米德尔马契 英文版 Middlemarch
乔治.艾略特 George Eliot
CHAPTER LV.
Hath she her faults? I would you had them too.They are the fruity must of soundest wine;Or say, they are regenerating fireSuch as hath turned the dense black elementInto a crystal pathway for the sun.
If youth is the season of hope, it is often so only in the sensethat our elders are hopeful about us; for no age is so apt as youthto think its emotions, partings, and resolves are the last oftheir kind. Each crisis seems final, simply because it is new.We are told that the oldest inhabitants in Peru do not cease to beagitated by the earthquakes, but they probably see beyond each shock,and reflect that there are plenty more to come.
To Dorothea, still in that time of youth when the eyes with their longfull lashes look out after their rain of tears unsoiled and unweariedas a freshly opened passion-flower, that morning's parting with WillLadislaw seemed to be the close of their personal relations.He was going away into the distance of unknown years, and if ever hecame back he would be another man. The actual state of his mind--his proud resolve to give the lie beforehand to any suspicionthat he would play the needy adventurer seeking a rich woman--lay quite out of her imagination, and she had interpreted all hisbehavior easily enough by her supposition that Mr. Casaubon's codicilseemed to him, as it did to her, a gross and cruel interdict onany active friendship between them. Their young delight in speakingto each other, and saying what no one else would care to hear,was forever ended, and become a treasure of the past. For thisvery reason she dwelt on it without inward check. That uniquehappiness too was dead, and in its shadowed silent chamber shemight vent the passionate grief which she herself wondered at.For the first time she took down the miniature from the wall and keptit before her, liking to blend the woman who had been too hardlyjudged with the grandson whom her own heart and judgment defended.Can any one who has rejoiced in woman's tenderness think it a reproachto her that she took the little oval picture in her palm and madea bed for it there, and leaned her cheek upon it, as if that wouldsoothe the creatures who had suffered unjust condemnation?She did not know then that it was Love who had come to her briefly,as in a dream before awaking, with the hues of morning on his wings--that it was Love to whom she was sobbing her farewell as his imagewas banished by the blameless rigor of irresistible day. She onlyfelt that there was something irrevocably amiss and lost in her lot,and her thoughts about the future were the more readily shapeninto resolve. Ardent souls, ready to construct their coming lives,are apt to commit themselves to the fulfilment of their own visions.
One day that she went to Freshitt to fulfil her promise of stayingall night and seeing baby washed, Mrs. Cadwallader came to dine,the Rector being gone on a fishing excursion. It was a warm evening,and even in the delightful drawing-room, where the fine old turf slopedfrom the open window towards a lilied pool and well-planted mounds,the heat was enough to make Celia in her white muslin and light curlsreflect with pity on what Dodo must feel in her black dress andclose cap. But this was not until some episodes with baby were over,and had left her mind at leisure. She had seated herself and takenup a fan for some time before she said, in her quiet guttural--
"Dear Dodo, do throw off that cap. I am sure your dress must makeyou feel ill."
"I am so used to the cap--it has become a sort of shell,"said Dorothea, smiling. "I feel rather bare and exposed when itis off."
"I must see you without it; it makes us all warm," said Celia,throwing down her fan, and going to Dorothea. It was a pretty pictureto see this little lady in white muslin unfastening the widow'scap from her more majestic sister, and tossing it on to a chair.Just as the coils and braids of dark-brown hair had been set free,Sir James entered the room. He looked at the released head, and said,"Ah!" in a tone of satisfaction.
"It was I who did it, James," said Celia. "Dodo need not makesuch a slavery of her mourning; she need not wear that cap anymore among her friends."
"My dear Celia," said Lady Chettam, "a widow must wear hermourning at least a year."
"Not if she marries again before the end of it," said Mrs. Cadwallader,who had some pleasure in startling her good friend the Dowager.Sir James was annoyed, and leaned forward to play with Celia'sMaltese dog.
"That is very rare, I hope," said Lady Chettam, in a tone intendedto guard against such events. "No friend of ours ever committedherself in that way except Mrs. Beevor, and it was very painful toLord Grinsell when she did so. Her first husband was objectionable,which made it the greater wonder. And severely she was punishedfor it. They said Captain Beevor dragged her about by the hair,and held up loaded pistols at her."
"Oh, if she took the wrong man!" said Mrs. Cadwallader, who was in adecidedly wicked mood. "Marriage is always bad then, first or second.Priority is a poor recommendation in a husband if he has got no other.I would rather have a good second husband than an indifferent first."
"My dear, your clever tongue runs away with you," said Lady Chettam."I am sure you would be the last woman to marry again prematurely,if our dear Rector were taken away."
"Oh, I make no vows; it might be a necessary economy. It islawful to marry again, I suppose; else we might as well be Hindoosinstead of Christians. Of course if a woman accepts the wrong man,she must take the consequences, and one who does it twice overdeserves her fate. But if she can marry blood, beauty, and bravery--the sooner the better."
"I think the subject of our conversation is very ill-chosen,"said Sir James, with a look of disgust. "Suppose we change it."
"Not on my account, Sir James," said Dorothea, determined not to losethe opportunity of freeing herself from certain oblique referencesto excellent matches. "If you are speaking on my behalf, I canassure you that no question can be more indifferent and impersonalto me than second marriage. It is no more to me than if you talkedof women going fox-hunting: whether it is admirable in them or not,I shall not follow them. Pray let Mrs. Cadwallader amuse herselfon that subject as much as on any other."
"My dear Mrs. Casaubon," said Lady Chettam, in her stateliest way,"you do not, I hope, think there was any allusion to you in mymentioning Mrs. Beevor. It was only an instance that occurred to me.She was step-daughter to Lord Grinsell: he married Mrs. Teveroyfor his second wife. There could be no possible allusion to you."
"Oh no," said Celia. "Nobody chose the subject; it all came outof Dodo's cap. Mrs. Cadwallader only said what was quite true.A woman could not be married in a widow's cap, James."
"Hush, my dear!" said Mrs. Cadwallader. "I will not offend again.I will not even refer to Dido or Zenobia. Only what are we totalk about? I, for my part, object to the discussion of Human Nature,because that is the nature of rectors' wives."
Later in the evening, after Mrs. Cadwallader was gone, Celia saidprivately to Dorothea, "Really, Dodo, taking your cap off madeyou like yourself again in more ways than one. You spoke up justas you used to do, when anything was said to displease you. But Icould hardly make out whether it was James that you thought wrong,or Mrs. Cadwallader."
"Neither," said Dorothea. "James spoke out of delicacy to me, but hewas mistaken in supposing that I minded what Mrs. Cadwallader said.I should only mind if there were a law obliging me to take any pieceof blood and beauty that she or anybody else recommended."
"But you know, Dodo, if you ever did marry, it would be all the betterto have blood and beauty," said Celia, reflecting that Mr. Casaubonhad not been richly endowed with those gifts, and that it wouldbe well to caution Dorothea in time.
"Don't be anxious, Kitty; I have quite other thoughts about my life.I shall never marry again," said Dorothea, touching her sister's chin,and looking at her with indulgent affection. Celia was nursingher baby, and Dorothea had come to say good-night to her.
"Really--quite?" said Celia. "Not anybody at all--if he werevery wonderful indeed?"
Dorothea shook her head slowly. "Not anybody at all. I havedelightful plans. I should like to take a great deal of land,and drain it, and make a little colony, where everybody should work,and all the work should be done well. I should know every one of thepeople and be their friend. I am going to have great consultationswith Mr. Garth: he can tell me almost everything I want to know."
"Then you _will_ be happy, if you have a plan, Dodo?" said Celia."Perhaps little Arthur will like plans when he grows up, and then hecan help you."
would be all the betterto have blood and beauty," said Celia, reflecting.
Sir James was informed that same night that Dorothea was reallyquite set against marrying anybody at all, and was going to taketo "all sorts of plans," just like what she used to have.Sir James made no remark. To his secret feeling there was somethingrepulsive in a woman's second marriage, and no match would preventhim from feeling it a sort of desecration for Dorothea. He wasaware that the world would regard such a sentiment as preposterous,especially in relation to a woman of one-and-twenty; the practiceof "the world" being to treat of a young widow's second marriageas certain and probably near, and to smile with meaning if the widowacts accordingly. But if Dorothea did choose to espouse her solitude,he felt that the resolution would well become her.