The course of this narrative1, steadily2 flowing on, bears me away from the morning-time of our married life, and carries me forward to the end.
In a fortnight more we three were back in London, and the shadow was stealing over us of the struggle to come.
Marian and I were careful to keep Laura in ignorance of the cause that had hurried us back--the necessity of making sure of the Count. It was now the beginning of May, and his term of occupation at the house in Forest Road expired in June. If he renewed it (and I had reasons, shortly to be mentioned, for anticipating that he would), I might be certain of his not escaping me. But if by any chance he disappointed my expectations and left the country, then I had no time to lose in arming myself to meet him as I best might.
In the first fulness of my new happiness, there had been moments when my resolution faltered--moments when I was tempted3 to be safely content, now that the dearest aspiration4 of my life was fulfilled in the possession of Laura's love. For the first time I thought faint-heartedly of the greatness of the risk, of the adverse5 chances arrayed against me, of the fair promise of our new life, and of the peril6 in which I might place the happiness which we had so hardly earned. Yes! let me own it honestly. For a brief time I wandered, in the sweet guiding of love, far from the purpose to which I had been true under sterner discipline and in darker days. Innocently Laura had tempted me aside from the hard path--innocently she was destined7 to lead me back again.
At times, dreams of the terrible past still disconnectedly recalled to her, in the mystery of sleep, the events of which her waking memory had lost all trace. One night (barely two weeks after our marriage), when I was watching her at rest, I saw the tears come slowly through her closed eyelids8, I heard the faint murmuring words escape her which told me that her spirit was back again on the fatal journey from Blackwater Park. That unconscious appeal, so touching9 and so awful in the sacredness of her sleep, ran through me like fire. The next day was the day we came back to London--the day when my resolution returned to me with tenfold strength.
The first necessity was to know something of the man. Thus far, the true story of his life was an impenetrable mystery to me.
I began with such scanty10 sources of information as were at my own disposal. The important narrative written by Mr. Frederick Fairlie (which Marian had obtained by following the directions I had given to her in the winter) proved to be of no service to the special object with which I now looked at it. While reading it I reconsidered the disclosure revealed to me by Mrs. Clements of the series of deceptions11 which had brought Anne Catherick to London, and which had there devoted12 her to the interests of the conspiracy13. Here, again, the Count had not openly committed himself--here, again, he was, to all practical purpose, out of my reach.
I next returned to Marian's journal at Blackwater Park. At my request she read to me again a passage which referred to her past curiosity about the Count, and to the few particulars which she had discovered relating to him.
The passage to which I allude14 occurs in that part of her journal which delineates his character and his personal appearance. She describes him as "not having crossed the frontiers of his native country for years past"--as "anxious to know if any Italian gentlemen were settled in the nearest town to Blackwater Park"--as "receiving letters with all sorts of odd stamps on them, and one with a large official-looking seal on it." She is inclined to consider that his long absence from his native country may be accounted for by assuming that he is a political exile. But she is, on the other hand, unable to reconcile this idea with the reception of the letter from abroad bearing "the large official looking seal"--letters from the Continent addressed to political exiles being usually the last to court attention from foreign post-offices in that way.
The considerations thus presented to me in the diary, joined to certain surmises15 of my own that grew out of them, suggested a conclusion which I wondered I had not arrived at before. I now said to myself--what Laura had once said to Marian at Blackwater Park, what Madame Fosco had overheard by listening at the door-the Count is a spy!
Laura had applied16 the word to him at hazard, in natural anger at his proceedings17 towards herself. I applied it to him with the deliberate conviction that his vocation18 in life was the vocation of a spy. On this assumption, the reason for his extraordinary stay in England so long after the objects of the conspiracy had been gained, became, to my mind, quite intelligible19.
The year of which I am now writing was the year of the famous Crystal Palace Exhibition in Hyde Park. Foreigners in unusually large numbers had arrived already, and were still arriving in England. Men were among us by hundreds whom the ceaseless distrustfulness of their governments had followed privately20, by means of appointed agents, to our shores. My surmises did not for a moment class a man of the Count's abilities and social position with the ordinary rank and file o~ foreign spies. I suspected him of holding a position of authority, of being entrusted21 by the government which he secretly served with the organisation22 and management of agents specially23 employed in this country, both men and women, and I believed Mrs. Rubelle, who had been so opportunely24 found to act as nurse at Blackwater Park, to be, in all probability, one of the number.
Assuming that this idea of mine had a foundation in truth, the position of the Count might prove to be more assailable25 than I had hitherto ventured to hope. To whom could I apply to know something more of the man's history and of the man himself than I knew now?
In this emergency it naturally occurred to my mind that a countryman of his own, on whom I could rely, might be the fittest person to help me. The first man whom I thought of under these circumstances was also the only Italian with whom I was intimately acquainted--my quaint27 little friend, Professor Pesca.
The professor has been so long absent from these pages that he has run some risk of being forgotten altogether.
It is the necessary law of such a story as mine that the persons concerned in it only appear when the course of events takes them up--they come and go, not by favour of my personal partiality, but by right of their direct connection with the circumstances to be detailed28. For this reason, not Pesca alone, but my mother and sister as well, have been left far in the background of the narrative. My visits to the Hampstead cottage, my mother's belief in the denial of Laura's identity which the conspiracy had accomplished29, my vain efforts to overcome the prejudice on her part and on my sister's to which, in their jealous affection for me, they both continued to adhere, the painful necessity which that prejudice imposed on me of concealing30 my marriage from them till they had learnt to do justice to my wife--all these little domestic occurrences have been left unrecorded because they were not essential to the main interest of the story. It is nothing that they added to my anxieties and embittered31 my disappointments-the steady march of events has inexorably passed them by.
For the same reason I have said nothing here of the consolation32 that I found in Pesca's brotherly affection for me, when I saw him again after the sudden cessation of my residence at Limmeridge House. I have not recorded the fidelity33 with which my warmhearted little friend followed me to the place of embarkation34 when I sailed for Central America, or the noisy transport of joy with which he received me when we next met in London. If I had felt justified35 in accepting the offers of service which he made to me on my return, he would have appeared again long ere this. But, though I knew that his honour and his courage were to be implicitly36 relied on, I was not so sure that his discretion37 was to be trusted, and, for that reason only, I followed the course of all my inquiries38 alone. It will now be sufficiently39 understood that Pesca was not separated from all connection with me and my interests, although he has hitherto been separated from all connection with the progress of this narrative. He was as true and as ready a friend of mine still as ever he had been in his life.
Before I summoned Pesca to my assistance it was necessary to see for myself what sort of man I had to deal with. Up to this time I had never once set eyes on Count Fosco.
Three days after my return with Laura and Marian to London, I set forth40 alone for Forest Road, St. John's Wood, between ten and eleven o'clock in the morning. It was a fine day--I had some hours to spare--and I thought it likely, if I waited a little for him, that the Count might be tempted out. I had no great reason to fear the chance of his recognising me in the daytime, for the only occasion when I had been seen by him was the occasion on which he had followed me home at night.
No one appeared at the windows in the front of the house. I walked down a turning which ran past the side of it, and looked over the low garden wall. One of the back windows on the lower floor was thrown up and a net was stretched across the opening. I saw nobody, but I heard, in the room, first a shrill41 whistling and singing of birds, then the deep ringing voice which Marian's description had made familiar to me. "Come out on my little finger, my pret-pret-pretties!" cried the voice. "Come out and hop26 upstairs! One, two, three--and up! Three, two, one--and down! One, two, three--twit-twit-twit-tweet!" The Count was exercising his canaries as he used to exercise them in Marian's time at Blackwater Park.
I waited a little while, and the singing and the whistling ceased. "Come, kiss me, my pretties!" said the deep voice. There was a responsive twittering and chirping--a low, oily laugh--a silence of a minute or so, and then I heard the opening of the house door. I turned and retraced42 my steps. The magnificent melody of the Prayer in Rossini's Moses, sung in a sonorous43 bass44 voice, rose grandly through the suburban45 silence of the place. The front garden gate opened and closed. The Count had come out.
He crossed the road and walked towards the western boundary of the Regent's Park. I kept on my own side of the way, a little behind him, and walked in that direction also.
Marian had prepared me for his high stature46, his monstrous47 corpulence, and his ostentatious mourning garments, but not for the horrible freshness and cheerfulness and vitality48 of the man. He carried his sixty years as if they had been fewer than forty. He sauntered along, wearing his hat a little on one side, with a light jaunty49 step, swinging his big stick, humming to himself, looking up from time to time at the houses and gardens on either side of him with superb, smiling patronage50. If a stranger had been told that the whole neighbourhood belonged to him, that stranger would not have been surprised to hear it. He never looked back, he paid no apparent attention to me, no apparent attention to any one who passed him on his own side of the road, except now and then, when he smiled and smirked51, with an easy paternal52 good humour, at the nursery-maids and the children whom he met. In this way he led me on, till we reached a colony of shops outside the western terraces of the Park.
Here he stopped at a pastrycook's, went in (probably to give an order), and came out again immediately with a tart53 in his hand. An Italian was grinding an organ before the shop, and a miserable54 little shrivelled monkey was sitting on the instrument. The Count stopped, bit a piece for himself out of the tart, and gravely handed the rest to the monkey. "My poor little man!" he said, with grotesque55 tenderness, "you look hungry. In the sacred name of humanity, I offer you some lunch!" The organ-grinder piteously put in his claim to a penny from the benevolent56 stranger. The Count shrugged57 his shoulders contemptuously, and passed on.
We reached the streets and the better class of shops between the New Road and Oxford58 Street. The Count stopped again and entered a small optician's shop, with an inscription59 in the window announcing that repairs were neatly60 executed inside. He came out again with an opera-glass in his hand, walked a few paces on, and stopped to look at a bill of the opera placed outside a musicseller's shop. He read the bill attentively61, considered a moment, and then hailed an empty cab as it passed him. "Opera Boxoffice," he said to the man, and was driven away.
I crossed the road, and looked at the bill in my turn. The performance announced was Lucrezia Borgia, and it was to take place that evening. The opera-glass in the Count's hand, his careful reading of the bill, and his direction to the cabman, all suggested that he proposed making one of the audience. I had the means of getting an admission for myself and a friend to the pit by applying to one of the scene-painters attached to the theatre, with whom I had been well acquainted in past times. There was a chance at least that the Count might be easily visible among the audience to me and to any one with me, and in this case I had the means of ascertaining62 whether Pesca knew his countryman or not that very night.
This consideration at once decided63 the disposal of my evening. I procured64 the tickets, leaving a note at the Professor's lodgings65 on the way. At a quarter to eight I called to take him with me to the theatre. My little friend was in a state of the highest excitement, with a festive66 flower in his button-hole, and the largest opera-glass I ever saw hugged up under his arm.
"Are you ready?" I asked.
"Right-all-right," said Pesca.
We started for the theatre.
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narrative
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| n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的 | |
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steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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tempted
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| v.怂恿（某人）干不正当的事；冒…的险（tempt的过去分词） | |
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aspiration
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| n.志向，志趣抱负；渴望；(语)送气音；吸出 | |
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adverse
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| adj.不利的；有害的；敌对的，不友好的 | |
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peril
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| n.(严重的)危险；危险的事物 | |
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destined
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| adj.命中注定的；(for)以…为目的地的 | |
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eyelids
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| n.眼睑( eyelid的名词复数 )；眼睛也不眨一下；不露声色；面不改色 | |
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touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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scanty
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| adj.缺乏的，仅有的，节省的，狭小的，不够的 | |
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deceptions
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| 欺骗( deception的名词复数 )； 骗术，诡计 | |
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devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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conspiracy
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| n.阴谋，密谋，共谋 | |
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allude
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| v.提及，暗指 | |
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surmises
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| v.臆测，推断( surmise的第三人称单数 )；揣测；猜想 | |
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applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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proceedings
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| n.进程，过程，议程；诉讼(程序)；公报 | |
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vocation
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| n.职业，行业 | |
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intelligible
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| adj.可理解的，明白易懂的，清楚的 | |
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privately
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| adv.以私人的身份，悄悄地，私下地 | |
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entrusted
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| v.委托，托付( entrust的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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organisation
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| n.组织，安排，团体，有机休 | |
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specially
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| adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地 | |
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opportunely
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| adv.恰好地，适时地 | |
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assailable
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| adj.可攻击的，易攻击的 | |
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hop
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| n.单脚跳，跳跃；vi.单脚跳，跳跃；着手做某事；vt.跳跃，跃过 | |
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quaint
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| adj.古雅的，离奇有趣的，奇怪的 | |
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detailed
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| adj.详细的，详尽的，极注意细节的，完全的 | |
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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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concealing
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，遮住( conceal的现在分词 ) | |
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embittered
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| v.使怨恨，激怒( embitter的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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consolation
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| n.安慰，慰问 | |
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fidelity
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| n.忠诚，忠实；精确 | |
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embarkation
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| n. 乘船, 搭机, 开船 | |
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justified
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| a.正当的，有理的 | |
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implicitly
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| adv. 含蓄地, 暗中地, 毫不保留地 | |
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discretion
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| n.谨慎；随意处理 | |
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inquiries
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| n.调查( inquiry的名词复数 )；疑问；探究；打听 | |
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sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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shrill
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| adj.尖声的；刺耳的；v尖叫 | |
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retraced
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| v.折回( retrace的过去式和过去分词 )；回忆；回顾；追溯 | |
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sonorous
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| adj.响亮的，回响的；adv.圆润低沉地；感人地；n.感人，堂皇 | |
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bass
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| n.男低音(歌手)；低音乐器；低音大提琴 | |
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suburban
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| adj.城郊的，在郊区的 | |
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stature
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| n.（高度）水平，（高度）境界，身高，身材 | |
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monstrous
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| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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vitality
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| n.活力，生命力，效力 | |
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jaunty
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| adj．愉快的，满足的；adv.心满意足地，洋洋得意地；n.心满意足；洋洋得意 | |
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patronage
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| n.赞助，支援，援助；光顾，捧场 | |
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smirked
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| v.傻笑( smirk的过去分词 ) | |
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paternal
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| adj.父亲的，像父亲的，父系的，父方的 | |
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tart
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| adj.酸的；尖酸的，刻薄的；n.果馅饼；淫妇 | |
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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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grotesque
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| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
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benevolent
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| adj.仁慈的，乐善好施的 | |
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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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Oxford
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| n.牛津（英国城市） | |
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inscription
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| n.（尤指石块上的）刻印文字，铭文，碑文 | |
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neatly
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| adv.整洁地，干净地，灵巧地，熟练地 | |
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attentively
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| adv.聚精会神地；周到地；谛；凝神 | |
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ascertaining
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| v.弄清，确定，查明( ascertain的现在分词 ) | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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procured
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| v.（努力）取得， （设法）获得( procure的过去式和过去分词 )；拉皮条 | |
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lodgings
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| n. 出租的房舍, 寄宿舍 | |
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festive
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| adj.欢宴的，节日的 | |
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