Journey to Bleakridge
i
Hilda and Janet were mounting the precipitous Sytch Bank together on their way from Turnhill into Bursley. It was dark; they had missed one train at Turnhill and had preferred not to wait for the next. Although they had been very busy in Hilda’s house throughout all the afternoon and a part of the evening, and had eaten only a picnic meal, neither of them was aware of fatigue1, and the two miles to Bursley seemed a trifle.
Going slowly up the steep slope, they did not converse2. Janet said that the weather was changing, and Hilda, without replying, peered at the black baffling sky. The air had, almost suddenly, grown warmer. Above, in the regions unseen, mysterious activities were in movement, as if marshalling vast forces. The stars had vanished. A gentle but equivocal wind on the cheek presaged3 rain, and seemed to be bearing downwards4 into the homeliness5 of the earth some strange vibration6 out of infinite space. The primeval elements of the summer night encouraged and intensified7 Hilda’s mood, half joyous8, half apprehensive9. She thought: “A few days ago, I was in Hornsey, with the prospect10 of the visit to Turnhill before me. Now the visit is behind me. I said that Janet should be my companion, and she has been my companion. I said that I would cut myself free, and I have cut myself free. I need never go to Turnhill again, unless I like. The two trunks will be sent for tomorrow; and all the rest will be sold—even the clock. The thing is done. I have absolute liberty, and an income, and the intimacy11 of this splendid affectionate Janet.... How fortunate it was that Mr. Cannon12 was not at his office when we called! Of course I was obliged to call.... And yet would it not be more satisfactory if I had seen him?... I must have been in a horribly morbid13 state up at Hornsey.... Soon I must decide about my future. Soon I shall actually have decided14!... Life is very queer!” She had as yet no notion whatever of what she would do with her liberty and her income and the future; but she thought vaguely15 of something heroic, grandiose16, and unusual.
ii
In her hand she carried a small shabby book, bound in blue and gold, with gilt17 edges a little irregular. She had found this book while sorting out the multitudinous contents of her mother’s wardrobe, and at the last moment, perceiving that it had been overlooked, and being somehow ashamed to leave it to the auctioneers, she had brought it away, not knowing how she would ultimately dispose of it. The book had possibly been dear to her mother, but she could not embarrass her freedom by conserving19 everything that had possibly been dear to her mother. It was entitled The Girl’s Week-day Book, by Mrs. Copley, and it had been published by the Religious Tract20 Society, no doubt in her mother’s girlhood. The frontispiece, a steel engraving21, showed a group of girls feeding some swans by the terraced margin22 of an ornamental23 water, and it bore the legend, “Feeding the Swans.” And on the title-page was the text: “That our daughters may be as corner-stones, polished after the similitude of a palace. Psalm24 cxliv. 12.” In the table of contents were such phrases as: “One thing at a time. Darkness and Light. Respect for Ministers. The Drowning Fly. Trifling25 with words of Scripture26. Goose and Swan. Delicate Health. Conscientious27 Regard to Truth. Sensibility and Gentleness contrasted with Affectation. Curiosity and Tattling. Instability of Worldly Possessions.” A book representing, for Hilda, all that was most grotesque28 in an age that was now definitely finished and closed! A silly book!
During the picnic meal she had idly read extracts from it to Janet, amusing sentences; and though the book had once been held sacred by her who was dead, and though they were engaged in stirring the scarce-cold ashes of a tragedy, the girls had nevertheless permitted themselves a kindly29, moderate mirth. Hilda had quoted from a conversation in it: “Well, I would rather sit quietly round this cheerful fire, and talk with dear mamma, than go to the grandest ball that ever was known!” and Janet had plumply commented: “What a dreadful lie!” And then they had both laughed openly, perhaps to relieve the spiritual tension caused by the day’s task and the surroundings. After that, Hilda had continued to dip into the book, but silently. And Janet had imagined that Hilda was merely bored by the monotonous30 absurdity31 of the sentiments expressed.
Janet was wrong. Hilda had read the following: “One word more. Do not rest in your religious impressions. You have, perhaps, been the subject of terror on account of sin; your mind has been solemnized by some event in Providence32; by an alarming fit of sickness, or the death of a relative, or a companion.... This is indeed to be reckoned a great mercy; but then the danger is, lest you should rest here; lest those tears, and terrors, and resolutions, should be the only evidences on which you venture to conclude on the safety of your immortal33 state. What is your present condition?...”
Which words intimidated34 Hilda in spite of herself. In vain she repeated that the book was a silly book. She really believed that it was silly, but she knew also that there was an aspect of it which was not silly. She was reminded by it that she had found no solution of the problem which had distracted her in Hornsey. ‘What is your present condition?’ Her present condition was still that of a weakling and a coward who had sunk down inertly35 before the great problem of sin. And now, in the growing strength of her moral convalescence36, she was raising her eyes again to meet the problem. Her future seemed to be bound up with the problem. As she breasted the top of the Sytch under the invisible lowering clouds, with her new, adored friend by her side, and the despised but powerful book in her hand, she mused37 in an ambiguous reverie upon her situation, dogged by the problem which alone was accompanying her out of the past into the future. Her reverie was shot through by piercing needles of regret for her mother; and even with the touch of Janet’s arm against her own in the darkness she had sharp realizations38 of her extreme solitude39 in the world. Withal, the sense of life was precious and beautiful. She was not happy; but she was filled with the mysterious vital elation40 which surpasses happiness.
iii
They descended41 gently into Bursley, crossing the top of St. Luke’s Square and turning eastwards42 into Market Square, ruled by the sombre and massive Town Hall in whose high tower an illuminated43 dial shone like a topaz. To Hilda, this nocturnal entry into Bursley had the romance of an entry into a town friendly but strange and recondite44. During the few days of her stay with the Orgreaves in the suburb of Bleakridge, she had scarcely gone into the town once. She had never seen it at night. In the old Turnhill days she had come over to Bursley occasionally with her mother; but to shoppers from Turnhill, Bursley meant St. Luke’s Square and not a yard beyond.
Now the girls arrived at the commencement of the steam-car track, where a huge engine and tram were waiting, and as they turned another corner, the long perspective of Trafalgar Road, rising with its double row of lamps towards fashionable Bleakridge, was revealed to Hilda. She thought, naturally, that every other part of the Five Towns was more impressive and more important than the poor little outskirt, Turnhill, of her birth. In Turnhill there was no thoroughfare to compare with Trafalgar Road, and no fashionable suburb whatever. She had almost the feeling of being in a metropolis45, if a local metropolis.
“It’s beginning to rain, I think,” said Janet.
“Who’s that?” Hilda questioned abruptly46, ignoring the remark in the swift, unreflecting excitement of a sensibility surprised.
“Where?”
“There!”
They were going down Duck Bank into the hollow. On the right, opposite the lighted Dragon Hotel, lay Duck Square in obscure somnolence47; at the corner of Duck Square and Trafalgar Road was a double-fronted shop, of which all the shutters48 were up except two or three in the centre of the doorway49. Framed thus in the aperture50, a young man stood within the shop under a bright central gas-jet; he was gazing intently at a large sheet of paper which he held in his outstretched hands, and the girls saw him in profile: tall, rather lanky51, fair, with hair dishevelled, and a serious, studious, and magnanimous face; quite unconscious that he made a picture for unseen observers.
“That?” said Janet, in a confidential52 and interested tone. “That’s young Clayhanger—Edwin Clayhanger.1 His father’s the printer, you know. Came from Turnhill, originally.”
“I never knew,” said Hilda. “But I seem to have heard the name.”
“Oh! It must have been a long time ago. He’s got the best business in Bursley now. Father says it’s one of the best in the Five Towns. He’s built that new house just close to ours. Don’t you remember I pointed53 it out to you? Father’s the architect. They’re going to move into it next week or the week after. I expect that’s why the son and heir’s working so late to-night, packing and so on, perhaps.”
The young man moved out of sight. But his face had made in those few thrilling seconds a deep impression on Hilda; so that in her mind she still saw it, with an almost physical particularity of detail. It presented itself to her, in some mysterious way, as a romantic visage, wistful, full of sad subtleties54, of the unknown and the seductive, and of a latent benevolence55. It was as recondite and as sympathetic as the town in which she had discovered it.
She said nothing.
“Old Mr. Clayhanger is a regular character,” Janet eagerly went on, to Hilda’s great content. “Some people don’t like him. But I rather do like him.” She was always thus kind. “Grandmother once told me he sprang from simply nothing at all—worked on a potbank when he was quite a child.”
“Who? The father, you mean?”
“Yes, the father. Now, goodness knows how much he isn’t worth I Father is always saying he could buy us up, lock, stock, and barrel.” Janet laughed. “People often call him a miser56, but he can’t be so much of a miser, seeing that he’s built this new house.”
“And I suppose the son’s in the business?”
“Yes. He wanted to be an architect. That was how father got to know him. But old Mr. Clayhanger wouldn’t have it. And so he’s a printer, and one day he’ll be one of the principal men in the town.”
“Oh! So you know him?”
“Well, we do and we don’t. I go into the shop sometimes; and then I’ve seen him once or twice up at the new house. We’ve asked him to come in and see us. But he’s never come, and I don’t think he ever will. I believe his father does keep him grinding away rather hard. I’m sure he’s frightfully clever.”
“How can you tell?”
“Oh! From bits of things he says. And he’s read everything, it seems! And once he saved a great heavy printing-machine from going through the floor of the printing-shop into the basement. If it hadn’t been for him there’d have been a dreadful accident. Everybody was talking about that. He doesn’t look it, does he?”
They were now passing the corner at which stood the shop. Hilda peered within the narrowing, unshuttered slit57, but she could see no more of Edwin Clayhanger.
“No, he doesn’t,” she agreed, while thinking nevertheless that he did look precisely58 that. “And so he lives all alone with his father. No mother?”
“No mother. But there are two sisters. The youngest is married, and just going to have a baby, poor thing! The other one keeps house. I believe she’s a splendid girl, but neither of them is a bit like Edwin. Not a bit. He’s—”
“What?”
“I don’t know. Look here, miss! What about this rain? I vote we take the car up the hill.”
1 See the author’s novel, Clayhanger.
iv
The steam-car was rumbling59 after them down Duck Bank. It stopped, huge above them, and they climbed into it through an odour of warm grease that trailed from the engine. The conductor touched his hat to Janet, who smiled like a sister upon this fellow-being. Two middle-aged60 men were the only other occupants of the interior of the car; both raised their hats to Janet. The girls sat down in opposite corners next to the door. Then, with a deafening61 continuous clatter62 of loose glass-panes and throbbing63 of its filthy64 floor, the vehicle started again, elephantine. It was impossible to talk in that unique din18. Hilda had no desire to talk. She watched Janet pay the fares as in a dream, without even offering her own penny, though as a rule she was touchily65 punctilious66 in sharing expenses with the sumptuous67 Janet. Without being in the least aware of it, and quite innocently, Janet had painted a picture of the young man, Edwin Clayhanger, which intensified a hundredfold the strong romantic piquancy68 of Hilda’s brief vision of him. In an instant Hilda saw her ideal future—that future which had loomed69 grandiose, indefinite, and strange—she saw it quite precise and simple as the wife of such a creature as Edwin Clayhanger. The change was astounding70 in its abruptness71. She saw all the delightful72 and pure vistas73 of love with a man, subtle, baffling, and benevolent74, and above all superior; with a man who would be respected by a whole town as a pillar of society, while bringing to his intimacy with herself an exotic and wistful quality which neither she nor anyone could possibly define. She asked: “What attracts me in him? I don’t know. I like him.” She who had never spoken to him! She who never before had vividly75 seen herself as married to a man! He was clever; he was sincere; he was kind; he was trustworthy; he would have wealth and importance and reputation. All this was good; but all this would have been indifferent to her, had there not been an enigmatic and inscrutable and unprecedented76 something in his face, in his bearing, which challenged and inflamed77 her imagination.
It did not occur to her to think of Janet as in the future a married woman. But of herself she thought, with new agitations78: “I am innocent now! I am ignorant now! I am a girl now! But one day I shall be so no longer. One day I shall be a woman. One day I shall be in the power and possession of some man—if not this man, then some other. Everything happens; and this will happen!” And the hazardous79 strangeness of life enchanted80 her.
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fatigue
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| n.疲劳，劳累 | |
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converse
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| vi.谈话，谈天，闲聊；adv.相反的，相反 | |
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presaged
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| v.预示，预兆( presage的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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downwards
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| adj./adv.向下的（地），下行的（地） | |
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homeliness
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| n.简朴，朴实；相貌平平 | |
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vibration
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| n.颤动，振动；摆动 | |
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intensified
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| v.（使）增强， （使）加剧( intensify的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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joyous
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| adj.充满快乐的；令人高兴的 | |
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apprehensive
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| adj.担心的，恐惧的，善于领会的 | |
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prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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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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cannon
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| n.大炮，火炮；飞机上的机关炮 | |
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morbid
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| adj.病的；致病的；病态的；可怕的 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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grandiose
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| adj.宏伟的，宏大的，堂皇的，铺张的 | |
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gilt
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| adj.镀金的；n.金边证券 | |
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din
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| n.喧闹声，嘈杂声 | |
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conserving
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| v.保护，保藏，保存( conserve的现在分词 ) | |
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tract
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| n.传单，小册子，大片(土地或森林) | |
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engraving
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| n.版画；雕刻（作品）；雕刻艺术；镌版术v.在（硬物）上雕刻（字，画等）( engrave的现在分词 )；将某事物深深印在（记忆或头脑中） | |
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margin
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| n.页边空白；差额；余地，余裕；边，边缘 | |
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ornamental
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| adj.装饰的；作装饰用的；n.装饰品；观赏植物 | |
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psalm
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| n.赞美诗，圣诗 | |
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trifling
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| adj.微不足道的；没什么价值的 | |
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scripture
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| n.经文，圣书，手稿；Scripture:(常用复数)《圣经》，《圣经》中的一段 | |
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conscientious
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| adj.审慎正直的，认真的，本着良心的 | |
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grotesque
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| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
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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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monotonous
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| adj.单调的，一成不变的，使人厌倦的 | |
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absurdity
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| n.荒谬，愚蠢；谬论 | |
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providence
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| n.深谋远虑，天道，天意；远见；节约；上帝 | |
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immortal
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| adj.不朽的；永生的，不死的；神的 | |
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intimidated
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| v.恐吓；威胁adj.害怕的；受到威胁的 | |
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inertly
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| adv.不活泼地，无生气地 | |
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convalescence
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| n.病后康复期 | |
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mused
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| v.沉思，冥想( muse的过去式和过去分词 )；沉思自语说（某事） | |
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realizations
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| 认识，领会( realization的名词复数 )； 实现 | |
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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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elation
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| n.兴高采烈，洋洋得意 | |
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descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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eastwards
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| adj.向东方（的），朝东（的）；n.向东的方向 | |
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illuminated
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| adj.被照明的；受启迪的 | |
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recondite
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| adj.深奥的，难解的 | |
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metropolis
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| n.首府；大城市 | |
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abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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somnolence
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| n.想睡，梦幻；欲寐；嗜睡；嗜眠 | |
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shutters
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| 百叶窗( shutter的名词复数 )； （照相机的）快门 | |
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doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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aperture
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| n.孔，隙，窄的缺口 | |
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lanky
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| adj.瘦长的 | |
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confidential
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| adj.秘（机）密的，表示信任的，担任机密工作的 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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subtleties
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| 细微( subtlety的名词复数 )； 精细； 巧妙； 细微的差别等 | |
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benevolence
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| n.慈悲，捐助 | |
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miser
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| n.守财奴，吝啬鬼 (adj.miserly) | |
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slit
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| n.狭长的切口；裂缝；vt.切开，撕裂 | |
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precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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rumbling
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| n. 隆隆声, 辘辘声 adj. 隆隆响的 动词rumble的现在分词 | |
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middle-aged
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| adj.中年的 | |
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deafening
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| adj. 振耳欲聋的, 极喧闹的 动词deafen的现在分词形式 | |
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clatter
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| v./n.(使)发出连续而清脆的撞击声 | |
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throbbing
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| a. 跳动的,悸动的 | |
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filthy
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| adj.卑劣的；恶劣的，肮脏的 | |
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touchily
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| adv.易动气地；过分敏感地；小心眼地；难以取悦地 | |
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punctilious
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| adj.谨慎的，谨小慎微的 | |
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sumptuous
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| adj.豪华的，奢侈的，华丽的 | |
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piquancy
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| n.辛辣，辣味，痛快 | |
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loomed
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| v.隐约出现，阴森地逼近( loom的过去式和过去分词 )；隐约出现，阴森地逼近 | |
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astounding
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| adj.使人震惊的vt.使震惊，使大吃一惊astound的现在分词) | |
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abruptness
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| n. 突然，唐突 | |
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delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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vistas
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| 长条形景色( vista的名词复数 )； 回顾； 展望； （未来可能发生的）一系列情景 | |
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benevolent
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| adj.仁慈的，乐善好施的 | |
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vividly
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| adv.清楚地，鲜明地，生动地 | |
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76
unprecedented
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| adj.无前例的，新奇的 | |
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77
inflamed
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| adj.发炎的，红肿的v.（使）变红，发怒，过热( inflame的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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78
agitations
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| （液体等的）摇动( agitation的名词复数 )； 鼓动； 激烈争论； （情绪等的）纷乱 | |
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79
hazardous
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| adj.(有)危险的，冒险的；碰运气的 | |
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enchanted
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| adj. 被施魔法的，陶醉的，入迷的 动词enchant的过去式和过去分词 | |
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