"Wouldn't it make a good Movie! I might have it copyrighted!" she shrugged2.
But she told the chauffeur3 to hurry, hoping that she might, even yet, get to the office before Daniel got there.
"If I don't, and if he tries to keep Catherine from coming down to me—well, if I didn't look such a sight, I would go right up into the office!"
When, however, the taxicab drew up before the building of which the second floor was occupied by Daniel's law offices, and she leaned for an instant out of the cab window, she saw her husband coming down the street. Jennie, then, had been too early for him. Margaret looked about hastily for Catherine, but she saw nothing of her. She shrank far back, then, in the cab to prevent Daniel's seeing her, for he was now close by.
She saw him hesitate at the door of the building and glance inquiringly at the cab; then, curiosity moving him, for Daniel had the petty curiosity of an unoccupied woman, he came over to the curb4 and looked into the window of the cab.
Margaret met his glance calmly. All she cared about was that he should not prevent her meeting Catherine.
"Why, Margaret! You out of doors! What for? You came for me? Is anything wrong?"
"I came out for some fresh air."
"But to come out on the street!" he protested, scandalized.
"I'm not exposed to view."
"But the chauffeur has seen you!" whispered Daniel, actually colouring with embarrassment5.
"He doesn't mind it nearly as much as you do, Daniel. I think he'll recover; he looks robust6."
"But what have you come down to my office for?"
As Margaret at this moment saw Catherine coming out of the building, she promptly7 answered, "To see Miss Hamilton and clear matters up with her. Here she is now."
Daniel turned about sharply, and Catherine, nodding a cheerful good-morning to him, stepped into the cab and bent8 over Margaret to kiss her.
"But, Miss Hamilton," cried Daniel as his clerk settled Herself comfortably beside his wife, "why are you not at your desk?"
"I left a note on your desk, Mr. Leitzel, asking you to excuse me for an hour. I shall be back before ten," she replied, drawing the cab door shut and speaking to him through the open window.
"To the park," Margaret ordered the chauffeur. "Good-bye, Daniel."
"Miss Hamilton," faltered9 Daniel, but before he could collect his wits to decide how he ought to meet so unprecedented10 a situation, the car started and whirled down the street.
Slowly and thoughtfully he turned into his office building. Never before in all his life had his will been so frustrated11 as by this young wife of his hearth12 and home upon whom he showered every comfort, every luxury and indulgence. That any one whom he supported should disobey, defy, and thwart13 him! It was beyond belief. How did she dare to do it?
"But what's a man to do with a wife who doesn't care for his displeasure any more than if he were an old cat!" he raged. "Oh, well," he tried to console himself, "it won't be long, now, until the baby comes, and then surely she'll be different. She'll have to be! I'll find some means of teaching her that my wishes can't be disregarded!"
Miss Hamilton's note which he found on his desk stated succinctly14 that she had an imperative15 engagement this morning which would make her an hour late.
Daniel, sinking limply into his desk-chair, crushed the note in his long, thin fingers and tossed it into his waste-basket, with the murderous wish that it was his clerk's head he was smashing.
"What will they be when they get the vote?" he groaned16. "Women," he said spitefully but epigrammatically, "are the pest of men's lives!"
Margaret, meantime, without once directly referring to her husband and his sisters, had managed to convey to Catherine an explanation of the silence and desolation that had existed between them during the past two weeks; and she was now making a compact with her which she felt must insure them both against any future misunderstanding.
"Tell me first, Catherine, that our friendship means more to you than—than any petty considerations! Please, Catherine, tell me that it does! For I just must have you, you know! You are more to me than I can possibly be to you, for you have your mother, while I——"
She hesitated and Catherine said, "And you, Margaret, will soon have your child. Will that make you need me any less? I don't believe it will, dear. And my other dear ones can't in the least fill your place in my life. I can't give you up any more than you can spare me. Nothing," she said with decision, "shall separate us."
"Then," said Margaret, pressing Catherine's hand, "hereafter, when you come to see me, ring the bell four times by twos, and I, knowing about the hour to look for you, will be on hand to let you in myself."
"All right. I will."
"Catherine! You are large-minded!"
"My dear!" protested Catherine, "'large-minded' to be indifferent to the eccentricities17 of—well," she closed her lips on the rest of her sentence, "two illiterate18, vulgar old women," was what she had nearly said; but she left it to Margaret's imagination to finish her remark.
"While you are ill in bed, I suppose I shan't be able to get near you," she ventured. "It will be dreadful if I have to wait nearly a month before I can see that baby! It's going to be awfully19 dear to me, Margaret! Next thing to having one of my own."
"I couldn't wait a whole month to show it to you. I'll ask the doctor to bring you to me."
"We'll manage somehow," affirmed Catherine.
Margaret, looking rather pale, did not answer, and Catherine suddenly put her arms about her and kissed her.
"You poor child!" she said tenderly.
"I'm not a good fighter," Margaret sadly shook her head. "And there are so many, many adjustments to be made, I——"
She stopped short and bit her lips to keep back the tears that sprang to her eyes.
"At least," said Catherine encouragingly, "you seem to be coming to your ordeal20, dear, with plenty of courage; and that's the main thing just now."
"Oh, Catherine, I'm willing to go through a lot for the sake of holding a baby of my own to my heart!"
"Then you think, Margaret, that motherhood is going to be all that it's cracked up to be?"
"Under ideal conditions," said Margaret, "I can see nothing greater to be desired."
"But do the ideal conditions ever exist?"
"I suppose they seldom do."
"Sometimes I've had my doubts," said Catherine. "The male poets and painters exalt21 the beauty, the holiness of motherhood, and the women bear the burden and pain of it."
"But when women whose lives have had the largest horizon—women like Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Margaret Fuller—have declared that their motherhood was the crown and climax22 of all their experiences of life, I suppose the poets and painters are not very wrong about it, Catherine."
"I hope they are not, since all my instincts about it are entirely23 primitive24 and I feel that nothing in the world will compensate25 me if I've got to go through life childless."
"There would be one compensation," said Margaret earnestly.
"What?"
"Sometimes, since I've known I was going to have a child, the responsibility, the almost crushing responsibility, has seemed more than I could bear. That's what I meant when I spoke26 of ideal conditions."
Catherine held back her mental reply to this, which was, "Yes, we should be careful whom we marry, and why did you tie up with a little rat like Danny Leitzel?"
What she did say was: "You didn't feel this crushing sense of responsibility until after you found yourself pregnant?"
"No. Before that I thought only of my own happiness in having a baby to cherish. But, Catherine, when we look about us and see what life can do to us, I wonder how we ever dare, under any conditions, to bring a child into this awful world!"
"We can't question the foundations of the universe, however."
"No, but we can question modern civilization, which produces a huge population of criminals, lunatics, degenerates27, and incapables."
"Think of pleasant things, my dear!"
"I try to. To tell you the truth, in spite of my heavy sense of responsibility, I can hardly wait, Catherine, until I have my baby! I want to show you the lovely little embroidered28 dress Harriet sent me. Will you come in to see it and me this afternoon after four o'clock?"
"Yes."
"I'll be on the watch."
"All right," Catherine nodded.
"The baby received another present, the other day, which touched me very much," added Margaret. "A cunning pair of socks from its grandmother which she knit herself."
"Its grandmother? But——"
"I mean Mr. Leitzel's step-mother."
"Oh!"
"Did you ever happen to see her, Catherine?"
"Once. She came to the office once to see Mr. Leitzel."
Catherine's tone of withdrawal29, as though she feared to be questioned, piqued30 Margaret's interest.
"What was your impression of her?"
"Margaret, your husband's mother has an unforgettable face! There's a benediction31 in it, such sweetness, refinement32, and simplicity33 shine in her countenance34. When she had talked to me for a while, I felt as a good Catholic must who has been blessed by the Pope. Just the sort of person (with a heart too tender to hurt a fly) to be herself easily victimized by the human vultures that prey35 upon the too confiding36."
"Has anybody victimized her?" Margaret casually37 inquired.
Catherine hesitated an instant before she answered: "Righteousness is sometimes a breastplate to protect the otherwise defenceless. It is that dear old woman's extraordinary conscientiousness38 that has saved her from being entirely devoured39 by the vultures, though she has certainly been gnawed40 at pretty hard. I can't explain to you, now, just what I mean. Some day, perhaps."
"Oh, do tell me, Catherine."
Again Catherine hesitated before she replied: "She made a certain promise to her husband on his deathbed which her conscience has never allowed her to break, though she has always believed that she was acting41 against her own interests in keeping it. But it's her loyalty42 to her promise that's been her breastplate; that has saved her from the vultures."
Margaret considered in silence this suggestive bit of information. It was rather more lucid43 to her than Catherine suspected. But she was impressed with the sudden realization44 she had of her friend's intimate knowledge of Daniel's affairs and it flashed upon her that perhaps his seemingly unreasonable45 objections to their intimacy46 might have quite another explanation than that he had given it.
In this, however, she was mistaken. Daniel entirely trusted the discretion47 of his clerk. Not so much because he believed her bound in honour to keep his secrets as because it was the part of a first-class clerk (which she was) to be discreetly48 silent as to her employer's business operations.
"And now, my dear," Catherine broke in on her thoughts, "since we've threshed things out and have made a compact that we will not again misunderstand each other, I think I'd better get back to my 'job.'"
Margaret gave the order to the chauffeur; and when a little while later, alone in the taxicab on her way home, she found her heart overflowing49 with a sense of the fulness, the richness of life, and considered how strenuously50 Daniel and his sisters tried to take from her the comfort, the happiness, of companionship with Catherine and how impossible it would be to make them see what that companionship meant to her, she felt greatly strengthened in her resolve to resist, steadily51 and persistently52, their aggressions upon her personal liberty.
At her own door, as she opened her purse to pay for the cab, she found she had remaining of her monthly allowance only two dollars and the chauffeur's price was three dollars. She hesitated an instant, then telling the man to charge the cab to Mr. Leitzel, she got out hastily and went indoors.
"Rather hard on Daniel to make him pay the costs of my plots gotten up to circumvent53 his plots! He won't like it. Ah, I've a bright idea! I'll tell him to deduct54 the three dollars from my next 'allowance.' That will appease55 him."
But on second thoughts she realized that that same bright idea would surely occur to Daniel without any suggestion from her.
点击
收听单词发音
收听单词发音 |
1
contrive
|
|
| vt.谋划，策划；设法做到；设计，想出 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
shrugged
|
|
| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
chauffeur
|
|
| n.(受雇于私人或公司的)司机；v.为…开车 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
curb
|
|
| n.场外证券市场，场外交易；vt.制止，抑制 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
embarrassment
|
|
| n.尴尬；使人为难的人(事物)；障碍；窘迫 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
robust
|
|
| adj.强壮的，强健的，粗野的，需要体力的，浓的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
promptly
|
|
| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
bent
|
|
| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
faltered
|
|
| （嗓音）颤抖( falter的过去式和过去分词 )； 支吾其词； 蹒跚； 摇晃 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
unprecedented
|
|
| adj.无前例的，新奇的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
frustrated
|
|
| adj.挫败的，失意的，泄气的v.使不成功( frustrate的过去式和过去分词 )；挫败；使受挫折；令人沮丧 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
hearth
|
|
| n.壁炉炉床，壁炉地面 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
thwart
|
|
| v.阻挠，妨碍，反对；adj.横(断的) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
succinctly
|
|
| adv.简洁地；简洁地，简便地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
imperative
|
|
| n.命令，需要；规则；祈使语气；adj.强制的；紧急的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
groaned
|
|
| v.呻吟( groan的过去式和过去分词 )；发牢骚；抱怨；受苦 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
eccentricities
|
|
| n.古怪行为( eccentricity的名词复数 )；反常；怪癖 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
illiterate
|
|
| adj.文盲的；无知的；n.文盲 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
awfully
|
|
| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
ordeal
|
|
| n.苦难经历，（尤指对品格、耐力的）严峻考验 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
exalt
|
|
| v.赞扬，歌颂，晋升，提升 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
climax
|
|
| n.顶点；高潮；v.(使)达到顶点 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
entirely
|
|
| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
primitive
|
|
| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
25
compensate
|
|
| vt.补偿，赔偿；酬报 vi.弥补；补偿；抵消 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
26
spoke
|
|
| 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 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
27
degenerates
|
|
| 衰退，堕落，退化( degenerate的第三人称单数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
28
embroidered
|
|
| adj．绣花的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
29
withdrawal
|
|
| n.取回，提款；撤退，撤军；收回，撤销 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
30
piqued
|
|
| v.伤害…的自尊心( pique的过去式和过去分词 )；激起（好奇心） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
31
benediction
|
|
| n.祝福；恩赐 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
32
refinement
|
|
| n.文雅；高尚；精美；精制；精炼 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
33
simplicity
|
|
| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
34
countenance
|
|
| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
35
prey
|
|
| n.被掠食者，牺牲者，掠食；v.捕食，掠夺，折磨 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
36
confiding
|
|
| adj.相信人的，易于相信的v.吐露（秘密，心事等）( confide的现在分词 )；（向某人）吐露（隐私、秘密等） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
37
casually
|
|
| adv.漠不关心地，无动于衷地，不负责任地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
38
conscientiousness
|
|
| 责任心 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
39
devoured
|
|
| 吞没( devour的过去式和过去分词 )； 耗尽； 津津有味地看； 狼吞虎咽地吃光 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
40
gnawed
|
|
| 咬( gnaw的过去式和过去分词 )； （长时间） 折磨某人； （使）苦恼； （长时间）危害某事物 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
41
acting
|
|
| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
42
loyalty
|
|
| n.忠诚，忠心 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
43
lucid
|
|
| adj.明白易懂的，清晰的，头脑清楚的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
44
realization
|
|
| n.实现；认识到，深刻了解 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
45
unreasonable
|
|
| adj.不讲道理的，不合情理的，过度的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
46
intimacy
|
|
| n.熟悉，亲密，密切关系，亲昵的言行 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
47
discretion
|
|
| n.谨慎；随意处理 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
48
discreetly
|
|
| ad.(言行)审慎地，慎重地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
49
overflowing
|
|
| n. 溢出物,溢流 adj. 充沛的，充满的 动词overflow的现在分词形式 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
50
strenuously
|
|
| adv.奋发地，费力地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
51
steadily
|
|
| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
52
persistently
|
|
| ad.坚持地；固执地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
53
circumvent
|
|
| vt.环绕，包围；对…用计取胜，智胜 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
54
deduct
|
|
| vt.扣除，减去 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
55
appease
|
|
| v.安抚，缓和，平息，满足 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |