章节正文
bit."
The end came soon after this, and, in spite of our attitude (I
speak of us four, not of Smugg) of whole-heartedness, I think it
was rather a shock to us all, when Joe announced one morning, on
his arrival with the chops, that he was to be made a happy man at
the church next day. Smugg was not in the room, and the rest of
us congratulated Joe, and made up a purse for him to give Pyrrha,
with our best respects, and he bowed himself out, mightily
pleased, and asseverating that we were real gentlemen. Then we
sat and looked at the table.
"It robs us of a resource," pronounced Gayford, once again making
himself the mouthpiece of the party. We all nodded, and filled
fresh pipes.
Presently Smugg sidled in. We had seen little of him the last
week; save when he was construing he had taken refuge in his own
room. When he came in now, Gayford wagged his head
significantly at me; apparently, it was my task to bell the cat.
I rose, and went to the mantelpiece. Smugg had sat down at the
table, and my back was to him. I took a match from the box,
struck it, and applied it to my pipe, and, punctuating my words
with interspersed puffings, I said carelessly:
"By the way, Smugg, Pyrrha's going to be married to Joe Shanks
to-morrow."
I don't know how he looked. I kept my face from him, but, after
a long minute's pause, he answered:
"Thank you, Robertson. It's Aeschylus this morning, isn't it?"
We had a noisy evening that night. I suppose we felt below par,
and wanted cheering up. Anyhow, we made an expedition to the
grocer's, and amazed him with a demand for his best champagne and
his choicest sherry. We carried the goods home in a bag, and sat
down to a revel. Smugg had some bread and cheese in his own
room; he said that he had letters to write. We dined
largely, and drank still more largely; then we sang, and at
last--it was near on twelve, a terrible hour for that
neighborhood--we made our way, amid much boisterousness and
horseplay, to bed; where I, at least, was asleep in five minutes.
As the church clock struck two, I awoke. I heard a sound of
movement in Smugg's room next door. I lay and listened.
Presently his door opened, and he creaked gentlydownstairs. I
sprang out of bed and looked out of the window. Smugg, fully
dressed, was gliding along the path toward Dill's farm. Some
impulse--curiosity only, very likely--made me jump into my
trousers, seize a flanneljacket, draw on a pair of boots, and
hastily follow him. When I got outside he was visible in the
moonlight, mounting the path ahead of me. He held on his way
toward the farm, I following. When he reached the yard he
stopped for a moment, and seemed to peer up at the windows, which
were all dark and unresponsive. I stood as quiet as I could,
twenty yards from him, and moved cautiously on again when he
turned to the right and passed through the gate into the meadows.
I saw no signs of Pyrrha. Smugg held on his way across the
meadows, down toward the stream; and suddenly the thought leaped
to my brain that the poor fool meant to drown himself. But I
could hardly believe it. Surely he must merely be taking a
desperate lover's ramble, a last sad visit to the scenes of his
silly, irrational infatuation. If I went up to him, I should
look a fool, too; so I hung behind, ready to turn upon him if
need appeared.
He walked down to the very edge of the stream; it ran deep and
fast just here, under a high bank and a row of old willows.
Smugg sat down on the bank, wet though the grass was, and clasped
his hands over his knees. I crouched down a little way behind
him, ready and alert. I am a good swimmer, and I did not doubt
my power to pull him out, even if I were not in time to prevent
him jumping in. I saw him rise, look over the brink, and sit
down again. I almost thought I saw him shiver. And presently,
through the stillness of the summer night, came the strangest,
saddest sound; catching my ear as it drifted across the meadow.
Smugg was sobbing, and his sobs--never loud--rose and fell with
the subdued stress of intolerable pain.
Suddenly he leaped up, cried aloud, and flung his hands above his
head. I thought he was gone this time; but he stopped, poised,
as it seemed, over the water, and I heard him cry, "I can't, I
can't!" and he sank down all in a heap on the bank, and fell
again to sobbing. I hope never to see a man--if you can call
Smugg a man--like that again.
He sat where he was, and I where I was, till the moon paled and a
distant hint of day discovered us. Then he rose, brushed himself
with his hands, and slunk quickly from the bank. Had he looked
anywhere but on the ground, he must have seen me; as it was, I
only narrowly avoided him, and fell again into my place behind
him. All the way back to our garden I followed him. As he
passed through the gate, I quickened my pace, overtook him, and
laid my hand on his arm. The man's face gave me what I remember
my old nurse used to call "quite a turn."
"You're an average idiot, aren't you?" said I. "Oh, yes; I've
been squatting in the wet by that infernal river, too. You ought
to get three months, by rights."
He looked at me in a dazed sort of way.
"I daren't," he said. "I wanted to, but I daren't."
There is really nothing more. We went to the wedding, leaving
Smugg in bed; and in the evening we, leaving Smugg still in bed
(I told Mary to keep an eye on him), and carrying a dozen of the
grocer's best port, went up to dance at Dill's farm. Joe was
polished till I could almost see myself in his cheek, and Pyrrha
looked more charming than ever. She and Joe were to leave us
early, to go to Joe's own house in the village, but I managed to
get one dance with her. Indeed, I believe she wanted a word
with me.
"Well, all's well that ends well, isn't it?" I began. "No more
scoldings! Not from Mrs. Dill, anyhow."
"You can't let that alone, sir," said Pyrrha.
I chuckled gently.
"Oh, I'll never refer to it again," said I. "This is a fine
wedding of yours, Betsy."
"It's good of you and the other gentlemen to come, sir."
"We had to see the last of you," and I sighed very
ostentatiously.
Pyrrha laughed. She did not believe in it, and she knew that I
knew she did not, but the little compliment pleased her, all the
same.
"Smugg," I pursued, "is ill in bed. But perhaps he wouldn't have
come, anyhow."
"If you please, sir----" Pyrrha began; but she stopped.
"Yes, Betsy? What is it?"
"Would you take a message for me, sir?"
"If it's a proper one, Betsy, for a married lady to send."
She laughed a little, and said:
"Oh, it's no harm, sir. I'm afraid he aint--he's rather down,
sir."
"Who?"
"Why, that Smugg, sir."
"Oh, that Smugg! Why, yes; a little down, Betsy, I fear."
"You might tell him as I bear no malice, sir--as I'm not angry--
with him, I mean."
"Certainly," said I. "It will probably do him good."
"He got me into trouble; but there, I can make allowances; and
it's all right now, sir."
"In fact you forgive him?"
"I think you might tell him so, sir," said Betsy.
"But," said I, "are you aware that he was another's all the
time?"
"What, sir?"
"Oh, yes! engaged to be married."
"Well, I never! Him! What, all the while he----"
"Precisely."
"Well, that beats everything. Oh, if I'd known that!"
"I'll give him your message."
"No, sir, not now, I thank you. The villain!"
"You are right," said I. "I think your mother ought to have--
scolded him, too."
"Now you promised, sir----" but Joe came up, and I escaped.
IV.
A REPENTANT SINNER.
It was, I believe, mainly as a compliment to me that Miss Audrey
Liston was asked to Poltons. Miss Liston and I were very good
friends, and my cousin Dora Polton thought, as she informed me,
that it would be nice for me to have someone I could talk to
about "books and so on." I did not complain. Miss Liston was a
pleasant young woman of six-and-twenty; I liked her very much
except on paper, and I was aware that she made it a point of duty
to read something at least of what I wrote. She was in the habit
of describing herself as an "authoress in a small way." If it
were pointed out that six three-volume novels in three years (the
term of her literary activity, at the time of which I
write) could hardly be called "a small way," she would smile
modestly and say that it was not really much; and if she were
told that the English language embraced no such word as
"authoress," she would smile again and say that it ought to; a
position toward the bugbear of correctness with which, I confess,
I sympathize in some degree. She was very diligent; she worked
from ten to one every day while she was at Poltons; how much she
wrote is between her and her conscience.
There was another impeachment which Miss Liston was hardly at the
trouble to deny. "Take my characters from life?" she would
exclaim. "Surely every artist" (Miss Liston often referred to
herself as an artist) "must?" And she would proceed to
maintain--what is perhaps true sometimes--that people rather
liked being put into books, just as they like being photographed,
for all that they grumble and pretend to be afflicted when either
process is levied against them. In discussing this matter
with Miss Liston I felt myself on delicate ground, for it was
notorious that I figured in her first book in the guise of a
misogynistic genius; the fact that she lengthened (and thickened)
my hair, converted it from an indeterminate brown to a dusky
black, gave me a drooping mustache, and invested my very ordinary
workaday eyes with a strange magneticattraction, availed
nothing; I was at once recognized; and, I may remark in passing,
an uncommonly disagreeable fellow she made me. Thus I had passed
through the fire. I felt tolerably sure that I presented no
other aspect of interest, real or supposed, and I was quite
content that Miss Liston should serve all the rest of her
acquaintance as she had served me. I reckoned they would last
her, at the present rate of production, about five years.
Fate was kind to Miss Liston, and provided her with most suitable
patterns for her next piece of work at Poltons itself. There
were a young man and a young woman staying in the house--Sir
Gilbert Chillington and Miss Pamela Myles. The moment Miss
Liston was apprized of a possible romance, she began the study of
the protagonists. She was looking out, she told me, for some new
types (if it were any consolation--and there is a sort of dignity
about it--to be called a type, Miss Liston's victims were always
welcome to so much), and she had found them in Chillington and
Pamela. The former appeared to my dull eye to offer no salient
novelty; he was tall, broad, handsome, and he possessed a manner
of enviable placidity. Pamela, I allowed, was exactly the
heroine Miss Liston loved--haughty, capricious, difficile, but
sound and true at heart (I was mentally skimming Volume I). Miss
Liston agreed with me in my conception of Pamela, but declared
that I did not do justice to the artistic possibilities latent in
Chillington; he had a curious attraction which it would tax her
The end came soon after this, and, in spite of our attitude (I
speak of us four, not of Smugg) of whole-heartedness, I think it
was rather a shock to us all, when Joe announced one morning, on
his arrival with the chops, that he was to be made a happy man at
the church next day. Smugg was not in the room, and the rest of
us congratulated Joe, and made up a purse for him to give Pyrrha,
with our best respects, and he bowed himself out, mightily
pleased, and asseverating that we were real gentlemen. Then we
sat and looked at the table.
"It robs us of a resource," pronounced Gayford, once again making
himself the mouthpiece of the party. We all nodded, and filled
fresh pipes.
Presently Smugg sidled in. We had seen little of him the last
week; save when he was construing he had taken refuge in his own
room. When he came in now, Gayford wagged his head
significantly at me; apparently, it was my task to bell the cat.
I rose, and went to the mantelpiece. Smugg had sat down at the
table, and my back was to him. I took a match from the box,
struck it, and applied it to my pipe, and, punctuating my words
with interspersed puffings, I said carelessly:
"By the way, Smugg, Pyrrha's going to be married to Joe Shanks
to-morrow."
I don't know how he looked. I kept my face from him, but, after
a long minute's pause, he answered:
"Thank you, Robertson. It's Aeschylus this morning, isn't it?"
We had a noisy evening that night. I suppose we felt below par,
and wanted cheering up. Anyhow, we made an expedition to the
grocer's, and amazed him with a demand for his best champagne and
his choicest sherry. We carried the goods home in a bag, and sat
down to a revel. Smugg had some bread and cheese in his own
room; he said that he had letters to write. We dined
largely, and drank still more largely; then we sang, and at
last--it was near on twelve, a terrible hour for that
neighborhood--we made our way, amid much boisterousness and
horseplay, to bed; where I, at least, was asleep in five minutes.
As the church clock struck two, I awoke. I heard a sound of
movement in Smugg's room next door. I lay and listened.
Presently his door opened, and he creaked gentlydownstairs. I
sprang out of bed and looked out of the window. Smugg, fully
dressed, was gliding along the path toward Dill's farm. Some
impulse--curiosity only, very likely--made me jump into my
trousers, seize a flanneljacket, draw on a pair of boots, and
hastily follow him. When I got outside he was visible in the
moonlight, mounting the path ahead of me. He held on his way
toward the farm, I following. When he reached the yard he
stopped for a moment, and seemed to peer up at the windows, which
were all dark and unresponsive. I stood as quiet as I could,
twenty yards from him, and moved cautiously on again when he
turned to the right and passed through the gate into the meadows.
I saw no signs of Pyrrha. Smugg held on his way across the
meadows, down toward the stream; and suddenly the thought leaped
to my brain that the poor fool meant to drown himself. But I
could hardly believe it. Surely he must merely be taking a
desperate lover's ramble, a last sad visit to the scenes of his
silly, irrational infatuation. If I went up to him, I should
look a fool, too; so I hung behind, ready to turn upon him if
need appeared.
He walked down to the very edge of the stream; it ran deep and
fast just here, under a high bank and a row of old willows.
Smugg sat down on the bank, wet though the grass was, and clasped
his hands over his knees. I crouched down a little way behind
him, ready and alert. I am a good swimmer, and I did not doubt
my power to pull him out, even if I were not in time to prevent
him jumping in. I saw him rise, look over the brink, and sit
down again. I almost thought I saw him shiver. And presently,
through the stillness of the summer night, came the strangest,
saddest sound; catching my ear as it drifted across the meadow.
Smugg was sobbing, and his sobs--never loud--rose and fell with
the subdued stress of intolerable pain.
Suddenly he leaped up, cried aloud, and flung his hands above his
head. I thought he was gone this time; but he stopped, poised,
as it seemed, over the water, and I heard him cry, "I can't, I
can't!" and he sank down all in a heap on the bank, and fell
again to sobbing. I hope never to see a man--if you can call
Smugg a man--like that again.
He sat where he was, and I where I was, till the moon paled and a
distant hint of day discovered us. Then he rose, brushed himself
with his hands, and slunk quickly from the bank. Had he looked
anywhere but on the ground, he must have seen me; as it was, I
only narrowly avoided him, and fell again into my place behind
him. All the way back to our garden I followed him. As he
passed through the gate, I quickened my pace, overtook him, and
laid my hand on his arm. The man's face gave me what I remember
my old nurse used to call "quite a turn."
"You're an average idiot, aren't you?" said I. "Oh, yes; I've
been squatting in the wet by that infernal river, too. You ought
to get three months, by rights."
He looked at me in a dazed sort of way.
"I daren't," he said. "I wanted to, but I daren't."
There is really nothing more. We went to the wedding, leaving
Smugg in bed; and in the evening we, leaving Smugg still in bed
(I told Mary to keep an eye on him), and carrying a dozen of the
grocer's best port, went up to dance at Dill's farm. Joe was
polished till I could almost see myself in his cheek, and Pyrrha
looked more charming than ever. She and Joe were to leave us
early, to go to Joe's own house in the village, but I managed to
get one dance with her. Indeed, I believe she wanted a word
with me.
"Well, all's well that ends well, isn't it?" I began. "No more
scoldings! Not from Mrs. Dill, anyhow."
"You can't let that alone, sir," said Pyrrha.
I chuckled gently.
"Oh, I'll never refer to it again," said I. "This is a fine
wedding of yours, Betsy."
"It's good of you and the other gentlemen to come, sir."
"We had to see the last of you," and I sighed very
ostentatiously.
Pyrrha laughed. She did not believe in it, and she knew that I
knew she did not, but the little compliment pleased her, all the
same.
"Smugg," I pursued, "is ill in bed. But perhaps he wouldn't have
come, anyhow."
"If you please, sir----" Pyrrha began; but she stopped.
"Yes, Betsy? What is it?"
"Would you take a message for me, sir?"
"If it's a proper one, Betsy, for a married lady to send."
She laughed a little, and said:
"Oh, it's no harm, sir. I'm afraid he aint--he's rather down,
sir."
"Who?"
"Why, that Smugg, sir."
"Oh, that Smugg! Why, yes; a little down, Betsy, I fear."
"You might tell him as I bear no malice, sir--as I'm not angry--
with him, I mean."
"Certainly," said I. "It will probably do him good."
"He got me into trouble; but there, I can make allowances; and
it's all right now, sir."
"In fact you forgive him?"
"I think you might tell him so, sir," said Betsy.
"But," said I, "are you aware that he was another's all the
time?"
"What, sir?"
"Oh, yes! engaged to be married."
"Well, I never! Him! What, all the while he----"
"Precisely."
"Well, that beats everything. Oh, if I'd known that!"
"I'll give him your message."
"No, sir, not now, I thank you. The villain!"
"You are right," said I. "I think your mother ought to have--
scolded him, too."
"Now you promised, sir----" but Joe came up, and I escaped.
IV.
A REPENTANT SINNER.
It was, I believe, mainly as a compliment to me that Miss Audrey
Liston was asked to Poltons. Miss Liston and I were very good
friends, and my cousin Dora Polton thought, as she informed me,
that it would be nice for me to have someone I could talk to
about "books and so on." I did not complain. Miss Liston was a
pleasant young woman of six-and-twenty; I liked her very much
except on paper, and I was aware that she made it a point of duty
to read something at least of what I wrote. She was in the habit
of describing herself as an "authoress in a small way." If it
were pointed out that six three-volume novels in three years (the
term of her literary activity, at the time of which I
write) could hardly be called "a small way," she would smile
modestly and say that it was not really much; and if she were
told that the English language embraced no such word as
"authoress," she would smile again and say that it ought to; a
position toward the bugbear of correctness with which, I confess,
I sympathize in some degree. She was very diligent; she worked
from ten to one every day while she was at Poltons; how much she
wrote is between her and her conscience.
There was another impeachment which Miss Liston was hardly at the
trouble to deny. "Take my characters from life?" she would
exclaim. "Surely every artist" (Miss Liston often referred to
herself as an artist) "must?" And she would proceed to
maintain--what is perhaps true sometimes--that people rather
liked being put into books, just as they like being photographed,
for all that they grumble and pretend to be afflicted when either
process is levied against them. In discussing this matter
with Miss Liston I felt myself on delicate ground, for it was
notorious that I figured in her first book in the guise of a
misogynistic genius; the fact that she lengthened (and thickened)
my hair, converted it from an indeterminate brown to a dusky
black, gave me a drooping mustache, and invested my very ordinary
workaday eyes with a strange magneticattraction, availed
nothing; I was at once recognized; and, I may remark in passing,
an uncommonly disagreeable fellow she made me. Thus I had passed
through the fire. I felt tolerably sure that I presented no
other aspect of interest, real or supposed, and I was quite
content that Miss Liston should serve all the rest of her
acquaintance as she had served me. I reckoned they would last
her, at the present rate of production, about five years.
Fate was kind to Miss Liston, and provided her with most suitable
patterns for her next piece of work at Poltons itself. There
were a young man and a young woman staying in the house--Sir
Gilbert Chillington and Miss Pamela Myles. The moment Miss
Liston was apprized of a possible romance, she began the study of
the protagonists. She was looking out, she told me, for some new
types (if it were any consolation--and there is a sort of dignity
about it--to be called a type, Miss Liston's victims were always
welcome to so much), and she had found them in Chillington and
Pamela. The former appeared to my dull eye to offer no salient
novelty; he was tall, broad, handsome, and he possessed a manner
of enviable placidity. Pamela, I allowed, was exactly the
heroine Miss Liston loved--haughty, capricious, difficile, but
sound and true at heart (I was mentally skimming Volume I). Miss
Liston agreed with me in my conception of Pamela, but declared
that I did not do justice to the artistic possibilities latent in
Chillington; he had a curious attraction which it would tax her
- arrival [ə´raivəl]
n.到达；到达的人(物) (初中英语单词) - refuge [´refju:dʒ] v.&n.避难(所)；庇护 (初中英语单词)
- expedition [,ekspi´diʃən] n.远征；探险；迅速 (初中英语单词)
- cheese [tʃi:z] n.干酪，乳酪 (初中英语单词)
- gently [´dʒentli] ad.温和地；静静地 (初中英语单词)
- downstairs [,daun´steəz] ad.在楼下 a.楼下的 (初中英语单词)
- jacket [´dʒækit] n.茄克衫；外套 (初中英语单词)
- visible [´vizəbəl] a.可见的；明显的 (初中英语单词)
- stream [stri:m] n.河 vi.流出；飘扬 (初中英语单词)
- swimmer [´swimə] n.游泳者 (初中英语单词)
- shiver [´ʃivə] v.&n.(使)颤抖；碎片 (初中英语单词)
- stress [stres] n.强调；压力 vt.强调 (初中英语单词)
- wedding [´wediŋ] n.婚礼，结婚 (初中英语单词)
- charming [´tʃɑ:miŋ] a.可爱的；极好的 (初中英语单词)
- forgive [fə´giv] vt.原谅，谅解，宽恕 (初中英语单词)
- mainly [´meinli] ad.主要地；大体上 (初中英语单词)
- complain [kəm´plein] vi.抱怨，叫屈；控诉 (初中英语单词)
- pointed [´pɔintid] a.尖(锐)的；中肯的 (初中英语单词)
- literary [´litərəri] a.文学(上)的 (初中英语单词)
- diligent [´dilidʒənt] a.勤奋的 (初中英语单词)
- pretend [pri´tend] v.假装；借口；妄求 (初中英语单词)
- delicate [´delikət] a.精美的；微妙的 (初中英语单词)
- genius [´dʒi:niəs] n.天才(人物)；天赋 (初中英语单词)
- aspect [´æspekt] n.面貌；神色；方向 (初中英语单词)
- supposed [sə´pəuzd] a.想象的；假定的 (初中英语单词)
- romance [rəu´mæns] n.中世纪骑士小说 (初中英语单词)
- volume [´vɔlju:m, ´vɑljəm] n.卷；书籍；体积；容量 (初中英语单词)
- pronounced [prə´naunst] a.发出音的；显著的 (高中英语单词)
- apparently [ə´pærəntli] ad.显然，表面上地 (高中英语单词)
- cautiously [´kɔ:ʃəsli] ad.小心地；谨慎地 (高中英语单词)
- stillness [´stilnis] n.不动；无声，寂静 (高中英语单词)
- compliment [´kɔmplimənt] n.敬意 vt.赞美；祝贺 (高中英语单词)
- malice [´mælis] n.恶意；怨恨；预谋 (高中英语单词)
- grumble [´grʌmbəl] v.&n.抱怨；发牢骚 (高中英语单词)
- attraction [ə´trækʃən] n.吸引(力)；引力 (高中英语单词)
- disagreeable [,disə´gri:əbl] a.令人不悦的 (高中英语单词)
- conception [kən´sepʃən] n.构思；概念；怀孕 (高中英语单词)
- artistic [ɑ:´tistik] a.艺术的；有美感的 (高中英语单词)
- flannel [´flænl] n.法兰绒 (英语四级单词)
- ramble [´ræmbl] v.&n.闲逛；漫步 (英语四级单词)
- intolerable [in´tɔlərəb(ə)l] a.无法忍受的 (英语四级单词)
- overtook [,əuvə´tuk] overtake的过去式 (英语四级单词)
- mustache [mə´stɑ:ʃ] n.髭，小胡子 (英语四级单词)
- magnetic [mæg´netik] a.磁(性)的 (英语四级单词)
- applied [ə´plaid] a.实用的，应用的 (英语六级单词)
- champagne [ʃæm´pein] n.香槟酒；微黄色 (英语六级单词)
- taking [´teikiŋ] a.迷人的 n.捕获物 (英语六级单词)
- narrowly [´nærəuli] ad.勉强地；严密地 (英语六级单词)
- infernal [in´fə:nəl] a.地狱的，恶魔似的 (英语六级单词)
- latent [´leitənt] a.潜在的，潜伏的 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
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