dinner if I'm going into the city again to-night. Will you attend to it?"
"Yes."
"That's a dear. I'm going up to lie down. Don't let the children come to my room and wake me, will you, dear?" she added as she started languidly upstairs.
"But, Harriet!"
"What?" Harriet asked, not stopping.
"I accepted Aunt Virginia's invitation and she is coming out in her motor for me!"
"Too bad! I'm awfully28 sorry. You'd better 'phone at once or she will be offended. Tell her that as we are much too poor to buy tickets for the theatre, we can't possibly refuse to use them on the rare occasions when they're given to us!" Harriet laughed as she disappeared around the curve of the winding29 stairway.
Margaret sprang after her. "Oh, Harriet! I can't give it up!" Her voice was low and breathless.
"But if you 'phone at once Aunt Virginia won't be cross. You know, dearie, you shouldn't make engagements without first finding out what ours are." And Harriet moved on up the stairs to her bedroom.
Margaret was ashamed of her childishness when at dinner that evening Walter, her brother-in-law, inquiring, in his kind, solicitous30 way, the cause of her pallor and silence, she burst out crying and rushed from the table.
Walter, looking shocked and distressed31, turned to his wife for an explanation. But Harriet's face expressed blank astonishment32.
"Why, I can't imagine! Unless she's tired out from having had the children all day. I was at Mrs. Duncan's luncheon, you know. I didn't get home until nearly five. I'll tell Margaret to go to bed early to-night and rest up."
Walter Eastman, searching his wife's face keenly, shrugged33 his big shoulders at the impenetrability of its innocent candour. No use to try to get at the truth of anything from Harriet. She wasn't exactly a liar34, but she had a genius for twisting facts to suit her own selfish ends—and all Harriet's ends were selfish. Even the welfare of her children was secondary to her own comfort and convenience. Walter had no illusions about the wife of his bosom35 and the mother of his three children. He knew perfectly36 well that she loved no one as she loved herself, and that this dominating self-love made her often cold-blooded and even sometimes a bit false, though always, he was sure, unconsciously so. He was still quite fond of her, which spoke37 well for them both, considering that they had been married nine years. Of course, after such a length of time they were no longer "in love." But Harriet was an easy-going, good-natured woman, when you didn't cross her; and as he was also easy-going and good-natured, and never crossed her when he could avoid it, they got on beautifully and had a pretty good time together.
Walter wondered sometimes what Harriet would do if placed in circumstances where her own inclinations39 would have to be sacrificed for those of another. For instance, if she and Margaret had to change places.
"Take Margaret to the play with you to-night and I'll stay home with the kiddies, Harriet," he suggested, looking at his wife across their beautifully appointed dinner-table with its old family china and silver. Harriet, in her home-made evening gown, graced with distinction the stately dining-room furnished in shining antique mahogany, its walls hung with interesting portraits. "If Margaret's had charge of the children all day, she ought not to have them to-night."
"No." Harriet shook her head. "Margaret ought not to go out to-night, she's too tired. And I want you with me, dear. Margaret is not my husband, you know. That's the danger of having one of your family living with you," she sighed. "It is so apt to make a husband and wife less near to each other. I am always resisting the inclination38, Walter, dear, to pair off with Margaret instead of with you. I resist it for your sake, for the children's sake, for the sake of our home."
"I shall feel a selfish beast going to a play and leaving that dear girl alone here with the babies. They're our babies, not hers, you know."
"She loves them like her own; she's crazy about them. They are the greatest pleasure she has, Walter."
"Because she hasn't the sort of young pleasures she ought to have. And because she's so unselfish, Hat, that she lets herself be imposed upon to the limit! I've been thinking, lately, that we ought to do more than we do for Margaret; she ought to know girls of her own age; she ought to have a bit of social life, now that the year of mourning is over. It's too dull for her, sticking out here eternally, minding our children and seeing after the house."
"But she's used to sticking out here and seeing after the house. When she lived here with Uncle Osmond she had a lot less diversion and life about her than she has now, and you know how deadly gloomy it was here then. We've brightened it up and made it a home for Margaret."
"The fact that she had to sacrifice her girlhood for your uncle is all the more reason why she shouldn't sacrifice what's left of it for our children."
"If Margaret doesn't complain, I don't see why you need, dear."
"She'd never complain—she never thinks of herself. Your Uncle Osmond took care not to let her form the habit! For that very reason we should think for her a bit, Hattie, dear. I say, we've got to let Margaret in for some young society."
"When I can't afford to keep up my social end, let alone hers? And if we should spend money that way for Margaret, where would the children come in?"
"Oh, pshaw!" said Walter impatiently. "You're bluffing40! You care no more about the money side of it than I do. You're not a Yankee tight-wad! Margaret need not live the life of a nursemaid because we're not rich, any more than you do, honey. It's absurd! And it's all wrong. What you're really afraid of, Hat, is that if she went about more, you'd have to stay at home now and then with your own babies. Eh, dear?"
But he was warned by the look in his wife's face that he must go no further. He was aware of the fact that Harriet was distinctly jealous of his too manifest liking41 for Margaret. Being something of a philosopher, he had felt occasionally, when his sister-in-law had seemed to him more than usually charming and irresistible42, that a wife's instinctive43 jealousy44 was really a Providential safeguard to hold a man in check.
He wondered often why he found Margaret so tremendously appealing, when undoubtedly45 his wife, though ten years older than her sister, was much the better looking of the two. He was not subtle enough to divine that it was the absolutely feminine quality of Margaret's personality, the penetrating46, all-pervasive womanliness which one felt in her presence, which expressed itself in her every movement, in every curve of her young body—it was this which so poignantly47 appealed to his strong virility48 that at times he felt he could not bear her presence in the house.
He would turn from her and look upon his wife's much prettier face and finer figure, only to have the fire of his blood turn lukewarm. For he recognized, with fatal clearness, that though Harriet had the beautiful, clear-cut features and look of high breeding characteristic of the Berkeley race, her inexpressive countenance49 betrayed a commonplace mind and soul, while Margaret, lacking the Berkeley beauty, did have the family look and air of breeding, which gave her, with her countenance of intelligence and sensitiveness, a marked distinction; and Walter Eastman was a man not only of temperament50, but of the poetic51 imagination that idealizes the woman with whom he is at the time in love.
"The man that marries Margaret will never fall out of love with her—she's magnetic to her finger-tips! What's more, there's something in her worth loving—worth loving forever!"
At this stage of his reflections he usually pulled himself up short, uncomfortably conscious of his disloyalty. Harriet, he knew, was wholly loyal to him, proud of him, thinking him all that any woman could reasonably expect a husband to be—a gentleman of old family, well set up physically52, and indeed good-looking, chivalrous53 to his wife, devoted54 to his children, temperate55 in his habits, upright and honourable56. She did not even criticise57 his natural indolence, which, rather than lack of brains or opportunity, kept his law practice and his earnings58 too small for the needs of his growing family; but Harriet preferred to do without money rather than have her husband be a vulgar "hustler," like a "Yankee upstart."
It was this same indolence of Walter's, rather than want of force of character, which led him to stand by passively and see his sister-in-law constantly imposed upon, as he distinctly felt that she was, though he realized that Margaret herself, dear, sweet girl, never seemed conscious of it. Her unexpected outburst at dinner to-night had shocked and hurt him to the quick. He was sure that something really outrageous59 on Harriet's part must have caused it. Yet rather than "raise a row" with Harriet, he acquiesced60 in her decision to leave Margaret at home. It must be said in justice to him that had his astute61 wife not kept him in ignorance of their Aunt Virginia's invitation to Margaret he would undoubtedly have taken a stand in the matter. Harriet, carefully calculating the limit of his easy forbearance, knew better than to tell him of that invitation; and she could safely count upon Margaret not to put her in the wrong with Walter.
Margaret, meantime, locked in her room, had quickly got over her outbreak of weeping and was now sitting upright upon her bed, resolutely62 facing her quandary63.
It was Harriet's assumption of authority, with its implication of her own subservient64 position, that was opening Margaret's eyes this evening to the real nature of her position in her sister's household.
"Suppose I went straight to her just now, all dressed for the theatre, and told her in an off-hand, careless, artistic65 manner that I couldn't possibly break my engagement with Aunt Virginia!"
Margaret, perched Turk-fashion on the foot of her bed, her hands clasped about one knee, her cheeks flushed, her eyes very bright, contemplated66 in fancy Harriet's consternation67 at such an unwonted procedure on her part—and she knew she would not do it. Not because, like Walter, she was too indolent to wrestle68 with Harriet's cold-blooded tenacity69; nor because she was in the least afraid of her sister. After living eight years with Uncle Osmond she would hardly quail70 before Harriet! But it was that thing Harriet had said to her this afternoon—that awful thing that burned in her brain and heart—it was that with which she must reckon before she could take any definite stand. "You should not make any engagements without first finding out what ours are," Harriet had said, which, in view of all the circumstances, simply meant, "Being dependent upon us for your food and clothes, your time should be at our disposal. You are no more free to go and come than are the cook and butler."
Now of course Harriet would never admit for an instant that she felt like that. Margaret knew perfectly well that her sister did not begrudge71 the little it cost to keep her with them. Harriet was not so thrifty72 as that. This attitude, then, was probably only a pretext73 to cover something else which Harriet was no doubt unwilling74 to admit even to her own soul, that something else which Margaret, herself, had tried so long not to see, which made her presence at Berkeley Hill unwelcome to both Walter and Harriet. And Harriet, too proud to acknowledge her true reason for wishing her sister away, pretended to an economic one.
"Suppose I said to her, 'You must not make engagements without first finding out what mine are?' Now if she had only said, 'We should not make engagements without first consulting with each other.' But she put all the obligation where she tries to persuade herself that it belongs."
When presently Margaret heard her sister and Walter leave the house to go to the theatre she got up from her bed and went to Harriet's room adjoining the nursery, to keep guard over the three sleeping children until their parents came home.
Lying on a chintz-covered couch at the foot of Harriet's huge four-posted bed, she thought long and earnestly upon every phase of her difficult situation, determined75 that before she slept she would solve the apparently impossible problem of how she might leave Berkeley Hill.
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1
speculation
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| n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机 | |
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apprehensive
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| adj.担心的，恐惧的，善于领会的 | |
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prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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prospective
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| adj.预期的，未来的，前瞻性的 | |
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misgivings
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| n.疑虑，担忧，害怕；疑虑，担心，恐惧( misgiving的名词复数 )；疑惧 | |
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betrothal
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| n. 婚约, 订婚 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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8
inexplicable
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| adj.无法解释的，难理解的 | |
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9
plausible
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| adj.似真实的，似乎有理的，似乎可信的 | |
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10
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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entanglement
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| n.纠缠，牵累 | |
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persistently
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| ad.坚持地；固执地 | |
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delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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avidly
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| adv.渴望地，热心地 | |
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loomed
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| v.隐约出现，阴森地逼近( loom的过去式和过去分词 )；隐约出现，阴森地逼近 | |
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16
intoxicating
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| a. 醉人的,使人兴奋的 | |
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isolated
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| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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suburban
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| adj.城郊的，在郊区的 | |
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decrepit
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| adj.衰老的，破旧的 | |
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prosaic
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| adj.单调的，无趣的 | |
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passionately
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| ad.热烈地，激烈地 | |
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22
luncheon
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| n.午宴，午餐，便宴 | |
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exultantly
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| adv.狂欢地，欢欣鼓舞地 | |
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spacious
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| adj.广阔的，宽敞的 | |
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comely
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| adj.漂亮的，合宜的 | |
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leisurely
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| adj.悠闲的；从容的，慢慢的 | |
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casually
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| adv.漠不关心地，无动于衷地，不负责任地 | |
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awfully
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| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
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winding
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| n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈 | |
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solicitous
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| adj.热切的，挂念的 | |
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distressed
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| 痛苦的 | |
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astonishment
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| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
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shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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liar
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| n.说谎的人 | |
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bosom
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| n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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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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38
inclination
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| n.倾斜；点头；弯腰；斜坡；倾度；倾向；爱好 | |
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inclinations
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| 倾向( inclination的名词复数 )； 倾斜； 爱好； 斜坡 | |
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40
bluffing
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| n. 威吓，唬人 动词bluff的现在分词形式 | |
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41
liking
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| n.爱好；嗜好；喜欢 | |
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42
irresistible
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| adj.非常诱人的，无法拒绝的，无法抗拒的 | |
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43
instinctive
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| adj.(出于)本能的；直觉的；(出于)天性的 | |
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jealousy
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| n.妒忌，嫉妒，猜忌 | |
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45
undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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46
penetrating
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| adj.（声音）响亮的，尖锐的adj.（气味）刺激的adj.（思想）敏锐的，有洞察力的 | |
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47
poignantly
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48
virility
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| n.雄劲，丈夫气 | |
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49
countenance
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| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
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50
temperament
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| n.气质，性格，性情 | |
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51
poetic
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| adj.富有诗意的，有诗人气质的，善于抒情的 | |
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52
physically
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| adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律 | |
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53
chivalrous
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| adj.武士精神的；对女人彬彬有礼的 | |
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54
devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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55
temperate
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| adj.温和的，温带的，自我克制的，不过分的 | |
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56
honourable
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| adj.可敬的；荣誉的，光荣的 | |
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57
criticise
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| v.批评，评论；非难 | |
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58
earnings
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| n.工资收人；利润，利益，所得 | |
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outrageous
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| adj.无理的，令人不能容忍的 | |
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60
acquiesced
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| v.默认，默许( acquiesce的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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61
astute
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| adj.机敏的，精明的 | |
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resolutely
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| adj.坚决地，果断地 | |
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63
quandary
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| n.困惑，进迟两难之境 | |
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64
subservient
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| adj.卑屈的，阿谀的 | |
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65
artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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contemplated
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| adj. 预期的 动词contemplate的过去分词形式 | |
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consternation
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| n.大为吃惊，惊骇 | |
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68
wrestle
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| vi.摔跤，角力；搏斗；全力对付 | |
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tenacity
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| n.坚韧 | |
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70
quail
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| n.鹌鹑；vi.畏惧，颤抖 | |
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71
begrudge
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| vt.吝啬，羡慕 | |
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72
thrifty
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| adj.节俭的；兴旺的；健壮的 | |
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73
pretext
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| n.借口，托词 | |
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74
unwilling
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| adj.不情愿的 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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