一双蓝眼睛 英文版 A Pair of Blue Eyes
托马斯.哈代 Thomas Hardy
Chapter XVIII Page 2
'She is sound asleep, ma'am,' Unity whispered.
Mrs. Swancourt opened the door. Elfride was lying full-dressed onthe bed, her face hot and red, her arms thrown abroad. Atintervals of a minute she tossed restlessly from side to side, andindistinctly moaned words used in the game of chess.
Mrs. Swancourt had a turn for doctoring, and felt her pulse. Itwas twanging like a harp-string, at the rate of nearly a hundredand fifty a minute. Softly moving the sleeping girl to a littleless cramped position, she went downstairs again.
'She is asleep now,' said Mrs. Swancourt. 'She does not seem verywell. Cousin Knight, what were you thinking of? her tender brainwon't bear cudgelling like your great head. You should havestrictly forbidden her to play again.'
In truth, the essayist's experience of the nature of young womenwas far less extensive than his abstract knowledge of them ledhimself and others to believe. He could pack them into sentenceslike a workman, but practically was nowhere.
'I am indeed sorry,' said Knight, feeling even more than heexpressed. 'But surely, the young lady knows best what is goodfor her!'
'Bless you, that's just what she doesn't know. She never thinksof such things, does she, Christopher? Her father and I have tocommand her and keep her in order, as you would a child. She willsay things worthy of a French epigrammatist, and act like a robinin a greenhouse. But I think we will send for Dr. Granson--therecan be no harm.'
A man was straightway despatched on horseback to Castle Boterel,and the gentleman known as Dr. Granson came in the course of theafternoon. He pronounced her nervous system to be in a decidedstate of disorder; forwarded some soothing draught, and gaveorders that on no account whatever was she to play chess again.
The next morning Knight, much vexed with himself, waited with acuriously compounded feeling for her entry to breakfast. Thewomen servants came in to prayers at irregular intervals, and aseach entered, he could not, to save his life, avoid turning hishead with the hope that she might be Elfride. Mr. Swancourt beganreading without waiting for her. Then somebody glided innoiselessly; Knight softly glanced up: it was only the littlekitchen-maid. Knight thought reading prayers a bore.
He went out alone, and for almost the first time failed torecognize that holding converse with Nature's charms was notsolitude. On nearing the house again he perceived his youngfriend crossing a slope by a path which ran into the one he wasfollowing in the angle of the field. Here they met. Elfride wasat once exultant and abashed: coming into his presence had uponher the effect of entering a cathedral.
Knight had his note-book in his hand, and had, in fact, been inthe very act of writing therein when they came in view of eachother. He left off in the midst of a sentence, and proceeded toinquire warmly concerning her state of health. She said she wasperfectly well, and indeed had never looked better. Her healthwas as inconsequent as her actions. Her lips were red, WITHOUTthe polish that cherries have, and their redness margined with thewhite skin in a clearly defined line, which had nothing of jaggedconfusion in it. Altogether she stood as the last person in theworld to be knocked over by a game of chess, because tooephemeral-looking to play one.
'Are you taking notes?' she inquired with an alacrity plainlyarising less from interest in the subject than from a wish todivert his thoughts from herself.
'Yes; I was making an entry. And with your permission I willcomplete it.' Knight then stood still and wrote. Elfride remainedbeside him a moment, and afterwards walked on.
'I should like to see all the secrets that are in that book,' shegaily flung back to him over her shoulder.
'I don't think you would find much to interest you.'
'I know I should.'
'Then of course I have no more to say.'
'But I would ask this question first. Is it a book of mere factsconcerning journeys and expenditure, and so on, or a book ofthoughts?'
'Well, to tell the truth, it is not exactly either. It consistsfor the most part of jottings for articles and essays, disjointedand disconnected, of no possible interest to anybody but myself.'
'It contains, I suppose, your developed thoughts in embryo?'
'Yes.'
'If they are interesting when enlarged to the size of an article,what must they be in their concentrated form? Pure rectifiedspirit, above proof; before it is lowered to be fit for humanconsumption: "words that burn" indeed.'
'Rather like a balloon before it is inflated: flabby, shapeless,dead. You could hardly read them.'
'May I try?' she said coaxingly. 'I wrote my poor romance in thatway--I mean in bits, out of doors--and I should like to seewhether your way of entering things is the same as mine.'
'Really, that's rather an awkward request. I suppose I can hardlyrefuse now you have asked so directly; but----'
'You think me ill-mannered in asking. But does not this justifyme--your writing in my presence, Mr. Knight? If I had lighted uponyour book by chance, it would have been different; but you standbefore me, and say, "Excuse me," without caring whether I do ornot, and write on, and then tell me they are not private facts butpublic ideas.'
'Very well, Miss Swancourt. If you really must see, theconsequences be upon your own head. Remember, my advice to you isto leave my book alone.'
'But with that caution I have your permission?'
'Yes.'
She hesitated a moment, looked at his hand containing the book,then laughed, and saying, 'I must see it,' withdrew it from hisfingers.
Knight rambled on towards the house, leaving her standing in thepath turning over the leaves. By the time he had reached thewicket-gate he saw that she had moved, and waited till she cameup.
Elfride had closed the note-book, and was carrying it disdainfullyby the corner between her finger and thumb; her face wore anettled look. She silently extended the volume towards him,raising her eyes no higher than her hand was lifted.
'Take it,' said Elfride quickly. 'I don't want to read it.'
'Could you understand it?' said Knight.
'As far as I looked. But I didn't care to read much.'
'Why, Miss Swancourt?'
'Only because I didn't wish to--that's all.'
'I warned you that you might not.'
'Yes, but I never supposed you would have put me there.'
'Your name is not mentioned once within the four corners.'
'Not my name--I know that.'
'Nor your description, nor anything by which anybody wouldrecognize you.'
'Except myself. For what is this?' she exclaimed, taking it fromhim and opening a page. 'August 7. That's the day beforeyesterday. But I won't read it,' Elfride said, closing the bookagain with pretty hauteur. 'Why should I? I had no business toask to see your hook, and it serves me right.'
Knight hardly recollected what he had written, and turned over thebook to see. He came to this:
'Aug. 7. Girl gets into her teens, and her self-consciousness isborn. After a certain interval passed in infantine helplessnessit begins to act. Simple, young, and inexperienced at first.Persons of observation can tell to a nicety how old thisconsciousness is by the skill it has acquired in the art necessaryto its success--the art of hiding itself. Generally begins careerby actions which are popularly termed showing-off. Method adopteddepends in each case upon the disposition, rank, residence, of theyoung lady attempting it. Town-bred girl will utter some moralparadox on fast men, or love. Country miss adopts the morematerial media of taking a ghastly fence, whistling, or makingyour blood run cold by appearing to risk her neck. (MEM. OnEndelstow Tower.)
'An innocent vanity is of course the origin of these displays."Look at me," say these youthful beginners in womanly artifice,without reflecting whether or not it be to their advantage to showso very much of themselves. (Amplify and correct for paper onArtless Arts.)'
'Yes, I remember now,' said Knight. 'The notes were certainlysuggested by your manoeuvre on the church tower. But you must notthink too much of such random observations,' he continuedencouragingly, as he noticed her injured looks. 'A mere fancypassing through my head assumes a factitious importance to you,because it has been made permanent by being written down. Allmankind think thoughts as bad as those of people they most love onearth, but such thoughts never getting embodied on paper, itbecomes assumed that they never existed. I daresay that youyourself have thought some disagreeable thing or other of me,which would seem just as bad as this if written. I challenge you,now, to tell me.'
'The worst thing I have thought of you?'
'Yes.'
'I must not.'
'Oh yes.'
'I thought you were rather round-shouldered.'
Knight looked slightly redder.
'And that there was a little bald spot on the top of your head.'
'Heh-heh! Two ineradicable defects,' said Knight, there being afaint ghastliness discernible in his laugh. 'They are much worsein a lady's eye than being thought self-conscious, I suppose.'
'Ah, that's very fine,' she said, too inexperienced to perceiveher hit, and hence not quite disposed to forgive his notes. 'Youalluded to me in that entry as if I were such a child, too.Everybody does that. I cannot understand it. I am quite a woman,you know. How old do you think I am?'
'How old? Why, seventeen, I should say. All girls are seventeen.'
'You are wrong. I am nearly nineteen. Which class of women doyou like best, those who seem younger, or those who seem olderthan they are?'
'Off-hand I should be inclined to say those who seem older.'
So it was not Elfride's class.
'But it is well known,' she said eagerly, and there was somethingtouching in the artless anxiety to be thought much of which sherevealed by her words, 'that the slower a nature is to develop,the richer the nature. Youths and girls who are men and womenbefore they come of age are nobodies by the time that backwardpeople have shown their full compass.'
'Yes,' said Knight thoughtfully. 'There is really something inthat remark. But at the risk of offence I must remind you thatyou there take it for granted that the woman behind her time at agiven age has not reached the end of her tether. Her backwardnessmay be not because she is slow to develop, but because she soonexhausted her capacity for developing.'
Elfride looked disappointed. By this time they were indoors.Mrs. Swancourt, to whom match-making by any honest means was meatand drink, had now a little scheme of that nature concerning thispair. The morning-room, in which they both expected to find her,was empty; the old lady having, for the above reason, vacated itby the second door as they entered by the first.
Knight went to the chimney-piece, and carelessly surveyed twoportraits on ivory.
'Though these pink ladies had very rudimentary features, judgingby what I see here,' he observed, 'they had unquestionablybeautiful heads of hair.'
'Yes; and that is everything,' said Elfride, possibly conscious ofher own, possibly not.
'Not everything; though a great deal, certainly.'
'Which colour do you like best?' she ventured to ask.
'More depends on its abundance than on its colour.'
'Abundances being equal, may I inquire your favourite colour?'
'Dark.'
'I mean for women,' she said, with the minutest fall ofcountenance, and a hope that she had been misunderstood.
'So do I,' Knight replied.
It was impossible for any man not to know the colour of Elfride'shair. In women who wear it plainly such a feature may beoverlooked by men not given to ocular intentness. But hers wasalways in the way. You saw her hair as far as you could see hersex, and knew that it was the palest brown. She knew instantlythat Knight, being perfectly aware of this, had an independentstandard of admiration in the matter.
Elfride was thoroughly vexed. She could not but be struck withthe honesty of his opinions, and the worst of it was, that themore they went against her, the more she respected them. And now,like a reckless gambler, she hazarded her last and best treasure.Her eyes: they were her all now.
'What coloured eyes do you like best, Mr. Knight?' she saidslowly.
'Honestly, or as a compliment?'
, there being afaint ghastliness discernible.
'Of course honestly; I don't want anybody's compliment!'
And yet Elfride knew otherwise: that a compliment or word ofapproval from that man then would have been like a well to afamished Arab.
then laughed, and saying.
'I prefer hazel,' he said serenely.
She had played and lost again.