A week or two later Hurstmanceaux saw a paragraph in the morning papers which made him throw them hastily aside, leave his breakfast unfinished, and go to his sister’s house in Stanhope Street. Her ladyship was in her bath. “Say I shall return in half an hour. I come on an urgent matter.” Leaving that message with her servants he went to walk away the time in the Park. It was a fine and breezy morning, but Hurstmanceaux, who always hated the town, saw no beauty in the budding elms, or the cycling women, or even in Jack1 or Boo, who were trotting2 along on their little black Shetlands. When the time was up he waited restlessly another half hour in his sister’s boudoir, where he felt and looked like a St. Bernard dog shut up in a pen at a show.
She at last made her appearance, looking charming, with her hair scarce dry gathered loosely up with a turquoise-studded comb and a morning-gown of cloudy lace and chiffon floating about her; a modern Aphrodite.
“You have made your husband a director in the City,” said Hurstmanceaux without preface, almost before she had entered the room.
She was prepared for the attack and smiled, rather impertinently.
“What does it matter to you, Ronnie?”
“A director of a bank!”
“’Tisn’t your bank, is it?”
“A director of a bank!” he repeated. It seemed to him so monstrous3, so shocking that he had no words left.
“They won’t let him into the strong-room,” said Cocky’s wife. “It may be rather absurd; but it isn’t more absurd than numbers of other things—than your being asked to be a mayor, for instance.”
“If I had accepted I should not have disgraced the mayoralty.”
[121]“Cocky won’t disgrace anything. They’ll look after him.”
“Who did it?”
“Is that your business, dear Ronnie?”
“Oh, of course, it was that miserable4 cad from Dakota, whom you forced through the gates of Otterbourne House.”
“If you know, why ask?”
“What an insult to us all! What a position to put us in! When everybody’s seen the man at your ball where we all were——!”
His sister laughed a little, but she was bored and annoyed. What business was it of his? Why could she not be let alone to arrange these little matters to her own convenience in any ingenious way she chose?
“How could you make the duke appear to play such a part?” said Hurstmanceaux. “He is the soul of honor and of proper pride. What have you made him look like? It is the kind of thing that is a disgrace to the country! It is the kind of thing that makes the whole peerage ridiculous and contemptible6. Imagine what the Radical7 press will say! Such scandalous jobbery justifies8 the worst accusations9.”
“Don’t read the Radical newspapers then. I shall read them, because they will be so deliciously funny. They are always so amusing about Cocky.”
“You have singular notions of amusement. I do not share them.”
“I do not see the comedy of what is disreputable and dishonorable. His father will be most cruelly distressed11.”
“He should give us more money then. We must do what we can to keep ourselves; Poodle never helps us. Well—hardly ever.”
“Otterbourne has been endlessly good to you. It is no use for him or anybody else to fill a sieve13 with water.”
“Why don’t he give us the house? We are obliged to[122] pay fifteen hundred a year for this nutshell, while he lives all alone in that huge place.”
“Why should he not live in his own house? What decent gentleman would have Cocky under his roof?”
“You have no kind of feeling, Ronnie. I ought to have Otterbourne House. I have always said so. I can’t give a ball here. Not even a little dance. Poodle might keep his own apartments, those he uses on the ground floor there, but we ought to have all the rest.”
“He allowed you to have that ball there the other night, and all the cost of it fell on him.”
“That is a great deal for him to do certainly! To lend us the house once in a season when it is our right to live in it altogether!”
“He does not think so.”
“No! Horrid14 selfish old man! Pretending to be young, too, with his flossy white hair and his absurd flirtations. Would you believe that he even made difficulties about our keeping our horses at his mews!”
“He probably knew that it meant his paying the forage15 bills. The duke is most generous and kind, and I think you ought to be more grateful to him than you are.”
“Oh, rubbish!” said Mouse, infinitely16 bored. “People who hate you to amuse yourself, who want you to live on a halfpenny a day, and who say something disagreeable whenever they open their lips, are always considered to be good to one. There is only one really good-natured thing that we ever wanted Poodle to do, and that was to let us live in Otterbourne House; and he has always refused. I am certain he will go on living for twenty years merely to keep us out of it!”
“Don’t wish him in his grave. As soon as your husband gets Otterbourne House he will sell it to make an hotel. A company has already spoken to him.”
“Perhaps. I cannot say. Ask your lawyer. But I know that an hotel company has made overtures18 to him for purchase or lease in event of the duke’s death—may it be many a day distant! He is an honest gentleman, and you and your husband and your cursed cad out of Dakota have made him look to English society as if he were[123] capable of having sold the honor of entrance to his house for a mess of pottage for his son’s thirsty maw.”
“My dear Ronald, how you excite yourself! Really there is no reason.”
Hurstmanceaux looked at her very wistfully.
“Can’t you see the dishonor of what you’ve done?” he said impatiently. “You coax19 and persecute20 Otterbourne until he allows you to take those new people to his house, and then you let the cad you take there make your husband a director of a bank of which the man is chairman! Can’t you see to what comment you expose us all? Of what wretched manœuvring you make us all look guilty? Have you any perception, no conscience, no common decency21? If Cocky were another kind of man than he is, such a thing would look a job. But being what he is, the transaction is something still more infamous22.”
She listened, so much amused, that she really could scarcely feel angry.
“My dear Ronald,” she said very impertinently, “you have a morality altogether of your own; it is so extremely old-fashioned that you can’t expect anybody to make themselves ridiculous by adopting it. As for ‘a job,’ isn’t the whole of government a job? When you’ve cleaned out Downing Street it will be time to bring your brooms in here.”
At that moment Cocky put his head in between the door-curtains and nodded to Hurstmanceaux. “She’s made me a guinea-pig, Ronnie,” he said, with his little thin laugh. “Didn’t think I should take to business, did you? Have you seen the papers? Lord, they’re such fun! I’ve bought ten copies of Truth.”
His wife laughed.
“It’s no use reading Truth to Ronnie. He’s no sense of fun; he never had.”
“I have some sense of shame,” replied Hurstmanceaux, looking with loathing23 on his brother-in-law’s thin, colorless, grinning face. “It is an old-fashioned thing; but if this wretched little cur were not too feeble for a man to touch, I would teach him some respect for it with a hunting-crop.”
Then he pushed past Cocky, who was still between the[124] door-curtains, and went downstairs to take his way to Otterbourne House.
“Jove! what a wax he’s in,” said Cocky, greatly diverted. “Just as if he didn’t know us by this time!”
“He is always so absurd,” replied Mouse. “He has no common sense and no perception.”
“He ought to go about in chain armor,” said Cocky, picking up Truth and reading for the fourth time, with infinite relish25, the description of himself as an “Hereditary26 Legislator in Mincing27 Lane.” “I am not a hereditary legislator yet,” he said as he read. “As I don’t get the halfpence, why should I get the kicks? That’s what I said to the mob in the park. Break the pater’s windows, don’t break mine. I’m plain John Orme, without a shilling to bless myself with, and the beggars cheered me! They’ll cheer you for any rot if they’re only in the mood for it; and if they aren’t in the mood, you might talk like Moses and Mahomet, they’d bawl28 you down—oh, get out you little beasts, damn you!”
This objurgation was addressed to the Blenheims, who, suddenly becoming aware of his presence, made for his trousers with that conviction that his immediate29 destruction would be a public service, which they shared with the editor of Truth.
Hurstmanceaux walked through the streets and felt his ears tingle30 as he heard the newsboys shouting the names of newspapers.
His sister had said rightly; he was not a man of his time; he was impetuous in action, warm in feeling, sensitive in honor; he had nothing of the cynical31 morality, the apathetic32 indifference33, the cool opportunism of modern men of his age. He was no philosopher, and he could not bring himself to smile at an unprincipled action. He felt as ashamed as though he were himself at fault, as he entered the duke’s apartments in Otterbourne House.
Hurstmanceaux and the duke had much regard for each other, but their conversation was usually somewhat guarded and reserved, for the one could not say all he thought of Otterbourne’s son, and the other could not say all he thought of Ronald’s sister. There were many[125] subjects on which they mutually preserved silence. But this appointment of Kenilworth seemed so monstrous to both that it broke the reserve between them. They each felt to owe the other an apology.
“My dear Ronald,” said the duke, holding out his hand, “I know why you have come. I thank you.”
“I dare not offer any plea in her defence,” replied Hurstmanceaux huskily; “I can only tell you how grieved I am that your constant kindness and forbearance to my sister should meet with so base a requital34.”
The duke sighed.
“I am bound in honor to remember that the basest of men is her husband—and my son!”
They were both silent.
The morning papers were lying on a table by the duke’s side, amongst them the green cover of Truth.
“That is no excuse for her,” said her brother at length. “This thing is of her devising much more than it is his.”
“There are women who are a moral phylloxera,” replied Otterbourne. “They corrupt35 all they touch. But in fairness to her I must say that it was chiefly my son who persuaded me to let this man Massarene into my house. They made me an accomplice36 in a job! Perhaps,” the duke added with a sad smile, “the world knows me well enough to give me credit for having been an unconscious accomplice—for having been a fool, not a knave37!”
To these two honest gentlemen the matter was one of excruciating pain, and of what seemed to them both intolerable humiliation38. But society, though it laughed loudly for five minutes over the article on an hereditary legislator, forgot it five minutes later, and was not shocked: it is too well-used in these days to similar transactions between an impoverished39 nobility, with unpaid40 rents and ruinous death-duties, and a new-born plutocracy41 creeping upward on its swollen42 belly43 like the serpent of Scripture44.
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1
jack
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| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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2
trotting
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| 小跑，急走( trot的现在分词 )； 匆匆忙忙地走 | |
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3
monstrous
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| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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4
miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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5
utterance
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| n.用言语表达，话语，言语 | |
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6
contemptible
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| adj.可鄙的，可轻视的，卑劣的 | |
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7
radical
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| n.激进份子，原子团，根号；adj.根本的，激进的，彻底的 | |
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8
justifies
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| 证明…有理( justify的第三人称单数 )； 为…辩护； 对…作出解释； 为…辩解（或辩护） | |
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9
accusations
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| n.指责( accusation的名词复数 )；指控；控告；（被告发、控告的）罪名 | |
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10
stilts
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| n.（支撑建筑物高出地面或水面的）桩子，支柱( stilt的名词复数 )；高跷 | |
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11
distressed
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| 痛苦的 | |
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12
growl
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| v.（狗等）嗥叫，（炮等）轰鸣；n.嗥叫，轰鸣 | |
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13
sieve
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| n.筛，滤器，漏勺 | |
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14
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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15
forage
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| n.(牛马的)饲料，粮草；v.搜寻，翻寻 | |
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16
infinitely
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| adv.无限地，无穷地 | |
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17
entail
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| vt.使承担，使成为必要，需要 | |
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18
overtures
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| n.主动的表示，提议；（向某人做出的）友好表示、姿态或提议( overture的名词复数 )；（歌剧、芭蕾舞、音乐剧等的）序曲，前奏曲 | |
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19
coax
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| v.哄诱，劝诱，用诱哄得到，诱取 | |
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20
persecute
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| vt.迫害，虐待；纠缠，骚扰 | |
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21
decency
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| n.体面，得体，合宜，正派，庄重 | |
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22
infamous
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| adj.声名狼藉的，臭名昭著的，邪恶的 | |
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23
loathing
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| n.厌恶，憎恨v.憎恨，厌恶( loathe的现在分词)；极不喜欢 | |
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24
shrilly
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| 尖声的； 光亮的，耀眼的 | |
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25
relish
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| n.滋味，享受，爱好，调味品；vt.加调味料，享受，品味；vi.有滋味 | |
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26
hereditary
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| adj.遗传的，遗传性的，可继承的，世袭的 | |
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27
mincing
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| adj.矫饰的；v.切碎；切碎 | |
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28
bawl
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| v.大喊大叫，大声地喊，咆哮 | |
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29
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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30
tingle
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| vi.感到刺痛，感到激动；n.刺痛，激动 | |
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31
cynical
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| adj.(对人性或动机)怀疑的，不信世道向善的 | |
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32
apathetic
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| adj.冷漠的，无动于衷的 | |
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33
indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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34
requital
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| n.酬劳；报复 | |
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35
corrupt
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| v.贿赂，收买；adj.腐败的，贪污的 | |
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36
accomplice
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| n.从犯，帮凶，同谋 | |
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37
knave
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| n.流氓；（纸牌中的）杰克 | |
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38
humiliation
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| n.羞辱 | |
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39
impoverished
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| adj.穷困的，无力的，用尽了的v.使（某人）贫穷( impoverish的过去式和过去分词 )；使（某物）贫瘠或恶化 | |
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40
unpaid
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| adj.未付款的，无报酬的 | |
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41
plutocracy
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| n.富豪统治 | |
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42
swollen
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| adj.肿大的，水涨的；v.使变大，肿胀 | |
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43
belly
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| n.肚子，腹部；(像肚子一样)鼓起的部分，膛 | |
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44
scripture
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| n.经文，圣书，手稿；Scripture:(常用复数)《圣经》，《圣经》中的一段 | |
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