"Love, thou art bitter."
—Blaine.
Mr. Amherst, having in a weak moment given his consent to the ball, repays himself by being as unamiable afterward1 as he can well manage.
"You can have your music and the supper from London, if you wish it," he says to Marcia, one day, when he has inveighed2 against the whole proceeding3 in language that borders on the abusive; "but if you think I am going to have an army of decorators down here, turning the house into a fancy bazar, and making one feel a stranger in one's own rooms, you are very much mistaken."
"I think you are right, dear," Marcia answers, with her customary meekness4: "people of that kind are always more trouble than anything else. And no doubt we shall be able to do all that is necessary quite as well ourselves."
"As to that you can, of course, please yourself. Though why you cannot dance without filling the rooms with earwigs and dying flowers I can't conceive."
Mr. Amherst's word being like the law of the Medes and Persians, that altereth not, no one disputes it. They couple a few opprobrious5 epithets6 with his name just at first, but finally, putting on an air of resolution, declare themselves determined7 and ready to outdo any decorators in the kingdom.
"We shall wake up in the morning after the ball to find ourselves famous," says Lady Stafford. "The county will ring with our praises. But we must have help: we cannot depend upon broken reeds." With a reproachful glance at Sir Penthony, who is looking the picture of laziness. "Talbot Lowry, of course, will assist us; he goes without saying."
"I hope he will come without saying," puts in Sir Penthony; "it would be much more to the purpose. Any smart young tradesmen among your fellows, Mottie?"
"Unless Grainger. You know Grainger, Lady Stafford?"
"Indeed I do. What! is he stationed with you now? He must have re-joined very lately."
"Only the other day. Would he be of any use to you?"
"The very greatest."
"What! Spooney?" says Tedcastle, laughing. "I don't believe he could climb a ladder to save his life. Think of his pretty hands and his sweet little feet."
"And his lisp,—and his new eyeglass," says Stafford.
"Never mind; I will have him here," declares Cecil, gayly. "In spite of all you say, I positively8 adore that Grainger boy."
"You seem to have a passion for fools," says Sir Penthony, a little bitterly, feeling some anger toward her.
"And you seem to have a talent for incivility," retorts she, rather nettled9. This ends the conversation.
Nevertheless Mr. Grainger is asked to come and give what assistance he can toward adorning10 Herst, which, when they take into consideration the ladylike whiteness of his hands and the general imbecility of his countenance11, is not set at a very high value.
He is a tall, lanky12 youth, with more than the usual allowance of bone, but rather less of intellect; he is, however, full of ambition and smiles, and is amiability13 itself all round. He is also desperately14 addicted15 to Lady Stafford. He has a dear little moustache, that undergoes much encouragement from his thumb and first finger, and he has a captivating way of saying "How charming!" or, "Very sweet," to anything that pleases him. And, as most things seem to meet his approbation16, he makes these two brilliant remarks with startling frequency.
To Cecil he is a joy. In him she evidently finds a fund of amusement, as, during the three days it takes them to convert the ball-room, tea-room, etc., into perfumed bowers17, she devotes herself exclusively to his society.
Perhaps the undisguised chagrin18 of Sir Penthony and Talbot Lowry as they witness her civility to Grainger goes far to add a zest19 to her enjoyment20 of that young man's exceedingly small talk.
After dinner on the third day all is nearly completed. A few more leaves, a few more flowers, a wreath or two to be distributed here and there, is all that remains21 to be done.
"I hate decorating in October," Cecil says. "There is such a dearth22 of flowers, and the gardeners get so greedy about the house plants. Every blossom looks as if it had been made the most of."
"Well, I don't know," replies Mr. Grainger, squeezing his glass into his eye with much difficulty, it being a new importation and hard to manage. When he has altered all his face into an appalling23 grin, and completely blocked the sight of one eye, he goes on affably: "I think all this—er—very charming."
"No? Do you? I'm so glad. Do you know I believe you have wonderful taste? The way in which you tied that last bunch of trailing ivy24 had something about it absolutely artistic25."
"If it hadn't fallen to pieces directly afterward, which rather spoiled the effect," says Sir Penthony, with an unkind smile.
"Did it? How sad! But then the idea remains, and that is everything. Now, Mr. Grainger, please stand here—(will you move a little bit, Sir Penthony? Thanks)—just here—while I go up this ladder to satisfy myself about these flowers. By the bye,"—pausing on one of the rungs to look back,—"suppose I were to fall? Do you think you could catch me?"
"I only wish you would give me the opportunity of trying," replies he, weakly.
"Beastly puppy!" mutters Sir Penthony, under his breath.
"Perhaps I shall, if you are good. Now look. Are they straight? Do they look well?" asks Cecil.
"Very sweet," replies Mr. Grainger.
"Potts, hand me up some nails," exclaims Lowry, impatiently, who is on another ladder close by, and has been an attentive26 and disgusted listener; addressing Potts, who stands lost in contemplation of Grainger. "Look sharp, can't you? And tell me what you think of this." Pointing to his design on the wall. "Is it 'all your fancy painted it?' Is it 'lovely' and 'divine?' Answer."
"Very sour, I think," returns Mr. Potts, hitting off Grainger's voice to a nicety, while maintaining a countenance sufficiently27 innocent to border on the imbecile.
Both Sir Penthony and Lowry laugh immoderately, while Cecil turns away to hide the smile that may betray her. Grainger himself is the only one wholly unconscious of any joke. He smiles, indeed, genially28, because they smile, and happily refrains from inquiry29 of any sort.
Meantime in the tea-room—that opens off the supper-room, where the others are engaged—Molly and Philip are busy arranging bouquets30 chosen from among a basketful of flowers that has just been brought in by one of the under-gardeners.
Philip is on his knees,—almost at Molly's feet,—while she bends over him searching for the choicest buds.
"What a lovely ring!" says Philip, presently, staying in his task to take her hand and examine the diamond that glitters on it. "Was it a present?"
"Of course. Where could such a 'beggar-maid' as I am get money enough to buy such a ring?"
"Will you think me rude if I ask you the every-day name of your King Cophetua?"
"I have no King Cophetua."
"Then tell me where you got it?"
"What a question!" Lightly. "Perhaps from my own true love. Perhaps it is the little fetter31 that seals my engagement to him. Perhaps it isn't."
"Yet you said just now——"
"About that eccentric king? Well, I spoke32 truly. Royalty33 has not yet thrown itself at my feet. Still,"—coquettishly,—"that is no reason why I should look coldly upon all commoners."
"Be serious, Molly, for one moment," he entreats34, the look of passionate35 earnestness she so much dislikes coming over his face, darkening instead of brightening it. "Sometimes I am half mad with doubt. Tell me the truth,—now,—here. Are you engaged? Is there anything between you and—Luttrell?"
The spirit of mischief36 has laid hold of Molly. She cares nothing at all for Shadwell. Of all the men she has met at Herst he attracts her least. She scarcely understands the wild love with which she has inspired him; she cannot sympathize with his emotion.
"Well, if you compel me to confess it," she says, lowering her eyes, 'there is."
"It is true, then!" cries he, rising to his feet and turning deadly pale. "My fears did not deceive me."
"Quite true. There is a whole long room 'between me' and Mr. Luttrell and"—dropping her voice—"you." Here she laughs merrily and with all her heart. To her it is a jest,—no more.
"How a woman—the very best woman—loves to torture!" exclaims he, anger and relief struggling in his tone. "Oh, that I dared believe that latter part of your sentence,—that I could stand between you and all the world!"
"'Fain would I climb, but that I fear to fall,'" quotes Molly, jestingly. "You know the answer? 'If thy heart fail thee, do not climb at all.'"
"Is that a challenge?" demands he, eagerly, going nearer to her.
"I don't know." Waving him back. "Hear the oracle37 again. I feel strong in appropriate rhyme to-night:
"'He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,
Who fears to put it to the touch
To win or lose it all.'"
They are quite alone. Some one has given the door leading to the adjoining apartment a push that has entirely38 closed it. Molly, in her white evening gown and pale-blue ribbons, with a bunch of her favorite roses at her breast, is looking up at him, a little mocking smile upon her lips. She is cold,—perhaps a shade amused,—without one particle of sentiment.
"I fear nothing," cries Philip, in a low impassioned tone, made unwisely bold by her words, seizing her hands and pressing warm, unwelcome kisses on them; "whether I win or lose, I will speak now. Yet what shall I tell you that you do not already know? I love you,—my idol,—my darling! Oh, Molly! do not look so coldly on me."
"Don't be earnest, Philip," interrupts she, with a frown, and a sudden change of tone, raising her head, and regarding him with distasteful hauteur39; "there is nothing I detest40 so much; and your earnestness especially wearies me. When I spoke I was merely jesting, as you must have known. I do not want your love. I have told you so before. Let my hands go, Philip; your touch is hateful to me."
He drops her hands as though they burned him; and she, with flushed cheeks and a still frowning brow, turns abruptly41 away, leaving him alone,—angered, hurt, but still adoring.
Ten minutes later, her heart—a tender one—misgives her. She has been unjust to him,—unkind. She will return and make such reparation as lies in her power.
With a light step she returns to the tea-room, where she left him, and, looking gently in, finds he has neither stirred nor raised his head since her cruel words cut him to the heart. Ten minutes,—a long time,—and all consumed in thoughts of her! Feeling still more contrite42, she approaches him.
"Why, Philip," she says, with an attempt at playfulness, "still enduring 'grinding torments43?' What have I said to you? You have taken my foolish words too much to heart. That is not wise. Sometimes I hardly know myself what it is I have been saying."
She has come very near to him,—so near that gazing up at him appealingly, she brings her face in dangerously close proximity44 to his. A mad desire to kiss the lips that sue so sweetly for a pardon fills him, yet he dares not do it. Although a man not given to self-restraint where desire is at elbow urging him on, he now stands subdued45, unnerved, in Molly's presence.
"Have I really distressed46 you?" asks she, softly, his strange silence rendering47 her still more remorseful48. "Come,"—laying her hand upon his arm,—"tell me what I have done."
"'Sweet, you have trod on a heart,'" quotes Philip, in so low a tone as to be almost unheard. He crosses his hand tightly over hers for an instant; a moment later, and it is she who—this time—finds herself alone.
In the next room success is crowning their efforts. When Molly re-enters, she finds the work almost completed. Just a finishing touch here and there, and all is ended.
"I suppose I should consider myself in luck: I have still a little skin left," says Sir Penthony, examining his hand with tender solicitude49. "I don't think I fancy decorating: I shan't take to the trade."
"You—should have put on gloves, you know, and that," says Grainger, who is regarding his dainty fingers with undisguised sadness,—something that is almost an expression on his face.
"Awfully nice," replies Molly.
"Quite too awfully awful," exclaims Mr. Potts, with exaggerated enthusiasm, and is instantly suppressed.
"If you cannot exhibit greater decorum, Potts, we shall be obliged to put your head in a bag," says Sir Penthony, severely51. "I consider 'awfully' quite the correct word. What with the ivy and the gigantic size of those paper roses, the room presents quite a startling appearance."
"Well, I'm sure they are far prettier than Lady Harriet Nitemair's; and she made such a fuss about hers last spring," says Cecil, rather injured.
"Not to be named in the same day," declares Luttrell, who had not been at Lady Harriet Nitemair's.
"Why, Tedcastle, you were not there; you were on your way home from India at that time."
"Was I? By Jove! so I was. Never mind, I take your word for it, and stick to my opinion," replies Luttrell, unabashed.
"I really think we ought to christen our work." Mr. Potts puts in dreamily, being in a thirsty mood; and christened it is in champagne52.
Potts himself, having drunk his own and every one else's health many times, grows gradually gayer and gayer. To wind up this momentous53 evening without making it remarkable54 in any way strikes him as being a tame proceeding. "To do or die" suddenly occurs to him, and he instantly acts upon it.
Seeing his two former allies standing55 rather apart from the others, he makes for them and thus addresses them:
"Tell you what," he says, with much geniality56, "it feels like Christmas, and crackers57, and small games, don't it? I feel up to anything. And I have a capital idea in my head. Wouldn't it be rather a joke to frighten the others?"
"It would," says Cecil, decidedly.
"Would it?" says Molly, diffidently.
"I have a first-rate plan; I can make you both look so like ghosts that you would frighten the unsuspecting into fits."
"First, Plantagenet, before we go any further into your ghostly schemes, answer me this: is there any gunpowder58 about it?"
"None." Laughing. "You just dress yourselves in white sheets, or that, and hold a plate in your hands filled with whiskey and salt, and—there you are. You have no idea of the tremendous effect. You will be more like a corpse59 than anything you can imagine."
"Do the whiskey and the salt ever blow up?" asks Molly, cautiously. "Because if so——"
"No, they don't; of course not. Say nothing about it to the others, and we shall astonish them by and by. It is an awfully becoming thing, too," says Potts, with a view to encouragement; "you will look like marble statues."
"We are trusting you again," says Cecil, regarding him fixedly61. "Plantagenet, if you should again be our undoing——"
"Not the slightest fear of a fiasco this time," says Potts, comfortably.
点击收听单词发音
1 afterward | |
adv.后来;以后 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
2 inveighed | |
v.猛烈抨击,痛骂,谩骂( inveigh的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
3 proceeding | |
n.行动,进行,(pl.)会议录,学报 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
4 meekness | |
n.温顺,柔和 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
5 opprobrious | |
adj.可耻的,辱骂的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
6 epithets | |
n.(表示性质、特征等的)词语( epithet的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
7 determined | |
adj.坚定的;有决心的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
8 positively | |
adv.明确地,断然,坚决地;实在,确实 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
9 nettled | |
v.拿荨麻打,拿荨麻刺(nettle的过去式与过去分词形式) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
10 adorning | |
修饰,装饰物 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
11 countenance | |
n.脸色,面容;面部表情;vt.支持,赞同 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
12 lanky | |
adj.瘦长的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
13 amiability | |
n.和蔼可亲的,亲切的,友善的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
14 desperately | |
adv.极度渴望地,绝望地,孤注一掷地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
15 addicted | |
adj.沉溺于....的,对...上瘾的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
16 approbation | |
n.称赞;认可 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
17 bowers | |
n.(女子的)卧室( bower的名词复数 );船首锚;阴凉处;鞠躬的人 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
18 chagrin | |
n.懊恼;气愤;委屈 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
19 zest | |
n.乐趣;滋味,风味;兴趣 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
20 enjoyment | |
n.乐趣;享有;享用 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
21 remains | |
n.剩余物,残留物;遗体,遗迹 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
22 dearth | |
n.缺乏,粮食不足,饥谨 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
23 appalling | |
adj.骇人听闻的,令人震惊的,可怕的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
24 ivy | |
n.常青藤,常春藤 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
25 artistic | |
adj.艺术(家)的,美术(家)的;善于艺术创作的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
26 attentive | |
adj.注意的,专心的;关心(别人)的,殷勤的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
27 sufficiently | |
adv.足够地,充分地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
28 genially | |
adv.亲切地,和蔼地;快活地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
29 inquiry | |
n.打听,询问,调查,查问 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
30 bouquets | |
n.花束( bouquet的名词复数 );(酒的)芳香 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
31 fetter | |
n./vt.脚镣,束缚 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
32 spoke | |
n.(车轮的)辐条;轮辐;破坏某人的计划;阻挠某人的行动 v.讲,谈(speak的过去式);说;演说;从某种观点来说 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
33 royalty | |
n.皇家,皇族 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
34 entreats | |
恳求,乞求( entreat的第三人称单数 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
35 passionate | |
adj.热情的,热烈的,激昂的,易动情的,易怒的,性情暴躁的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
36 mischief | |
n.损害,伤害,危害;恶作剧,捣蛋,胡闹 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
37 oracle | |
n.神谕,神谕处,预言 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
38 entirely | |
ad.全部地,完整地;完全地,彻底地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
39 hauteur | |
n.傲慢 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
40 detest | |
vt.痛恨,憎恶 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
41 abruptly | |
adv.突然地,出其不意地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
42 contrite | |
adj.悔悟了的,后悔的,痛悔的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
43 torments | |
(肉体或精神上的)折磨,痛苦( torment的名词复数 ); 造成痛苦的事物[人] | |
参考例句: |
|
|
44 proximity | |
n.接近,邻近 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
45 subdued | |
adj. 屈服的,柔和的,减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
46 distressed | |
痛苦的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
47 rendering | |
n.表现,描写 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
48 remorseful | |
adj.悔恨的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
49 solicitude | |
n.焦虑 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
50 awfully | |
adv.可怕地,非常地,极端地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
51 severely | |
adv.严格地;严厉地;非常恶劣地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
52 champagne | |
n.香槟酒;微黄色 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
53 momentous | |
adj.重要的,重大的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
54 remarkable | |
adj.显著的,异常的,非凡的,值得注意的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
55 standing | |
n.持续,地位;adj.永久的,不动的,直立的,不流动的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
56 geniality | |
n.和蔼,诚恳;愉快 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
57 crackers | |
adj.精神错乱的,癫狂的n.爆竹( cracker的名词复数 );薄脆饼干;(认为)十分愉快的事;迷人的姑娘 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
58 gunpowder | |
n.火药 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
59 corpse | |
n.尸体,死尸 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
60 murmurs | |
n.低沉、连续而不清的声音( murmur的名词复数 );低语声;怨言;嘀咕 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
61 fixedly | |
adv.固定地;不屈地,坚定不移地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
欢迎访问英文小说网 |