Convalescence1 of a Healthy Mind Distraught
From an abandonment that had the last pleasure of life in a willingness to yield it up, Diana rose with her friend’s help in some state of fortitude2, resembling the effort of her feet to bear the weight of her body. She plucked her courage out of the dust to which her heart had been scattered3, and tasked herself to walk as the world does. But she was indisposed to compassionate4 herself in the manner of the burdened world. She lashed5 the creature who could not raise a head like others, and made the endurance of torture a support, such as the pride of being is to men. She would not have seen any similarity to pride in it; would have deemed it the reverse. It was in fact the painful gathering6 of the atoms composing pride. For she had not only suffered; she had done wrongly: and when that was acknowledged, by the light of her sufferings the wrong-doing appeared gigantic, chorussing eulogies7 of the man she had thought her lover: and who was her lover once, before the crime against him. In the opening of her bosom8 to Emma, he was painted a noble figure; one of those that Romance delights to harass9 for the sake of ultimately the more exquisitely10 rewarding. He hated treachery: she had been guilty of doing what he most hated. She glorified12 him for the incapacity to forgive; it was to her mind godlike. And her excuses of herself?
At the first confession13, she said she had none, and sullenly14 maintained that there was none to exonerate15. Little by little her story was related—her version of the story: for not even as woman to woman, friend to great-hearted friend, pure soul to soul, could Diana tell of the state of shivering abjection16 in which Dacier had left her on the fatal night; of the many causes conducing to it, and of the chief. That was an unutterable secret, bound by all the laws of feminine civilization not to be betrayed. Her excessive self-abasement and exaltation of him who had struck her down, rendered it difficult to be understood; and not till Emma had revolved17 it and let it ripen18 in the mind some days could she perceive with any clearness her Tony’s motives19, or mania20. The very word Money thickened the riddle21: for Tony knew that her friend’s purse was her own to dip in at her pleasure; yet she, to escape so small an obligation, had committed the enormity for which she held the man blameless in spurning22 her.
‘You see what I am, Emmy,’ Diana said.
‘What I do not see, is that he had grounds for striking so cruelly.’
‘I proved myself unworthy of him.’
But does a man pretending to love a woman cut at one blow, for such a cause, the ties uniting her to him? Unworthiness of that kind, is not commonly the capital offence in love. Tony’s deep prostration23 and her resplendent picture of her judge and executioner, kept Emma questioning within herself. Gradually she became enlightened enough to distinguish in the man a known, if not common, type of the externally soft and polished, internally hard and relentless24, who are equal to the trials of love only as long as favouring circumstances and seemings nurse the fair object of their courtship.
Her thoughts recurred25 to the madness driving Tony to betray the secret; and the ascent26 unhelped to get a survey of it and her and the conditions, was mountainous. She toiled27 up but to enter the regions of cloud; sure nevertheless that the obscurity was penetrable28 and excuses to be discovered somewhere. Having never wanted money herself, she was unable perfectly29 to realize the urgency of the need: she began however to comprehend that the very eminent30 gentleman, before whom all human creatures were to bow in humility31, had for an extended term considerably32 added to the expenses of Tony’s household, by inciting33 her to give those little dinners to his political supporters, and bringing comrades perpetually to supper-parties, careless of how it might affect her character and her purse. Surely an honourable34 man was bound to her in honour? Tony’s remark: ‘I have the reptile35 in me, dear,’ her exaggeration of the act, in her resigned despair,—was surely no justification36 for his breaking from her, even though he had discovered a vestige37 of the common ‘reptile,’ to leave her with a stain on her name?—There would not have been a question about it if Tony had not exalted38 him so loftily, refusing, in visible pain, to hear him blamed.
Danvers had dressed a bed for Lady Dunstane in her mistress’s chamber39, where often during the night Emma caught a sound of stifled40 weeping or the long falling breath of wakeful grief. One night she asked whether Tony would like to have her by her side.
‘No, dear,’ was the answer in the dark; ‘but you know my old pensioners41, the blind fifer and his wife; I’ve been thinking of them.’
‘They were paid as they passed down the street yesterday, my love.’
‘Yes, dear, I hope so. But he flourishes his tune42 so absurdly. I’ve been thinking, that is the part I have played, instead of doing the female’s duty of handing round the tin-cup for pennies. I won’t cry any more.’
She sighed and turned to sleep, leaving Emma to disburden her heart in tears.
For it seemed to her that Tony’s intellect was weakened. She not merely abased43 herself and exalted Dacier preposterously44, she had sunk her intelligence in her sensations: a state that she used to decry45 as the sin of mankind, the origin of error and blood.
Strangely too, the proposal came from her, or the suggestion of it, notwithstanding her subjectedness to the nerves, that she should show her face in public. She said: ‘I shall have to run about, Emmy, when I can fancy I am able to rattle46 up to the old mark. At present, I feel like a wrestler47 who has had a fall. As soon as the stiffness is over, it’s best to make an appearance, for the sake of one’s backers, though I shall never be in the wrestling ring again.’
‘That is a good decision—when you feel quite yourself, dear Tony,’ Emma replied.
‘I dare say I have disgraced my sex, but not as they suppose. I feel my new self already, and can make the poor brute48 go through fire on behalf of the old. What is the task?—merely to drive a face!’
‘It is not known.’
‘It will be known.’
‘But this is a sealed secret.’
‘Nothing is a secret that has been spoken. It ‘s in the air, and I have to breathe to live by it. And I would rather it were out. “She betrayed him.” Rather that, than have them think—anything! They will exclaim, How could she! I have been unable to answer it to you—my own heart. How? Oh! our weakness is the swiftest dog to hunt us; we cannot escape it. But I have the answer for them, that I trust with my whole soul none of them would have done the like.’
‘None, my Tony, would have taken it to the soul as you do.’
‘I talk, dear. If I took it honestly, I should be dumb, soon dust. The moment we begin to speak, the guilty creature is running for cover. She could not otherwise exist. I am sensible of evasion50 when I open my lips.’
‘But Tony has told me all.’
‘I think I have. But if you excuse my conduct, I am certain I have not.’
‘Dear girl, accounting51 for it, is not the same as excusing.’
‘Who can account for it! I was caught in a whirl—Oh! nothing supernatural: my weakness; which it pleases me to call a madness—shift the ninety-ninth! When I drove down that night to Mr. Tonans, I am certain I had my clear wits, but I felt like a bolt. I saw things, but at too swift a rate for the conscience of them. Ah! let never Necessity draw the bow of our weakness: it is the soul that is winged to its perdition. I remember I was writing a story, named THE MAN OF TWO MINDS. I shall sign it, By the Woman of Two Natures. If ever it is finished. Capacity for thinking should precede the act of writing. It should; I do not say that it does. Capacity for assimilating the public taste and reproducing it, is the commonest. The stuff is perishable52, but it pays us for our labour, and in so doing saves us from becoming tricksters. Now I can see that Mr. Redworth had it in that big head of his—the authoress outliving her income!’
‘He dared not speak.’
‘Why did he not dare?’
‘Would it have checked you?’
‘I was a shot out of a gun, and I am glad he did not stand in my way. What power charged the gun, is another question. Dada used to say, that it is the devil’s masterstroke to get us to accuse him. “So fare ye well, old Nickie Ben.” My dear, I am a black sheep; a creature with a spotted53 reputation; I must wash and wash; and not with water—with sulphur-flames.’ She sighed. ‘I am down there where they burn. You should have let me lie and die. You were not kind. I was going quietly.’
‘My love!’ cried Emma, overborne by a despair that she traced to the woman’s concealment54 of her bleeding heart, ‘you live for me. Do set your mind on that. Think of what you are bearing, as your debt to Emma. Will you?’
Tony bowed her head mechanically.
‘But I am in love with King Death, and must confess it,’ she said. ‘That hideous55 eating you forced on me, snatched me from him. And I feel that if I had gone, I should have been mercifully forgiven by everybody.’
‘Except by me,’ said Emma, embracing her. ‘Tony would have left her friend for her last voyage in mourning. And my dearest will live to know happiness.’
‘I have no more belief in it, Emmy.’
‘The mistake of the world is to think happiness possible to the senses.’
‘Yes; we distil56 that fine essence through the senses; and the act is called the pain of life. It is the death of them. So much I understand of what our existence must be. But I may grieve for having done so little.’
‘That is the sound grief, with hope at the core—not in love with itself and wretchedly mortal, as we find self is under every shape it takes; especially the chief one.’
‘Name it.’
‘It is best named Amor.’
There was a writhing57 in the frame of the hearer, for she did want Love to be respected; not shadowed by her misfortune. Her still-flushed senses protested on behalf of the eternalness of the passion, and she was obliged to think Emma’s cold condemnatory58 intellect came of the no knowledge of it.
A letter from Mr. Tonans, containing an enclosure, was a sharp trial of Diana’s endurance of the irony59 of Fate. She had spoken of the irony in allusion60 to her freedom. Now that, according to a communication from her lawyers, she was independent of the task of writing, the letter which paid the price of her misery61 bruised62 her heavily.
‘Read it and tear it all to strips,’ she said in an abhorrence63 to Emma, who rejoined: ‘Shall I go at once and see him?’
‘Can it serve any end? But throw it into the fire. Oh! no simulation of virtue64. There was not, I think, a stipulated65 return for what I did. But I perceive clearly—I can read only by events—that there was an understanding. You behold66 it. I went to him to sell it. He thanks me, says I served the good cause well. I have not that consolation67. If I had thought of the cause—of anything high, it would have arrested me. On the fire with it!’
The letter and square slip were consumed. Diana watched the blackening papers.
So they cease their sinning, Emmy; and as long as I am in torment68, I may hope for grace. We talked of the irony. It means, the pain of fire.’
‘I spoke49 of the irony to Redworth,’ said Emma; ‘incidentally, of course.’
‘He is really not altogether the Mr. Cuthbert Dering of your caricature. He is never less than acceptably rational. I won’t repeat his truisms; but he said, or I deduced from what he said, that a grandmother’s maxims70 would expound71 the enigma72.’
‘Probably the simple is the deep, in relation to the mysteries of life,’ said Diana, whose wits had been pricked73 to a momentary74 activity by the letter. ‘He behaves wisely; so perhaps we are bound to take his words for wisdom. Much nonsense is talked and written, and he is one of the world’s reserves, who need no more than enrolling75, to make a sturdy phalanx of common sense. It’s a pity they are not enlisted76 and drilled to express themselves.’ She relapsed. ‘But neither he nor any of them could understand my case.’
‘He puts the idea of an irony down to the guilt11 of impatience77, Tony.’
‘Could there be a keener irony than that? A friend of Dada’s waited patiently for a small fortune, and when it arrived, he was a worn-out man, just assisted to go decently to his grave.’
‘But he may have gained in spirit by his patient waiting.’
‘Oh! true. We are warmer if we travel on foot sunward, but it is a discovery that we are colder if we take to ballooning upward. The material good reverses its benefits the more nearly we clasp it. All life is a lesson that we live to enjoy but in the spirit. I will brood on your saying.’
‘It is your own saying, silly Tony, as the only things worth saying always, are!’ exclaimed Emma, as she smiled happily to see her friend’s mind reviving, though it was faintly and in the dark.
收听单词发音 |
1
convalescence
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| n.病后康复期 | |
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fortitude
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| n.坚忍不拔；刚毅 | |
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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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compassionate
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| adj.有同情心的，表示同情的 | |
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lashed
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| adj.具睫毛的v.鞭打( lash的过去式和过去分词 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥 | |
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gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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eulogies
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| n.颂词，颂文( eulogy的名词复数 ) | |
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bosom
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| n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的 | |
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harass
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| vt.使烦恼，折磨，骚扰 | |
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exquisitely
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| adv.精致地；强烈地；剧烈地；异常地 | |
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guilt
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| n.犯罪；内疚；过失，罪责 | |
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glorified
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| 美其名的，变荣耀的 | |
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confession
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| n.自白，供认，承认 | |
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sullenly
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| 不高兴地，绷着脸，忧郁地 | |
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exonerate
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| v.免除责任，确定无罪 | |
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abjection
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| n. 卑鄙, 落魄 | |
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revolved
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| v.（使）旋转( revolve的过去式和过去分词 )；细想 | |
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ripen
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| vt.使成熟；vi.成熟 | |
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motives
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| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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mania
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| n.疯狂；躁狂症，狂热，癖好 | |
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riddle
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| n.谜，谜语，粗筛；vt.解谜，给…出谜，筛，检查，鉴定，非难，充满于；vi.出谜 | |
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spurning
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| v.一脚踢开，拒绝接受( spurn的现在分词 ) | |
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23
prostration
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| n. 平伏, 跪倒, 疲劳 | |
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relentless
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| adj.残酷的，不留情的，无怜悯心的 | |
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recurred
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| 再发生，复发( recur的过去式和过去分词 )； 治愈 | |
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ascent
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| n.(声望或地位)提高；上升，升高；登高 | |
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toiled
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| 长时间或辛苦地工作( toil的过去式和过去分词 )； 艰难缓慢地移动，跋涉 | |
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penetrable
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| adj.可穿透的 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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30
eminent
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| adj.显赫的，杰出的，有名的，优良的 | |
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humility
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| n.谦逊，谦恭 | |
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considerably
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| adv.极大地；相当大地；在很大程度上 | |
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inciting
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| 刺激的，煽动的 | |
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honourable
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| adj.可敬的；荣誉的，光荣的 | |
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reptile
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| n.爬行动物；两栖动物 | |
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justification
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| n.正当的理由；辩解的理由 | |
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vestige
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| n.痕迹，遗迹，残余 | |
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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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chamber
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| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
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stifled
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| （使）窒息， （使）窒闷( stifle的过去式和过去分词 )； 镇压，遏制； 堵 | |
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pensioners
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| n.领取退休、养老金或抚恤金的人( pensioner的名词复数 ) | |
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tune
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| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
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abased
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| 使谦卑( abase的过去式和过去分词 )； 使感到羞耻； 使降低（地位、身份等）； 降下 | |
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preposterously
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| adv.反常地；荒谬地；荒谬可笑地；不合理地 | |
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decry
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| v.危难，谴责 | |
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rattle
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| v.飞奔，碰响；激怒；n.碰撞声；拨浪鼓 | |
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wrestler
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| n.摔角选手，扭 | |
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brute
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| n.野兽，兽性 | |
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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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evasion
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| n.逃避，偷漏(税) | |
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accounting
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| n.会计，会计学，借贷对照表 | |
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perishable
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| adj.（尤指食物）易腐的，易坏的 | |
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spotted
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| adj.有斑点的，斑纹的，弄污了的 | |
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concealment
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| n.隐藏, 掩盖，隐瞒 | |
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hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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distil
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| vt.蒸馏；提取…的精华，精选出 | |
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writhing
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| （因极度痛苦而）扭动或翻滚( writhe的现在分词 ) | |
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condemnatory
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| adj. 非难的，处罚的 | |
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irony
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| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
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allusion
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| n.暗示，间接提示 | |
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misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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bruised
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| [医]青肿的，瘀紫的 | |
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abhorrence
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| n.憎恶；可憎恶的事 | |
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virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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stipulated
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| vt.& vi.规定；约定adj.[法]合同规定的 | |
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behold
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| v.看，注视，看到 | |
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consolation
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| n.安慰，慰问 | |
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torment
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| n.折磨；令人痛苦的东西(人)；vt.折磨；纠缠 | |
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fumed
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| 愤怒( fume的过去式和过去分词 )； 大怒； 发怒； 冒烟 | |
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maxims
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| n.格言，座右铭( maxim的名词复数 ) | |
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expound
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| v.详述；解释；阐述 | |
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enigma
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| n.谜，谜一样的人或事 | |
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pricked
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| 刺，扎，戳( prick的过去式和过去分词 )； 刺伤； 刺痛； 使剧痛 | |
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momentary
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| adj.片刻的，瞬息的；短暂的 | |
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enrolling
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| v.招收( enrol的现在分词 )；吸收；入学；加入；[亦作enrol]( enroll的现在分词 )；登记，招收，使入伍（或入会、入学等），参加，成为成员；记入名册；卷起，包起 | |
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enlisted
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| adj.应募入伍的v.（使）入伍， （使）参军( enlist的过去式和过去分词 )；获得（帮助或支持） | |
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impatience
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| n.不耐烦，急躁 | |
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