"I was worried, and did not wish to meet people and be chattered2 to. I thought the meadow-path would be quiet, and so it was."
"Quiet! Yes; but how horribly muddy! Do change your wet boots at once, Ancram!"
There was little need for her to insist on this proceeding3. Algernon hastened to his room, pulled off his wet boots, and desired that they should be thrown away.
"They can be dried and cleaned, sir," said plump-faced Lydia, aghast at this order.
"My good girl you may do what you please with them. I shall never wear them again. Slight boots of that sort that have once been wet through become shapeless, don't you understand? Take them away."
When the master of the house descended4 to the drawing-room, he found a paper, squarely folded in the shape of a letter, lying in a conspicuous5 position on the centre table. It was Mr. Gladwish the shoemaker's bill, accompanied by an urgent request for immediate6 payment.
"More wall-paper, Cassy," said her husband, flinging himself on the sofa.
"Do you know, Lydia tells me the man was quite insolent7!" said Castalia. "What can be done with such people? They don't seem to me to have the least idea who we are!"
"Oh, confound the brutes8! Don't let us talk about them!"
But Castalia continued to talk about them in a strain of mingled9 wonder and disgust. She did not cease until dinner was announced, and Algernon was by that time so thoroughly10 wearied by his conjugal11 tête-à-tête, that he even received with something like satisfaction the announcement that Castalia expected the Misses Rose and Violet McDougall to pass the evening at Ivy12 Lodge13.
"I daresay your mother will come too," said Castalia, "and bring Rhoda Maxfield with her. I asked her."
"Rhoda? Why on earth do you invite that little Maxfield?"
"What is your objection to her, Ancram?"
"Oh, I have no objection to her in the world. But I should not have thought she was precisely14 the sort of person to suit you."
"That's exactly what Miss Bodkin says! Miss Bodkin tried to keep Rhoda apart from me, I am perfectly15 sure. And I can't fathom16 her motive17. And now you say the same sort of thing. However, I always notice that you echo her words. But I don't intend to be guided by Miss Bodkin's likes and dislikes. I haven't the same opinion of Miss Bodkin's wisdom that the people have here, and I shall choose my friends for myself. It's quite absurd, the fuss that is made in this place about Miss Bodkin; absolutely sickening. Rose McDougall is the only person of the whole set who seems to keep her senses on the subject."
"Rose McDougall will never lose her senses from admiration18 of another woman," returned Algernon. And then the colloquy19 was broken up by the arrival of the Misses McDougall, clogged20 and cloaked, and attended by their maid-servant. After having exchanged greetings with these ladies, Algernon withdrew, murmuring something about going to smoke his cigar.
"You'll not be long, Ancram, shall you?" said his wife, in a complaining tone. But he disappeared from the room without replying to her.
"I'm so dreadfully afraid that I drive your husband away when I come here, my dear," said Rose McDougall with a spiteful glance at Algernon's retreating figure.
"Good gracious, no! He doesn't think of minding you at all."
"Oh, I daresay he does not mind me; does not think me of importance enough to be taken any notice of. But I cannot help observing that he always keeps out of the way as much as possible when I am spending an evening here."
"Nonsense!" said Castalia, tranquilly22 continuing to string steel beads23 on to red silk for the manufacture of a purse.
"You might as well say that it is I who drive Mr. Errington away, Rose," put in Violet.
"Not at all!" returned her sister, with sudden sharpness. "That's quite a different matter."
"I don't see why, Rose!"
The true answer to this remark, in the elder Miss McDougall's mind, would have been, "You are so utterly24 insignificant25, compared with me, that you are effaced26 in my company, and are neither liked nor disliked on your own merits." But she could not quite say that, so she merely repeated with increased sharpness, "That's a very different matter."
Rose McDougall was one of those persons who prefer animosity to indifference27. That any one should simply not care about her was a suggestion so intolerable that she was wont28 to declare of persons who did not show any special desire for her society, that they hated her. She was sure Mr. A. detested29 the sight of her, and Miss B. was her bitter enemy. But, perhaps, in Algernon's case, she had more reason for declaring he disliked her than in many others. He did in truth object to the sort of influence she exercised over Castalia. He knew that Castalia was insatiably curious about even the most trifling30 details of his past life in Whitford; and he knew that Miss McDougall was very capable of misrepresenting—even of innocently misrepresenting—many circumstances and persons in such a way as to irritate Castalia's easily-aroused jealousy31; and Castalia's easily-aroused jealousy was an element of discomfort32 in his daily life. In a word, there had arisen since his marriage a smouldering sort of hostility33 between him and Rose McDougall. But he was far from conceiving the acrid34 nature of her feelings towards him. For his part, he laughed at her a little in a playful way, and contradicted her, and, above all, he did not permit her to bore him by exacting35 any attention from him which he was disinclined to pay. But there was no bitterness in all that. None in the world!
Only he did not reckon on the bitterness excited in Miss Rose's breast by being laughed at and neglected. The graceful36 and charming way in which the laughter and neglect were accomplished37 by no means mollified the sting of them; a point which graceful and charming persons would do well sometimes to consider, but to which they are often singularly blind.
"And what have you been doing with yourself all day, Castalia dear?" asked Violet with a great display of affection.
"Oh—what can one do with oneself in this horrid38 hole?"
"To be sure!" responded Violet. But she responded rather uncertainly. To her, Whitford seemed by no means a horrid hole. She had been content enough to live there for many years—ever since her uncle had brought her and her sister from Scotland in their mourning clothes, and received his orphan39 nieces into his home.
"Don't speak of it, my dear!" exclaimed Rose, on whom the reminiscences of the years spent in Whitford wrought40 by no means a softening41 effect. "What possessed42 Uncle James to stick himself down in this place, of all places, I cannot conjecture43. He might as well have buried us girls alive at once."
"Oh, well, I suppose you have had time enough to get used to it," said Castalia, coolly. "Violet, will you ring the bell? It is close to you. Thank you.—Lydia," when the girl appeared, "where is your master?"
"In the dining-room, ma'am."
"What is he doing?"
"Smoking and reading, ma'am."
"Go and ask him to come here, with my love."
"How the woman worrits him! She doesn't leave him a minute's peace," was Lydia's comment to the cook on this embassy.
"She worrits everybody, in her slow, crawley kind o' way; but I'm sorry for her sometimes, too. It's a trying thing to care more for a person's little finger than a person cares for your whole body and soul," returned Polly, who had a kind of broad good-nature and candour. But Lydia felt no sympathy with her mistress, and maintained that it was all her own fault then! What did she be always nagging44 at him for?—having that pitiless contempt for other women's mistakes in the management of their husbands which is not uncommon45 with her sex.
Some such thoughts as Lydia's probably passed through the minds of the Misses McDougall, but, of course, that was not the time or place to express them. They exerted themselves to entertain their hostess with a variety of Whitford gossip, while Castalia—her attention divided between the purse she was making and the drawing-room door, at which she hoped to see her husband presently appear—merely threw in a languid interjection now and then as her contribution to the conversation.
At length she rose, and flung the crimson46 and steel purse down on the table.
"Do you want anything, dear?" asked the obliging Violet with officious alacrity47.
"No; I shan't be long gone. Sit still, Violet."
"She's gone to implore48 her husband to honour us with a little of his society," whispered Rose, when Castalia had shut the door. "I'm certain of it. More fool she!"
The sisters sat silent for a few minutes. Then they heard the door of the dining-room open, as though Castalia were coming back, and the sound of voices. Rose was seated nearest to the door, which was separated from that of the little dining-room opposite by a very narrow passage, and she distinctly heard Algernon say, "Pooh! The old girl doesn't want me." And again, "Says I hate her? Nonsense! I look on her with the veneration49 due to her years and virtues50." And then Castalia said, "Well, she can't help her years. Besides, that's not the question. You ought to come, for my sake. It's very unkind of you, Ancram." After that there was a lower murmur21 of speech, as though the speakers had changed their places in the room, and Rose was able to distinguish no more.
When Mrs. Algernon Errington returned to the drawing-room, she found Violet in her old seat near the pianoforte; but Rose had shifted her position, and was standing51 near the window.
"What are you doing there, Rose? Enjoying the prospect52?" asked Castalia. The shutters53 were not closed, but, as the night was very dark, there certainly did not seem to be any inducement to look out of the window.
"Can't you persuade your husband to come, dear? I'm so sorry!" said Rose, turning round; and her sister looked up quickly at the sound of her voice, which, to Violet's accustomed ear, betrayed in its inflections suppressed anger. Her face, too, was crimson, and her little light blue eyes sparkled with unusual brightness.
Castalia, however, noticed none of these things. "Oh, he'll come presently," she said. "He really was finishing a cigar. I told him that you were offended with him, and——"
"I offended with your husband? Oh dear no! Why on earth should I be? You ought not to have said that, Castalia."
"Well, you thought he was offended with you, or something of the sort. It's all the same," returned Castalia, with her air of weary indifference. "And he says it's nonsense."
"My dear, I am only sorry on your account that he won't come. Really, to myself, it matters very little; very little indeed. What a pity that you have not some one to amuse him! We are none of us clever enough, that is clear."
"Oh, you are quite mistaken if you think Ancram cares particularly for clever women!" said Castalia, whose thoughts instantly reverted54 to Minnie Bodkin. "Even Miss Bodkin, whom everybody declares to be such a wonder of talent, bores him sometimes, I can tell you. Of course he has known her from his childhood, and all that; but he said to me only yesterday that she was conceited55, and too fond of preaching. So you see! I daresay, poor thing, she fancies all the time that she is enchanting56 him by her wisdom."
"Dear me," said Violet timidly, and with a sort of strangled sigh. "I think that, as a rule, gentlemen don't like any kind of women except pretty women! Though, to be sure, Minnie is handsome enough if it wasn't for her affliction."
"Oh, I wasn't thinking of Minnie," said Rose, viciously twitching57 at her sewing thread. "I meant it was a pity there was no one here who was clever enough, and who thought it worth while, to play off pretty airs and graces for Mr. Errington's amusement. That's the kind of cleverness that attracts men. And your husband, my dear, was always remarkably58 fond of flirting60."
Violet opened her eyes in astonishment61, and, from her place a little behind Castalia, made a warning grimace62 to her sister; but Rose only responded by a defiant63 toss of the head. Castalia's attention was now effectually aroused, and although she still spoke64 in the querulous drawl that was natural to her (or had become so from long habit), it was with a countenance65 earnestly addressed to her interlocutor, instead of, as hitherto, with carelessly averted66 eyes. "I never heard any one say before that Ancram was fond of flirting," she said.
"I should have thought it was not necessary to hear it. You might see it for yourself; unless, indeed, he is very sly about it in your presence. He, he, he!"
"See it for myself? Why—there's nobody here for him to flirt59 with!"
This na?ve ignoring of any pretensions67 on the part of her present guests to be eligible68 for the purposes of flirtation69 was not lost on Rose.
"Not many who would flirt with a married man. No, I hope and believe not! But there are many kinds of flirtation, you know. There's the soft and sentimental70, the shy, sweet sixteen style—little Miss Maxfield's style, for instance."
"Rhoda!"
"Yes; that is her name, I believe. I have never been intimate with the young person myself. Uncle James has always been very particular as to whom we associated with. However, since you have taken her up, my dear, I suppose she may be considered visitable."
"We have met her at Dr. Bodkin's, you know, Rose," put in Violet, who was looking and listening with a distressed71 expression of face.
"Oh yes; I believe Minnie asked her there at first to please Algernon. Minnie can be good-natured in that sort of way. But I don't know that it was very judicious72."
"Why should you suppose it was to please my husband that Rhoda was invited to the Bodkins?" asked Castalia. "I don't see that at all. The girl might have been asked to please Miss Bodkin. I daresay she had heard of her from Mrs. Errington. Mrs. Errington is always raving73 about her."
Rose smiled with tightly-closed lips, and nodded. "To be sure! Poor dear Mrs. Errington—I mean no disrespect to your mother-in-law, Castalia, who is really a superior woman, only in some things she is as blind as a bat."
Castalia's sallow face was paler than ever. Her nostrils74 were dilated75 as if she had been running fast. "You never told me a word of this before," she said.
"My dear creature," said Rose, looking full at Castalia for the first time, "why, what was there to tell? The subject was led to by chance now, and I had not the least idea that you did not know all Algy's old love-stories. Everybody here—except, I suppose, poor dear Mrs. Errington—knew of the boy-and-girl nonsense between him and that little thing. But of course it never was serious. That was out of the question."
"I don't believe it!" said Castalia, suddenly.
"Well, I daresay the thing was exaggerated, as so often happens. For my part, I never could see what there was in the girl to make so many people admire her. A certain freshness, perhaps; and some men do think a great deal of that pink-and-white sort of insipidity76."
"At all events, Ancram does not care about her now," said Castalia, speaking in broken sentences, and twisting her watch-chain nervously77 backwards78 and forwards in her fingers.
"Oh, of course not! I daresay he never did care about her in earnest. But that sort of philandering79 is a little dangerous, isn't it?"
"He does not like me to ask her to the house even."
"Doesn't he?"
"No; he has said so more or less plainly several times. He said so this very evening."
"Did he, indeed? Well, I really am glad to hear it. I scarcely gave Algy—Mr. Errington—credit for so much—prudence!"
"Mrs. Errington and Miss Maxfield," announced Lydia at the door of the drawing-room.
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1
descending
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| n. 下行 adj. 下降的 | |
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chattered
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| （人）喋喋不休( chatter的过去式 )； 唠叨； （牙齿）打战； （机器）震颤 | |
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proceeding
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| n.行动，进行，(pl.)会议录，学报 | |
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descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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conspicuous
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| adj.明眼的，惹人注目的；炫耀的，摆阔气的 | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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insolent
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| adj.傲慢的，无理的 | |
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brutes
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| 兽( brute的名词复数 )； 畜生； 残酷无情的人； 兽性 | |
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mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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conjugal
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| adj.婚姻的，婚姻性的 | |
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ivy
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| n.常青藤，常春藤 | |
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lodge
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| v.临时住宿，寄宿，寄存，容纳；n.传达室，小旅馆 | |
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14
precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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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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fathom
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| v.领悟，彻底了解 | |
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motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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colloquy
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| n.谈话，自由讨论 | |
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clogged
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| （使）阻碍( clog的过去式和过去分词 )； 淤滞 | |
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murmur
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| n.低语，低声的怨言；v.低语，低声而言 | |
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tranquilly
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| adv. 宁静地 | |
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beads
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| n.（空心）小珠子( bead的名词复数 )；水珠；珠子项链 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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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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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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indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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wont
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| adj.习惯于；v.习惯；n.习惯 | |
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detested
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| v.憎恶，嫌恶，痛恨( detest的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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trifling
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| adj.微不足道的；没什么价值的 | |
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jealousy
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| n.妒忌，嫉妒，猜忌 | |
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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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hostility
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| n.敌对，敌意；抵制［pl.］交战，战争 | |
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acrid
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| adj.辛辣的，尖刻的，刻薄的 | |
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exacting
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| adj.苛求的，要求严格的 | |
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graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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horrid
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| adj.可怕的；令人惊恐的；恐怖的；极讨厌的 | |
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orphan
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| n.孤儿；adj.无父母的 | |
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wrought
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| v.引起；以…原料制作；运转；adj.制造的 | |
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softening
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| 变软，软化 | |
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42
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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43
conjecture
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| n./v.推测，猜测 | |
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44
nagging
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| adj.唠叨的，挑剔的；使人不得安宁的v.不断地挑剔或批评（某人）( nag的现在分词 )；不断地烦扰或伤害（某人）；无休止地抱怨；不断指责 | |
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uncommon
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| adj.罕见的，非凡的，不平常的 | |
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46
crimson
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| n./adj.深(绯)红色(的)；vi.脸变绯红色 | |
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47
alacrity
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| n.敏捷，轻快，乐意 | |
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48
implore
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| vt.乞求，恳求，哀求 | |
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49
veneration
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| n.尊敬，崇拜 | |
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50
virtues
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| 美德( virtue的名词复数 )； 德行； 优点； 长处 | |
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51
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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52
prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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53
shutters
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| 百叶窗( shutter的名词复数 )； （照相机的）快门 | |
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54
reverted
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| 恢复( revert的过去式和过去分词 )； 重提； 回到…上； 归还 | |
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55
conceited
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| adj.自负的，骄傲自满的 | |
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56
enchanting
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| a.讨人喜欢的 | |
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57
twitching
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| n.颤搐 | |
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58
remarkably
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| ad.不同寻常地，相当地 | |
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59
flirt
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| v.调情，挑逗，调戏；n.调情者，卖俏者 | |
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60
flirting
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| v.调情，打情骂俏( flirt的现在分词 ) | |
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61
astonishment
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| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
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62
grimace
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| v.做鬼脸，面部歪扭 | |
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defiant
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| adj.无礼的，挑战的 | |
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64
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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65
countenance
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| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
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66
averted
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| 防止，避免( avert的过去式和过去分词 )； 转移 | |
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67
pretensions
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| 自称( pretension的名词复数 )； 自命不凡； 要求； 权力 | |
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68
eligible
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| adj.有条件被选中的；(尤指婚姻等)合适(意)的 | |
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69
flirtation
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| n.调情，调戏，挑逗 | |
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70
sentimental
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| adj.多愁善感的，感伤的 | |
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71
distressed
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| 痛苦的 | |
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72
judicious
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| adj.明智的，明断的，能作出明智决定的 | |
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73
raving
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| adj.说胡话的；疯狂的，怒吼的；非常漂亮的；令人醉心[痴心]的v.胡言乱语(rave的现在分词)n.胡话；疯话adv.胡言乱语地；疯狂地 | |
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74
nostrils
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| 鼻孔( nostril的名词复数 ) | |
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75
dilated
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| adj.加宽的，扩大的v.（使某物）扩大，膨胀，张大( dilate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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76
insipidity
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| n.枯燥无味，清淡，无精神；无生气状 | |
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77
nervously
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| adv.神情激动地，不安地 | |
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78
backwards
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| adv.往回地，向原处，倒，相反，前后倒置地 | |
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79
philandering
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| v.调戏，玩弄女性( philander的现在分词 ) | |
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