Whether or no, she, whom you are to forgive, if you can, did or did not belong to the Upper Ten Thousand of this our English world, I am not prepared to say with any strength of affirmation. By blood she was connected with big people — distantly connected with some very big people indeed, people who belonged to the Upper Ten Hundred if there be any such division; but of these very big relations she had known and seen little, and they had cared as little for her. Her grandfather, Squire1 Vavasor of Vavasor Hall, in Westmoreland, was a country gentleman, possessing some thousand a year at the outside, and he therefore never came up to London, and had no ambition to have himself numbered as one in any exclusive set. A hot-headed, ignorant, honest old gentleman, he lived ever at Vavasor Hall, declaring, to any who would listen to him, that the country was going to the mischief2, and congratulating himself that at any rate, in his county, parliamentary reform had been powerless to alter the old political arrangements. Alice Vavasor, whose offence against the world I am to tell you, and if possible to excuse, was the daughter of his younger son; and as her father, John Vavasor, had done nothing to raise the family name to eminence3, Alice could not lay claim to any high position from her birth as a Vavasor. John Vavasor had come up to London early in life as a barrister, and had failed. He had failed at least in attaining4 either much wealth or much repute, though he had succeeded in earning, or perhaps I might better say, in obtaining, a livelihood5. He had married a lady somewhat older than himself, who was in possession of four hundred a year, and who was related to those big people to whom I have alluded6. Who these were, and the special nature of the relationship, I shall be called upon to explain hereafter, but at present it will suffice to say that Alice Macleod gave great offence to all her friends by her marriage. She did not, however, give them much time for the indulgence of their anger. Having given birth to a daughter within twelve months of her marriage, she died, leaving in abeyance7 that question as to whether the fault of her marriage should or should not be pardoned by her family.
When a man marries an heiress for her money, if that money be within her own control, as was the case with Miss Macleod’s fortune, it is generally well for the speculating lover that the lady’s friends should quarrel with him and with her. She is thereby8 driven to throw herself entirely9 into the gentleman’s arms, and he thus becomes possessed10 of the wife and the money without the abominable11 nuisance of stringent12 settlements. But the Macleods, though they quarrelled with Alice, did not quarrel with her à l’outrance. They snubbed herself and her chosen husband; but they did not so far separate themselves from her and her affairs as to give up the charge of her possessions. Her four hundred a year was settled very closely on herself and on her children, without even a life interest having been given to Mr Vavasor, and therefore when she died the mother’s fortune became the property of the little baby. But, under these circumstances, the big people did not refuse to interest themselves to some extent on behalf of the father. I do not suppose that any actual agreement or compact was made between Mr Vavasor and the Macleods; but it came to be understood between them that if he made no demand upon them for his daughter’s money, and allowed them to have charge of her education, they would do something for him. He was a practising barrister, though his practice had never amounted to much; and a practising barrister is always supposed to be capable of filling any situation which may come in his way. Two years after his wife’s death Mr Vavasor was appointed assistant commissioner13 in some office which had to do with insolvents14, and which was abolished three years after his appointment. It was at first thought that he would keep his eight hundred a year for life and be required to do nothing for it; but a wretched cheeseparing Whig government, as John Vavasor called it when describing the circumstances of the arrangement to his father, down in Westmoreland, would not permit this; it gave him the option of taking four hundred a year for doing nothing, or of keeping his whole income and attending three days a week for three hours a day during term time, at a miserable15 dingy16 little office near Chancery Lane, where his duty would consist in signing his name to accounts which he never read, and at which he was never supposed even to look. He had sulkily elected to keep the money, and this signing had now been for nearly twenty years the business of his life. Of course he considered himself to be a very hardly-used man. One Lord Chancellor17 after another he petitioned, begging that he might be relieved from the cruelty of his position, and allowed to take his salary without doing anything in return for it. The amount of work which he did perform was certainly a minimum of labour. Term time, as terms were counted in Mr Vavasor’s office, hardly comprised half the year, and the hours of weekly attendance did not do more than make one day’s work a week for a working man; but Mr Vavasor had been appointed an assistant commissioner, and with every Lord Chancellor he argued that all Westminster Hall, and Lincoln’s Inn to boot, had no right to call upon him to degrade himself by signing his name to accounts. In answer to every memorial he was offered the alternative of freedom with half his income; and so the thing went on.
There can, however, be no doubt that Mr Vavasor was better off — and happier with his almost nominal18 employment than he would have been without it. He always argued that it kept him in London; but he would undoubtedly19 have lived in London with or without his official occupation. He had become so habituated to London life in a small way, before the choice of leaving London was open to him, that nothing would have kept him long away from it. After his wife’s death he dined at his club every day on which a dinner was not given to him by some friend elsewhere, and was rarely happy except when so dining. They who have seen him scanning the steward’s list of dishes, and giving the necessary orders for his own and his friend’s dinner, at about half past four in the afternoon, have seen John Vavasor at the only moment of the day at which he is ever much in earnest. All other things are light and easy to him — to be taken easily and to be dismissed easily. Even the eating of the dinner calls forth20 from him no special sign of energy. Sometimes a frown will gather on his brow as he tastes the first half glass from his bottle of claret; but as a rule that which he has prepared for himself with so much elaborate care, is consumed with only pleasant enjoyment21. Now and again it will happen that the cook is treacherous22 even to him, and then he can hit hard; but in hitting he is quiet, and strikes with a smile on his face.
Such had been Mr Vavasor’s pursuits and pleasures in life up to the time at which my story commences. But I must not allow the reader to suppose that he was a man without good qualities. Had he when young possessed the gift of industry I think that he might have shone in his profession, and have been well spoken of and esteemed23 in the world. As it was he was a discontented man, but nevertheless he was popular, and to some extent esteemed. He was liberal as far as his means would permit; he was a man of his word; and he understood well that code of by-laws which was presumed to constitute the character of a gentleman in his circle. He knew how to carry himself well among men, and understood thoroughly24 what might be said, and what might not; what might be done among those with whom he lived, and what should be left undone25. By nature, too, he was kindly26 disposed, loving many persons a little if he loved few or none passionately27. Moreover, at the age of fifty, he was a handsome man, with a fine forehead, round which the hair and beard was only beginning to show itself to be grey. He stood well, with a large person, only now beginning to become corpulent. His eyes were bright and grey, and his mouth and chin were sharply cut, and told of gentle birth. Most men who knew John Vavasor well, declared it to be a pity that he should spend his time in signing accounts in Chancery Lane.
I have said that Alice Vavasor’s big relatives cared but little for her in her early years; but I have also said that they were careful to undertake the charge of her education, and I must explain away this little discrepancy28. The biggest of these big people had hardly heard of her; but there was a certain Lady Macleod, not very big herself, but, as it were, hanging on to the skirts of those who were so, who cared very much for Alice. She was the widow of a Sir Archibald Macleod, K.C.B., who had been a soldier, she herself having also been a Macleod by birth; and for very many years past — from a time previous to the birth of Alice Vavasor — she had lived at Cheltenham, making short sojourns29 in London during the spring, when the contents of her limited purse would admit of her doing so. Of old Lady Macleod I think I may say that she was a good woman — that she was a good woman, though subject to two of the most serious drawbacks to goodness which can afflict30 a lady. She was a Calvinistic Sabbatarian in religion, and in worldly matters she was a devout31 believer in the high rank of her noble relatives. She could almost worship a youthful marquis, though he lived a life that would disgrace a heathen among heathens; and she could and did, in her own mind, condemn32 crowds of commonplace men and women to all eternal torments33 which her imagination could conceive, because they listened to profane34 music in a park on Sunday. Yet she was a good woman. Out of her small means she gave much away. She owed no man anything. She strove to love her neighbours. She bore much pain with calm unspeaking endurance, and she lived in trust of a better world. Alice Vavasor, who was after all only her cousin, she loved with an exceeding love, and yet Alice had done very much to extinguish such love. Alice, in the years of her childhood, had been brought up by Lady Macleod; at the age of twelve she had been sent to a school at Aix-la-Chapelle — a comitatus of her relatives having agreed that such was to be her fate, much in opposition35 to Lady Macleod’s judgment36; at nineteen she had returned to Cheltenham, and after remaining there for little more than a year, had expressed her unwillingness37 to remain longer with her cousin. She could sympathise neither with her relative’s faults or virtues38. She made an arrangement, therefore, with her father, that they two would keep house together in London, and so they had lived for the last five years — for Alice Vavasor when she will be introduced to the reader had already passed her twenty-fourth birthday.
Their mode of life had been singular and certainly not in all respects satisfactory. Alice when she was twenty-one had the full command of her own fortune; and when she induced her father, who for the last fifteen years had lived in lodgings39, to take a small house in Queen Anne Street, of course she offered to incur40 a portion of the expense. He had warned her that his habits were not those of a domestic man, but he had been content simply so to warn her. He had not felt it to be his duty to decline the arrangement because he knew himself to be unable to give to his child all that attention which a widowed father under such circumstances should pay to an only daughter. The house had been taken, and Alice and he had lived together, but their lives had been quite apart. For a short time, for a month or two, he had striven to dine at home and even to remain at home through the evening; but the work had been too hard for him and he had utterly41 broken down. He had said to her and to himself that his health would fail him under the effects of so great a change made so late in life, and I am not sure that he had not spoken truly. At any rate the effort had been abandoned, and Mr. Vavasor now never dined at home. Nor did he and his daughter ever dine out together. Their joint42 means did not admit of their giving dinners, and therefore they could not make their joint way in the same circle. It thus came to pass that they lived apart — quite apart. They saw each other, probably, daily; but they did little more than see each other. They did not even breakfast together, and after three o’clock in the day Mr Vavasor was never to be found in his own house.
Miss Vavasor had made for herself a certain footing in society, though I am disposed to doubt her right to be considered as holding a place among the Upper Ten Thousand. Two classes of people she had chosen to avoid, having been driven to such avoidings by her aunt’s preferences; marquises and such like, whether wicked or otherwise, she had eschewed43, and had eschewed likewise all Low Church tendencies. The eschewing44 of marquises is not generally very difficult. Young ladies living with their fathers on very moderate incomes in or about Queen Anne Street are not usually much troubled on that matter. Nor can I say that Miss Vavasor was so troubled. But with her there was a certain definite thing to be done towards such eschewal45. Lady Macleod by no means avoided her noble relatives, nor did she at all avoid Alice Vavasor. When in London she was persevering46 in her visits to Queen Anne Street, though she considered herself, nobody knew why, not to be on speaking terms with Mr Vavasor. And she strove hard to produce an intimacy47 between Alice and her noble relatives — such an intimacy as that which she herself enjoyed — an intimacy which gave her a footing in their houses but no footing in their hearts, or even in their habits. But all this Alice declined with as much consistency48 as she did those other struggles which her old cousin made on her behalf — strong, never-flagging, but ever-failing efforts to induce the girl to go to such places of worship as Lady Macleod herself frequented.
A few words must be said as to Alice Vavasor’s person; one fact also must be told, and then, I believe, I may start upon my story. As regards her character, I will leave it to be read in the story itself. The reader already knows that she appears upon the scene at no very early age, and the mode of her life had perhaps given to her an appearance of more years than those which she really possessed. It was not that her face was old, but that there was nothing that was girlish in her manners. Her demeanour was as staid, and her voice as self-possessed, as though she had already been ten years married. In person she was tall and well made, rather large in her neck and shoulders, as were all the Vavasors, but by no means fat. Her hair was brown, but very dark, and she wore it rather lower upon her forehead than is customary at the present day. Her eyes, too, were dark, though they were not black, and her complexion49, though not quite that of a brunette, was far away from being fair. Her nose was somewhat broad, and retroussé too, but to my thinking it was a charming nose, full of character, and giving to her face at times a look of pleasant humour, which it would otherwise have lacked. Her mouth was large, and full of character, and her chin oval, dimpled, and finely chiselled50, like her father’s. I beg you, in taking her for all in all, to admit that she was a fine, handsome, high-spirited young woman.
And now for my fact. At the time of which I am writing she was already engaged to be married.
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squire
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| n.护卫, 侍从, 乡绅 | |
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mischief
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| n.损害，伤害，危害；恶作剧，捣蛋，胡闹 | |
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eminence
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| n.卓越，显赫；高地，高处；名家 | |
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attaining
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| （通常经过努力）实现( attain的现在分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况） | |
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livelihood
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| n.生计，谋生之道 | |
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alluded
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| 提及，暗指( allude的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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abeyance
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| n.搁置，缓办，中止，产权未定 | |
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thereby
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| adv.因此，从而 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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abominable
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| adj.可厌的，令人憎恶的 | |
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stringent
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| adj.严厉的；令人信服的；银根紧的 | |
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commissioner
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| n.（政府厅、局、处等部门）专员，长官，委员 | |
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insolvents
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| n.无力偿还债务的人（insolvent的复数形式） | |
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miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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dingy
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| adj.昏暗的，肮脏的 | |
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chancellor
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| n.(英)大臣；法官；(德、奥)总理；大学校长 | |
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nominal
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| adj.名义上的；(金额、租金)微不足道的 | |
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undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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enjoyment
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| n.乐趣；享有；享用 | |
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treacherous
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| adj.不可靠的，有暗藏的危险的；adj.背叛的，背信弃义的 | |
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esteemed
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| adj.受人尊敬的v.尊敬( esteem的过去式和过去分词 )；敬重；认为；以为 | |
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thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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undone
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| a.未做完的，未完成的 | |
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kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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passionately
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| ad.热烈地，激烈地 | |
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discrepancy
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| n.不同；不符；差异；矛盾 | |
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sojourns
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| n.逗留，旅居( sojourn的名词复数 ) | |
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afflict
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| vt.使身体或精神受痛苦，折磨 | |
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devout
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| adj.虔诚的，虔敬的，衷心的 (n.devoutness) | |
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condemn
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| vt.谴责，指责；宣判(罪犯)，判刑 | |
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torments
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| （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] | |
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profane
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| adj.亵神的，亵渎的；vt.亵渎，玷污 | |
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opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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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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unwillingness
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| n. 不愿意，不情愿 | |
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virtues
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| 美德( virtue的名词复数 )； 德行； 优点； 长处 | |
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lodgings
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| n. 出租的房舍, 寄宿舍 | |
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incur
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| vt.招致，蒙受，遭遇 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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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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eschewed
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| v.（尤指为道德或实际理由而）习惯性避开，回避( eschew的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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eschewing
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| v.（尤指为道德或实际理由而）习惯性避开，回避( eschew的现在分词 ) | |
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45
eschewal
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| n.避免（某种行为、食物等），回避（有害的或讨厌的人或事物）逃避 | |
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persevering
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| a.坚忍不拔的 | |
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intimacy
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| n.熟悉，亲密，密切关系，亲昵的言行 | |
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consistency
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| n.一贯性，前后一致，稳定性；(液体的)浓度 | |
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complexion
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| n.肤色；情况，局面；气质，性格 | |
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chiselled
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| adj.凿过的，凿光的； （文章等）精心雕琢的v.凿，雕，镌( chisel的过去式 ) | |
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