CHAPTER XIX

 In the place at the corner, on the chance of its saving time, Fleda wrote her telegram—wrote it in silence under Mrs. Gereth's eye and then in silence handed it to her. "I send this to Waterbath, on the possibility of your being there, to ask you to come to me." Mrs. Gereth held it a moment, read it more than once; then keeping it, and with her eyes on her companion, seemed to consider. There was the dawn of a kindness in her look; Fleda perceived in it, as if as the reward of complete submission¹, a slight relaxation² of her rigor³.

 

"Wouldn't it perhaps after all be better," she asked, "before doing this, to see if we can make his whereabouts certain?"

 

"Why so? It will be always so much done," said Fleda. "Though I'm poor," she added with a smile, "I don't mind the shilling."

 

"The shilling's my shilling," said Mrs. Gereth.

 

Fleda stayed her hand. "No, no—I'm superstitious⁴."

 

"Superstitious?"

 

"To succeed, it must be all me!"

 

"Well, if that will make it succeed!" Mrs. Gereth took back her shilling, but she still kept the telegram. "As he's most probably not there—"

 

"If he shouldn't be there," Fleda interrupted, "there will be no harm done."

 

"If he 'shouldn't be' there!" Mrs. Gereth ejaculated. "Heaven help us, how you assume it!"

 

"I'm only prepared for the worst. The Brigstocks will simply send any telegram on."

 

"Where will they send it?"

 

"Presumably to Poynton."

 

"They'll read it first," said Mrs. Gereth.

 

"Read it?"

 

"Yes, Mona will. She'll open it under the pretext⁵ of having it repeated; and then she'll probably do nothing. She'll keep it as a proof of your immodesty."

 

"What of that?" asked Fleda.

 

"You don't mind her seeing it?"

 

Rather musingly⁶ and absently Fleda shook her head. "I don't mind anything."

 

"Well, then, that's all right," said Mrs. Gereth as if she had only wanted to feel that she had been irreproachably⁷ considerate. After this she was gentler still, but she had another point to clear up. "Why have you given, for a reply, your sister's address?"

 

"Because if he does come to me he must come to me there. If that telegram goes," said Fleda, "I return to Maggie's to-night."

 

Mrs. Gereth seemed to wonder at this. "You won't receive him here with me?"

 

"No, I won't receive him here with you. Only where I received him last—only there again." She showed her companion that as to that she was firm.

 

But Mrs. Gereth had obviously now had some practice in following queer movements prompted by queer feelings. She resigned herself, though she fingered the paper a moment longer. She appeared to hesitate; then she brought out: "You couldn't then, if I release you, make your message a little stronger?"

 

Fleda gave her a faint smile. "He'll come if he can."

 

Mrs. Gereth met fully⁸ what this conveyed; with decision she pushed in the telegram. But she laid her hand quickly upon another form and with still greater decision wrote another message. "From me, this," she said to Fleda when she had finished: "to catch him possibly at Poynton. Will you read it?"

 

Fleda turned away. "Thank you."

 

"It's stronger than yours."

 

"I don't care," said Fleda, moving to the door. Mrs. Gereth, having paid for the second missive, rejoined her, and they drove together to Owen's club, where the elder lady alone got out. Fleda, from the hansom, watched through the glass doors her brief conversation with the hall-porter and then met in silence her return with the news that he had not seen Owen for a fortnight and was keeping his letters till called for. These had been the last orders; there were a dozen letters lying there. He had no more information to give, but they would see what they could find at Colonel Gereth's. To any connection with this inquiry⁹, however, Fleda now roused herself to object, and her friend had indeed to recognize that on second thoughts it couldn't be quite to the taste of either of them to advertise in the remoter reaches of the family that they had forfeited¹⁰ the confidence of the master of Poynton. The letters lying at the club proved effectively that he was not in London, and this was the question that immediately concerned them. Nothing could concern them further till the answers to their telegrams should have had time to arrive. Mrs. Gereth had got back into the cab, and, still at the door of the club, they sat staring at their need of patience. Fleda's eyes rested, in the great hard street, on passing figures that struck her as puppets pulled by strings¹¹. After a little the driver challenged them through the hole in the top. "Anywhere in particular, ladies?"

 

Fleda decided¹². "Drive to Euston, please."

 

"You won't wait for what we may hear?" Mrs. Gereth asked.

 

"Whatever we hear, I must go." As the cab went on she added: "But I needn't drag you to the station."

 

Mrs. Gereth was silent a moment; then "Nonsense!" she sharply replied.

 

In spite of this sharpness they were now almost equally and almost tremulously mild; though their mildness took mainly the form of an inevitable¹³ sense of nothing left to say. It was the unsaid that occupied them—the thing that for more than an hour they had been going round and round without naming it. Much too early for Fleda's train, they encountered at the station a long half-hour to wait. Fleda made no further allusion¹⁴ to Mrs. Gereth's leaving her; their dumbness, with the elapsing minutes, grew to be in itself a reconstituted bond. They slowly paced the great gray platform, and presently Mrs. Gereth took the girl's arm and leaned on it with a hard demand for support. It seemed to Fleda not difficult for each to know of what the other was thinking—to know indeed that they had in common two alternating visions, one of which, at moments, brought them as by a common impulse to a pause. This was the one that was fixed¹⁵; the other filled at times the whole space and then was shouldered away. Owen and Mona glared together out of the gloom and disappeared, but the replenishment¹⁶ of Poynton made a shining, steady light. The old splendor¹⁷ was there again, the old things were in their places. Our friends looked at them with an equal yearning¹⁸; face to face, on the platform, they counted them in each other's eyes. Fleda had come back to them by a road as strange as the road they themselves had followed. The wonder of their great journeys, the prodigy¹⁹ of this second one, was the question that made her occasionally stop. Several times she uttered it, asked how this and that difficulty had been met. Mrs. Gereth replied with pale lucidity—was naturally the person most familiar with the truth that what she undertook was always somehow achieved. To do it was to do it—she had more than one kind of magnificence. She confessed there, audaciously enough, to a sort of arrogance²⁰ of energy, and Fleda, going on again, her inquiry more than answered and her arm rendering²¹ service, flushed, in her diminished identity, with the sense that such a woman was great.

 

"You do mean literally²² everything, to the last little miniature on the last little screen?"

 

"I mean literally everything. Go over them with the catalogue!"

 

Fleda went over them while they walked again; she had no need of the catalogue. At last she spoke²³ once more: "Even the Maltese cross?"

 

"Even the Maltese cross. Why not that as well as everything else?—especially as I remembered how you like it."

 

Finally, after an interval²⁴, the girl exclaimed: "But the mere²⁵ fatigue²⁶ of it, the exhaustion²⁷ of such a feat²⁸! I drag you to and fro here while you must be ready to drop."

 

"I'm very, very tired." Mrs. Gereth's slow head-shake was tragic²⁹. "I couldn't do it again."

 

"I doubt if they'd bear it again!"

 

"That's another matter: they'd bear it if I could. There won't have been, this time either, a shake or a scratch. But I'm too tired—I very nearly don't care."

 

"You must sit down, then, till I go," said Fleda. "We must find a bench."

 

"No. I'm tired of them: I'm not tired of you. This is the way for you to feel most how much I rest on you." Fleda had a compunction, wondering as they continued to stroll whether it was right after all to leave her. She believed, however, that if the flame might for the moment burn low, it was far from dying out; an impression presently confirmed by the way Mrs. Gereth went on: "But one's fatigue is nothing. The idea under which one worked kept one up. For you I could—I can still. Nothing will have mattered if she's not there."

 

There was a question that this imposed, but Fleda at first found no voice to utter it: it was the thing that, between them, since her arrival, had been so consciously and vividly³⁰ unsaid. Finally she was able to breathe: "And if she is there—if she's there already?"

 

Mrs. Gereth's rejoinder too hung back; then when it came—from sad eyes as well as from lips barely moved—it was unexpectedly merciful. "It will be very hard." That was all, now; and it was poignantly³¹ simple. The train Fleda was to take had drawn³² up; the girl kissed her as if in farewell. Mrs. Gereth submitted, then after a little brought out: "If we have lost—"

 

"If we have lost?" Fleda repeated as she paused again.

 

"You'll all the same come abroad with me?"

 

"It will seem very strange to me if you want me. But whatever you ask, whatever you need, that I will always do."

 

"I shall need your company," said Mrs. Gereth. Fleda wondered an instant if this were not practically a demand for penal³³ submission—for a surrender that, in its complete humility³⁴, would be a long expiation³⁵. But there was none of the latent chill of the vindictive³⁶ in the way Mrs. Gereth pursued: "We can always, as time goes on, talk of them together."

 

"Of the old things?" Fleda had selected a third-class compartment³⁷: she stood a moment looking into it and at a fat woman with a basket who had already taken possession. "Always?" she said, turning again to her companion. "Never!" she exclaimed. She got into the carriage, and two men with bags and boxes immediately followed, blocking up door and window so long that when she was able to look out again Mrs. Gereth had gone.

1 submission   

n.服从，投降；温顺，谦虚；提出

参考例句：

• The defeated general showed his submission by giving up his sword.战败将军缴剑表示投降。
• No enemy can frighten us into submission.任何敌人的恐吓都不能使我们屈服。

2 relaxation   

n.松弛，放松；休息；消遣；娱乐

参考例句：

• The minister has consistently opposed any relaxation in the law.部长一向反对法律上的任何放宽。
• She listens to classical music for relaxation.她听古典音乐放松。

3 rigor   

n.严酷，严格，严厉

参考例句：

• Their analysis lacks rigor.他们的分析缺乏严谨性。||The crime will be treated with the full rigor of the law.这一罪行会严格依法审理。

4 superstitious   

adj.迷信的

参考例句：

• They aim to deliver the people who are in bondage to superstitious belief.他们的目的在于解脱那些受迷信束缚的人。
• These superstitious practices should be abolished as soon as possible.这些迷信做法应尽早取消。

5 pretext   

n.借口，托词

参考例句：

• He used his headache as a pretext for not going to school.他借口头疼而不去上学。
• He didn't attend that meeting under the pretext of sickness.他以生病为借口，没参加那个会议。

6 musingly   

adv.沉思地，冥想地

参考例句：

7 irreproachably   

adv.不可非难地，无过失地

参考例句：

8 fully   

adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地

参考例句：

• The doctor asked me to breathe in,then to breathe out fully.医生让我先吸气，然后全部呼出。
• They soon became fully integrated into the local community.他们很快就完全融入了当地人的圈子。

9 inquiry   

n.打听，询问，调查，查问

参考例句：

• Many parents have been pressing for an inquiry into the problem.许多家长迫切要求调查这个问题。
• The field of inquiry has narrowed down to five persons.调查的范围已经缩小到只剩5个人了。

10 forfeited   

（因违反协议、犯规、受罚等）丧失，失去( forfeit的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Because he broke the rules, he forfeited his winnings. 他犯规，所以丧失了奖金。
• He has forfeited the right to be the leader of this nation. 他丧失了作为这个国家领导的权利。

11 strings   

n.弦

参考例句：

• He sat on the bed,idly plucking the strings of his guitar.他坐在床上，随意地拨着吉他的弦。
• She swept her fingers over the strings of the harp.她用手指划过竖琴的琴弦。

12 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。

13 inevitable   

adj.不可避免的，必然发生的

参考例句：

• Mary was wearing her inevitable large hat.玛丽戴着她总是戴的那顶大帽子。
• The defeat had inevitable consequences for British policy.战败对英国政策不可避免地产生了影响。

14 allusion   

n.暗示，间接提示

参考例句：

• He made an allusion to a secret plan in his speech.在讲话中他暗示有一项秘密计划。
• She made no allusion to the incident.她没有提及那个事件。

15 fixed   

adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的

参考例句：

• Have you two fixed on a date for the wedding yet?你们俩选定婚期了吗？
• Once the aim is fixed,we should not change it arbitrarily.目标一旦确定，我们就不应该随意改变。

16 replenishment   

n.补充(货物)

参考例句：

• Since the wartime population needed replenishment, pregnancies were a good sign. 最后一桩倒不失为好现象，战时人口正该补充。
• Natural replenishment of this vast supply of underground water occurs very slowly. 靠自然补充大量地下水是十分缓慢的。

17 splendor   

n.光彩；壮丽，华丽；显赫，辉煌

参考例句：

• Never in his life had he gazed on such splendor.他生平从没有见过如此辉煌壮丽的场面。
• All the splendor in the world is not worth a good friend.人世间所有的荣华富贵不如一个好朋友。

18 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。

19 prodigy   

n.惊人的事物，奇迹，神童，天才，预兆

参考例句：

• She was a child prodigy on the violin.她是神童小提琴手。
• He was always a Negro prodigy who played barbarously and wonderfully.他始终是一个黑人的奇才，这种奇才弹奏起来粗野而惊人。

20 arrogance   

n.傲慢，自大

参考例句：

• His arrogance comes out in every speech he makes.他每次讲话都表现得骄傲自大。
• Arrogance arrested his progress.骄傲阻碍了他的进步。

21 rendering   

n.表现，描写

参考例句：

• She gave a splendid rendering of Beethoven's piano sonata.她精彩地演奏了贝多芬的钢琴奏鸣曲。
• His narrative is a super rendering of dialect speech and idiom.他的叙述是方言和土语最成功的运用。

22 literally   

adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实

参考例句：

• He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
• Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。

23 spoke   

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

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

24 interval   

n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息

参考例句：

• The interval between the two trees measures 40 feet.这两棵树的间隔是40英尺。
• There was a long interval before he anwsered the telephone.隔了好久他才回了电话。

25 mere   

adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过

参考例句：

• That is a mere repetition of what you said before.那不过是重复了你以前讲的话。
• It's a mere waste of time waiting any longer.再等下去纯粹是浪费时间。

26 fatigue   

n.疲劳，劳累

参考例句：

• The old lady can't bear the fatigue of a long journey.这位老妇人不能忍受长途旅行的疲劳。
• I have got over my weakness and fatigue.我已从虚弱和疲劳中恢复过来了。

27 exhaustion   

n.耗尽枯竭，疲惫，筋疲力尽，竭尽，详尽无遗的论述

参考例句：

• She slept the sleep of exhaustion.她因疲劳而酣睡。
• His exhaustion was obvious when he fell asleep standing.他站着睡着了，显然是太累了。

28 feat   

n.功绩；武艺，技艺；adj.灵巧的，漂亮的，合适的

参考例句：

• Man's first landing on the moon was a feat of great daring.人类首次登月是一个勇敢的壮举。
• He received a medal for his heroic feat.他因其英雄业绩而获得一枚勋章。

29 tragic   

adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的

参考例句：

• The effect of the pollution on the beaches is absolutely tragic.污染海滩后果可悲。
• Charles was a man doomed to tragic issues.查理是个注定不得善终的人。

30 vividly   

adv.清楚地，鲜明地，生动地

参考例句：

• The speaker pictured the suffering of the poor vividly.演讲者很生动地描述了穷人的生活。
• The characters in the book are vividly presented.这本书里的人物写得栩栩如生。

31 poignantly   

参考例句：

• His story is told poignantly in the film, A Beautiful Mind, now showing here. 以他的故事拍成的电影《美丽境界》，正在本地上映。

32 drawn   

v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的

参考例句：

• All the characters in the story are drawn from life.故事中的所有人物都取材于生活。
• Her gaze was drawn irresistibly to the scene outside.她的目光禁不住被外面的风景所吸引。

33 penal   

adj.刑罚的；刑法上的

参考例句：

• I hope you're familiar with penal code.我希望你们熟悉本州法律规则。
• He underwent nineteen years of penal servitude for theft.他因犯了大窃案受过十九年的苦刑。

34 humility   

n.谦逊，谦恭

参考例句：

• Humility often gains more than pride.谦逊往往比骄傲收益更多。
• His voice was still soft and filled with specious humility.他的声音还是那么温和，甚至有点谦卑。

35 expiation   

n.赎罪，补偿

参考例句：

• 'served him right,'said Drouet afterward, even in view of her keen expiation of her error. “那是他活该，"这一场结束时杜洛埃说，尽管那个妻子已竭力要赎前愆。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹
• Jesus made expiation for our sins on the cross. 耶稣在十字架上为我们赎了罪。 来自互联网

36 vindictive   

adj.有报仇心的，怀恨的，惩罚的

参考例句：

• I have no vindictive feelings about it.我对此没有恶意。
• The vindictive little girl tore up her sister's papers.那个充满报复心的小女孩撕破了她姐姐的作业。

37 compartment   

n.卧车包房，隔间；分隔的空间

参考例句：

• We were glad to have the whole compartment to ourselves.真高兴，整个客车隔间由我们独享。
• The batteries are safely enclosed in a watertight compartment.电池被安全地置于一个防水的隔间里。