Its opening incidents may be dated from a period when people still had reason to believe in permanency and had indeed many of them—sometimes through ingenuousness3, sometimes through stupidity of type—acquired a singular confidence in the importance and stability of their possessions, desires, ambitions and forms of conviction.
London at the time, in common with other great capitals, felt itself rather final though priding itself on being much more fluid and adaptable4 than it had been fifty years previously5. In speaking of itself it at least dealt with fixed7 customs, and conditions and established facts connected with them—which gave rise to brilliant—or dull—witticisms.
One of these, heard not infrequently, was to the effect that—in London—one might live under an umbrella if one lived under it in the right neighbourhood and on the right side of the street, which axiom is the reason that a certain child through the first six years of her life sat on certain days staring out of a window in a small, dingy8 room on the top floor of a slice of a house on a narrow but highly fashionable London street and looked on at the passing of motors, carriages and people in the dull afternoon grayness.
The room was exalted9 above its station by being called The Day Nursery and another room equally dingy and uninviting was known as The Night Nursery. The slice of a house was inhabited by the very pretty Mrs. Gareth-Lawless, its inordinate10 rent being reluctantly paid by her—apparently with the assistance of those “ravens” who are expected to supply the truly deserving. The rent was inordinate only from the standpoint of one regarding it soberly in connection with the character of the house itself which was a gaudy11 little kennel12 crowded between two comparatively stately mansions13. On one side lived an inordinately14 rich South African millionaire, and on the other an inordinately exalted person of title, which facts combined to form sufficient grounds for a certain inordinateness of rent.
Mrs. Gareth-Lawless was also, it may be stated, of the fibre which must live on the right side of the street or dissolve into nothingness—since as nearly nothingness as an embodied15 entity16 can achieve had Nature seemingly created her at the outset. So light and airy was the fair, slim, physical presentation of her being to the earthly vision, and so almost impalpably diaphanous17 the texture18 and form of mind and character to be observed by human perception, that among such friends—and enemies—as so slight a thing could claim she was prettily19 known as “Feather”. Her real name, “Amabel”, was not half as charming and whimsical in its appropriateness. “Feather” she adored being called and as it was the fashion among the amazing if amusing circle in which she spent her life, to call its acquaintances fantastic pet names selected from among the world of birds, beasts and fishes or inanimate objects—“Feather” she floated through her curious existence. And it so happened that she was the mother of the child who so often stared out of the window of the dingy and comfortless Day Nursery, too much a child to be more than vaguely21 conscious in a chaotic22 way that a certain feeling which at times raged within her and made her little body hot and restless was founded on something like actual hate for a special man who had certainly taken no deliberate steps to cause her detestation.
“Feather” had not been called by that delicious name when she married Robert Gareth-Lawless who was a beautiful and irresponsibly rather than deliberately23 bad young man. She was known as Amabel Darrel and the loveliest girl in the lovely corner of the island of Jersey24 where her father, a country doctor, had begotten25 a large family of lovely creatures and brought them up on the appallingly26 inadequate27 proceeds of his totally inadequate practice. Pretty female things must be disposed of early lest their market value decline. Therefore a well-born young man even without obvious resources represents a sail in the offing which is naturally welcomed as possibly belonging to a bark which may at least bear away a burden which the back carrying it as part of its pack will willingly shuffle28 on to other shoulders. It is all very well for a man with six lovely daughters to regard them as capital if he has money or position or generous relations or if he has energy and an ingenious unfatigued mind. But a man who is tired and neither clever nor important in any degree and who has reared his brood in one of the Channel Islands with a faded, silly, unattractive wife as his only aid in any difficulty, is wise in leaving the whole hopeless situation to chance and luck. Sometimes luck comes without assistance but—almost invariably—it does not.
“Feather”—who was then “Amabel”—thought Robert Gareth-Lawless incredible good luck. He only drifted into her summer by merest chance because a friend’s yacht in which he was wandering about “came in” for supplies. A girl Ariel in a thin white frock and with big larkspur blue eyes yearning29 at you under her flapping hat as she answers your questions about the best road to somewhere will not be too difficult about showing the way herself. And there you are at a first-class beginning.
The night after she met Gareth-Lawless in a lane whose banks were thick with bluebells30, Amabel and her sister Alice huddled31 close together in bed and talked almost pantingly in whispers over the possibilities which might reveal themselves—God willing—through a further acquaintance with Mr. Gareth-Lawless. They were eager and breathlessly anxious but they were young—young in their eagerness and Amabel was full of delight in his good looks.
“He is so handsome, Alice,” she whispered actually hugging her, not with affection but exultation32. “And he can’t be more than twenty-six or seven. And I’m sure he liked me. You know that way a man has of looking at you—one sees it even in a place like this where there are only curates and things. He has brown eyes—like dark bright water in pools. Oh, Alice, if he should!”
Alice was not perhaps as enthusiastic as her sister. Amabel had seen him first and in the Darrel household there was a sort of unwritten, not always observed code flimsily founded on “First come first served.” Just at the outset of an acquaintance one might say “Hands off” as it were. But not for long.
“It doesn’t matter how pretty one is they seldom do,” Alice grumbled33. “And he mayn’t have a farthing.”
“Alice,” whispered Amabel almost agonizingly, “I wouldn’t care a farthing—if only he would! Have I a farthing—have you a farthing—has anyone who ever comes here a farthing? He lives in London. He’d take me away. To live even in a back street in London would be Heaven! And one must—as soon as one possibly can.—One must! And Oh!” with another hug which this time was a shudder34, “think of what Doris Harmer had to do! Think of his thick red old neck and his horrid35 fatness! And the way he breathed through his nose. Doris said that at first it used to make her ill to look at him.”
“She’s got over it,” whispered Alice. “She’s almost as fat as he is now. And she’s loaded with pearls and things.”
“I shouldn’t have to ‘get over’ anything,” said Amabel, “if this one would. I could fall in love with him in a minute.”
“Did you hear what Father said?” Alice brought out the words rather slowly and reluctantly. She was not eager on the whole to yield up a detail which after all added glow to possible prospects36 which from her point of view were already irritatingly glowing. Yet she could not resist the impulse of excitement. “No, you didn’t hear. You were out of the room.”
“What about? Something about him? I hope it wasn’t horrid. How could it be?”
“He said,” Alice drawled with a touch of girlishly spiteful indifference37, “that if he was one of the poor Gareth-Lawlesses he hadn’t much chance of succeeding to the title. His uncle—Lord Lawdor—is only forty-five and he has four splendid healthy boys—perfect little giants.”
“Oh, I didn’t know there was a title. How splendid,” exclaimed Amabel rapturously. Then after a few moments’ innocent maiden38 reflection she breathed with sweet hopefulness from under the sheet, “Children so often have scarlet39 fever or diphtheria, and you know they say those very strong ones are more likely to die than the other kind. The Vicar of Sheen lost four all in a week. And the Vicar died too. The doctor said the diphtheria wouldn’t have killed him if the shock hadn’t helped.”
Alice—who had a teaspoonful40 more brain than her sister—burst into a fit of giggling41 it was necessary to smother42 by stuffing the sheet in her mouth.
“Oh! Amabel!” she gurgled. “You are such a donkey! You would have been silly enough to say that even if people could have heard you. Suppose he had!”
“Why should he care,” said Amabel simply. “One can’t help thinking things. If it happened he would be the Earl of Lawdor and—”
She fell again into sweet reflection while Alice giggled44 a little more. Then she herself stopped and thought also. After all perhaps—! One had to be practical. The tenor45 of her thoughts was such that she did not giggle43 again when Amabel broke the silence by whispering with tremulous, soft devoutness46.
“Alice—do you think that praying really helps?”
“I’ve prayed for things but I never got them,” answered Alice. “But you know what the Vicar said on Sunday in sermon about ‘Ask and ye shall receive’.”
“Perhaps you haven’t prayed in the right spirit,” Amabel suggested with true piety47. “Shall we—shall we try? Let us get out of bed and kneel down.”
“Get out of bed and kneel down yourself,” was Alice’s sympathetic rejoinder. “You wouldn’t take that much trouble for me.”
Amabel sat up on the edge of the bed. In the faint moonlight and her white night-gown she was almost angelic. She held the end of the long fair soft plait hanging over her shoulder and her eyes were full of reproach.
“I think you ought to take some interest,” she said plaintively48. “You know there would be more chances for you and the others—if I were not here.”
“I’ll wait until you are not here,” replied the unstirred Alice.
But Amabel felt there was no time for waiting in this particular case. A yacht which “came in” might so soon “put out”. She knelt down, clasping her slim young hands and bending her forehead upon them. In effect she implored49 that Divine Wisdom might guide Mr. Robert Gareth-Lawless in the much desired path. She also made divers50 promises because nothing is so easy as to promise things. She ended with a gently fervent51 appeal that—if her prayer were granted—something “might happen” which would result in her becoming a Countess of Lawdor. One could not have put the request with greater tentative delicacy52.
She felt quite uplifted and a trifle saintly when she rose from her knees. Alice had actually fallen asleep already and she sighed quite tenderly as she slipped into the place beside her. Almost as her lovely little head touched the pillow her own eyes closed. Then she was asleep herself—and in the faintly moonlit room with the long soft plait trailing over her shoulder looked even more like an angel than before.
Whether or not as a result of this touching53 appeal to the Throne of Grace, Robert Gareth-Lawless did. In three months there was a wedding at the very ancient village church, and the flowerlike bridesmaids followed a flower of a bride to the altar and later in the day to the station from where Mr. and Mrs. Robert Gareth-Lawless went on their way to London. Perhaps Alice and Olive also knelt by the side of their white beds the night after the wedding, for on that propitious54 day two friends of the bridegroom’s—one of them the owner of the yacht—decided to return again to the place where there were to be found the most nymphlike of pretty creatures a man had ever by any chance beheld55. Such delicate little fair crowned heads, such delicious little tip-tilted noses and slim white throats, such ripples56 of gay chatter58 and nonsense! When a man has fortune enough of his own why not take the prettiest thing he sees? So Alice and Olive were borne away also and poor Mr. and Mrs. Darrel breathed sighs of relief and there were not only more chances but causes for bright hopefulness in the once crowded house which now had rooms to spare.
A certain inattention on the part of the Deity59 was no doubt responsible for the fact that “something” did not “happen” to the family of Lord Lawdor. On the contrary his four little giants of sons throve astonishingly and a few months after the Gareth-Lawless wedding Lady Lawdor—a trifle effusively60, as it were—presented her husband with twin male infants so robust61 that they were humorously known for years afterwards as the “Twin Herculeses.”
By that time Amabel had become “Feather” and despite Robert’s ingenious and carefully detailed62 method of living upon nothing whatever, had many reasons for knowing that “life is a back street in London” is not a matter of beds of roses. Since the back street must be the “right street” and its accompaniments must wear an aspect of at least seeming to belong to the right order of detachment and fashionable ease, one was always in debt and forced to keep out of the way of duns, and obliged to pretend things and tell lies with aptness and outward gaiety. Sometimes one actually was so far driven to the wall that one could not keep most important engagements and the invention of plausible63 excuses demanded absolute genius. The slice of a house between the two big ones was a rash feature of the honeymoon64 but a year of giving smart little dinners in it and going to smart big dinners from it in a smart if small brougham ended in a condition somewhat akin6 to the feat20 of balancing oneself on the edge of a sword.
Then Robin65 was born. She was an intruder and a calamity66 of course. Nobody had contemplated67 her for a moment. Feather cried for a week when she first announced the probability of her advent68. Afterwards however she managed to forget the approaching annoyance69 and went to parties and danced to the last hour continuing to be a great success because her prettiness was delicious and her diaphanous mentality70 was no strain upon the minds of her admirers male and female.
That a Feather should become a parent gave rise to much wit of light weight when Robin in the form of a bundle of lace was carried down by her nurse to be exhibited in the gaudy crowded little drawing-room in the slice of a house in the Mayfair street.
It was the Head of the House of Coombe who asked the first question about her.
“What will you do with her?” he inquired detachedly.
The frequently referred to “babe unborn” could not have presented a gaze of purer innocence71 than did the lovely Feather. Her eyes of larkspur blueness were clear of any thought or intention as spring water is clear at its unclouded best.
“Do!” repeated. “What is it people ‘do’ with babies? I suppose the nurse knows. I don’t. I wouldn’t touch her for the world. She frightens me.”
“I shall call her Robin,” she said. “Her name is really Roberta as she couldn’t be called Robert. People will turn round to look at a girl when they hear her called Robin. Besides she has eyes like a robin. I wish she’d open them and let you see.”
By chance she did open them at the moment—quite slowly. They were dark liquid brown and seemed to be all lustrous73 iris74 which gazed unmovingly at the object in of focus. That object was the Head of the House of Coombe.
“She is staring at me. There is antipathy75 in her gaze,” he said, and stared back unmovingly also, but with a sort of cold interest.
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1
kaleidoscopic
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| adj.千变万化的 | |
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chaos
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| n.混乱，无秩序 | |
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ingenuousness
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| n.率直；正直；老实 | |
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adaptable
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| adj.能适应的，适应性强的，可改编的 | |
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previously
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| adv.以前，先前（地） | |
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akin
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| adj.同族的，类似的 | |
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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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dingy
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| adj.昏暗的，肮脏的 | |
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exalted
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| adj.(地位等)高的，崇高的；尊贵的，高尚的 | |
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inordinate
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| adj.无节制的；过度的 | |
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gaudy
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| adj.华而不实的；俗丽的 | |
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kennel
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| n.狗舍，狗窝 | |
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mansions
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| n.宅第，公馆，大厦( mansion的名词复数 ) | |
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inordinately
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| adv.无度地，非常地 | |
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embodied
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| v.表现( embody的过去式和过去分词 )；象征；包括；包含 | |
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entity
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| n.实体，独立存在体，实际存在物 | |
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diaphanous
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| adj.(布)精致的，半透明的 | |
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texture
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| n.(织物)质地；(材料)构造；结构；肌理 | |
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prettily
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| adv.优美地；可爱地 | |
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feat
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| n.功绩；武艺，技艺；adj.灵巧的，漂亮的，合适的 | |
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vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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chaotic
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| adj.混沌的，一片混乱的，一团糟的 | |
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deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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jersey
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| n.运动衫 | |
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begotten
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| v.为…之生父( beget的过去分词 )；产生，引起 | |
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appallingly
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| 毛骨悚然地 | |
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inadequate
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| adj.(for,to)不充足的，不适当的 | |
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shuffle
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| n.拖著脚走，洗纸牌；v.拖曳，慢吞吞地走 | |
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yearning
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| a.渴望的；向往的；怀念的 | |
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bluebells
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| n.圆叶风铃草( bluebell的名词复数 ) | |
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huddled
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| 挤在一起（huddle的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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exultation
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| n.狂喜，得意 | |
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grumbled
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| 抱怨( grumble的过去式和过去分词 )； 发牢骚； 咕哝； 发哼声 | |
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shudder
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| v.战粟，震动，剧烈地摇晃；n.战粟，抖动 | |
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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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prospects
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| n.希望，前途(恒为复数) | |
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indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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maiden
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| n.少女，处女；adj.未婚的，纯洁的，无经验的 | |
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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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teaspoonful
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| n.一茶匙的量；一茶匙容量 | |
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giggling
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| v.咯咯地笑( giggle的现在分词 ) | |
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smother
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| vt./vi.使窒息；抑制；闷死；n.浓烟；窒息 | |
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giggle
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| n.痴笑，咯咯地笑；v.咯咯地笑着说 | |
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giggled
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| v.咯咯地笑( giggle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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tenor
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| n.男高音（歌手），次中音（乐器），要旨，大意 | |
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devoutness
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| 朝拜 | |
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piety
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| n.虔诚，虔敬 | |
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plaintively
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| adv.悲哀地，哀怨地 | |
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implored
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| 恳求或乞求（某人）( implore的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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divers
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| adj.不同的；种种的 | |
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fervent
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| adj.热的，热烈的，热情的 | |
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delicacy
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| n.精致，细微，微妙，精良；美味，佳肴 | |
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touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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propitious
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| adj.吉利的；顺利的 | |
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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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ripples
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| 逐渐扩散的感觉( ripple的名词复数 ) | |
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ripple
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| n.涟波，涟漪，波纹，粗钢梳；vt.使...起涟漪，使起波纹； vi.呈波浪状，起伏前进 | |
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chatter
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| vi.／n.喋喋不休；短促尖叫；(牙齿)打战 | |
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59
deity
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| n.神，神性；被奉若神明的人(或物) | |
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effusively
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| adv.变溢地，热情洋溢地 | |
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61
robust
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| adj.强壮的，强健的，粗野的，需要体力的，浓的 | |
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detailed
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| adj.详细的，详尽的，极注意细节的，完全的 | |
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plausible
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| adj.似真实的，似乎有理的，似乎可信的 | |
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honeymoon
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| n.蜜月（假期）；vi.度蜜月 | |
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robin
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| n.知更鸟，红襟鸟 | |
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calamity
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| n.灾害，祸患，不幸事件 | |
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contemplated
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| adj. 预期的 动词contemplate的过去分词形式 | |
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68
advent
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| n.(重要事件等的)到来，来临 | |
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annoyance
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| n.恼怒，生气，烦恼 | |
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mentality
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| n.心理，思想，脑力 | |
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innocence
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| n.无罪；天真；无害 | |
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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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lustrous
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| adj.有光泽的；光辉的 | |
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iris
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| n.虹膜，彩虹 | |
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antipathy
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| n.憎恶；反感，引起反感的人或事物 | |
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