One day Madame Foucault knocked at the door of Sophia's little room (this ceremony of knocking was one of the indications that Sophia, convalescent, had been reinstated in her rights as an individual), and cried:
"Madame, one is going to leave you all alone for some time."
"Come in," said Sophia, who was sitting up in an armchair, and reading.
Madame Foucault opened the door. "One is going to leave you all alone for some time," she repeated in a low, confidential1 voice, sharply contrasting with her shriek2 behind the door.
Sophia nodded and smiled, and Madame Foucault also nodded and smiled. But Madame Foucault's face quickly resumed its anxious expression.
"The servant's brother marries himself to-day, and she implored3 me to accord her two days--what would you? Madame Laurence is out. And I must go out. It is four o'clock. I shall re-enter at six o'clock striking. Therefore ..."
"Perfectly," Sophia concurred4.
She looked curiously5 at Madame Foucault, who was carefully made up and arranged for the street, in a dress of yellow tussore with blue ornaments6, bright lemon-coloured gloves, a little blue bonnet7, and a little white parasol not wider when opened than her shoulders. Cheeks, lips, and eyes were heavily charged with rouge8, powder, or black. And that too abundant waist had been most cunningly confined in a belt that descended9 beneath, instead of rising above, the lower masses of the vast torso. The general effect was worthy10 of the effort that must have gone to it. Madame Foucault was not rejuvenated11 by her toilette, but it almost procured12 her pardon for the crime of being over forty, fat, creased13, and worn out. It was one of those defeats that are a triumph.
"You are very chic14," said Sophia, uttering her admiration15.
"Ah!" said Madame Foucault, shrugging the shoulders of disillusion16. "Chic! What does that do?"
But she was pleased.
The front-door banged. Sophia, by herself for the first time in the flat into which she had been carried unconscious and which she had never since left, had the disturbing sensation of being surrounded by mysterious rooms and mysterious things. She tried to continue reading, but the sentences conveyed nothing to her. She rose--she could walk now a little--and looked out of the window, through the interstices of the pattern of the lace curtains. The window gave on the courtyard, which was about sixteen feet below her. A low wall divided the courtyard from that of the next house. And the windows of the two houses, only to be distinguished17 by the different tints18 of their yellow paint, rose tier above tier in level floors, continuing beyond Sophia's field of vision. She pressed her face against the glass, and remembered the St. Luke's Square of her childhood; and just as there from the showroom window she could not even by pressing her face against the glass see the pavement, so here she could not see the roof; the courtyard was like the bottom of a well. There was no end to the windows; six storeys she could count, and the sills of a seventh were the limit of her view. Every window was heavily curtained, like her own. Some of the upper ones had green sunblinds. Scarcely any sound! Mysteries brooded without as well as within the flat of Madame Foucault. Sophia saw a bodiless hand twitch19 at a curtain and vanish. She noticed a green bird in a tiny cage on a sill in the next house. A woman whom she took to be the concierge20 appeared in the courtyard, deposited a small plant in the track of a ray of sunshine that lighted a corner for a couple of hours in the afternoon, and disappeared again. Then she heard a piano-- somewhere. That was all. The feeling that secret and strange lives were being lived behind those baffling windows, that humanity was everywhere intimately pulsing around her, oppressed her spirit yet not quite unpleasantly. The environment softened21 her glance upon the spectacle of existence, insomuch that sadness became a voluptuous22 pleasure. And the environment threw her back on herself, into a sensuous23 contemplation of the fundamental fact of Sophia Scales, formerly24 Sophia Baines.
She turned to the room, with the marks of the bath on the floor by the bed, and the draped piano that was never opened, and her two trunks filling up the corner opposite the door. She had the idea of thoroughly25 examining those trunks, which Chirac or somebody else must have fetched from the hotel. At the top of one of them was her purse, tied up with old ribbon and ostentatiously sealed! How comical these French people were when they deemed it necessary to be serious! She emptied both trunks, scrutinizing26 minutely all her goods, and thinking of the varied27 occasions upon which she had obtained them. Then she carefully restored them, her mind full of souvenirs newly awakened28.
She sighed as she straightened her back. A clock struck in another room. It seemed to invite her towards discoveries. She had been in no other room of the flat. She knew nothing of the rest of the flat save by sound. For neither of the other women had ever described it, nor had it occurred to them that Sophia might care to leave her room though she could not leave the house.
She opened her door, and glanced along the dim corridor, with which she was familiar. She knew that the kitchen lay next to her little room, and that next to the kitchen came the front-door. On the opposite side of the corridor were four double-doors. She crossed to the pair of doors facing her own little door, and quietly turned the handle, but the doors were locked; the same with the next pair. The third pair yielded, and she was in a large bedroom, with three windows on the street. She saw that the second pair of doors, which she had failed to unfasten, also opened into this room. Between the two pairs of doors was a wide bed. In front of the central window was a large dressing-table. To the left of the bed, half hiding the locked doors, was a large screen. On the marble mantelpiece, reflected in a huge mirror, that ascended29 to the ornate cornice, was a gilt30-and-basalt clock, with pendants to match. On the opposite side of the room from this was a long wide couch. The floor was of polished oak, with a skin on either side of the bed. At the foot of the bed was a small writing-table, with a penny bottle of ink on it. A few coloured prints and engravings- -representing, for example, Louis Philippe and his family, and people perishing on a raft--broke the tedium31 of the walls. The first impression on Sophia's eye was one of sombre splendour. Everything had the air of being richly ornamented32, draped, looped, carved, twisted, brocaded into gorgeousness. The dark crimson33 bed- hangings fell from massive rosettes in majestic34 folds. The counterpane was covered with lace. The window-curtains had amplitude35 beyond the necessary, and they were suspended from behind fringed and pleated valances. The green sofa and its sateen cushions were stiff with applied36 embroidery37. The chandelier hanging from the middle of the ceiling, modelled to represent cupids holding festoons, was a glittering confusion of gilt and lustres; the lustres tinkled38 when Sophia stood on a certain part of the floor. The cane-seated chairs were completely gilded39. There was an effect of spaciousness40. And the situation of the bed between the two double-doors, with the three windows in front and other pairs of doors communicating with other rooms on either hand, produced in addition an admirable symmetry.
But Sophia, with the sharp gaze of a woman brought up in the traditions of a modesty41 so proud that it scorns ostentation42, quickly tested and condemned43 the details of this chamber44 that imitated every luxury. Nothing in it, she found, was 'good.' And in St. Luke's Square 'goodness' meant honest workmanship, permanence, the absence of pretence45. All the stuffs were cheap and showy and shabby; all the furniture was cracked, warped46, or broken. The clock showed five minutes past twelve at five o'clock. And further, dust was everywhere, except in those places where even the most perfunctory cleaning could not have left it. In the obscurer pleatings of draperies it lay thick. Sophia's lip curled, and instinctively47 she lifted her peignoir. One of her mother's phrases came into her head: 'a lick and a promise.' And then another: "If you want to leave dirt, leave it where everybody can see it, not in the corners."
She peeped behind the screen, and all the horrible welter of a cabinet de toilette met her gaze: a repulsive48 medley49 of foul50 waters, stained vessels51 and cloths, brushes, sponges, powders, and pastes. Clothes were hung up in disorder52 on rough nails; among them she recognized a dressing-gown of Madame Foucault's, and, behind affairs of later date, the dazzling scarlet53 cloak in which she had first seen Madame Foucault, dilapidated now. So this was Madame Foucault's room! This was the bower54 from which that elegance55 emerged, the filth56 from which had sprung the mature blossom!
She passed from that room direct to another, of which the shutters57 were closed, leaving it in twilight58. This room too was a bedroom, rather smaller than the middle one, and having only one window, but furnished with the same dubious59 opulence60. Dust covered it everywhere, and small footmarks were visible in the dust on the floor. At the back was a small door, papered to match the wall, and within this door was a cabinet de toilette, with no light and no air; neither in the room nor in the closet was there any sign of individual habitation. She traversed the main bedroom again and found another bedroom to balance the second one, but open to the full light of day, and in a state of extreme disorder; the double- pillowed bed had not even been made: clothes and towels draped all the furniture: shoes were about the floor, and on a piece of string tied across the windows hung a single white stocking, wet. At the back was a cabinet de toilette, as dark as the other one, a vile61 malodorous mess of appliances whose familiar forms loomed62 vague and extraordinarily63 sinister64 in the dense65 obscurity. Sophia turned away with the righteous disgust of one whose preparations for the gaze of the world are as candid66 and simple as those of a child. Concealed67 dirt shocked her as much as it would have shocked her mother; and as for the trickeries of the toilet table, she contemned68 them as harshly as a young saint who has never been tempted69 contemns70 moral weakness. She thought of the strange flaccid daily life of those two women, whose hours seemed to slip unprofitably away without any result of achievement. She had actually witnessed nothing; but since the beginning of her convalescence71 her ears had heard, and she could piece the evidences together. There was never any sound in the flat, outside the kitchen, until noon. Then vague noises and smells would commence. And about one o'clock Madame Foucault, disarrayed72, would come to inquire if the servant had attended to the needs of the invalid73. Then the odours of cookery would accentuate74 themselves; bells rang; fragments of conversations escaped through doors ajar; occasionally a man's voice or a heavy step; then the fragrance75 of coffee; sometimes the sound of a kiss, the banging of the front door, the noise of brushing, or of the shaking of a carpet, a little scream as at some trifling76 domestic contretemps. Laurence, still in a dressing-gown, would lounge into Sophia's room, dirty, haggard, but polite with a curious stiff ceremony, and would drink her coffee there. This wandering in peignoirs would continue till three o'clock, and then Laurence might say, as if nerving herself to an unusual and immense effort: "I must be dressed by five o'clock. I have not a moment." Often Madame Foucault did not dress at all; on such days she would go to bed immediately after dinner, with the remark that she didn't know what was the matter with her, but she was exhausted77. And then the servant would retire to her seventh floor, and there would be silence until, now and then, faint creepings were heard at midnight or after. Once or twice, through the chinks of her door, Sophia had seen a light at two o'clock in the morning, just before the dawn.
Yet these were the women who had saved her life, who between them had put her into a cold bath every three hours night and day for weeks! Surely it was impossible after that to despise them for shiftlessness and talkative idling in peignoirs; impossible to despise them for anything whatever! But Sophia, conscious of her inheritance of strong and resolute78 character, did despise them as poor things. The one point on which she envied them was their formal manners to her, which seemed to become more dignified79 and graciously distant as her health improved. It was always 'Madame,' 'Madame,' to her, with an intonation80 of increasing deference81. They might have been apologizing to her for themselves.
She prowled into all the corners of the flat; but she discovered no more rooms, nothing but a large cupboard crammed82 with Madame Foucault's dresses. Then she went back to the large bedroom, and enjoyed the busy movement and rattle83 of the sloping street, and had long, vague yearnings for strength and for freedom in wide, sane84 places. She decided85 that on the morrow she would dress herself 'properly,' and never again wear a peignoir; the peignoir and all that it represented, disgusted her. And while looking at the street she ceased to see it and saw Cook's office and Chirac helping86 her into the carriage. Where was he? Why had he brought her to this impossible abode87? What did he mean by such conduct? But could he have acted otherwise? He had done the one thing that he could do. ... Chance! ... Chance! And why an impossible abode? Was one place more impossible than another? All this came of running away from home with Gerald. It was remarkable88 that she seldom thought of Gerald. He had vanished from her life as he had come into it--madly, preposterously89. She wondered what the next stage in her career would be. She certainly could not forecast it. Perhaps Gerald was starving, or in prison ... Bah! That exclamation90 expressed her appalling91 disdain92 of Gerald and of the Sophia who had once deemed him the paragon93 of men. Bah!
A carriage stopping in front of the house awakened her from her meditation94. Madame Foucault and a man very much younger than Madame Foucault got out of it. Sophia fled. After all, this prying95 into other people's rooms was quite inexcusable. She dropped on to her own bed and picked up a book, in case Madame Foucault should come in.
收听单词发音 |
1
confidential
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| adj.秘（机）密的，表示信任的，担任机密工作的 | |
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shriek
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| v./n.尖叫，叫喊 | |
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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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concurred
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| 同意（concur的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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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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ornaments
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| n.装饰( ornament的名词复数 )；点缀；装饰品；首饰v.装饰，点缀，美化( ornament的第三人称单数 ) | |
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bonnet
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| n.无边女帽；童帽 | |
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rouge
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| n.胭脂，口红唇膏；v.(在…上)擦口红 | |
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descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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rejuvenated
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| 更生的 | |
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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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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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chic
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| n./adj.别致(的)，时髦(的)，讲究的 | |
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admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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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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distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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tints
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| 色彩( tint的名词复数 )； 带白的颜色； （淡色）染发剂； 痕迹 | |
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twitch
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| v.急拉，抽动，痉挛，抽搐；n.扯，阵痛，痉挛 | |
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concierge
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| n.管理员；门房 | |
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softened
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| （使）变软( soften的过去式和过去分词 )； 缓解打击； 缓和； 安慰 | |
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voluptuous
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| adj.肉欲的，骄奢淫逸的 | |
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sensuous
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| adj.激发美感的；感官的，感觉上的 | |
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formerly
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| adv.从前，以前 | |
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thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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scrutinizing
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| v.仔细检查，详审( scrutinize的现在分词 ) | |
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varied
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| adj.多样的，多变化的 | |
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awakened
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| v.（使）醒( awaken的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到 | |
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ascended
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| v.上升，攀登( ascend的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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gilt
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| adj.镀金的；n.金边证券 | |
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tedium
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| n.单调；烦闷 | |
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ornamented
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| adj.花式字体的v.装饰，点缀，美化( ornament的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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crimson
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| n./adj.深(绯)红色(的)；vi.脸变绯红色 | |
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majestic
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| adj.雄伟的，壮丽的，庄严的，威严的，崇高的 | |
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amplitude
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| n.广大；充足；振幅 | |
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applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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embroidery
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| n.绣花，刺绣；绣制品 | |
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tinkled
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| （使）发出丁当声，（使）发铃铃声( tinkle的过去式和过去分词 )； 叮当响着发出，铃铃响着报出 | |
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gilded
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| a.镀金的，富有的 | |
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spaciousness
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| n.宽敞 | |
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41
modesty
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| n.谦逊，虚心，端庄，稳重，羞怯，朴素 | |
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ostentation
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| n.夸耀，卖弄 | |
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condemned
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| adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
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chamber
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| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
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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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46
warped
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| adj.反常的；乖戾的；（变）弯曲的；变形的v.弄弯，变歪( warp的过去式和过去分词 )；使（行为等）不合情理，使乖戾， | |
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47
instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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48
repulsive
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| adj.排斥的，使人反感的 | |
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medley
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| n.混合 | |
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50
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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51
vessels
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| n.血管( vessel的名词复数 )；船；容器；（具有特殊品质或接受特殊品质的）人 | |
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52
disorder
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| n.紊乱，混乱；骚动，骚乱；疾病，失调 | |
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53
scarlet
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| n.深红色，绯红色，红衣；adj.绯红色的 | |
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54
bower
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| n.凉亭，树荫下凉快之处；闺房；v.荫蔽 | |
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elegance
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| n.优雅；优美，雅致；精致，巧妙 | |
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filth
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| n.肮脏，污物，污秽；淫猥 | |
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57
shutters
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| 百叶窗( shutter的名词复数 )； （照相机的）快门 | |
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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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dubious
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| adj.怀疑的，无把握的；有问题的，靠不住的 | |
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opulence
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| n.财富，富裕 | |
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vile
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| adj.卑鄙的，可耻的，邪恶的；坏透的 | |
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loomed
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| v.隐约出现，阴森地逼近( loom的过去式和过去分词 )；隐约出现，阴森地逼近 | |
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extraordinarily
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| adv.格外地；极端地 | |
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sinister
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| adj.不吉利的，凶恶的，左边的 | |
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dense
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| a.密集的，稠密的，浓密的；密度大的 | |
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candid
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| adj.公正的，正直的；坦率的 | |
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concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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68
contemned
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| v.侮辱，蔑视( contemn的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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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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contemns
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| v.侮辱，蔑视( contemn的第三人称单数 ) | |
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71
convalescence
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| n.病后康复期 | |
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72
disarrayed
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| vt.使混乱（disarray的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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invalid
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| n.病人，伤残人；adj.有病的，伤残的；无效的 | |
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74
accentuate
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| v.着重，强调 | |
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75
fragrance
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| n.芬芳，香味，香气 | |
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76
trifling
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| adj.微不足道的；没什么价值的 | |
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77
exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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78
resolute
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| adj.坚决的，果敢的 | |
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79
dignified
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| a.可敬的，高贵的 | |
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80
intonation
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| n.语调，声调；发声 | |
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81
deference
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| n.尊重，顺从；敬意 | |
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82
crammed
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| adj.塞满的，挤满的；大口地吃；快速贪婪地吃v.把…塞满；填入；临时抱佛脚( cram的过去式) | |
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83
rattle
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| v.飞奔，碰响；激怒；n.碰撞声；拨浪鼓 | |
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84
sane
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| adj.心智健全的，神志清醒的，明智的，稳健的 | |
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85
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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86
helping
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| n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的 | |
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87
abode
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| n.住处，住所 | |
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88
remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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89
preposterously
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| adv.反常地；荒谬地；荒谬可笑地；不合理地 | |
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90
exclamation
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| n.感叹号，惊呼，惊叹词 | |
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91
appalling
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| adj.骇人听闻的，令人震惊的，可怕的 | |
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92
disdain
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| n.鄙视，轻视；v.轻视，鄙视，不屑 | |
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93
paragon
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| n.模范，典型 | |
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94
meditation
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| n.熟虑，（尤指宗教的）默想，沉思，（pl.）冥想录 | |
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95
prying
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| adj.爱打听的v.打听，刺探（他人的私事）( pry的现在分词 )；撬开 | |
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