What’s done, is what remains1! Ah, blessed they Who leave completed tasks of love to stay And answer mutely for them, being dead, Life was not purposeless, though Life be fled.
—Mrs. Norton, The Lady of La Garaye (1863)
Most British families of the middle and upper classes lived above their own cesspool...
—E. Royston Pike, Human Documents
of the Victorian Golden Age
The basement kitchen of Mrs. Poulteney’s large Regency house, which stood, an elegantly clear simile2 of her social status, in a commanding position on one of the steep hills behind Lyme Regis, would no doubt seem today almost in-tolerable for its functional3 inadequacies. Though the occu-pants in 1867 would have been quite clear as to who was the tyrant4 in their lives, the more real monster, to an age like ours, would beyond doubt have been the enormous kitchen range that occupied all the inner wall of the large and ill-lit room. It had three fires, all of which had to be stoked twice a day, and riddled5 twice a day; and since the smooth domestic running of the house depended on it, it could never be allowed to go out. Never mind how much a summer’s day sweltered, never mind that every time there was a south-westerly gale6 the monster blew black clouds of choking fumes—the remorseless furnaces had to be fed. And then the color of those walls! They cried out for some light shade, for white. Instead they were a bilious7 leaden green—one that was, unknown to the occupants (and to be fair, to the tyrant upstairs), rich in arsenic8. Perhaps it was fortunate that the room was damp and that the monster disseminated9 so much smoke and grease. At least the deadly dust was laid.
The sergeant10 major of this Stygian domain11 was a Mrs.
Fairley, a thin, small person who always wore black, but less for her widowhood than by temperament12. Perhaps her sharp melancholy13 had been induced by the sight of the endless torrent14 of lesser15 mortals who cascaded16 through her kitchen. Butlers, footmen, gardeners, grooms17, upstairs maids, down-stairs maids—they took just so much of Mrs. Poulteney’s standards and ways and then they fled. This was very dis-graceful and cowardly of them. But when you are expected to rise at six, to work from half past six to eleven, to work again from half past eleven to half past four, and then again from five to ten, and every day, thus a hundred-hour week, your reserves of grace and courage may not be very large.
A legendary18 summation19 of servant feelings had been deliv-ered to Mrs. Poulteney by the last butler but four: “Madam, I should rather spend the rest of my life in the poorhouse than live another week under this roof.” Some gravely doubted whether anyone could actually have dared to say these words to the awesome20 lady. But the sentiment behind them was understood when the man came down with his bags and claimed that he had.
Exactly how the ill-named Mrs. Fairley herself had stood her mistress so long was one of the local wonders. Most probably it was because she would, had life so fallen out, have been a Mrs. Poulteney on her own account. Her envy kept her there; and also her dark delight in the domestic catastrophes21 that descended22 so frequently on the house. In short, both women were incipient24 sadists; and it was to their advantage to tolerate each other.
Mrs. Poulteney had two obsessions25: or two aspects of the same obsession26. One was Dirt—though she made some sort of exception of the kitchen, since only the servants lived there—and the other was Immorality27. In neither field did anything untoward28 escape her eagle eye.
She was like some plump vulture, endlessly circling in her endless leisure, and endowed in the first field with a miracu-lous sixth sense as regards dust, fingermarks, insufficiently29 starched30 linen31, smells, stains, breakages and all the ills that houses are heir to. A gardener would be dismissed for being seen to come into the house with earth on his hands; a butler for having a spot of wine on his stock; a maid for having slut’s wool under her bed.
But the most abominable32 thing of all was that even outside her house she acknowledged no bounds to her authority. Failure to be seen at church, both at matins and at evensong, on Sunday was tantamount to proof of the worst moral laxity. Heaven help the maid seen out walking, on one of her rare free afternoons—one a month was the reluctant allowance—with a young man. And heaven also help the young man so in love that he tried to approach Marlborough House secretly to keep an assignation: for the gardens were a positive forest of humane33 man-traps—“humane” in this con-text referring to the fact that the great waiting jaws34 were untoothed, though quite powerful enough to break a man’s leg. These iron servants were the most cherished by Mrs. Poulteney. Them, she had never dismissed.
There would have been a place in the Gestapo for the lady; she had a way of interrogation that could reduce the sturdiest girls to tears in the first five minutes. In her fashion she was an epitome35 of all the most crassly36 arrogant37 traits of the ascendant British Empire. Her only notion of justice was that she must be right; and her only notion of government was an angry bombardment of the impertinent populace.
Yet among her own class, a very limited circle, she was renowned39 for her charity. And if you had disputed that repu-tation, your opponents would have produced an incontrovert-ible piece of evidence: had not dear, kind Mrs. Poulteney taken in the French Lieutenant’s Woman? I need hardly add that at the time the dear, kind lady knew only the other, more Grecian, nickname.
This remarkable40 event had taken place in the spring of 1866, exactly a year before the time of which I write; and it had to do with the great secret of Mrs. Poulteney’s life. It was a very simple secret. She believed in hell.
The vicar of Lyme at that time was a comparatively emancipated41 man theologically, but he also knew very well on which side his pastoral bread was buttered. He suited Lyme, a traditionally Low Church congregation, very well. He had the knack42 of a certain fervid43 eloquence44 in his sermons; and he kept his church free of crucifixes, images, ornaments45 and all other signs of the Romish cancer. When Mrs. Poulteney enounced to him her theories of the life to come, he did not argue, for incumbents46 of not notably47 fat livings do not argue with rich parishioners. Mrs. Poulteney’s purse was as open to calls from him as it was throttled48 where her thirteen domestics’ wages were concerned. In the winter (winter also of the fourth great cholera49 onslaught on Victori-an Britain) of that previous year Mrs. Poulteney had been a little ill, and the vicar had been as frequent a visitor as the doctors who so repeatedly had to assure her that she was suffering from a trivial stomach upset and not the dreaded50 Oriental killer51.
Mrs. Poulteney was not a stupid woman; indeed, she had acuity52 in practical matters, and her future destination, like all matters pertaining53 to her comfort, was a highly practical consideration. If she visualized54 God, He had rather the face of the Duke of Wellington; but His character was more that of a shrewd lawyer, a breed for whom Mrs. Poulteney had much respect. As she lay in her bedroom she reflected on the terrible mathematical doubt that increasingly haunted her; whether the Lord calculated charity by what one had given or by what one could have afforded to give. Here she had better data than the vicar. She had given considerable sums to the church; but she knew they fell far short of the prescribed one-tenth to be parted with by serious candidates for paradise. Certainly she had regulated her will to ensure that the account would be handsomely balanced after her death; but God might not be present at the reading of that document. Furthermore it chanced, while she was ill, that Mrs. Fairley, who read to her from the Bible in the evenings, picked on the parable55 of the widow’s mite38. It had always seemed a grossly unfair parable to Mrs. Poulteney; it now lay in her heart far longer than the enteritis bacilli in her intes-tines. One day, when she was convalescent, she took advan-tage of one of the solicitous56 vicar’s visits and cautiously examined her conscience. At first he was inclined to dismiss her spiritual worries.
“My dear madam, your feet are on the Rock. The Creator is all-seeing and all-wise. It is not for us to doubt His mercy—or His justice.”
“But supposing He should ask me if my conscience is clear?”
The vicar smiled. “You will reply that it is troubled. And with His infinite compassion57 He will—“
“But supposing He did not?”
“My dear Mrs. Poulteney, if you speak like this I shall have to reprimand you. We are not to dispute His under-standing.”
There was a silence. With the vicar Mrs. Poulteney felt herself with two people. One was her social inferior, and an inferior who depended on her for many of the pleasures of his table, for a substantial fraction of the running costs of his church and also for the happy performance of his nonliturgical duties among the poor; and the other was the representa-tive of God, before whom she had metaphorically58 to kneel. So her manner with him took often a bizarre and inconse-quential course. It was de haut en bos one moment, de has en haut the next; and sometimes she contrived59 both positions all in one sentence.
“If only poor Frederick had not died. He would have advised me.”
“Doubtless. And his advice would have resembled mine. You may rest assured of that. I know he was a Christian60. And what I say is sound Christian doctrine61.”
“It was a warning. A punishment.”
The vicar gave her a solemn look. “Beware, my dear lady, beware. One does not trespass62 lightly on Our Maker’s pre-rogative.”
She shifted her ground. Not all the vicars in creation could have justified63 her husband’s early death to her. It remained between her and God; a mystery like a black opal, that sometimes shone as a solemn omen23 and sometimes stood as a kind of sum already paid off against the amount of penance64 she might still owe.
“I have given. But I have not done good deeds.”
“To give is a most excellent deed.”
“I am not like Lady Cotton.”
This abruptly65 secular66 descent did not surprise the vicar. He was well aware, from previous references, that Mrs. Poulteney knew herself many lengths behind in that particular race for piety67. Lady Cotton, who lived some miles behind Lyme, was famous for her fanatically eleemosynary life. She visited, she presided over a missionary68 society, she had set up a home for fallen women—true, it was of such repentant69 severity that most of the beneficiaries of her Magdalen Society scram-bled back down to the pit of iniquity70 as soon as they could—but Mrs. Poulteney was as ignorant of that as she was of Tragedy’s more vulgar nickname.
The vicar coughed. “Lady Cotton is an example to us all.” This was oil on the flames—as he was perhaps not unaware71.
“I should visit.”
“That would be excellent.”
“It is that visiting always so distresses72 me.” The vicar was unhelpful. “I know it is wicked of me.”
“Come come.”
“Yes. Very wicked.”
A long silence followed, in which the vicar meditated73 on his dinner, still an hour away, and Mrs. Poulteney on her wickedness. She then came out, with an unaccustomed timidi-ty, with a compromise solution to her dilemma74.
“If you knew of some lady, some refined person who has come upon adverse75 circumstances ...”
“I am not quite clear what you intend.”
“I wish to take a companion. I have difficulty in writing now. And Mrs. Fairley reads so poorly. I should be happy to provide a home for such a person.”
“Very well. If you so wish it. I will make inquiries76.” Mrs. Poulteney flinched77 a little from this proposed wild casting of herself upon the bosom78 of true Christianity. “She must be of irreproachable79 moral character. I have my ser-vants to consider.”
“My dear lady, of course, of course.” The vicar stood. “And preferably without relations. The relations of one’s dependents can become so very tiresome80.”
“Rest assured that I shall not present anyone unsuitable.” He pressed her hand and moved towards the door. “And Mr. Forsythe, not too young a person.” He bowed and left the room. But halfway81 down the stairs to the ground floor, he stopped. He remembered. He reflect-ed. And perhaps an emotion not absolutely unconnected with malice82, a product of so many long hours of hypocrisy—or at least a not always complete frankness—at Mrs. Poulteney’s bombazined side, at any rate an impulse made him turn and go back to her drawing room. He stood in the doorway83.
“An eligible has occurred to me. Her name is Sarah Woodruff.”
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remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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simile
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| n.直喻，明喻 | |
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functional
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| adj.为实用而设计的，具备功能的，起作用的 | |
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tyrant
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| n.暴君，专制的君主，残暴的人 | |
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riddled
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| adj.布满的；充斥的；泛滥的v.解谜，出谜题(riddle的过去分词形式) | |
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gale
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| n.大风，强风，一阵闹声（尤指笑声等） | |
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bilious
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| adj.胆汁过多的；易怒的 | |
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arsenic
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| n.砒霜，砷；adj.砷的 | |
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disseminated
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| 散布，传播( disseminate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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sergeant
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| n.警官，中士 | |
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domain
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| n.(活动等)领域，范围；领地，势力范围 | |
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temperament
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| n.气质，性格，性情 | |
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melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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torrent
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| n.激流，洪流；爆发，(话语等的)连发 | |
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lesser
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| adj.次要的，较小的；adv.较小地，较少地 | |
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cascaded
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| 级联的 | |
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grooms
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| n.新郎( groom的名词复数 )；马夫v.照料或梳洗（马等）( groom的第三人称单数 )；使做好准备；训练；（给动物）擦洗 | |
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legendary
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| adj.传奇（中）的，闻名遐迩的；n.传奇（文学） | |
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summation
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| n.总和；最后辩论 | |
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awesome
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| adj.令人惊叹的，难得吓人的，很好的 | |
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catastrophes
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| n.灾祸( catastrophe的名词复数 )；灾难；不幸事件；困难 | |
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descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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omen
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| n.征兆，预兆；vt.预示 | |
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incipient
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| adj.起初的，发端的，初期的 | |
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obsessions
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| n.使人痴迷的人（或物）( obsession的名词复数 )；着魔；困扰 | |
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obsession
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| n.困扰，无法摆脱的思想(或情感) | |
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immorality
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| n. 不道德, 无道义 | |
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untoward
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| adj.不利的，不幸的，困难重重的 | |
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insufficiently
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| adv.不够地，不能胜任地 | |
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starched
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| adj.浆硬的，硬挺的，拘泥刻板的v.把（衣服、床单等）浆一浆( starch的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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linen
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| n.亚麻布，亚麻线，亚麻制品；adj.亚麻布制的，亚麻的 | |
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abominable
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| adj.可厌的，令人憎恶的 | |
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humane
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| adj.人道的，富有同情心的 | |
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jaws
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| n.口部；嘴 | |
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epitome
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| n.典型，梗概 | |
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crassly
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| adv.粗鲁地，愚钝地 | |
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arrogant
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| adj.傲慢的，自大的 | |
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mite
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| n.极小的东西；小铜币 | |
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renowned
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| adj.著名的，有名望的，声誉鹊起的 | |
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remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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emancipated
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| adj.被解放的，不受约束的v.解放某人（尤指摆脱政治、法律或社会的束缚）( emancipate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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knack
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| n.诀窍，做事情的灵巧的，便利的方法 | |
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fervid
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| adj.热情的；炽热的 | |
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eloquence
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| n.雄辩；口才，修辞 | |
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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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incumbents
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| 教区牧师( incumbent的名词复数 )； 教会中的任职者 | |
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notably
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| adv.值得注意地，显著地，尤其地，特别地 | |
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throttled
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| v.扼杀( throttle的过去式和过去分词 )；勒死；使窒息；压制 | |
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cholera
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| n.霍乱 | |
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dreaded
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| adj.令人畏惧的；害怕的v.害怕，恐惧，担心( dread的过去式和过去分词) | |
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killer
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| n.杀人者，杀人犯，杀手，屠杀者 | |
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acuity
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| n.敏锐，（疾病的）剧烈 | |
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pertaining
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| 与…有关系的，附属…的，为…固有的(to) | |
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visualized
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| 直观的，直视的 | |
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parable
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| n.寓言，比喻 | |
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solicitous
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| adj.热切的，挂念的 | |
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compassion
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| n.同情，怜悯 | |
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metaphorically
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| adv. 用比喻地 | |
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contrived
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| adj.不自然的，做作的；虚构的 | |
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Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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trespass
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| n./v.侵犯，闯入私人领地 | |
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justified
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| a.正当的，有理的 | |
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penance
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| n.（赎罪的）惩罪 | |
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abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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secular
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| n.牧师，凡人；adj.世俗的，现世的，不朽的 | |
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piety
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| n.虔诚，虔敬 | |
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missionary
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| adj.教会的，传教(士)的；n.传教士 | |
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repentant
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| adj.对…感到悔恨的 | |
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iniquity
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| n.邪恶；不公正 | |
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unaware
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| a.不知道的，未意识到的 | |
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distresses
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| n.悲痛( distress的名词复数 )；痛苦；贫困；危险 | |
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meditated
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| 深思，沉思，冥想( meditate的过去式和过去分词 )； 内心策划，考虑 | |
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dilemma
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| n.困境，进退两难的局面 | |
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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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inquiries
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| n.调查( inquiry的名词复数 )；疑问；探究；打听 | |
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flinched
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| v.（因危险和痛苦）退缩，畏惧( flinch的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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bosom
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| n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的 | |
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irreproachable
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| adj.不可指责的，无过失的 | |
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tiresome
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| adj.令人疲劳的，令人厌倦的 | |
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halfway
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| adj.中途的，不彻底的，部分的；adv.半路地，在中途，在半途 | |
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malice
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| n.恶意，怨恨，蓄意；[律]预谋 | |
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doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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