Is a man my grandsire knew ...
—Hardy, “Transformations”
The chaise, its calash down to allow Charles to enjoy the spring sunshine, passed the gatehouse. Young Hawkins stood by the opened gates, old Mrs. Hawkins beamed coyly at the door of the cottage. And Charles called to the under-coachman who had been waiting at Chippenham and now drove with Sam beside him on the box, to stop a moment. A special relationship existed between Charles and the old woman. Without a mother since the age of one, he had had to put up with a series of substitutes as a little boy; in his stays at Winsyatt he had attached himself to this same Mrs. Hawkins, technically2 in those days the head laundrymaid, but by right of service and popularity second only below stairs to the august housekeeper3 herself. Perhaps Charles’s affection for Aunt Tranter was an echo of his earlier memories of the simple woman—a perfect casting for Baucis—who now hob-bled down the path to the garden gate to greet him.
He had to answer all her eager inquiries4 about the forthcoming marriage; and to ask in his turn after her children. She seemed more than ordinarily solicitous5 for him, and he detected in her eye that pitying shadow the kind-hearted poor sometimes reserve for the favored rich. It was a shadow he knew of old, bestowed6 by the innocent-shrewd country wom-an on the poor motherless boy with the wicked father—for gross rumors7 of Charles’s surviving parent’s enjoyment8 of the pleasures of London life percolated9 down to Winsyatt. It seemed singularly out of place now, that mute sympathy, but Charles permitted it with an amused tolerance10. It came from love of him, as the neat gatehouse garden, and the parkland, beyond, and the clumps11 of old trees—each with a well-loved name, Carson’s Stand, Ten-pine Mound12, Ramillies (planted in celebration of that battle), the Oak-and-Elm, the Muses’ Grove13 and a dozen others, all as familiar to Charles as the names of the parts of his body—and the great avenue of limes, the iron railings, as all in his view of the domain14 came that day also, or so he felt, from love of him. At last he smiled down at the old laundrymaid. “I must get on. My uncle expects me.” Mrs. Hawkins looked for a moment as if she would not let herself be so easily dismissed; but the servant overcame the substitute mother. She contented15 herself with touching16 his hand as it lay on the chaise door. “Aye, Mr. Charles. He expects you.”
The coachman flicked17 the rump of the leading horse with his whip and the chaise pulled off up the gentle incline and into the fenestrated shadow of the still-leafless limes. After a while the drive became flat, again the whip licked lazily onto the bay haunch, and the two horses, remembering the man-ger was now near, broke into a brisk trot18. The swift gay crunch19 of the ironbound wheels, the slight screech20 of an insufficiently21 greased axle, the old affection revived by Mrs. Hawkins, his now certainty of being soon in real possession of this landscape, all this evoked22 in Charles that ineffable23 feeling of fortunate destiny and right order which his stay in Lyme had vaguely24 troubled. This piece of England belonged to him, and he belonged to it; its responsibilities were his, and its prestige, and its centuries-old organization.
They passed a group of his uncle’s workers: Ebenezer the smith, beside a portable brazier, hammering straight one of the iron rails that had been bent25. Behind him, two woodmen, passing the time of day; and a fourth very old man, who still wore the smock of his youth and an ancient billycock ... old Ben, the smith’s father, now one of the dozen or more aged26 pensioners27 of the estate allowed to live there, as free in all his outdoor comings and goings as the master himself; a kind of living file, and still often consulted, of the last eighty years or more of Winsyatt history.
These four turned as the chaise went past, and raised arms, and the billycock. Charles waved seigneurially back. He knew all their lives, as they knew his. He even knew how the rail had been bent. . . the great Jonas, his uncle’s favorite bull, had charged Mrs. Tomkins’s landau. “Her own d—d fault”—his uncle’s letter had said—“for painting her mouth scarlet28.” Charles smiled, remembering the dry inquiry29 in his answer as to why such an attractive widow should be calling at Winsyatt unchaperoned ...
But it was the great immutable30 rural peace that was so delicious to reenter. The miles of spring sward, the back-ground of Wiltshire downland, the distant house now coming into view, cream and gray, with its huge cedars31, the famous copper32 beech33 (all copper beeches34 are famous) by the west wing, the almost hidden stable row behind, with its little wooden tower and clock like a white exclamation35 mark between the intervening branches. It was symbolic36, that stable clock; though nothing—despite the telegram—was ever really urgent at Winsyatt, green todays flowed into green tomorrows, the only real hours were the solar hours, and though, except at haymaking and harvest, there were always too many hands for too little work, the sense of order was almost mechanical in its profundity37, in one’s feeling that it could not be disturbed, that it would always remain thus: benevolent38 and divine. Heaven—and Millie—knows there were rural injustices39 and poverties as vile40 as those taking place in Sheffield and Manchester; but they shunned41 the neighborhood of the great houses of England, perhaps for no better reason than that the owners liked well-tended peasants as much as well-tended fields and livestock42. Their compara-tive kindness to their huge staffs may have been no more than a side-product of their pursuit of the pleasant prospect43; but the underlings gained thereby44. And the motives45 of “intel-ligent” modern management are probably no more altruistic46. One set of kind exploiters went for the Pleasant Prospect; the others go for Higher Productivity.
As the chaise emerged from the end of the avenue of limes, where the railed pasture gave way to smoother lawns and shrubberies, and the drive entered its long curve up to the front of the house—a Palladian structure not too ruth-lessly improved and added to by the younger Wyatt—Charles felt himself truly entering upon his inheritance. It seemed to him to explain all his previous idling through life, his dallying47 with religion, with science, with travel; he had been waiting for this moment ... his call to the throne, so to speak. The absurd adventure in the Undercliff was forgotten. Immense duties, the preservation48 of this peace and order, lay ahead, as they had lain ahead of so many young men of his family in the past. Duty—that was his real wife, his Ernestina and his Sarah, and he sprang out of the chaise to welcome her as joyously49 as a boy not half his real age.
He was greeted in return, however, by an empty hall. He broke into the dayroom, or drawing room, expecting to see his uncle smilingly on his feet to meet him. But that room was empty, too. And something was strange in it, puzzling Charles a moment. Then he smiled. There were new curtains —and the carpets, yes, they were new as well. Ernestina would not be pleased, to have had the choice taken out of her hands—but what surer demonstration50 could there be of the old bachelor’s intention gracefully51 to hand on the torch?
Yet something else had also changed. It was some mo-ments before Charles realized what it was. The immortal52 bustard had been banished53; where its glass case had last stood was now a cabinet of china.
But still he did not guess.
Nor did he—but in this case, how could he?—guess what had happened to Sarah when she left him the previous afternoon. She had walked quickly back through the woods until she came to the place where she normally took the higher path that precluded54 any chance of her being seen from the Dairy. An observer would have seen her hesitate, and then, if he had had as sharp hearing as Sarah herself, have guessed why: a sound of voices from the Dairy cottage some hundred yards away down through the trees. Slowly and silently Sarah made her way forward until she came to a great holly55 bush, through whose dense56 leaves she could stare down at the back of the cottage. She remained standing57 some time, her face revealing nothing of what passed through her mind. Then some development in the scene below, outside the cottage, made her move ... but not back into the cover of the woods. Instead she walked boldly from out behind the holly tree and along the path that joined the cart track above the cottage. Thus she emerged in full view of the two women at the cottage door, one of whom carried a basket and was evidently about to set off on her way home.
Sarah’s dark figure came into view. She did not look down towards the cottage, towards those two surprised pairs of eyes, but went swiftly on her way until she passed behind the hedge of one of the fields that ran above the Dairy.
One of the women below was the dairyman’s wife. The other was Mrs. Fairley.
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yew
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| n.紫杉属树木 | |
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technically
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| adv.专门地，技术上地 | |
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housekeeper
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| n.管理家务的主妇，女管家 | |
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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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solicitous
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| adj.热切的，挂念的 | |
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bestowed
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| 赠给，授予( bestow的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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rumors
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| n.传闻( rumor的名词复数 )；[古]名誉；咕哝；[古]喧嚷v.传闻( rumor的第三人称单数 )；[古]名誉；咕哝；[古]喧嚷 | |
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enjoyment
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| n.乐趣；享有；享用 | |
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percolated
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| v.滤( percolate的过去式和过去分词 )；渗透；（思想等）渗透；渗入 | |
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tolerance
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| n.宽容；容忍，忍受；耐药力；公差 | |
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clumps
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| n.（树、灌木、植物等的）丛、簇( clump的名词复数 )；（土、泥等）团；块；笨重的脚步声v.（树、灌木、植物等的）丛、簇( clump的第三人称单数 )；（土、泥等）团；块；笨重的脚步声 | |
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mound
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| n.土墩，堤，小山；v.筑堤，用土堆防卫 | |
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grove
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| n.林子，小树林，园林 | |
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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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contented
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| adj.满意的，安心的，知足的 | |
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touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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flicked
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| （尤指用手指或手快速地）轻击( flick的过去式和过去分词 )； （用…）轻挥； （快速地）按开关； 向…笑了一下（或瞥了一眼等） | |
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trot
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| n.疾走，慢跑；n.老太婆；现成译本；(复数）trots:腹泻（与the 连用）；v.小跑，快步走，赶紧 | |
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crunch
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| n.关键时刻；艰难局面；v.发出碎裂声 | |
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screech
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| n./v.尖叫；(发出)刺耳的声音 | |
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insufficiently
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| adv.不够地，不能胜任地 | |
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evoked
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| [医]诱发的 | |
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ineffable
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| adj.无法表达的，不可言喻的 | |
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vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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pensioners
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| n.领取退休、养老金或抚恤金的人( pensioner的名词复数 ) | |
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scarlet
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| n.深红色，绯红色，红衣；adj.绯红色的 | |
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inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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immutable
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| adj.不可改变的，永恒的 | |
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cedars
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| 雪松，西洋杉( cedar的名词复数 ) | |
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copper
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| n.铜；铜币；铜器；adj.铜(制)的；(紫)铜色的 | |
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beech
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| n.山毛榉；adj.山毛榉的 | |
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beeches
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| n.山毛榉( beech的名词复数 )；山毛榉木材 | |
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exclamation
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| n.感叹号，惊呼，惊叹词 | |
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symbolic
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| adj.象征性的，符号的，象征主义的 | |
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profundity
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| n.渊博；深奥，深刻 | |
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benevolent
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| adj.仁慈的，乐善好施的 | |
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injustices
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| 不公平( injustice的名词复数 )； 非正义； 待…不公正； 冤枉 | |
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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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41
shunned
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| v.避开，回避，避免( shun的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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livestock
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| n.家畜，牲畜 | |
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43
prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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thereby
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| adv.因此，从而 | |
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motives
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| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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46
altruistic
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| adj.无私的，为他人着想的 | |
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47
dallying
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| v.随随便便地对待( dally的现在分词 )；不很认真地考虑；浪费时间；调情 | |
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48
preservation
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| n.保护，维护，保存，保留，保持 | |
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joyously
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| ad.快乐地, 高兴地 | |
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50
demonstration
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| n.表明，示范，论证，示威 | |
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51
gracefully
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| ad.大大方方地；优美地 | |
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52
immortal
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| adj.不朽的；永生的，不死的；神的 | |
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53
banished
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| v.放逐，驱逐( banish的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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54
precluded
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| v.阻止( preclude的过去式和过去分词 )；排除；妨碍；使…行不通 | |
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55
holly
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| n.[植]冬青属灌木 | |
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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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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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