一双蓝眼睛 英文版 A Pair of Blue Eyes
托马斯.哈代 Thomas Hardy
Chapter I
'A fair vestal, throned in the west'
Elfride Swancourt was a girl whose emotions lay very near thesurface. Their nature more precisely, and as modified by thecreeping hours of time, was known only to those who watched thecircumstances of her history.
Personally, she was the combination of very interestingparticulars, whose rarity, however, lay in the combination itselfrather than in the individual elements combined. As a matter offact, you did not see the form and substance of her features whenconversing with her; and this charming power of preventing amaterial study of her lineaments by an interlocutor, originatednot in the cloaking effect of a well-formed manner (for her mannerwas childish and scarcely formed), but in the attractive crudenessof the remarks themselves. She had lived all her life inretirement--the monstrari gigito of idle men had not flatteredher, and at the age of nineteen or twenty she was no further on insocial consciousness than an urban young lady of fifteen.
One point in her, however, you did notice: that was her eyes. Inthem was seen a sublimation of all of her; it was not necessary tolook further: there she lived.
These eyes were blue; blue as autumn distance--blue as the blue wesee between the retreating mouldings of hills and woody slopes ona sunny September morning. A misty and shady blue, that had nobeginning or surface, and was looked INTO rather than AT.
As to her presence, it was not powerful; it was weak. Some womencan make their personality pervade the atmosphere of a wholebanqueting hall; Elfride's was no more pervasive than that of akitten.
Elfride had as her own the thoughtfulness which appears in theface of the Madonna della Sedia, without its rapture: the warmthand spirit of the type of woman's feature most common to thebeauties--mortal and immortal--of Rubens, without their insistentfleshiness. The characteristic expression of the female faces ofCorreggio--that of the yearning human thoughts that lie too deepfor tears--was hers sometimes, but seldom under ordinaryconditions.
The point in Elfride Swancourt's life at which a deeper currentmay be said to have permanently set in, was one winter afternoonwhen she found herself standing, in the character of hostess, faceto face with a man she had never seen before--moreover, looking athim with a Miranda-like curiosity and interest that she had neveryet bestowed on a mortal.
On this particular day her father, the vicar of a parish on thesea-swept outskirts of Lower Wessex, and a widower, was sufferingfrom an attack of gout. After finishing her householdsupervisions Elfride became restless, and several times left theroom, ascended the staircase, and knocked at her father's chamber-door.
'Come in!' was always answered in a hearty out-of-door voice fromthe inside.
'Papa,' she said on one occasion to the fine, red-faced, handsomeman of forty, who, puffing and fizzing like a bursting bottle, layon the bed wrapped in a dressing-gown, and every now and thenenunciating, in spite of himself, about one letter of some word orwords that were almost oaths; 'papa, will you not come downstairsthis evening?' She spoke distinctly: he was rather deaf.
cold fowl, rabbit-pie, some pasties.
'Afraid not--eh-hh !--very much afraid I shall not, Elfride.Piph-ph-ph! I can't bear even a handkerchief upon this deuced toeof mine, much less a stocking or slipper--piph-ph-ph! There 'tisagain! No, I shan't get up till to-morrow.'
'Then I hope this London man won't come; for I don't know what Ishould do, papa.'
'Well, it would be awkward, certainly.'
'I should hardly think he would come to-day.'
'Why?'
'Because the wind blows so.'
'Wind! What ideas you have, Elfride! Who ever heard of windstopping a man from doing his business? The idea of this toe ofmine coming on so suddenly!...If he should come, you must send himup to me, I suppose, and then give him some food and put him tobed in some way. Dear me, what a nuisance all this is!'
'Must he have dinner?'
'Too heavy for a tired man at the end of a tedious journey.'
'Tea, then?'
'Not substantial enough.'
'High tea, then? There is cold fowl, rabbit-pie, some pasties, andthings of that kind.'
'Yes, high tea.'
'Must I pour out his tea, papa?'
'Of course; you are the mistress of the house.'
'What! sit there all the time with a stranger, just as if I knewhim, and not anybody to introduce us?'
'Nonsense, child, about introducing; you know better than that. Apractical professional man, tired and hungry, who has beentravelling ever since daylight this morning, will hardly beinclined to talk and air courtesies to-night. He wants food andshelter, and you must see that he has it, simply because I amsuddenly laid up and cannot. There is nothing so dreadful inthat, I hope? You get all kinds of stuff into your head fromreading so many of those novels.'
'Oh no; there is nothing dreadful in it when it becomes plainly acase of necessity like this. But, you see, you are always therewhen people come to dinner, even if we know them; and this is somestrange London man of the world, who will think it odd, perhaps.'
'Very well; let him.'
'Is he Mr. Hewby's partner?'
'I should scarcely think so: he may be.'
'How old is he, I wonder?'
wind blows so.'ph.
'That I cannot tell. You will find the copy of my letter to Mr.Hewby, and his answer, upon the table in the study. You may readthem, and then you'll know as much as I do about our visitor.'
'I have read them.'
'Well, what's the use of asking questions, then? They contain allI know. Ugh-h-h!...Od plague you, you young scamp! don't putanything there! I can't bear the weight of a fly.'
'Oh, I am sorry, papa. I forgot; I thought you might be cold,'she said, hastily removing the rug she had thrown upon the feet ofthe sufferer; and waiting till she saw that consciousness of heroffence had passed from his face, she withdrew from the room, andretired again downstairs.