Everybody pitied Selina, whose story was well known. She followed the corpse5 as the only mourner, Clark having been without relations in this part of the country, and a communication with his regiment6 having brought none from a distance. She sat in a little shabby brown-black mourning carriage, squeezing herself up in a corner to be as much as possible out of sight during the slow and dramatic march through the town to the tune7 from Saul. When the interment had taken place, the volleys been fired, and the return journey begun, it was with something like a shock that she found the military escort to be moving at a quick march to the lively strains of ‘Off she goes!’ as if all care for the sergeant-major was expected to be ended with the late discharge of the carbines. It was, by chance, the very tune to which they had been footing when he died, and unable to bear its notes, she hastily told her driver to drop behind. The band and military party diminished up the High Street, and Selina turned over Swan bridge and homeward to Mellstock.
Then recommenced for her a life whose incidents were precisely8 of a suit with those which had preceded the soldier’s return; but how different in her appreciation9 of them! Her narrow miss of the recovered respectability they had hoped for from that tardy10 event worked upon her parents as an irritant, and after the first week or two of her mourning her life with them grew almost insupportable. She had impulsively11 taken to herself the weeds of a widow, for such she seemed to herself to be, and clothed little Johnny in sables12 likewise. This assumption of a moral relationship to the deceased, which she asserted to be only not a legal one by two most unexpected accidents, led the old people to indulge in sarcasm13 at her expense whenever they beheld14 her attire15, though all the while it cost them more pain to utter than it gave her to hear it. Having become accustomed by her residence at home to the business carried on by her father, she surprised them one day by going off with the child to Chalk-Newton, in the direction of the town of Ivell, and opening a miniature fruit and vegetable shop, attending Ivell market with her produce. Her business grew somewhat larger, and it was soon sufficient to enable her to support herself and the boy in comfort. She called herself ‘Mrs. John Clark’ from the day of leaving home, and painted the name on her signboard—no man forbidding her.
By degrees the pain of her state was forgotten in her new circumstances, and getting to be generally accepted as the widow of a sergeant-major of dragoons—an assumption which her modest and mournful demeanour seemed to substantiate—her life became a placid16 one, her mind being nourished by the melancholy17 luxury of dreaming what might have been her future in New Zealand with John, if he had only lived to take her there. Her only travels now were a journey to Ivell on market-days, and once a fortnight to the churchyard in which Clark lay, there to tend, with Johnny’s assistance, as widows are wont18 to do, the flowers she had planted upon his grave.
On a day about eighteen months after his unexpected decease, Selina was surprised in her lodging19 over her little shop by a visit from Bartholomew Miller20. He had called on her once or twice before, on which occasions he had used without a word of comment the name by which she was known.
‘I’ve come this time,’ he said, ‘less because I was in this direction than to ask you, Mrs. Clark, what you mid21 well guess. I’ve come o’ purpose, in short.’
She smiled.
‘’Tis to ask me again to marry you?’
‘Yes, of course. You see, his coming back for ’ee proved what I always believed of ’ee, though others didn’t. There’s nobody but would be glad to welcome you to our parish again, now you’ve showed your independence and acted up to your trust in his promise. Well, my dear, will you come?’
‘I’d rather bide22 as Mrs. Clark, I think,’ she answered. ‘I am not ashamed of my position at all; for I am John’s widow in the eyes of Heaven.’
‘I quite agree—that’s why I’ve come. Still, you won’t like to be always straining at this shop-keeping and market-standing; and ’twould be better for Johnny if you had nothing to do but tend him.’
He here touched the only weak spot in Selina’s resistance to his proposal—the good of the boy. To promote that there were other men she might have married offhand23 without loving them if they had asked her to; but though she had known the worthy24 speaker from her youth, she could not for the moment fancy herself happy as Mrs. Miller.
He paused awhile. ‘I ought to tell ’ee, Mrs. Clark,’ he said by and by, ‘that marrying is getting to be a pressing question with me. Not on my own account at all. The truth is, that mother is growing old, and I am away from home a good deal, so that it is almost necessary there should be another person in the house with her besides me. That’s the practical consideration which forces me to think of taking a wife, apart from my wish to take you; and you know there’s nobody in the world I care for so much.’
She said something about there being far better women than she, and other natural commonplaces; but assured him she was most grateful to him for feeling what he felt, as indeed she sincerely was. However, Selina would not consent to be the useful third person in his comfortable home—at any rate just then. He went away, after taking tea with her, without discerning much hope for him in her good-bye.
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1
cavalry
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| n.骑兵；轻装甲部队 | |
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artillery
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| n.(军)火炮，大炮；炮兵(部队) | |
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brass
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| n.黄铜；黄铜器，铜管乐器 | |
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docile
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| adj.驯服的，易控制的，容易教的 | |
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corpse
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| n.尸体，死尸 | |
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regiment
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| n.团，多数，管理；v.组织，编成团，统制 | |
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7
tune
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| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
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8
precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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9
appreciation
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| n.评价；欣赏；感谢；领会，理解；价格上涨 | |
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tardy
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| adj.缓慢的，迟缓的 | |
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impulsively
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| adv.冲动地 | |
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sables
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| n.紫貂( sable的名词复数 )；紫貂皮；阴暗的；暗夜 | |
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13
sarcasm
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| n.讥讽，讽刺，嘲弄，反话 （adj.sarcastic） | |
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14
beheld
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| v.看，注视( behold的过去式和过去分词 )；瞧；看呀；（叙述中用于引出某人意外的出现）哎哟 | |
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attire
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| v.穿衣，装扮[同]array；n.衣着；盛装 | |
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16
placid
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| adj.安静的，平和的 | |
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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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wont
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| adj.习惯于；v.习惯；n.习惯 | |
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lodging
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| n.寄宿，住所；(大学生的)校外宿舍 | |
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miller
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| n.磨坊主 | |
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mid
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| adj.中央的，中间的 | |
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bide
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| v.忍耐；等候；住 | |
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offhand
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| adj.临时，无准备的；随便，马虎的 | |
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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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