Part 2 The Young Gentlemen Chapter 6

I never saw the “young gentlemen” again. I suppose most men are cowards about calamities¹ of that sort, the irremediable kind that have to be faced anew every morning. It takes a woman to shoulder such a lasting² tragedy, and hug it to her . . . as I had seen Catherine doing; as I saw Mrs. Durant yearning³ to do . . .

It was about that very matter that I interviewed the old housekeeper⁴ the day after the funeral. Among the papers which the police found on poor Cranch’s desk was a letter addressed to me. Like his message to Mrs. Durant it was of the briefest. “I have appointed no one to care for my sons; I expected to outlive them. Their mother would have wished Catherine to stay with them. Will you try to settle all this mercifully? There is plenty of money, but my brain won’t work. Good-bye.”

It was a matter, first of all, for the law; but before we entered on that phase I wanted to have a talk with old Catherine. She came to me, very decent in her new black; I hadn’t the heart to go to that dreadful house again, and I think perhaps it was easier for her to speak out under another roof. At any rate, I soon saw that, after all the years of silence, speech was a relief; as it might have been to him too, poor fellow, if only he had dared! But he couldn’t; there was that pride of his, his “Spanish pride” as she called it.

“Not but what he would have hated me to say so, sir; for the Spanish blood in him, and all that went with it, was what he most abominated⁵ . . . But there it was, closer to him than his marrow⁶ . . . Oh, what that old woman done to us! He told me why, once, long ago — it was about the time when he began to understand that our little boys were never going to grow up like other young gentlemen. ‘It’s her doing, the devil,’ he said to me; and then he told me how she’d been a great Spanish heiress, a rich merchant’s daughter, and had been promised, in that foreign way they have, to a young nobleman who’d never set eyes on her; and when the bridegroom came to the city where she lived, and saw her sitting in her father’s box across the theatre, he turned about and mounted his horse and rode off the same night; and never a word came from him — the shame of it! It nigh killed her, I believe, and she swore then and there she’d marry a foreigner and leave Spain; and that was how she took up with young Mr. Cranch that was in her father’s bank; and the old gentleman put a big sum into the Cranch shipping⁷ business, and packed off the young couple to Harpledon . . . But the poor misbuilt thing, it seems, couldn’t ever rightly get over the hurt to her pride, nor get used to the cold climate, and the snow and the strange faces; she would go about pining for the orange-flowers and the sunshine; and though she brought her husband a son, I do believe she hated him, and was glad to die and get out of Harpledon . . . That was my Mr. Cranch’s story . . .

“Well, sir, he despised his great-grandfather more than he hated the Spanish woman. ‘Marry that twisted stick for her money, and put her poisoned blood in us I’ He used to put it that way, sir, in his bad moments. And when he was twenty-one, and travelling abroad, he met the young English lady I was maid to, the loveliest soundest young creature you ever set eyes on. They loved and married, and the next year — oh, the pity — the next year she brought him our young gentlemen . . . twins, they were . . . When she died, a few weeks after, he was desperate . . . more desperate than I’ve ever seen him till the other day. But as the years passed, and he began to understand about our little boys — well, then he was thankful she was gone. And that thankfulness was the bitterest part of his grief.

“It was when they was about nine or ten that he first saw it; though I’d been certain long before that. We were living in Italy then. And one day — oh, what a day, sir! — he got a letter, Mr. Cranch did, from a circus-man who’d heard somehow of our poor little children . . . Oh, sir! . . . Then it was that he decided⁸ to leave Europe, and come back to Harpledon to live. It was a lonely lost place at that time; and there was all the big wing for our little gentlemen. We were happy in the old house, in our way; but it was a solitary⁹ life for so young a man as Mr. Cranch was then, and when the summer folk began to settle here I was glad of it, and I said to him: ‘You go out, sir, now, and make friends, and invite your friends here. I’ll see to it that our secret is kept.’ And so I did, sir, so I did . . . and he always trusted me. He needed life and company himself; but he would never separate himself from the little boys. He was so proud — and yet so soft-hearted! And where could he have put the little things? They never grew past their toys — there’s the worst of it. Heaps and heaps of them he brought home to them, year after year. Pets he tried too . . . but animals were afraid of them — just as I expect you were, sir, when you saw them,” she added suddenly, “but with no reason; there were never gentler beings. Little Waldo especially — it’s as if they were trying to make up for being a burden . . . Oh, for pity’s sake, let them stay on in their father’s house, and me with them, won’t you, sir?”

As she wished it, so it was. The legal side of the matter did not take long to settle, for the Cranches were almost extinct; there were only some distant cousins, long since gone from Harpledon. Old Catherine was suffered to remain on with her charges in the Cranch house, and one of the guardians¹¹ appointed by the courts was Mrs. Durant.

Would you have believed it? She wanted it — the horror, the responsibility and all. After that she lived all the year round at Harpledon; I believe she saw Cranch’s sons every day. I never went back there; but she used sometimes to come up and see me in Boston. The first time she appeared — it must have been about a year after the events I have related — I scarcely knew her when she walked into my library. She was an old bent¹² woman; her white hair now seemed an attribute of age, not a form of coquetry. After that, each time I saw her she seemed older and more bowed. But she told me once she was not unhappy — “not as unhappy as I used to be,” she added, qualifying the phrase.

On the same occasion — it was only a few months ago — she also told me that one of the twins was ill. She did not think he would last long, she said; and old Catherine did not think so either. “It’s little Waldo; he was the one who felt his father’s death the most; the dark one; I really think he understands. And when he goes, Donald won’t last long either.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Presently I shall be alone again,” she added.

I asked her then how old they were; and she thought for a moment, murmuring the years over slowly under her breath. “Only forty-one,” she said at length — as if she had said “Only four.”

Women are strange. I am their other guardian¹⁰; and I have never yet had the courage to go down to Harpledon and see them.

1 calamities   

n.灾祸，灾难( calamity的名词复数 )；不幸之事

参考例句：

• They will only triumph by persevering in their struggle against natural calamities. 他们只有坚持与自然灾害搏斗，才能取得胜利。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• One moment's false security can bring a century of calamities. 图一时之苟安，贻百年之大患。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

2 lasting   

adj.永久的，永恒的；vbl.持续，维持

参考例句：

• The lasting war debased the value of the dollar.持久的战争使美元贬值。
• We hope for a lasting settlement of all these troubles.我们希望这些纠纷能获得永久的解决。

3 yearning   

a.渴望的；向往的；怀念的

参考例句：

• a yearning for a quiet life 对宁静生活的向往
• He felt a great yearning after his old job. 他对过去的工作有一种强烈的渴想。

4 housekeeper   

n.管理家务的主妇，女管家

参考例句：

• A spotless stove told us that his mother is a diligent housekeeper.炉子清洁无瑕就表明他母亲是个勤劳的主妇。
• She is an economical housekeeper and feeds her family cheaply.她节约持家，一家人吃得很省。

5 abominated   

v.憎恶，厌恶，不喜欢( abominate的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He had always abominated the foreign devils' contraptions. 老通宝向来仇恨小轮船这一类洋鬼子的东西！ 来自汉英文学 - 春蚕

6 marrow   

n.骨髓；精华；活力

参考例句：

• It was so cold that he felt frozen to the marrow. 天气太冷了，他感到寒冷刺骨。
• He was tired to the marrow of his bones.他真是累得筋疲力尽了。

7 shipping   

n.船运（发货，运输，乘船）

参考例句：

• We struck a bargain with an American shipping firm.我们和一家美国船运公司谈成了一笔生意。
• There's a shipping charge of ￡5 added to the price.价格之外另加五英镑运输费。

8 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

9 solitary   

adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士

参考例句：

• I am rather fond of a solitary stroll in the country.我颇喜欢在乡间独自徜徉。
• The castle rises in solitary splendour on the fringe of the desert.这座城堡巍然耸立在沙漠的边际，显得十分壮美。

10 guardian   

n.监护人；守卫者，保护者

参考例句：

• The form must be signed by the child's parents or guardian. 这张表格须由孩子的家长或监护人签字。
• The press is a guardian of the public weal. 报刊是公共福利的卫护者。

11 guardians   

监护人( guardian的名词复数 )； 保护者，维护者

参考例句：

• Farmers should be guardians of the countryside. 农民应是乡村的保卫者。
• The police are guardians of law and order. 警察是法律和秩序的护卫者。

12 bent   

n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的

参考例句：

• He was fully bent upon the project.他一心扑在这项计划上。
• We bent over backward to help them.我们尽了最大努力帮助他们。