WITHIN Justine there was a moment's darkness; then, like terror-struck workers rallying to their tasks, every faculty1 was again at its post, receiving and transmitting signals, taking observations, anticipating orders, making her brain ring with the hum of a controlled activity.
She had known the sensation before--the transmuting2 of terror and pity into this miraculous3 lucidity4 of thought and action; but never had it snatched her from such depths. Oh, thank heaven for her knowledge now--for the trained mind that could take command of her senses and bend them firmly to its service!
Wyant seconded her well, after a moment's ague-fit of fear. She pitied and pardoned the moment, aware of its cause, and respecting him for the way in which he rose above it into the clear air of professional self-command. Through the first hours they worked shoulder to shoulder, conscious of each other only as of kindred will-powers, stretched to the utmost tension of discernment and activity, and hardly needing speech or look to further their swift co-operation. It was thus that she had known him in the hospital, in the heat of his youthful zeal5: the doctor she liked best to work with, because no other so tempered ardour with judgment6.
The great surgeon, arriving from town at midnight, confirmed his diagnosis7: there was undoubted injury to the spine8. Other consultants9 were summoned in haste, and in the winter dawn the verdict was pronounced--a fractured vertebra, and possibly lesion of the cord....
Justine got a moment alone when the surgeons returned to the sick-room. Other nurses were there now, capped, aproned, quickly and silently unpacking10 their appliances.... She must call a halt, clear her brain again, decide rapidly what was to be done next.... Oh, if only the crawling hours could bring Amherst! It was strange that there was no telegram yet--no, not strange, after all, since it was barely six in the morning, and her message had not been despatched till seven the night before. It was not unlikely that, in that little southern settlement, the telegraph office closed at six.
She stood in Bessy's sitting-room11, her forehead pressed to the window-pane, her eyes straining out into the thin February darkness, through which the morning star swam white. As soon as she had yielded her place to the other nurses her nervous tension relaxed, and she hung again above the deeps of anguish12, terrified and weak. In a moment the necessity for action would snatch her back to a firm footing--her thoughts would clear, her will affirm itself, all the wheels of the complex machine resume their functions. But now she felt only the horror....
She knew so well what was going on in the next room. Dr. Garford, the great surgeon, who had known her at Saint Elizabeth's, had evidently expected her to take command of the nurses he had brought from town; but there were enough without her, and there were other cares which, for the moment, she only could assume--the despatching of messages to the scattered13 family, the incessant14 telephoning and telegraphing to town, the general guidance of the household swinging rudderless in the tide of disaster. Cicely, above all, must be watched over and guarded from alarm. The little governess, reduced to a twittering heap of fears, had been quarantined in a distant room till reason returned to her; and the child, meanwhile, slept quietly in the old nurse's care.
Cicely would wake presently, and Justine must go up to her with a bright face; other duties would press thick on the heels of this; their feet were already on the threshold. But meanwhile she could only follow in imagination what was going on in the other room....
She had often thought with dread15 of such a contingency16. She always sympathized too much with her patients--she knew it was the joint17 in her armour18. Her quick-gushing pity lay too near that professional exterior19 which she had managed to endue20 with such a bright glaze21 of insensibility that some sentimental22 patients--without much the matter--had been known to call her "a little hard." How, then, should she steel herself if it fell to her lot to witness a cruel accident to some one she loved, and to have to perform a nurse's duties, steadily23, expertly, unflinchingly, while every fibre was torn with inward anguish?
She knew the horror of it now--and she knew also that her self-enforced exile from the sick-room was a hundred times worse. To stand there, knowing, with each tick of the clock, what was being said and done within--how the great luxurious24 room, with its pale draperies and scented25 cushions, and the hundred pretty trifles strewing26 the lace toilet-table and the delicate old furniture, was being swept bare, cleared for action like a ship's deck, drearily27 garnished28 with rows of instruments, rolls of medicated cotton, oiled silk, bottles, bandages, water-pillows--all the grim paraphernalia29 of the awful rites30 of pain: to know this, and to be able to call up with torturing vividness that poor pale face on the pillows, vague-eyed, expressionless, perhaps, as she had last seen it, or--worse yet--stirred already with the first creeping pangs31 of consciousness: to have these images slowly, deliberately32 burn themselves into her brain, and to be aware, at the same time, of that underlying33 moral disaster, of which the accident seemed the monstrous34 outward symbol--ah, this was worse than anything she had ever dreamed!
She knew that the final verdict could not be pronounced till the operation which was about to take place should reveal the extent of injury to the spine. Bessy, in falling, must have struck on the back of her head and shoulders, and it was but too probable that the fractured vertebra had caused a bruise35 if not a lesion of the spinal36 cord. In that case paralysis37 was certain--and a slow crawling death the almost inevitable38 outcome. There had been cases, of course--Justine's professional memory evoked39 them--cases of so-called "recovery," where actual death was kept at bay, a semblance40 of life preserved for years in the poor petrified41 body.... But the mind shrank from such a fate for Bessy. And it might still be that the injury to the spine was not grave--though, here again, the fracturing of the fourth vertebra was ominous42.
The door opened and some one came from the inner room--Wyant, in search of an instrument-case. Justine turned and they looked at each other.
"It will be now?"
"Yes. Dr. Garford asked if there was no one you could send for."
"No one but Mr. Tredegar and the Halford Gaineses. They'll be here this evening, I suppose."
They exchanged a discouraged glance, knowing how little difference the presence of the Halford Gaineses would make.
"He wanted to know if there was no telegram from Amherst."
"No."
"Then they mean to begin."
A nursemaid appeared in the doorway43. "Miss Cicely--" she said; and Justine bounded upstairs.
The day's work had begun. From Cicely to the governess--from the governess to the housekeeper--from the telephone to the writing-table--Justine vibrated back and forth44, quick, noiseless, self-possessed--sobering, guiding, controlling her confused and panic-stricken world. It seemed to her that half the day had elapsed before the telegraph office at Lynbrook opened--she was at the telephone at the stroke of the hour. No telegram? Only one--a message from Halford Gaines--"Arrive at eight tonight." Amherst was still silent! Was there a difference of time to be allowed for? She tried to remember, to calculate, but her brain was too crowded with other thoughts.... She turned away from the instrument discouraged.
Whenever she had time to think, she was overwhelmed by the weight of her solitude45. Mr. Langhope was in Egypt, accessible only through a London banker--Mrs. Ansell presumably wandering on the continent. Her cables might not reach them for days. And among the throng46 of Lynbrook habitués, she knew not to whom to turn. To loose the Telfer tribe and Mrs. Carbury upon that stricken house--her thought revolted from it, and she was thankful to know that February had dispersed47 their migratory48 flock to southern shores. But if only Amherst would come!
Cicely and the tranquillized governess had been despatched on a walk with the dogs, and Justine was returning upstairs when she met one of the servants with a telegram. She tore it open with a great throb49 of relief. It was her own message to Amherst--_address unknown_....
Had she misdirected it, then? In that first blinding moment her mind might so easily have failed her. But no--there was the name of the town before her...Millfield, Georgia...the same name as in his letter.... She had made no mistake, but he was gone! Gone--and without leaving an address.... For a moment her tired mind refused to work; then she roused herself, ran down the stairs again, and rang up the telegraph-office. The thing to do, of course, was to telegraph to the owner of the mills--of whose very name she was ignorant!--enquiring where Amherst was, and asking him to forward the message. Precious hours must be lost meanwhile--but, after all, they were waiting for no one upstairs.
* * * * *
The verdict had been pronounced: dislocation and fracture of the fourth vertebra, with consequent injury to the spinal cord. Dr. Garford and Wyant came out alone to tell her. The surgeon ran over the technical details, her brain instantly at attention as he developed his diagnosis and issued his orders. She asked no questions as to the future--she knew it was impossible to tell. But there were no immediate50 signs of a fatal ending: the patient had rallied well, and the general conditions were not unfavourable.
"You have heard from Mr. Amherst?" Dr. Garford concluded.
"Not yet...he may be travelling," Justine faltered51, unwilling52 to say that her telegram had been returned. As she spoke53 there was a tap on the door, and a folded paper was handed in--a telegram telephoned from the village.
"Amherst gone South America to study possibilities cotton growing have cabled our correspondent Buenos Ayres."
Concealment54 was no longer possible. Justine handed the message to the surgeon.
"Ah--and there would be no chance of finding his address among Mrs. Amherst's papers?"
"I think not--no."
"Well--we must keep her alive, Wyant."
"Yes, sir."
* * * * *
At dusk, Justine sat in the library, waiting for Cicely to be brought to her. A lull55 had descended56 on the house--a new order developed out of the morning's chaos57. With soundless steps, with lowered voices, the machinery58 of life was carried on. And Justine, caught in one of the pauses of inaction which she had fought off since morning, was reliving, for the hundredth time, her few moments at Bessy's bedside....
She had been summoned in the course of the afternoon, and stealing into the darkened room, had bent59 over the bed while the nurses noiselessly withdrew. There lay the white face which had been burnt into her inward vision--the motionless body, and the head stirring ceaselessly, as though to release the agitation60 of the imprisoned61 limbs. Bessy's eyes turned to her, drawing her down.
"Am I going to die, Justine?"
"No."
"The pain is...so awful...."
"It will pass...you will sleep...."
"Cicely----"
"She has gone for a walk. You'll see her presently."
The eyes faded, releasing Justine. She stole away, and the nurses came back.
Bessy had spoken of Cicely--but not a word of her husband! Perhaps her poor dazed mind groped for him, or perhaps it shrank from his name.... Justine was thankful for her silence. For the moment her heart was bitter against Amherst. Why, so soon after her appeal and his answer, had he been false to the spirit of their agreement? This unannounced, unexplained departure was nothing less than a breach62 of his tacit pledge--the pledge not to break definitely with Lynbrook. And why had he gone to South America? She drew her aching brows together, trying to retrace63 a vague memory of some allusion64 to the cotton-growing capabilities65 of the region.... Yes, he had spoken of it once in talking of the world's area of cotton production. But what impulse had sent him off on such an exploration? Mere66 unrest, perhaps--the intolerable burden of his useless life? The questions spun67 round and round in her head, weary, profitless, yet persistent68....
It was a relief when Cicely came--a relief to measure out the cambric tea, to make the terrier beg for ginger-bread, even to take up the thread of the interrupted fairy-tale--though through it all she was wrung69 by the thought that, just twenty-four hours earlier, she and the child had sat in the same place, listening for the trot70 of Bessy's horse....
The day passed: the hands of the clocks moved, food was cooked and served, blinds were drawn71 up or down, lamps lit and fires renewed...all these tokens of the passage of time took place before her, while her real consciousness seemed to hang in some dim central void, where nothing happened, nothing would ever happen....
And now Cicely was in bed, the last "long-distance" call was answered, the last orders to kitchen and stable had been despatched, Wyant had stolen down to her with his hourly report--"no change"--and she was waiting in the library for the Gaineses.
Carriage-wheels on the gravel72: they were there at last. Justine started up and went into the hall. As she passed out of the library the outer door opened, and the gusty73 night swooped74 in--as, at the same hour the day before, it had swooped in ahead of the dreadful procession--preceding now the carriageful of Hanaford relations: Mr. Gaines, red-glazed, brief and interrogatory; Westy, small, nervous, ill at ease with his grief; and Mrs. Gaines, supreme75 in the possession of a consolatory76 yet funereal77 manner, and sinking on Justine's breast with the solemn whisper: "Have you sent for the clergyman?"
收听单词发音 |
1
faculty
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| n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员 | |
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transmuting
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| v.使变形，使变质，把…变成…( transmute的现在分词 ) | |
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miraculous
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| adj.像奇迹一样的，不可思议的 | |
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lucidity
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| n.明朗，清晰，透明 | |
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zeal
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| n.热心，热情，热忱 | |
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judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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diagnosis
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| n.诊断，诊断结果，调查分析，判断 | |
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spine
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| n.脊柱，脊椎；(动植物的)刺；书脊 | |
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consultants
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| 顾问( consultant的名词复数 )； 高级顾问医生，会诊医生 | |
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unpacking
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| n.取出货物，拆包[箱]v.从（包裹等）中取出（所装的东西），打开行李取出( unpack的现在分词 )；拆包；解除…的负担；吐露（心事等） | |
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sitting-room
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| n.（BrE）客厅，起居室 | |
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anguish
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| n.(尤指心灵上的)极度痛苦，烦恼 | |
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scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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incessant
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| adj.不停的，连续的 | |
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dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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contingency
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| n.意外事件，可能性 | |
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joint
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| adj.联合的，共同的；n.关节，接合处；v.连接，贴合 | |
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armour
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| （=armor）n.盔甲；装甲部队 | |
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exterior
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| adj.外部的，外在的；表面的 | |
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endue
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| v.赋予 | |
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glaze
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| v.因疲倦、疲劳等指眼睛变得呆滞，毫无表情 | |
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sentimental
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| adj.多愁善感的，感伤的 | |
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23
steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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24
luxurious
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| adj.精美而昂贵的；豪华的 | |
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25
scented
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| adj.有香味的；洒香水的；有气味的v.嗅到(scent的过去分词) | |
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26
strewing
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| v.撒在…上( strew的现在分词 )；散落于；点缀；撒满 | |
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27
drearily
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| 沉寂地，厌倦地，可怕地 | |
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28
garnished
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| v.给（上餐桌的食物）加装饰( garnish的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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29
paraphernalia
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| n.装备；随身用品 | |
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30
rites
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| 仪式，典礼( rite的名词复数 ) | |
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31
pangs
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| 突然的剧痛( pang的名词复数 )； 悲痛 | |
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32
deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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33
underlying
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| adj.在下面的，含蓄的，潜在的 | |
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34
monstrous
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| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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35
bruise
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| n.青肿，挫伤；伤痕；vt.打青；挫伤 | |
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spinal
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| adj.针的，尖刺的，尖刺状突起的；adj.脊骨的，脊髓的 | |
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paralysis
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| n.麻痹(症)；瘫痪(症) | |
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38
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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39
evoked
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| [医]诱发的 | |
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semblance
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| n.外貌，外表 | |
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petrified
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| adj.惊呆的；目瞪口呆的v.使吓呆，使惊呆；变僵硬；使石化(petrify的过去式和过去分词) | |
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42
ominous
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| adj.不祥的，不吉的，预兆的，预示的 | |
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doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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throng
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| n.人群，群众；v.拥挤，群集 | |
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dispersed
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| adj. 被驱散的, 被分散的, 散布的 | |
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migratory
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| n.候鸟，迁移 | |
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49
throb
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| v.震颤，颤动；(急速强烈地)跳动，搏动 | |
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50
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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51
faltered
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| （嗓音）颤抖( falter的过去式和过去分词 )； 支吾其词； 蹒跚； 摇晃 | |
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52
unwilling
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| adj.不情愿的 | |
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53
spoke
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| 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 | |
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54
concealment
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| n.隐藏, 掩盖，隐瞒 | |
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55
lull
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| v.使安静，使入睡，缓和，哄骗；n.暂停，间歇 | |
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56
descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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57
chaos
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| n.混乱，无秩序 | |
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58
machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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59
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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60
agitation
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| n.搅动；搅拌；鼓动，煽动 | |
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61
imprisoned
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| 下狱，监禁( imprison的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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breach
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| n.违反，不履行；破裂；vt.冲破，攻破 | |
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63
retrace
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| v.折回；追溯，探源 | |
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64
allusion
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| n.暗示，间接提示 | |
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65
capabilities
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| n.能力( capability的名词复数 )；可能；容量；[复数]潜在能力 | |
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66
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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67
spun
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| v.纺，杜撰，急转身 | |
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persistent
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| adj.坚持不懈的，执意的；持续的 | |
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69
wrung
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| 绞( wring的过去式和过去分词 )； 握紧（尤指别人的手）； 把（湿衣服）拧干； 绞掉（水） | |
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70
trot
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| n.疾走，慢跑；n.老太婆；现成译本；(复数）trots:腹泻（与the 连用）；v.小跑，快步走，赶紧 | |
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71
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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72
gravel
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| n.砂跞；砂砾层；结石 | |
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73
gusty
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| adj.起大风的 | |
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74
swooped
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| 俯冲，猛冲( swoop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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75
supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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76
consolatory
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| adj.慰问的，可藉慰的 | |
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funereal
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| adj.悲哀的；送葬的 | |
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