Mr. Carden found her in this state, and set himself to soothe3 her. He told her the understanding he had come to with Mr. Little, and begged her to be as reasonable and as patient as her lover was. But the appeal was not successful. “He came to see me,” she cried, “and he has gone away without seeing me. You have begun to break both our hearts, with your reason and your prudence4. One comfort, mine will break first; I have not his fortitude5. Oh, my poor Henry! He has gone away, hanging his head, broken-hearted: that is what you have DONE for me. After that, what are words? Air—air—and you can't feed hungry hearts with air.”
“Well, my child, I am sorry now I did not bring him in here. But I really did it for the best. I wished to spare you further agitation6.”
“Agitation!” And she opened her eyes with astonishment7. “Why, it is you who agitate8 me. He would have soothed9 me in a moment. One kind and hopeful word from him, one tender glance of his dear eye, one pressure of his dear hard hand, and I could have borne anything; but that drop of comfort you denied us both. Oh, cruel! cruel!”
“Calm yourself, Grace, and remember whom you are speaking to. It was an error in judgment10, perhaps—nothing more.”
“Grace,” said Mr. Carden, sadly, but firmly, “we poor parents are all prepared for this. After many years of love and tenderness bestowed13 on our offspring, the day is sure to come when the young thing we have reared with so much care and tenderness will meet a person of her own age, a STRANGER; and, in a month or two, all our love, our care, our anxiety, our hopes, will be nothing in the balance. This wound is in store for us all. We foresee it; we receive it; we groan14 under it; we forgive it. We go patiently on, and still give our ungrateful children the benefit of our love and our experience. I have seen in my own family that horrible mixture, Gentility and Poverty. In our class of life, poverty is not only poverty, it is misery15, and meanness as well. My income dies with me. My daughter and her children shall not go back to the misery and meanness out of which I have struggled. They shall be secured against it by law, before she marries, or she shall marry under her father's curse.”
Then Grace was frightened, and said she should never marry under her father's curse; but (with a fresh burst of weeping) what need was there to send Henry away without seeing her, and letting them comfort each other under this sudden affliction? “Ah, I was too happy this morning,” said the poor girl. “I was singing before breakfast. Jael always told me not to do that. Oh! oh! oh!”
Mr. Carden kept silence; but his fortitude was sorely tried.
That day Grace pleaded headache, and did not appear to dinner. Mr. Carden dined alone, and missed her bright face sadly. He sent his love to her, and went off to the club, not very happy. At the club he met Mr. Coventry, and told him frankly16 what he had done. Mr. Coventry, to his surprise, thanked him warmly. “She will be mine in two years,” said he. “Little will never be able to make a settlement on her.” This remark set Mr. Carden thinking.
Grace watched the window day after day, but Henry never came nor passed. She went a great deal more than usual into the town, in hopes of meeting him by the purest accident. She longed to call on Mrs. Little, but feminine instinct withheld17 her; she divined that Mrs. Little must be deeply offended.
She fretted18 for a sight of Henry, and for an explanation, in which she might clear herself, and show her love, without being in the least disobedient to her father. Now all this was too subtle to be written. So she fretted and pined for a meeting.
While she was in this condition, and losing color every day, who should call one day—to reconnoiter, I suppose—but Mr. Coventry.
Grace was lying on the sofa, languid and distraite, when he was announced. She sat up directly, and her eye kindled19.
Mr. Coventry came in with his usual grace and cat-like step. “Ah, Miss Carden!”
Miss Carden rose majestically20 to her feet, made him a formal courtesy, and swept out of the room, without deigning21 him a word. She went to the study, and said, “Papa, here's a friend of yours—Mr. Coventry.”
“Dear me, I am very busy. I wish you would amuse him for a few minutes till I have finished this letter.”
“Excuse me, papa; I cannot stay in the same room with Mr. Coventry.”
“Why not, pray?”
“He is a dangerous man: he compromises one. He offered me an engagement-ring, and I refused it; yet he made you believe we were engaged. You have taken care I shall not be compromised with the man I love; and shall I be compromised with the man I don't care for? No, thank you.”
“Very well, Grace,” said Mr. Carden, coldly.
Shortly after this Mr. Carden requested Dr. Amboyne to call; he received the doctor in his study, and told him that he was beginning to be uneasy about Grace; she was losing her appetite, her color, and her spirits. Should he send her to the seaside?
“The seaside! I distrust conventional remedies. Let me see the patient.”
He entered the room and found her coloring a figure she had drawn22: it was a beautiful woman, with an anchor at her feet. The door was open, and the doctor, entering softly, saw a tear fall on the work from a face so pale and worn with pining, that he could hardly repress a start; he did repress it though, for starts are unprofessional; he shook hands with her in his usual way. “Sorry to hear you are indisposed, my dear Miss Grace.” He then examined her tongue, and felt her pulse; and then he sat down, right before her, and fixed23 his eyes on her. “How long have you been unwell?”
“One reason I ask, I have another patient, who has been attacked somewhat in the same way.”
Grace colored, and fixed a searching eye on the doctor. “Do I know the lady?”
“No. For it happens to be a male patient.”
“Perhaps it is going about.”
“Possibly; this is the age of competition. Still it is hard you can't have a little malady25 of this kind all to yourself; don't you think so?”
At this Grace laughed hysterically26.
“Come, none of that before me,” said the doctor sternly.
She stopped directly, frightened. The doctor smiled.
Mr. Carden peeped in from his study. “When you have done with her, come and prescribe for me. I am a little out of sorts too.” With this, he retired27. “That means you are to go and tell him what is the matter with me,” said Grace bitterly.
“Is his curiosity unjustifiable?”
“Oh no. Poor papa!” Then she asked him dryly if he knew what was the matter with her.
“I think I do.”
“I'll try; and a man can but do his best. I'll tell you one thing: if I can't cure you, no doctor in the world can: see how modest I am. Now for papa.”
She let him go to the very door: and then a meek29 little timid voice said, in a scarce audible murmur30, “Doctor!”
Now when this meek murmur issued from a young lady who had, up to this period of the interview, been rather cold and cutting, the sagacious doctor smiled. “My dear?” said he, in a very gentle voice.
“Doctor! about your other patient!”
“Well?”
“Is he as bad as I am? For indeed, my dear friend, I feel—my food has no taste—life itself no savor31. I used to go singing, now I sit sighing. Is he as bad as I am?”
“I'll tell you the truth; his malady is as strong as yours; but he has the great advantage of being a man; and, again, of being a man of brains. He is a worker, and an inventor; and now, instead of succumbing32 tamely to his disorder33, he is working double tides, and inventing with all his might, in order to remove an obstacle between him and one he loves with all his manly soul. A contest so noble and so perpetual sustains and fortifies34 the mind. He is indomitable; only, at times, his heart of steel will soften35, and then he has fits of deep dejection and depression, which I mourn to see; for his manly virtues36, and his likeness37 to one I loved deeply in my youth, have made him dear to me.”
During this Grace turned her head away, and, ere the doctor ended, her tears were flowing freely; for to her, being a woman, this portrait of a male struggle with sorrow was far more touching38 than any description of feminine and unresisted grief could be: and, when the doctor said he loved his patient, she stole her little hand into his in a way to melt Old Nick, if he is a male. Ladies, forgive the unchivalrous doubt.
“Doctor,” said she, affecting all of a sudden a little air of small sprightliness39, very small, “now, do—you—think—it would do your patient—the least good in the world—if you were to take him this?”
She handed him her work, and then she blushed divinely.
“Why, it is a figure of Hope.”
“Yes.”
“I think it might do him a great deal of good.”
“You could say I painted it for him.”
“So I will. That will do him no harm neither. Shall I say I found you crying over it?”
“Oh, no! no! That would make him cry too, perhaps.”
“Ah, I forgot that. Grace, you are an angel.”
“Ah, no. But you can tell him I am—if you think so. That will do him no great harm—will it?”
“Not an atom to him; but it will subject me to a pinch for stale news. There, give me my patient's picture, and let me go.”
She kissed the little picture half-furtively, and gave it him, and let him go; only, as he went out at the door, she murmured, “Come often.”
Now, when this artful doctor got outside the door, his face became grave all of a sudden, for he had seen enough to give him a degree of anxiety he had not betrayed to his interesting patient herself.
“Well, doctor?” said Mr. Carden, affecting more cheerfulness than he felt. “Nothing there beyond your skill, I suppose?”
“Her health is declining rapidly. Pale, hollow-eyed, listless, languid—not the same girl.”
“Is it bodily do you think, or only mental?”
“Mental as to its cause; but bodily in the result. The two things are connected in all of us, and very closely in Miss Carden. Her organization is fine, and, therefore, subtle. She is tuned40 in a high key. Her sensibility is great; and tough folk, like you and me, must begin by putting ourselves in her place before we prescribe for her, otherwise our harsh hands may crush a beautiful, but too tender, flower.”
“Good heavens!” said Carden, beginning to be seriously alarmed, “do you mean to say you think, if this goes on, she will be in any danger?”
“Why, if it were to go on at the same rate, it would be very serious. She must have lost a stone in weight already.”
“What, my child! my sweet Grace! Is it possible her life—”
“And do you think your daughter is not mortal like other people? The young girls that are carried past your door to the churchyard one after another, had they no fathers?”
At this blunt speech the father trembled from head to foot.
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1
manly
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| adj.有男子气概的；adv.男子般地，果断地 | |
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sobbing
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| <主方>Ⅰ adj.湿透的 | |
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soothe
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| v.安慰；使平静；使减轻；缓和；奉承 | |
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prudence
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| n.谨慎，精明，节俭 | |
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fortitude
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| n.坚忍不拔；刚毅 | |
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agitation
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| n.搅动；搅拌；鼓动，煽动 | |
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astonishment
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| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
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agitate
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| vi.(for,against)煽动，鼓动；vt.搅动 | |
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9
soothed
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| v.安慰( soothe的过去式和过去分词 )；抚慰；使舒服；减轻痛苦 | |
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10
judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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soothing
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| adj.慰藉的；使人宽心的；镇静的 | |
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meddle
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| v.干预，干涉，插手 | |
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13
bestowed
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| 赠给，授予( bestow的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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groan
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| vi./n.呻吟，抱怨；(发出)呻吟般的声音 | |
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15
misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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17
withheld
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| withhold过去式及过去分词 | |
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fretted
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| 焦躁的，附有弦马的，腐蚀的 | |
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19
kindled
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| （使某物）燃烧，着火( kindle的过去式和过去分词 )； 激起（感情等）； 发亮，放光 | |
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majestically
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| 雄伟地； 庄重地； 威严地； 崇高地 | |
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21
deigning
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| v.屈尊，俯就( deign的现在分词 ) | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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24
sullenly
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| 不高兴地，绷着脸，忧郁地 | |
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25
malady
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| n.病，疾病(通常做比喻) | |
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hysterically
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| ad. 歇斯底里地 | |
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retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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haughty
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| adj.傲慢的，高傲的 | |
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meek
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| adj.温顺的，逆来顺受的 | |
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murmur
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| n.低语，低声的怨言；v.低语，低声而言 | |
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31
savor
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| vt.品尝，欣赏；n.味道，风味；情趣，趣味 | |
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32
succumbing
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| 不再抵抗（诱惑、疾病、攻击等）( succumb的现在分词 )； 屈从； 被压垮； 死 | |
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33
disorder
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| n.紊乱，混乱；骚动，骚乱；疾病，失调 | |
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34
fortifies
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| 筑防御工事于( fortify的第三人称单数 )； 筑堡于； 增强； 强化（食品） | |
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35
soften
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| v.(使)变柔软；(使)变柔和 | |
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36
virtues
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| 美德( virtue的名词复数 )； 德行； 优点； 长处 | |
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37
likeness
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| n.相像，相似（之处） | |
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38
touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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39
sprightliness
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| n.愉快，快活 | |
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40
tuned
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| adj.调谐的，已调谐的v.调音( tune的过去式和过去分词 )；调整；（给收音机、电视等）调谐；使协调 | |
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