"You've been out, Sophia?" said Mrs. Baines in the parlour, questioningly. Sophia had taken off her hat and mantle1 hurriedly in the cutting-out room, for she was in danger of being late for tea; but her hair and face showed traces of the March breeze. Mrs. Baines, whose stoutness2 seemed to increase, sat in the rocking- chair with a number of The Sunday at Home in her hand. Tea was set.
"Yes, mother. I called to see Miss Chetwynd."
"I wish you'd tell me when you are going out."
"I looked all over for you before I started."
"No, you didn't, for I haven't stirred from this room since four o'clock. ... You should not say things like that," Mrs. Baines added in a gentler tone.
Mrs. Baines had suffered much that day. She knew that she was in an irritable3, nervous state, and therefore she said to herself, in her quality of wise woman, "I must watch myself. I mustn't let myself go." And she thought how reasonable she was. She did not guess that all her gestures betrayed her; nor did it occur to her that few things are more galling4 than the spectacle of a person, actuated by lofty motives5, obviously trying to be kind and patient under what he considers to be extreme provocation6.
Maggie blundered up the kitchen stairs with the teapot and hot toast; and so Sophia had an excuse for silence. Sophia too had suffered much, suffered excruciatingly; she carried at that moment a whole tragedy in her young soul, unaccustomed to such burdens. Her attitude towards her mother was half fearful and half defiant7; it might be summed up in the phrase which she had repeated again and again under her breath on the way home, "Well, mother can't kill me!"
Mrs. Baines put down the blue-covered magazine and twisted her rocking-chair towards the table.
"You can pour out the tea," said Mrs. Baines.
"Where's Constance?"
"She's not very well. She's lying down."
"Anything the matter with her?"
"No."
This was inaccurate8. Nearly everything was the matter with Constance, who had never been less Constance than during that afternoon. But Mrs. Baines had no intention of discussing Constance's love-affairs with Sophia. The less said to Sophia about love, the better! Sophia was excitable enough already!
They sat opposite to each other, on either side of the fire--the monumental matron whose black bodice heavily overhung the table, whose large rounded face was creased9 and wrinkled by what seemed countless10 years of joy and disillusion11; and the young, slim girl, so fresh, so virginal, so ignorant, with all the pathos12 of an unsuspecting victim about to be sacrificed to the minotaur of Time! They both ate hot toast, with careless haste, in silence, preoccupied13, worried, and outwardly nonchalant.
"And what has Miss Chetwynd got to say?" Mrs. Baines inquired.
"She wasn't in."
Here was a blow for Mrs. Baines, whose suspicions about Sophia, driven off by her certainties regarding Constance, suddenly sprang forward in her mind, and prowled to and fro like a band of tigers.
Still, Mrs. Baines was determined14 to be calm and careful. "Oh! What time did you call?"
"I don't know. About half-past four." Sophia finished her tea quickly, and rose. "Shall I tell Mr. Povey he can come?"
(Mr. Povey had his tea after the ladies of the house.)
"Yes, if you will stay in the shop till I come. Light me the gas before you go."
Sophia took a wax taper15 from a vase on the mantelpiece, stuck it in the fire and lit the gas, which exploded in its crystal cloister16 with a mild report.
"What's all that clay on your boots, child?" asked Mrs. Baines.
"Clay?" repeated Sophia, staring foolishly at her boots.
"Yes," said Mrs. Baines. "It looks like marl. Where on earth have you been?"
She interrogated17 her daughter with an upward gaze, frigid18 and unconsciously hostile, through her gold-rimmed glasses.
"I must have picked it up on the roads," said Sophia, and hastened to the door.
"Sophia!"
"Yes, mother."
"Shut the door."
Sophia unwillingly19 shut the door which she had half opened.
"Come here."
Sophia obeyed, with falling lip.
"You are deceiving me, Sophia," said Mrs. Baines, with fierce solemnity. "Where have you been this afternoon?"
Sophia's foot was restless on the carpet behind the table. "I haven't been anywhere," she murmured glumly20.
"Have you seen young Scales?"
"Yes," said Sophia with grimness, glancing audaciously for an instant at her mother. ("She can't kill me: She can't kill me," her heart muttered. And she had youth and beauty in her favour, while her mother was only a fat middle-aged21 woman. "She can't kill me," said her heart, with the trembling, cruel insolence22 of the mirror-flattered child.)
"How came you to meet him?"
No answer.
"Sophia, you heard what I said!"
Still no answer. Sophia looked down at the table. ("She can't kill me.")
"If you are going to be sullen23, I shall have to suppose the worst," said Mrs. Baines.
Sophia kept her silence.
"Of course," Mrs. Baines resumed, "if you choose to be wicked, neither your mother nor any one else can stop you. There are certain things I CAN do, and these I SHALL do ... Let me warn you that young Scales is a thoroughly24 bad lot. I know all about him. He has been living a wild life abroad, and if it hadn't been that his uncle is a partner in Birkinshaws, they would never have taken him on again." A pause. "I hope that one day you will be a happy wife, but you are much too young yet to be meeting young men, and nothing would ever induce me to let you have anything to do with this Scales. I won't have it. In future you are not to go out alone. You understand me?"
Sophia kept silence.
"I hope you will be in a better frame of mind to-morrow. I can only hope so. But if you aren't, I shall take very severe measures. You think you can defy me. But you never were more mistaken in your life. I don't want to see any more of you now. Go and tell Mr. Povey; and call Maggie for the fresh tea. You make me almost glad that your father died even as he did. He has, at any rate, been spared this."
Those words 'died even as he did' achieved the intimidation25 of Sophia. They seemed to indicate that Mrs. Baines, though she had magnanimously never mentioned the subject to Sophia, knew exactly how the old man had died. Sophia escaped from the room in fear, cowed. Nevertheless, her thought was, "She hasn't killed me. I made up my mind I wouldn't talk, and I didn't."
In the evening, as she sat in the shop primly26 and sternly sewing at hats--while her mother wept in secret on the first floor, and Constance remained hidden on the second--Sophia lived over again the scene at the old shaft27; but she lived it differently, admitting that she had been wrong, guessing by instinct that she had shown a foolish mistrust of love. As she sat in the shop, she adopted just the right attitude and said just the right things. Instead of being a silly baby she was an accomplished28 and dazzling woman, then. When customers came in, and the young lady assistants unobtrusively turned higher the central gas, according to the regime of the shop, it was really extraordinary that they could not read in the heart of the beautiful Miss Baines the words which blazed there; "YOU'RE THE FINEST GIRL I EVER MET," and "I SHALL WRITE TO YOU." The young lady assistants had their notions as to both Constance and Sophia, but the truth, at least as regarded Sophia, was beyond the flight of their imaginations. When eight o'clock struck and she gave the formal order for dust-sheets, the shop being empty, they never supposed that she was dreaming about posts and plotting how to get hold of the morning's letters before Mr. Povey.
收听单词发音 |
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mantle
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| n.斗篷，覆罩之物，罩子；v.罩住，覆盖，脸红 | |
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stoutness
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| 坚固，刚毅 | |
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irritable
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| adj.急躁的；过敏的；易怒的 | |
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galling
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| adj.难堪的,使烦恼的,使焦躁的 | |
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motives
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| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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provocation
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| n.激怒，刺激，挑拨，挑衅的事物，激怒的原因 | |
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defiant
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| adj.无礼的，挑战的 | |
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inaccurate
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| adj.错误的，不正确的，不准确的 | |
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9
creased
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| （使…）起折痕，弄皱( crease的过去式和过去分词 )； （皮肤）皱起，使起皱纹； 皱皱巴巴 | |
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countless
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| adj.无数的，多得不计其数的 | |
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disillusion
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| vt.使不再抱幻想，使理想破灭 | |
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pathos
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| n.哀婉，悲怆 | |
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preoccupied
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| adj.全神贯注的，入神的；被抢先占有的；心事重重的v.占据（某人）思想，使对…全神贯注，使专心于( preoccupy的过去式) | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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taper
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| n.小蜡烛，尖细，渐弱；adj.尖细的；v.逐渐变小 | |
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cloister
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| n.修道院；v.隐退，使与世隔绝 | |
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interrogated
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| v.询问( interrogate的过去式和过去分词 )；审问；（在计算机或其他机器上）查询 | |
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frigid
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| adj.寒冷的，凛冽的；冷淡的；拘禁的 | |
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unwillingly
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| adv.不情愿地 | |
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glumly
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| adv.忧郁地，闷闷不乐地；阴郁地 | |
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middle-aged
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| adj.中年的 | |
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insolence
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| n.傲慢；无礼；厚颜；傲慢的态度 | |
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23
sullen
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| adj.愠怒的，闷闷不乐的，(天气等)阴沉的 | |
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24
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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intimidation
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| n.恐吓，威胁 | |
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primly
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| adv.循规蹈矩地，整洁地 | |
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27
shaft
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| n.(工具的)柄，杆状物 | |
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28
accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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