"My heart is sore pained within me, and the terrors of death are fallen upon me. Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me, and horror hath overwhelmed me!"
She heard a voice saying these words distinctly. She did not start. She scarcely felt surprise. The direful lamentation20 was in harmony with all she saw, and heard, and felt.
Again the voice spoke21: "Our fathers trusted in thee: they trusted, and thou didst deliver them. They cried unto thee and were delivered; they trusted in thee and were not confounded. But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people!"
Castalia heard, scarcely listening. The words flowed by her like a tune22 that brings tears to the eyes by mere sympathy with its sad sound.
Presently a man passed before her, walking with an unequal pace—now quick, now slow, now stopping outright23. He had his hands clasped at the back of his neck; his head was bent24 down, and he was talking aloud to himself.
"Aye, there have been such. The lot has fallen upon me. I know it with a sure knowledge. It is borne in upon me with a certainty that pierces through bone and marrow25. I am of the number of those that go down to the pit. Why, O Lord—Nay! though he slay26 me, yet will I trust in Him. For he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, and we should come together in judgment27."
He stopped in his walk; stood still for a second or two, and then turned to pace back again. In so doing he saw Castalia. She also looked full at him, and recognised the Methodist preacher. David Powell went up to her without hesitation28. He remembered her at once; and he remembered, too, in a confused way, something of what Mrs. Thimbleby had been recently telling him about dissensions between this woman and her husband; of unhappiness and quarrels; and—what was that the widow had said of young Mrs. Errington being jealous of Rhoda? Ah, yes! He had it all now.
The time had been when David Powell would have had to wrestle29 hard with indignation against anyone who should have spoken evil of Rhoda. He would have felt a hot, human flush of anger; and would have combated it as a stirring of the unregenerate man within him. But all such feelings were over with him. No ray from the outside world appeared able to pierce the gloom which had gathered thicker and thicker in his own mind, unless it touched his sense of sympathy with suffering. He was still sensitive to that, as certain chemicals are to the light.
He went close up to Castalia, and said, without any preliminary or usual greeting, "You are in affliction. Have you called upon the Lord? Have you cast your burthen upon him? He is a good shepherd. He will carry the weary and footsore of his flock lest they faint by the way and perish utterly30."
It was noticeable when he spoke that his voice, which had been of such full sweetness, was now hoarse31, and even harsh here and there, like a fine instrument that has been jarred. This did not seem to be altogether due to physical causes; for there still came out of his mouth every now and then a tone that was exquisitely32 musical. But the discord33 seemed to be in the spirit that moved the voice, and could not guide it with complete freedom and mastery.
Castalia shook her head impatiently, and turned her eyes away from him. But she did not do so with any of her old hauteur34 and intimation of the vast distance which separated her from her humbler fellow-creatures. Pain of mind had familiarised her with the conception that she held her humanity in common with a very heterogeneous35 multitude. Had Powell been a sleek36, smug personage like Brother Jackson, veiling profound self-complacency under the technical announcement of himself as a miserable sinner, she might have turned from him in disgust. As it was, she felt merely the unwillingness37 to be disturbed, of a creature in whom the numbness38 of apathy39 has succeeded to acute anguish40. She wanted to be rid of him. He looked at her with the yearning41 pity which was so fundamental a part of his nature. "Pray!" he said, clasping his hands together. "Go to your Father, which is in Heaven, and He shall give you rest. Oh, God loves you—he loves you!"
"No one loves me," returned Castalia, with white rigid42 lips. Then she got up from the bench, and went back into her own garden and into the house, with the air of a person walking in sleep.
Powell looked after her sadly. "If she would but pray!" he murmured. "I would pray for her. I would wrestle with the Lord on her behalf. But—of late I have feared more and more that my prayers are not acceptable; that my voice is an abomination to the Lord."
He resumed his walk along the river bank, speaking aloud, and gesticulating to himself as he went.
Meanwhile, Castalia wandered about her own house "like a ghost," as the servants said. She went from the little dining-room to the drawing-room, and then she painfully mounted the steep staircase to her bed-room, opened the door of her husband's little dressing-closet, shut it again, and went downstairs once more. She could not sit still; she could not read; she could not even think. She could only suffer, and move about restlessly, as if with a dim instinctive43 idea of escaping from her suffering. Presently she began to open the drawers of a little toy cabinet in the drawing-room, and examine their contents, as if she had never seen them before. From that she went to a window-seat, made hollow, and with a cushioned lid, so that it served as a seat and a box, and began to rummage44 among its contents. These consisted chiefly of valueless scraps45, odds46 and ends, put there to be hidden and out of the way. Among them were some of poor Mrs. Errington's wedding-presents to her son and daughter-in-law. Castalia's maid, Slater, had unceremoniously consigned47 these to oblivion, together with a few other old-fashioned articles, under the generic48 name of "rubbish." There was a pair of hand-screens elaborately embroidered49 in silk, very faded and out of date. Mrs. Errington declared them to be the work of her grand-aunt, the beautiful Miss Jacintha Ancram, who made such a great match, and became a Marchioness. There was an ancient carved ivory fan, yellow with age, brought by a cadet of the house of Ancram from India, as a present to some forgotten sweetheart. There was a little cardboard box, covered with fragments of raised rice-paper, arranged in a pattern. This was the work of Mrs. Errington's own hands in her school-girl days, and was of the kind called then, if I mistake not, "filagree work." Castalia took these and other things out of the window-seat, and examined them and put them back, one by one, moving exactly like an automaton50 figure that had been wound up to perform those motions. When she came to the filagree box, she opened that too. There was a Tonquin bean in it, filling the box with its faint sweet odour. There was a pair of gold buckles51, that seemed to be attenuated52 with age; and a garnet-brooch, with one or two stones missing. And then at the bottom of the box was something flat, wrapped in silver paper. She unwrapped it and looked at it.
It was a water-colour drawing done by Algernon immediately on his return from Llanryddan, in the first flush of his love-making, and represented himself and Rhoda standing53 side by side in front of the little cottage where they had lodged54 there. Algernon had given himself pinker cheeks, bluer eyes, and more amber-coloured hair than nature had endowed him with. Rhoda was equally over-tinted. There was no merit in the drawing, which was stiff and school-boyish, but the very exaggerations of form and colour emphasised the likeness55 in a way not to be mistaken.
Castalia trembled from head to foot as she looked on the two rosy56 simpering faces. A curious ripple57 or tremor58 ran over her body, such as may be observed in persons recovering consciousness after a swoon. She tore the drawing into small fragments. Her teeth were set. Her eyes glared. She looked like a murderess. She trod the scattered59 bits into the carpet with her heel. Then, as if with an afterthought, she swept them contemptuously into the bright steel shovel60, and threw them into the fire, and stood and watched them blaze and smoulder. After that she wrapped her shawl more tightly round her—she had forgotten to remove either it or her bonnet on coming in—and went out at the front door, and walked straight into Whitford, and to Jonathan Maxfield's house.
She asked for "the master." The old man was at home, in the little parlour, and Sally showed Mrs. Errington into the room almost without the ceremony of tapping with her knuckles61 at the door, and then made off to the kitchen to tell Mrs. Grimshaw. The lady's face had scared her.
Old Max was sitting near the dull fire which burned in the grate. The big Bible, his constant companion now, lay open on the table. But he had not been devoting his attention to that solely62. He had had a large old-fashioned wooden desk brought down from his own room, and had been fingering the papers in it, reading some, and merely glancing at the outside folds of others. He now looked up at Castalia without recognising her.
"What is your business with me?" he asked, peering at her in perplexity.
"I've come to speak to you——" began Castalia; and at the first sound of her voice, Maxfield recognised her. He remembered the only visit she had paid him previously63, when she came to beg that Rhoda might be allowed to visit her. She had taken a great fancy to his pretty Rhoda, this skinny, yellow-faced, fine lady. Ha! Well, she might show what civilities she pleased to Rhoda. No objection to that. Indeed, it was a proceeding64 to be encouraged, seeing that it probably caused a good deal of discomfort65 and embarrassment66 to Algernon! So he gave a little nod, meant to be courteous67, and said, "Oh, I didn't just know you at first. Won't you be seated?"
Castalia refused by a gesture, and stood still opposite to him with one hand on the table, apparently68 in some embarrassment how to begin. Then it flashed on old Max that this "Honourable69 Missis," as he called her, had probably come to thank him, and found it not altogether easy to do so. But what could Castalia have to thank him for? This; Rhoda had so implored70 her father to relieve Algernon from his anxiety about the bills, that at length the old man had said with a chuckle71, "Tell you what, Rhoda, I'll hand 'em over to Mr. Diamond, and maybe he will give them to you as a wedding present if he gets the school. And then you can do what you like with 'em. My gentleman won't be above taking a present from you or your husband. I've seen what meanness she can do and what dirt he can swallow, and not even make a wry72 face over it! Aye, dirt as would turn many a poor labouring man's stomach."
Rhoda, upon this, had consulted Matthew Diamond, and had not found it difficult to make him agree with her wish to give up the bills to Algernon. Indeed, although he had almost come to old Max's opinion of his former pupil, he would not for the world have behaved so as to make Rhoda suppose that he bore him a grudge73. Rhoda's errand to the post-office that afternoon had been to bring Algernon this comforting news. She had taken care not to tell her father of Mrs. Algernon's behaviour, but had come home and cried a little quietly in her own room, and kept her tears and the cause of them to herself. Therefore it was that Jonathan Maxfield supposed the fine lady to have come to thank him for his magnanimity on behalf of her absent husband, and he was already preparing to give her "a dose," as he phrased it, and to spare her no item of Rhoda's prosperity, and wealth, and good prospects74 in the world.
Castalia remained leaning with one hand on the table, and did not continue her speech during the second or two in which these thoughts and intentions were passing through old Maxfield's brain. But it was by no means that she hesitated from embarrassment or lack of words: rather the words crowded to her lips too quickly and fiercely for utterance75.
"I've come to speak to you about your daughter," she said at length.
"Aye, aye. Miss Maxfield's a bit of a friend o' yours. Miss Maxfield's allus been very kind to all the fam'ly ever since we've known 'em. But you'd best be seated."
"They say you are an honest, decent man," Castalia went on, neither seating herself nor noticing the invitation to do so. "It may be so. I am willing to believe it. But, if so, you are grossly deceived, cheated, and played upon by that vile76 girl."
Maxfield brought his two clenched77 fists heavily down on the table, and half raised himself in his chair. "Stop!" said he. "Who are you talking of?"
"You may believe me. I tell you I have watched—I have seen. She was in love with my husband years ago. She used every art to catch him. And now—now that he is married, she receives secret visits from him. Do you know that he came at night—ten o'clock at night—to your house when you were away? She goes to the post-office slily to see him. I caught her there this morning leaving a private message for him with the clerk! Is that decent? Is it what you wish? Do you sanction it? She writes to him. She has turned his heart against me. He schemes to keep me out of the office. I know why now. Oh yes; I am not the blind dupe they think for. She has made him more cruel, more wicked to me than I could have imagined any man could be. My heart is broken. But as true as there is a God in Heaven I'll have amends78 made to me. She shall beg my pardon on her knees. And you had better look to it, if you don't want her character to be torn to pieces by every foul79 tongue in this town. I have borne enough. Keep her at home. Keep her from decoying other women's husbands, I warn you——"
Maxfield, who had been struggling to reach the bell, pulled it so violently that the wire was broken. At the peal80 Betty Grimshaw came running in, terrified. "Mercy, brother-in-law!" she cried. "What is it?"
"Get the police," gasped81 old Max, as if he were choking. "Send some one for a policeman, to turn that mad quean out of my house. She's not fit for a decent house. She's—she's——Oh, but you shall repent82 this! I'll sell you up, every stick of trumpery83 in the place. You audacious Jezebel! Turn her out of doors, I say! Do you hear me?"
Betty and the servant stood white and quivering, looking from the old man unable to rise from his chair without help, and the lady who stood opposite to him, glaring with a Medusa face. Neither of the two frightened women stirred hand or foot to fulfil the master's behest. But Castalia relieved them from any perplexity on that score, at least, by voluntarily turning to leave the room. In the doorway84 she met Rhoda, who had run downstairs in alarm at the violent pealing85 of the bell. Castalia drew herself suddenly aside, as though something unspeakably loathsome86 stood in her path, held her dress away from any passing contact with the amazed girl, and rushed out of the house.
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1
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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curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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bonnet
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| n.无边女帽；童帽 | |
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miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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euphoniously
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| adj.悦耳的 | |
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whit
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| n.一点，丝毫 | |
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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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spire
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| n.(教堂)尖顶，尖塔，高点 | |
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hazy
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| adj.有薄雾的，朦胧的；不肯定的，模糊的 | |
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toad
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| n.蟾蜍，癞蛤蟆 | |
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squatted
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| v.像动物一样蹲下( squat的过去式和过去分词 )；非法擅自占用（土地或房屋）；为获得其所有权；而占用某片公共用地。 | |
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suffocation
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| n.窒息 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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boughs
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| 大树枝( bough的名词复数 ) | |
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shuddered
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| v.战栗( shudder的过去式和过去分词 )；发抖；（机器、车辆等）突然震动；颤动 | |
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gusts
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| 一阵强风( gust的名词复数 )； （怒、笑等的）爆发； （感情的）迸发； 发作 | |
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muffled
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| adj.（声音）被隔的；听不太清的；（衣服）裹严的；蒙住的v.压抑，捂住( muffle的过去式和过去分词 )；用厚厚的衣帽包着（自己） | |
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19
withered
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| adj. 枯萎的，干瘪的，（人身体的部分器官）因病萎缩的或未发育良好的 动词wither的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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lamentation
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| n.悲叹，哀悼 | |
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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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tune
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| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
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outright
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| adv.坦率地；彻底地；立即；adj.无疑的；彻底的 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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marrow
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| n.骨髓；精华；活力 | |
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slay
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| v.杀死，宰杀，杀戮 | |
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judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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hesitation
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| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
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wrestle
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| vi.摔跤，角力；搏斗；全力对付 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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hoarse
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| adj.嘶哑的，沙哑的 | |
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exquisitely
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| adv.精致地；强烈地；剧烈地；异常地 | |
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discord
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| n.不和，意见不合，争论，（音乐）不和谐 | |
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hauteur
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| n.傲慢 | |
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heterogeneous
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| adj.庞杂的；异类的 | |
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sleek
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| adj.光滑的，井然有序的；v.使光滑，梳拢 | |
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unwillingness
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| n. 不愿意，不情愿 | |
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numbness
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| n.无感觉，麻木，惊呆 | |
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apathy
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| n.漠不关心，无动于衷；冷淡 | |
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anguish
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| n.(尤指心灵上的)极度痛苦，烦恼 | |
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yearning
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| a.渴望的；向往的；怀念的 | |
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rigid
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| adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的 | |
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instinctive
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| adj.(出于)本能的；直觉的；(出于)天性的 | |
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rummage
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| v./n.翻寻，仔细检查 | |
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scraps
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| 油渣 | |
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odds
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| n.让步，机率，可能性，比率；胜败优劣之别 | |
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47
consigned
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| v.把…置于（令人不快的境地）( consign的过去式和过去分词 )；把…托付给；把…托人代售；丟弃 | |
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generic
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| adj.一般的，普通的，共有的 | |
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embroidered
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| adj．绣花的 | |
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automaton
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| n.自动机器，机器人 | |
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buckles
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| 搭扣，扣环( buckle的名词复数 ) | |
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52
attenuated
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| v.（使）变细( attenuate的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）变薄；（使）变小；减弱 | |
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53
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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lodged
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| v.存放( lodge的过去式和过去分词 )；暂住；埋入；（权利、权威等）归属 | |
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likeness
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| n.相像，相似（之处） | |
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rosy
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| adj.美好的，乐观的，玫瑰色的 | |
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ripple
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| n.涟波，涟漪，波纹，粗钢梳；vt.使...起涟漪，使起波纹； vi.呈波浪状，起伏前进 | |
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58
tremor
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| n.震动，颤动，战栗，兴奋，地震 | |
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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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shovel
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| n.铁锨，铲子，一铲之量；v.铲，铲出 | |
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knuckles
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| n.（指人）指关节( knuckle的名词复数 )；（指动物）膝关节，踝v.（指人）指关节( knuckle的第三人称单数 )；（指动物）膝关节，踝 | |
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62
solely
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| adv.仅仅，唯一地 | |
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previously
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| adv.以前，先前（地） | |
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proceeding
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| n.行动，进行，(pl.)会议录，学报 | |
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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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embarrassment
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| n.尴尬；使人为难的人(事物)；障碍；窘迫 | |
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courteous
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| adj.彬彬有礼的，客气的 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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honourable
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| adj.可敬的；荣誉的，光荣的 | |
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implored
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| 恳求或乞求（某人）( implore的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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71
chuckle
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| vi.／n.轻声笑，咯咯笑 | |
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72
wry
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| adj.讽刺的；扭曲的 | |
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73
grudge
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| n.不满，怨恨，妒嫉；vt.勉强给，不情愿做 | |
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74
prospects
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| n.希望，前途(恒为复数) | |
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75
utterance
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| n.用言语表达，话语，言语 | |
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76
vile
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| adj.卑鄙的，可耻的，邪恶的；坏透的 | |
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77
clenched
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| v.紧握，抓紧，咬紧( clench的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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78
amends
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| n. 赔偿 | |
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79
foul
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| adj.污秽的；邪恶的；v.弄脏；妨害；犯规；n.犯规 | |
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80
peal
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| n.钟声；v.鸣响 | |
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81
gasped
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| v.喘气( gasp的过去式和过去分词 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
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82
repent
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| v.悔悟，悔改，忏悔，后悔 | |
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83
trumpery
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| n.无价值的杂物；adj.（物品）中看不中用的 | |
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84
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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85
pealing
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| v.（使）（钟等）鸣响，（雷等）发出隆隆声( peal的现在分词 ) | |
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86
loathsome
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| adj.讨厌的，令人厌恶的 | |
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