(Extract from the diary of Sir Eustace Pedler)As I remarked once before, I am essentially1 a man of peace. I yearn2 for aquiet life—and that’s just the one thing I don’t seem able to have. I am al-ways in the middle of storms and alarms. The relief of getting away fromPagett with his incessant3 nosing out of intrigues4 was enormous, and MissPettigrew is certainly a useful creature. Although there is nothing of thehouri about her, one or two of her accomplishments5 are invaluable6. It istrue that I had a touch of liver at Bulawayo and behaved like a bear inconsequence, but I had had a disturbed night in the train. At 3 am an ex-quisitely dressed young man looking like a musical-comedy hero of theWild West entered my compartment7 and asked where I was going. Disreg-arding my first murmur8 of “Tea—and for God’s sake don’t put sugar in it,”
he repeated his question, laying stress on the fact that he was not a waiterbut an Immigration officer. I finally succeeded in satisfying him that I wassuffering from no infectious disease, that I was visiting Rhodesia from thepurest of motives10, and further gratified him with my full Christian11 namesand my place of birth. I then endeavoured to snatch a little sleep, but someofficious ass9 aroused me at 5:30 with a cup of liquid sugar which he calledtea. I don’t think I threw it at him, but I know that that was what I wantedto do. He brought me unsugared tea, stone cold, at 6, and I then fell asleeputterly exhausted12, to awaken13 just outside Bulawayo and be landed with abeastly wooden giraffe, all legs and neck!
But for these small contretemps, all had been going smoothly14. And thenfresh calamity15 befell.
It was the night of our arrival at the Falls. I was dictating16 to Miss Pettigrewin my sitting room, when suddenly Mrs. Blair burst in without a word of ex-cuse and wearing most compromising attire17.
“Where’s Anne?” she cried.
A nice question to ask. As though I were responsible for the girl. What didshe expect Miss Pettigrew to think? That I was in the habit of producing AnneBeddingfeld from my pocket at midnight or thereabouts? Very compromisingfor a man in my position.
“I presume,” I said coldly, “that she is in her bed.”
I cleared my throat and glanced at Miss Pettigrew, to show that I was readyto resume dictating. I hoped Mrs. Blair would take the hint. She did nothingof the kind. Instead she sank into a chair, and waved a slippered18 foot in anagitated manner.
“She’s not in her room. I’ve been there. I had a dream—a terrible dream—that she was in some awful danger, and I got up and went to her room, just toreassure myself, you know. She wasn’t there and her bed hadn’t been sleptin.”
She looked at me appealingly.
“What shall I do, Sir Eustace?”
Repressing the desire to reply, “Go to bed, and don’t worry over nothing. Anable-bodied young woman like Anne Beddingfeld is perfectly19 well able to takecare of herself,” I frowned judicially20.
“What does Race say about it?”
Why should Race have it all his own way? Let him have some of the disad-vantages as well as the advantages of female society.
“I can’t find him anywhere.”
She was evidently making a night of it. I sighed, and sat down in a chair.
“I don’t quite see the reason for your agitation,” I said patiently.
“My dream—”
“That curry21 we had for dinner!”
“Oh, Sir Eustace!”
The woman was quite indignant. And yet everybody knows that nightmaresare a direct result of injudicious eating.
“After all,” I continued persuasively22, “why shouldn’t Anne Beddingfeld andRace go out for a little stroll without having the whole hotel aroused about it?”
“You think they’ve just gone out for a stroll together? But it’s after mid-night?”
“One does these foolish things when one is young,” I murmured, “thoughRace is certainly old enough to know better.”
“Do you really think so?”
“I dare say they’ve run away to make a match of it,” I continued soothingly,though fully23 aware that I was making an idiotic24 suggestion. For, after all, at aplace like this, where is there to run away to?
I don’t know how much longer I should have gone on making feeble re-marks, but at that moment Race himself walked in upon us. At any rate, I hadbeen partly right—he had been out for a stroll, but he hadn’t taken Anne withhim. However, I had been quite wrong in my way of dealing25 with the situation.
I was soon shown that. Race had the whole hotel turned upside down in threeminutes. I’ve never seen a man more upset.
The thing is very extraordinary. Where did the girl go? She walked out of thehotel, fully dressed, about ten minutes past eleven, and she was never seenagain. The idea of suicide seems impossible. She was one of these energeticyoung women who are in love with life, and have not the faintest intention ofquitting it. There was no train either way until midday on the morrow, so shecan’t have left the place. Then where the devil is she?
Race is almost beside himself, poor fellow. He has left no stone unturned. Allthe DC’s, or whatever they call themselves, for hundreds of miles round havebeen pressed into the service. The native trackers have run about on all fours.
Everything that can be done is being done—but no sign of Anne Beddingfeld.
The accepted theory is that she walked in her sleep. There are signs on thepath near the bridge which seem to show that the girl walked deliberately26 offthe edge. If so, of course, she must have been dashed to pieces on the rocks be-low. Unfortunately, most of the footprints were obliterated27 by a party of tour-ists who chose to walk that way early on the Monday morning.
I don’t know that it’s a very satisfactory theory. In my young days, I was al-ways told that sleepwalkers couldn’t hurt themselves—that their own sixthsense took care of them. I don’t think the theory satisfies Mrs. Blair either.
I can’t make that woman out. Her whole attitude towards Race haschanged. She watches him now like a cat a mouse, and she makes obvious ef-forts to bring herself to be civil to him. And they used to be such friends. Alto-gether she is unlike herself, nervous, hysterical28, starting and jumping at theleast sound. I am beginning to think that it is high time I went to Jo’burg.
A rumour29 came along yesterday of a mysterious island somewhere up theriver, with a man and a girl on it. Race got very excited. It turned out to be alla mare’s nest, however. The man had been there for years, and is well-knownto the manager of the hotel. He takes parties up and down the river in the sea-son and points out crocodiles and a stray hippopotamus30 or so to them. I be-lieve that he keeps a tame one which is trained to bite pieces out of the boat onoccasions. Then he fends31 it off with a boathook, and the party feel they havereally got to the back of beyond at last. How long the girl has been there is notdefinitely known, but it seems pretty clear that she can’t be Anne, and there isa certain delicacy32 in interfering33 in other people’s affairs. If I were this youngfellow, I should certainly kick Race off the island if he came asking questionsabout my love affairs.
Later.
It is definitely settled that I go to Jo’burg tomorrow. Race urges me to do so.
Things are getting unpleasant there, by all I hear, but I might as well go beforethey get worse. I dare say I shall be shot by a striker, anyway. Mrs. Blair wasto have accompanied me, but at the last minute she changed her mind and de-cided to stay on at the Falls. It seems as though she couldn’t bear to take hereyes off Race. She came to me tonight, and said, with some hesitation34, that shehad a favour to ask. Would I take charge of her souvenirs for her?
“Not the animals?” I asked, in lively alarm. I always felt that I should getstuck with those beastly animals sooner or later.
In the end, we effected a compromise. I took charge of two small woodenboxes for her which contained fragile articles. The animals are to be packedby the local store in vast crates35 and sent to Cape36 Town by rail, where Pagettwill see to their being stored.
The people who are packing them say that they are of a particularly awk-ward shape (!), and that special cases will have to be made. I pointed37 out toMrs. Blair that by the time she has got them home those animals will have costher easily a pound apiece!
Pagett is straining at the leash38 to rejoin me in Jo’burg. I shall make an ex-cuse of Mrs. Blair’s cases to keep him in Cape Town. I have written him thathe must receive the cases and see to their safe disposal, as they contain rarecurios of immense value.
So all is settled, and I and Miss Pettigrew go off into the blue together. Andanyone who has seen Miss Pettigrew will admit that it is perfectly respectable.
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essentially
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| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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yearn
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| v.想念；怀念；渴望 | |
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incessant
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| adj.不停的，连续的 | |
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intrigues
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| n.密谋策划( intrigue的名词复数 )；神秘气氛；引人入胜的复杂情节v.搞阴谋诡计( intrigue的第三人称单数 )；激起…的好奇心 | |
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accomplishments
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| n.造诣；完成( accomplishment的名词复数 )；技能；成绩；成就 | |
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invaluable
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| adj.无价的，非常宝贵的，极为贵重的 | |
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compartment
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| n.卧车包房，隔间；分隔的空间 | |
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murmur
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| n.低语，低声的怨言；v.低语，低声而言 | |
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ass
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| n.驴；傻瓜，蠢笨的人 | |
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motives
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| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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awaken
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| vi.醒，觉醒；vt.唤醒，使觉醒，唤起，激起 | |
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smoothly
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| adv.平滑地，顺利地，流利地，流畅地 | |
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calamity
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| n.灾害，祸患，不幸事件 | |
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dictating
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| v.大声讲或读( dictate的现在分词 )；口授；支配；摆布 | |
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attire
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| v.穿衣，装扮[同]array；n.衣着；盛装 | |
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slippered
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| 穿拖鞋的 | |
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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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judicially
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| 依法判决地，公平地 | |
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curry
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| n.咖哩粉，咖哩饭菜；v.用咖哩粉调味，用马栉梳，制革 | |
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persuasively
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| adv.口才好地；令人信服地 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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idiotic
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| adj.白痴的 | |
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dealing
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| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
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deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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obliterated
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| v.除去( obliterate的过去式和过去分词 )；涂去；擦掉；彻底破坏或毁灭 | |
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hysterical
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| adj.情绪异常激动的，歇斯底里般的 | |
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rumour
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| n.谣言，谣传，传闻 | |
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hippopotamus
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| n.河马 | |
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fends
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| v.独立生活，照料自己( fend的第三人称单数 )；挡开，避开 | |
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delicacy
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| n.精致，细微，微妙，精良；美味，佳肴 | |
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interfering
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| adj. 妨碍的 动词interfere的现在分词 | |
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hesitation
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| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
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crates
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| n. 板条箱, 篓子, 旧汽车 vt. 装进纸条箱 | |
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cape
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| n.海角，岬；披肩，短披风 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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leash
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| n.牵狗的皮带，束缚；v.用皮带系住 | |
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