"Well," said Mr. Povey, rising from the rocking-chair that in a previous age had been John Baines's, "I've got to make a start some time, so I may as well begin now!"
And he went from the parlour into the shop. Constance's eye followed him as far as the door, where their glances met for an instant in the transient gaze which expresses the tenderness of people who feel more than they kiss.
It was on the morning of this day that Mrs. Baines, relinquishing1 the sovereignty of St. Luke's Square, had gone to live as a younger sister in the house of Harriet Maddack at Axe2. Constance guessed little of the secret anguish3 of that departure. She only knew that it was just like her mother, having perfectly4 arranged the entire house for the arrival of the honeymoon5 couple from Buxton, to flit early away so as to spare the natural blushing diffidence of the said couple. It was like her mother's commonsense6 and her mother's sympathetic comprehension. Further, Constance did not pursue her mother's feelings, being far too busy with her own. She sat there full of new knowledge and new importance, brimming with experience and strange, unexpected aspirations7, purposes, yes--and cunnings! And yet, though the very curves of her cheeks seemed to be mysteriously altering, the old Constance still lingered in that frame, an innocent soul hesitating to spread its wings and quit for ever the body which had been its home; you could see the timid thing peeping wistfully out of the eyes of the married woman.
Constance rang the bell for Maggie to clear the table; and as she did so she had the illusion that she was not really a married woman and a house-mistress, but only a kind of counterfeit8. She did most fervently9 hope that all would go right in the house--at any rate until she had grown more accustomed to her situation.
The hope was to be disappointed. Maggie's rather silly, obsequious10 smile concealed11 but for a moment the ineffable12 tragedy that had lain in wait for unarmed Constance.
"If you please, Mrs. Povey," said Maggie, as she crushed cups together on the tin tray with her great, red hands, which always looked like something out of a butcher's shop; then a pause, "Will you please accept of this?"
Now, before the wedding Maggie had already, with tears of affection, given Constance a pair of blue glass vases (in order to purchase which she had been obliged to ask for special permission to go out), and Constance wondered what was coming now from Maggie's pocket. A small piece of folded paper came from Maggie's pocket. Constance accepted of it, and read: "I begs to give one month's notice to leave. Signed Maggie. June 10, 1867."
"Maggie!" exclaimed the old Constance, terrified by this incredible occurrence, ere the married woman could strangle her.
"I never give notice before, Mrs. Povey," said Maggie, "so I don't know as I know how it ought for be done--not rightly. But I hope as you'll accept of it, Mrs. Povey."
"Oh! of course," said Mrs. Povey, primly13, just as if Maggie was not the central supporting pillar of the house, just as if Maggie had not assisted at her birth, just as if the end of the world had not abruptly14 been announced, just as if St. Luke's Square were not inconceivable without Maggie. "But why--"
"Well, Mrs. Povey, I've been a-thinking it over in my kitchen, and I said to myself: 'If there's going to be one change there'd better be two,' I says. Not but what I wouldn't work my fingers to the bone for ye, Miss Constance."
Here Maggie began to cry into the tray.
Constance looked at her. Despite the special muslin of that day she had traces of the slatternliness of which Mrs. Baines had never been able to cure her. She was over forty, big, gawky. She had no figure, no charms of any kind. She was what was left of a woman after twenty-two years in the cave of a philanthropic family. And in her cave she had actually been thinking things over! Constance detected for the first time, beneath the dehumanized drudge15, the stirrings of a separate and perhaps capricious individuality. Maggie's engagements had never been real to her employers. Within the house she had never been, in practice, anything but 'Maggie'--an organism. And now she was permitting herself ideas about changes!
"You'll soon be suited with another, Mrs. Povey," said Maggie. "There's many a--many a--" She burst into sobs16.
"But if you really want to leave, what are you crying for, Maggie?" asked Mrs. Povey, at her wisest. "Have you told mother?"
"No, miss," Maggie whimpered, absently wiping her wrinkled cheeks with ineffectual muslin. "I couldn't seem to fancy telling your mother. And as you're the mistress now, I thought as I'd save it for you when you come home. I hope you'll excuse me, Mrs. Povey."
"Of course I'm very sorry. You've been a very good servant. And in these days--"
The child had acquired this turn of speech from her mother. It did not appear to occur to either of them that they were living in the sixties.
"Thank ye, miss."
"And what are you thinking of doing, Maggie? You know you won't get many places like this."
"To tell ye the truth, Mrs. Povey, I'm going to get married mysen."
"Indeed!" murmured Constance, with the perfunctoriness of habit in replying to these tidings.
"Oh! but I am, mum," Maggie insisted. "It's all settled. Mr. Hollins, mum."
"Not Hollins, the fish-hawker!"
"Yes, mum. I seem to fancy him. You don't remember as him and me was engaged in '48. He was my first, like. I broke it off because he was in that Chartist lot, and I knew as Mr. Baines would never stand that. Now he's asked me again. He's been a widower17 this long time."
"I'm sure I hope you'll be happy, Maggie. But what about his habits?"
"He won't have no habits with me, Mrs. Povey."
A woman was definitely emerging from the drudge.
When Maggie, having entirely18 ceased sobbing19, had put the folded cloth in the table-drawer and departed with the tray, her mistress became frankly20 the girl again. No primness21 about her as she stood alone there in the parlour; no pretence22 that Maggie's notice to leave was an everyday document, to be casually23 glanced at--as one glances at an unpaid24 bill! She would be compelled to find a new servant, making solemn inquiries25 into character, and to train the new servant, and to talk to her from heights from which she had never addressed Maggie. At that moment she had an illusion that there were no other available, suitable servants in the whole world. And the arranged marriage? She felt that this time--the thirteenth or fourteenth time--the engagement was serious and would only end at the altar. The vision of Maggie and Hollins at the altar shocked her. Marriage was a series of phenomena26, and a general state, very holy and wonderful--too sacred, somehow, for such creatures as Maggie and Hollins. Her vague, instinctive27 revolt against such a usage of matrimony centred round the idea of a strong, eternal smell of fish. However, the projected outrage28 on a hallowed institution troubled her much less than the imminent29 problem of domestic service.
She ran into the shop--or she would have run if she had not checked her girlishness betimes--and on her lips, ready to be whispered importantly into a husband's astounded30 ear, were the words, "Maggie has given notice! Yes! Truly!" But Samuel Povey was engaged. He was leaning over the counter and staring at an outspread paper upon which a certain Mr. Yardley was making strokes with a thick pencil. Mr. Yardley, who had a long red beard, painted houses and rooms. She knew him only by sight. In her mind she always associated him with the sign over his premises31 in Trafalgar Road, "Yardley Bros., Authorised plumbers32. Painters. Decorators. Paper-hangers. Facia writers." For years, in childhood, she had passed that sign without knowing what sort of things 'Bros,' and 'Facia' were, and what was the mysterious similarity between a plumber33 and a version of the Bible. She could not interrupt her husband, he was wholly absorbed; nor could she stay in the shop (which appeared just a little smaller than usual), for that would have meant an unsuccessful endeavour to front the young lady-assistants as though nothing in particular had happened to her. So she went sedately34 up the showroom stairs and thus to the bedroom floors of the house--her house! Mrs. Povey's house! She even climbed to Constance's old bedroom; her mother had stripped the bed--that was all, except a slight diminution35 of this room, corresponding to that of the shop! Then to the drawing-room. In the recess36 outside the drawing-room door the black box of silver plate still lay. She had expected her mother to take it; but no! Assuredly her mother was one to do things handsomely--when she did them. In the drawing-room, not a tassel37 of an antimacassar touched! Yes, the fire-screen, the luscious38 bunch of roses on an expanse of mustard, which Constance had worked for her mother years ago, was gone! That her mother should have clung to just that one souvenir, out of all the heavy opulence39 of the drawing-room, touched Constance intimately. She perceived that if she could not talk to her husband she must write to her mother. And she sat down at the oval table and wrote, "Darling mother, I am sure you will be very surprised to hear. ... She means it. ... I think she is making a serious mistake. Ought I to put an advertisement in the Signal, or will it do if. ... Please write by return. We are back and have enjoyed ourselves very much. Sam says he enjoys getting up late. ..." And so on to the last inch of the fourth scolloped page.
She was obliged to revisit the shop for a stamp, stamps being kept in Mr. Povey's desk in the corner--a high desk, at which you stood. Mr. Povey was now in earnest converse40 with Mr. Yardley at the door, and twilight41, which began a full hour earlier in the shop than in the Square, had cast faint shadows in corners behind counters.
"Will you just run out with this to the pillar, Miss Dadd?"
"With pleasure, Mrs. Povey."
"Where are you going to?" Mr. Povey interrupted his conversation to stop the flying girl.
"She's just going to the post for me," Constance called out from the region of the till.
"Oh! All right!"
A trifle! A nothing! Yet somehow, in the quiet customerless shop, the episode, with the scarce perceptible difference in Samuel's tone at his second remark, was delicious to Constance. Somehow it was the REAL beginning of her wifehood. (There had been about nine other real beginnings in the past fortnight.)
Mr. Povey came in to supper, laden42 with ledgers43 and similar works which Constance had never even pretended to understand. It was a sign from him that the honeymoon was over. He was proprietor44 now, and his ardour for ledgers most justifiable45. Still, there was the question of her servant.
"Never!" he exclaimed, when she told him all about the end of the world. A 'never' which expressed extreme astonishment46 and the liveliest concern!
But Constance had anticipated that he would have been just a little more knocked down, bowled over, staggered, stunned47, flabbergasted. In a swift gleam of insight she saw that she had been in danger of forgetting her role of experienced, capable married woman.
"I shall have to set about getting a fresh one," she said hastily, with an admirable assumption of light and easy casualness.
Mr. Povey seemed to think that Hollins would suit Maggie pretty well. He made no remark to the betrothed48 when she answered the final bell of the night.
He opened his ledgers, whistling.
"I think I shall go up, dear," said Constance. "I've a lot of things to put away."
"Do," said he. "Call out when you've done."
收听单词发音 |
1
relinquishing
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| 交出，让给( relinquish的现在分词 )； 放弃 | |
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axe
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| n.斧子；v.用斧头砍，削减 | |
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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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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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honeymoon
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| n.蜜月（假期）；vi.度蜜月 | |
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commonsense
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| adj.有常识的；明白事理的；注重实际的 | |
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aspirations
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| 强烈的愿望( aspiration的名词复数 )； 志向； 发送气音； 发 h 音 | |
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counterfeit
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| vt.伪造，仿造；adj.伪造的，假冒的 | |
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fervently
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| adv.热烈地，热情地，强烈地 | |
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obsequious
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| adj.谄媚的，奉承的，顺从的 | |
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concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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ineffable
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| adj.无法表达的，不可言喻的 | |
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primly
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| adv.循规蹈矩地，整洁地 | |
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abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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drudge
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| n.劳碌的人；v.做苦工，操劳 | |
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sobs
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| 啜泣（声），呜咽（声）( sob的名词复数 ) | |
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widower
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| n.鳏夫 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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sobbing
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| <主方>Ⅰ adj.湿透的 | |
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frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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primness
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| n.循规蹈矩，整洁 | |
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pretence
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| n.假装，作假；借口，口实；虚伪；虚饰 | |
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casually
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| adv.漠不关心地，无动于衷地，不负责任地 | |
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unpaid
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| adj.未付款的，无报酬的 | |
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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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phenomena
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| n.现象 | |
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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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outrage
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| n.暴行，侮辱，愤怒；vt.凌辱，激怒 | |
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imminent
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| adj.即将发生的，临近的，逼近的 | |
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astounded
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| v.使震惊(astound的过去式和过去分词)；愕然；愕；惊讶 | |
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premises
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| n.建筑物，房屋 | |
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plumbers
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| n.管子工，水暖工( plumber的名词复数 )；[美][口]（防止泄密的）堵漏人员 | |
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plumber
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| n.(装修水管的)管子工 | |
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sedately
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| adv.镇静地，安详地 | |
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diminution
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| n.减少；变小 | |
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recess
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| n.短期休息，壁凹（墙上装架子，柜子等凹处） | |
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tassel
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| n.流苏，穗；v.抽穗， （玉米）长穗须 | |
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luscious
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| adj.美味的；芬芳的；肉感的，引与性欲的 | |
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opulence
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| n.财富，富裕 | |
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converse
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| vi.谈话，谈天，闲聊；adv.相反的，相反 | |
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twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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42
laden
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| adj.装满了的；充满了的；负了重担的；苦恼的 | |
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ledgers
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| n.分类账( ledger的名词复数 ) | |
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44
proprietor
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| n.所有人；业主；经营者 | |
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45
justifiable
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| adj.有理由的，无可非议的 | |
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46
astonishment
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| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
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47
stunned
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| adj. 震惊的，惊讶的 动词stun的过去式和过去分词 | |
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48
betrothed
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| n. 已订婚者 动词betroth的过去式和过去分词 | |
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