Duty—that’s to say complying With whate’er’s expected here . ..
With the form conforming duly,
Senseless what it meaneth truly . . .
‘Tis the stern and prompt suppressing,
As an obvious deadly sin,
All the questing and the guessing
Of the soul’s own soul within:
‘Tis the coward acquiescence1
In a destiny’s behest . . .
—A. H. Clough, “Duty” (1841)
They arrived at the White Lion just before ten that night. The lights were still on in Aunt Tranter’s house; a curtain moved as they passed. Charles performed a quick toilet and leaving Sam to unpack2, strode manfully up the hill. Mary was overjoyed to see him; Aunt Tranter, just behind her, was pinkly wreathed in welcoming smiles. She had had strict orders to remove herself as soon as she had greeted the traveler: there was to be no duenna nonsense that evening. Ernestina, with her customary estimation of her own dignity, had remained in the back sitting room.
She did not rise when Charles entered, but gave him a long reproachful look from under her eyelashes. He smiled.
“I forgot to buy flowers in Exeter.”
“So I see, sir.”
“I was in such haste to be here before you went to bed.”
She cast down her eyes and watched her hands, which were engaged in embroidery3. Charles moved closer, and the hands rather abruptly4 stopped work and turned over the small article at which they were working.
“I see I have a rival.”
“You deserve to have many.”
He knelt beside her and gently raised one of her hands and kissed it. She slipped a little look at him.
“I haven’t slept a minute since you went away.”
“I can see that by your pallid5 cheeks and swollen6 eyes.”
She would not smile. “Now you make fun of me.”
“If this is what insomnia7 does to you I shall arrange to have an alarm bell ringing perpetually in our bedroom.”
She blushed. Charles rose and sat beside her and drew her head round and kissed her mouth and then her closed eyes, which after being thus touched opened and stared into his, every atom of dryness gone.
He smiled. “Now let me see what you are embroidering8 for your secret admirer.”
She held up her work. It was a watch pocket, in blue velvet9—one of those little pouches10 Victorian gentlemen hung by their dressing12 tables and put their watches in at night. On the hanging flap there was embroidered13 a white heart with the initials C and E on either side; on the face of the pouch11 was begun, but not finished, a couplet in gold thread. Charles read it out loud.
“’Each time thy watch thou wind’ ... and how the deuce is that to finish?”
“You must guess.”
Charles stared at the blue velvet.
“Thy wife her teeth will grind’?”
She snatched it out of sight.
“Now I shan’t tell. You are no better than a cad.” A “cad” in those days meant an omnibus conductor, famous for their gift of low repartee14.
“Who would never ask a fare of one so fair.”
“False flattery and feeble puns are equally detestable.”
“And you, my dearest, are adorable when you are angry.”
“Then I shall forgive you—just to be horrid15.”
She turned a little away from him then, though his arm remained around her waist and the pressure of his hand on hers was returned. They remained in silence a few moments. He kissed her hand once more.
“I may walk with you tomorrow morning? And we’ll show the world what fashionable lovers we are, and look bored, and quite unmistakably a marriage of convenience?”
She smiled; then impulsively16 disclosed the watch pocket.
“’Each time thy watch thou wind, Of love may I thee remind.’”
“My sweetest.”
He gazed into her eyes a moment longer, then felt in his pocket and placed on her lap a small hinged box in dark-red morocco.
“Flowers of a kind.”
Shyly she pressed the little clasp back and opened the box; on a bed of crimson17 velvet lay an elegant Swiss brooch: a tiny oval mosaic18 of a spray of flowers, bordered by alternate pearls and fragments of coral set in gold. She looked dewily at Charles. He helpfully closed his eyes. She turned and leaned and planted a chaste19 kiss softly on his lips; then lay with her head on his shoulder, and looked again at the brooch, and kissed that.
Charles remembered the lines of that priapic song. He whispered in her ear. “I wish tomorrow were our wedding day.”
It was simple: one lived by irony20 and sentiment, one observed convention. What might have been was one more subject for detached and ironic21 observation; as was what might be. One surrendered, in other words; one learned to be what one was.
Charles pressed the girl’s arm. “Dearest, I have a small confession22 to make. It concerns that miserable23 female at Marlborough House.”
She sat up a little, pertly surprised, already amused. “Not poor Tragedy?”
He smiled. “I fear the more vulgar appellation24 is better suited.” He pressed her hand. “It is really most stupid and trivial. What happened was merely this. During one of my little pursuits of the elusive25 echinoderm ...”
And so ends the story. What happened to Sarah, I do not know—whatever it was, she never troubled Charles again in person, however long she may have lingered in his memory. This is what most often happens. People sink out of sight, drown in the shadows of closer things.
Charles and Ernestina did not live happily ever after; but they lived together, though Charles finally survived her by a decade (and earnestly mourned her throughout it). They begat what shall it be—let us say seven children. Sir Robert added injury to insult by siring, and within ten months of his alliance to Mrs. Bella Tomkins, not one heir, but two. This fatal pair of twins were what finally drove Charles into business. He was bored to begin with; and then got a taste for the thing. His own sons were given no choice; and their sons today still control the great shop and all its ramifica-tions.
Sam and Mary—but who can be bothered with the biogra-phy of servants? They married, and bred, and died, in the monotonous26 fashion of their kind.
Now who else? Dr. Grogan? He died in his ninety-first year. Since Aunt Tranter also lived into her nineties, we have clear proof of the amiability27 of the fresh Lyme air.
It cannot be all-effective, though, since Mrs. Poulteney died within two months of Charles’s last return to Lyme. Here, I am happy to say, I can summon up enough interest to look into the future—that is, into her after-life. Suitably dressed in black, she arrived in her barouche at the Heavenly Gates. Her footman—for naturally, as in ancient Egypt, her whole household had died with her—descended and gravely opened the carriage door. Mrs. Poulteney mounted the steps and after making a mental note to inform the Creator (when she knew Him better) that His domestics should be more on the alert for important callers, pulled the bellring. The butler at last appeared.
“Ma’am?”
“I am Mrs. Poulteney. I have come to take up residence. Kindly28 inform your Master.”
“His Infinitude has been informed of your decease, ma’m. His angels have already sung a Jubilate in celebration of the event.”
“That is most proper and kind of Him.” And the worthy29 lady, pluming30 and swelling31, made to sweep into the imposing32 white hall she saw beyond the butler’s head. But the man did not move aside. Instead he rather impertinently jangled some keys he chanced to have in his hand.
“My man! Make way. I am she. Mrs. Poulteney of Lyme Regis.”
“Formerly of Lyme Regis, ma’m. And now of a much more tropical abode33.”
With that, the brutal34 flunkey slammed the door in her face. Mrs. Poulteney’s immediate35 reaction was to look round, for fear her domestics might have overheard this scene. But her carriage, which she had thought to hear draw away to the servants’ quarters, had mysteriously disappeared. In fact everything had disappeared, road and landscape (rather resembling the Great Drive up to Windsor Castle, for some peculiar36 reason), all, all had vanished. There was nothing but space—and horror of horrors, a devouring37 space. One by one, the steps up which Mrs. Poulteney had so imperially mounted began also to disappear. Only three were left; and then only two; then one. Mrs. Poulteney stood on nothing. She was most distinctly heard to say “Lady Cotton is behind this”; and then she fell, flouncing and bannering and balloon-ing, like a shot crow, down to where her real master waited.
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acquiescence
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| n.默许；顺从 | |
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unpack
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| vt.打开包裹（或行李），卸货 | |
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embroidery
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| n.绣花，刺绣；绣制品 | |
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abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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pallid
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| adj.苍白的，呆板的 | |
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swollen
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| adj.肿大的，水涨的；v.使变大，肿胀 | |
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insomnia
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| n.失眠，失眠症 | |
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embroidering
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| v.（在织物上）绣花( embroider的现在分词 )；刺绣；对…加以渲染（或修饰）；给…添枝加叶 | |
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velvet
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| n.丝绒，天鹅绒；adj.丝绒制的，柔软的 | |
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pouches
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| n.（放在衣袋里或连在腰带上的）小袋( pouch的名词复数 )；（袋鼠等的）育儿袋；邮袋；（某些动物贮存食物的）颊袋 | |
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pouch
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| n.小袋，小包，囊状袋；vt.装...入袋中，用袋运输；vi.用袋送信件 | |
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dressing
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| n.(食物)调料；包扎伤口的用品，敷料 | |
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embroidered
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| adj．绣花的 | |
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repartee
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| n.机敏的应答 | |
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horrid
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| adj.可怕的；令人惊恐的；恐怖的；极讨厌的 | |
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impulsively
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| adv.冲动地 | |
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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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mosaic
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| n./adj.镶嵌细工的，镶嵌工艺品的，嵌花式的 | |
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chaste
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| adj.贞洁的；有道德的；善良的；简朴的 | |
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irony
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| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
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ironic
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| adj.讽刺的，有讽刺意味的，出乎意料的 | |
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confession
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| n.自白，供认，承认 | |
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miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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appellation
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| n.名称，称呼 | |
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elusive
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| adj.难以表达(捉摸)的；令人困惑的；逃避的 | |
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monotonous
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| adj.单调的，一成不变的，使人厌倦的 | |
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amiability
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| n.和蔼可亲的，亲切的，友善的 | |
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kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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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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pluming
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| 用羽毛装饰（plume的现在分词形式） | |
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swelling
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| n.肿胀 | |
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imposing
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| adj.使人难忘的，壮丽的，堂皇的，雄伟的 | |
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abode
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| n.住处，住所 | |
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brutal
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| adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的 | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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devouring
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| 吞没( devour的现在分词 )； 耗尽； 津津有味地看； 狼吞虎咽地吃光 | |
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