章节正文
was authenticated by an affectionate" target="_blank" title="a.亲爱的">affectionate wink now and
then. Miss Carvil had come to look forward rather
to these winks. At first they had discomposed her:
the poor fellow was mad. Afterwards she had
learned to laugh at them: there was no harm in
him. Now she was aware of an unacknowledged,
pleasurable, incredulousemotion, expressed by a
faint blush. He winked not in the least vulgarly;
his thin red face with a well-modelled curved nose,
had a sort of distinction--the more so that when he
talked to her he looked with a steadier and more in-
telligent glance. A handsome, hale, upright, ca-
pable man, with a white beard. You did not think
of his age. His son, he affirmed, had resembled
him amazingly from his earliest babyhood.
Harry would be one-and-thirty next July, he
declared. Proper age to get married with a nice,
sensible girl that could appreciate a good home.
He was a very high-spirited boy. High-spirited
husbands were the easiest to manage. These mean,
soft chaps, that you would think butter wouldn't
melt in their mouths, were the ones to make a wom-
an thoroughlymiserable. And there was nothing
like a home--a fireside--a good roof: no turning
out of your warm bed in all sorts of weather. "Eh,
my dear?"
Captain Hagberd had been one of those sailors
that pursue their calling within sight of land. One
of the many children of a bankrupt farmer, he had
been apprenticed hurriedly to a coasting skipper,
and had remained on the coast all his sea life. It
must have been a hard one at first: he had never
taken to it; his affection turned to the land, with
its innumerable houses, with its quiet lives gathered
round its firesides. Many sailors feel and profess
a rationaldislike for the sea, but his was a pro-
found and emotional animosity--as if the love of
the stabler element had been bred into him through
many generations.
"People did not know what they let their boys in
for when they let them go to sea," he expounded to
Bessie. "As soon make convicts of them at once."
He did not believe you ever got used to it. The
weariness of such a life got worse as you got older.
What sort of trade was it in which more than half
your time you did not put your foot inside your
house? Directly you got out to sea you had no
means of knowing what went on at home. One
might have thought him weary of distant voyages;
and the longest he had ever made had lasted a fort-
night, of which the most part had been spent at
anchor, sheltering from the weather. As soon as
his wife had inherited a house and enough to live on
(from a bachelor uncle who had made some money
in the coal business) he threw up his command of
an East-coast collier with a feeling as though he
had escaped from the galleys. After all these years
he might have counted on the fingers of his two
hands all the days he had been out of sight of Eng-
land. He had never known what it was to be out
of soundings. "I have never been further than
eighty fathoms from the land," was one of his
boasts.
Bessie Carvil heard all these things. In front of
their cottage grew an under-sized ash; and on sum-
mer afternoons she would bring out a chair on the
grass-plot and sit down with her sewing. Captain
Hagberd, in his canvas suit, leaned on a spade. He
dug every day in his front plot. He turned it over
and over several times every year, but was not go-
ing to plant anything "just at present."
To Bessie Carvil he would state more explicitly:
"Not till our Harry comes home to-morrow." And
she had heard this formula of hope so often that it
only awakened the vaguest pity in her heart for
that hopeful old man.
Everything was put off in that way, and every-
thing was being prepared likewise for to-morrow.
There was a boxful of packets of various flower-
seeds to choose from, for the front garden. "He
will doubtless let you have your say about that, my
dear," Captain Hagberd intimated to her across
the railing.
Miss Bessie's head remained bowed over her
work. She had heard all this so many times. But
now and then she would rise, lay down her sewing,
and come slowly to the fence. There was a charm
in these gentle ravings. He was determined that
his son should not go away again for the want of a
home all ready for him. He had been filling the
other cottage with all sorts of furniture. She im-
agined it all new, fresh with varnish, piled up as
in a warehouse. There would be tables wrapped
up in sacking; rolls of carpets thick and vertical
like fragments of columns, the gleam of white mar-
ble tops in the dimness of the drawn blinds. Cap-
tain Hagberd always described his purchases to
her, carefully, as to a person having a legitimate
interest in them. The overgrown yard of his cot-
tage could be laid over with concrete . . . after
to-morrow.
"We may just as well do away with the fence.
You could have your drying-line out, quite clear of
your flowers." He winked, and she would blush
faintly.
This madness that had entered her life through
the kind impulses of her heart had reasonable de-
tails. What if some day his son returned? But
she could not even be quite sure that he ever had a
son; and if he existed anywhere he had been too
long away. When Captain Hagberd got excited
in his talk she would steady him by a pretence of
belief, laughing a little to salve her conscience.
Only once she had tried pityingly to throw some
doubt on that hope doomed to disappointment, but
the effect of her attempt had scared her very much.
All at once over that man's face there came an ex-
pression of horror and incredulity, as though he
had seen a crack open out in the firmament.
"You--you--you don't think he's drowned!"
For a moment he seemed to her ready to go out
of his mind, for in his ordinary state she thought
him more sane than people gave him credit for.
On that occasion the violence of the emotion was
followed by a most paternal and complacent re-
covery.
"Don't alarm yourself, my dear," he said a lit-
tle cunningly: "the sea can't keep him. He does
not belong to it. None of us Hagberds ever did
belong to it. Look at me; I didn't get drowned.
Moreover, he isn't a sailor at all; and if he is not a
sailor he's bound to come back. There's nothing
to prevent him coming back. . . ."
His eyes began to wander.
"To-morrow."
She never tried again, for fear the man should
go out of his mind on the spot. He depended on
her. She seemed the only sensible person in the
town; and he would congratulate himself frankly
before her face on having secured such a level-
headed wife for his son. The rest of the town, he
confided to her once, in a fit of temper, was certainly
queer. The way they looked at you--the way they
talked to you! He had never got on with any one
in the place. Didn't like the people. He would
not have left his own country if it had not been
clear that his son had taken a fancy to Colebrook.
She humoured him in silence, listening patiently
by the fence; crocheting with downcast eyes.
Blushes came with difficulty on her dead-white
complexion, under the negligently twisted opu-
lence of mahogany-coloured hair. Her father was
frankly carroty.
She had a full figure; a tired, unrefreshed face.
When Captain Hagberd vaunted the necessity and
propriety of a home and the delights of one's own
fireside, she smiled a little, with her lips only. Her
home delights had been confined to the nursing of
her father during the ten best years of her life.
A bestial roaring coming out of an upstairs win-
dow would interrupt their talk. She would begin
at once to roll up her crochet-work or fold her sew-
ing, without the slightest sign of haste. Mean-
while the howls and roars of her name would go on,
making the fishermen strolling upon the sea-wall
on the other side of the road turn their heads to-
wards the cottages. She would go in slowly at the
front door, and a moment afterwards there would
fall a profound silence. Presently she would re-
appear, leading by the hand a man, gross and un-
wieldy like a hippopotamus, with a bad-tempered,
surly face.
He was a widowed boat-builder, whom blindness
had overtaken years before in the full flush of busi-
ness. He behaved to his daughter as if she had
been responsible for its incurablecharacter. He
had been heard to bellow at the top of his voice,
as if to defy Heaven, that he did not care: he had
made enough money to have ham and eggs for his
breakfast every morning. He thanked God for it,
in a fiendish tone as though he were cursing.
Captain Hagberd had been so unfavourably im-
pressed by his tenant, that once he told Miss Bes-
sie, "He is a very extravagant fellow, my dear."
She was knitting that day, finishing a pair of
socks for her father, who expected her to keep up
the supply dutifully. She hated knitting, and, as
she was just at the heel part, she had to keep her
eyes on her needles.
"Of course it isn't as if he had a son to provide
for," Captain Hagberd went on a little vacantly.
"Girls, of course, don't require so much--h'm--
h'm. They don't run away from home, my dear."
"No," said Miss Bessie, quietly.
Captain Hagberd, amongst the mounds of
turned-up earth, chuckled. With his maritime rig,
his weather-beaten face, his beard of Father Nep-
tune, he resembled a deposed sea-god who had ex-
changed the trident for the spade.
"And he must look upon you as already pro-
vided for, in a manner. That's the best of it with
then. Miss Carvil had come to look forward rather
to these winks. At first they had discomposed her:
the poor fellow was mad. Afterwards she had
learned to laugh at them: there was no harm in
him. Now she was aware of an unacknowledged,
pleasurable, incredulousemotion, expressed by a
faint blush. He winked not in the least vulgarly;
his thin red face with a well-modelled curved nose,
had a sort of distinction--the more so that when he
talked to her he looked with a steadier and more in-
telligent glance. A handsome, hale, upright, ca-
pable man, with a white beard. You did not think
of his age. His son, he affirmed, had resembled
him amazingly from his earliest babyhood.
Harry would be one-and-thirty next July, he
declared. Proper age to get married with a nice,
sensible girl that could appreciate a good home.
He was a very high-spirited boy. High-spirited
husbands were the easiest to manage. These mean,
soft chaps, that you would think butter wouldn't
melt in their mouths, were the ones to make a wom-
an thoroughlymiserable. And there was nothing
like a home--a fireside--a good roof: no turning
out of your warm bed in all sorts of weather. "Eh,
my dear?"
Captain Hagberd had been one of those sailors
that pursue their calling within sight of land. One
of the many children of a bankrupt farmer, he had
been apprenticed hurriedly to a coasting skipper,
and had remained on the coast all his sea life. It
must have been a hard one at first: he had never
taken to it; his affection turned to the land, with
its innumerable houses, with its quiet lives gathered
round its firesides. Many sailors feel and profess
a rationaldislike for the sea, but his was a pro-
found and emotional animosity--as if the love of
the stabler element had been bred into him through
many generations.
"People did not know what they let their boys in
for when they let them go to sea," he expounded to
Bessie. "As soon make convicts of them at once."
He did not believe you ever got used to it. The
weariness of such a life got worse as you got older.
What sort of trade was it in which more than half
your time you did not put your foot inside your
house? Directly you got out to sea you had no
means of knowing what went on at home. One
might have thought him weary of distant voyages;
and the longest he had ever made had lasted a fort-
night, of which the most part had been spent at
anchor, sheltering from the weather. As soon as
his wife had inherited a house and enough to live on
(from a bachelor uncle who had made some money
in the coal business) he threw up his command of
an East-coast collier with a feeling as though he
had escaped from the galleys. After all these years
he might have counted on the fingers of his two
hands all the days he had been out of sight of Eng-
land. He had never known what it was to be out
of soundings. "I have never been further than
eighty fathoms from the land," was one of his
boasts.
Bessie Carvil heard all these things. In front of
their cottage grew an under-sized ash; and on sum-
mer afternoons she would bring out a chair on the
grass-plot and sit down with her sewing. Captain
Hagberd, in his canvas suit, leaned on a spade. He
dug every day in his front plot. He turned it over
and over several times every year, but was not go-
ing to plant anything "just at present."
To Bessie Carvil he would state more explicitly:
"Not till our Harry comes home to-morrow." And
she had heard this formula of hope so often that it
only awakened the vaguest pity in her heart for
that hopeful old man.
Everything was put off in that way, and every-
thing was being prepared likewise for to-morrow.
There was a boxful of packets of various flower-
seeds to choose from, for the front garden. "He
will doubtless let you have your say about that, my
dear," Captain Hagberd intimated to her across
the railing.
Miss Bessie's head remained bowed over her
work. She had heard all this so many times. But
now and then she would rise, lay down her sewing,
and come slowly to the fence. There was a charm
in these gentle ravings. He was determined that
his son should not go away again for the want of a
home all ready for him. He had been filling the
other cottage with all sorts of furniture. She im-
agined it all new, fresh with varnish, piled up as
in a warehouse. There would be tables wrapped
up in sacking; rolls of carpets thick and vertical
like fragments of columns, the gleam of white mar-
ble tops in the dimness of the drawn blinds. Cap-
tain Hagberd always described his purchases to
her, carefully, as to a person having a legitimate
interest in them. The overgrown yard of his cot-
tage could be laid over with concrete . . . after
to-morrow.
"We may just as well do away with the fence.
You could have your drying-line out, quite clear of
your flowers." He winked, and she would blush
faintly.
This madness that had entered her life through
the kind impulses of her heart had reasonable de-
tails. What if some day his son returned? But
she could not even be quite sure that he ever had a
son; and if he existed anywhere he had been too
long away. When Captain Hagberd got excited
in his talk she would steady him by a pretence of
belief, laughing a little to salve her conscience.
Only once she had tried pityingly to throw some
doubt on that hope doomed to disappointment, but
the effect of her attempt had scared her very much.
All at once over that man's face there came an ex-
pression of horror and incredulity, as though he
had seen a crack open out in the firmament.
"You--you--you don't think he's drowned!"
For a moment he seemed to her ready to go out
of his mind, for in his ordinary state she thought
him more sane than people gave him credit for.
On that occasion the violence of the emotion was
followed by a most paternal and complacent re-
covery.
"Don't alarm yourself, my dear," he said a lit-
tle cunningly: "the sea can't keep him. He does
not belong to it. None of us Hagberds ever did
belong to it. Look at me; I didn't get drowned.
Moreover, he isn't a sailor at all; and if he is not a
sailor he's bound to come back. There's nothing
to prevent him coming back. . . ."
His eyes began to wander.
"To-morrow."
She never tried again, for fear the man should
go out of his mind on the spot. He depended on
her. She seemed the only sensible person in the
town; and he would congratulate himself frankly
before her face on having secured such a level-
headed wife for his son. The rest of the town, he
confided to her once, in a fit of temper, was certainly
queer. The way they looked at you--the way they
talked to you! He had never got on with any one
in the place. Didn't like the people. He would
not have left his own country if it had not been
clear that his son had taken a fancy to Colebrook.
She humoured him in silence, listening patiently
by the fence; crocheting with downcast eyes.
Blushes came with difficulty on her dead-white
complexion, under the negligently twisted opu-
lence of mahogany-coloured hair. Her father was
frankly carroty.
She had a full figure; a tired, unrefreshed face.
When Captain Hagberd vaunted the necessity and
propriety of a home and the delights of one's own
fireside, she smiled a little, with her lips only. Her
home delights had been confined to the nursing of
her father during the ten best years of her life.
A bestial roaring coming out of an upstairs win-
dow would interrupt their talk. She would begin
at once to roll up her crochet-work or fold her sew-
ing, without the slightest sign of haste. Mean-
while the howls and roars of her name would go on,
making the fishermen strolling upon the sea-wall
on the other side of the road turn their heads to-
wards the cottages. She would go in slowly at the
front door, and a moment afterwards there would
fall a profound silence. Presently she would re-
appear, leading by the hand a man, gross and un-
wieldy like a hippopotamus, with a bad-tempered,
surly face.
He was a widowed boat-builder, whom blindness
had overtaken years before in the full flush of busi-
ness. He behaved to his daughter as if she had
been responsible for its incurablecharacter. He
had been heard to bellow at the top of his voice,
as if to defy Heaven, that he did not care: he had
made enough money to have ham and eggs for his
breakfast every morning. He thanked God for it,
in a fiendish tone as though he were cursing.
Captain Hagberd had been so unfavourably im-
pressed by his tenant, that once he told Miss Bes-
sie, "He is a very extravagant fellow, my dear."
She was knitting that day, finishing a pair of
socks for her father, who expected her to keep up
the supply dutifully. She hated knitting, and, as
she was just at the heel part, she had to keep her
eyes on her needles.
"Of course it isn't as if he had a son to provide
for," Captain Hagberd went on a little vacantly.
"Girls, of course, don't require so much--h'm--
h'm. They don't run away from home, my dear."
"No," said Miss Bessie, quietly.
Captain Hagberd, amongst the mounds of
turned-up earth, chuckled. With his maritime rig,
his weather-beaten face, his beard of Father Nep-
tune, he resembled a deposed sea-god who had ex-
changed the trident for the spade.
"And he must look upon you as already pro-
vided for, in a manner. That's the best of it with
- emotion [i´məuʃən]
n.感情；情绪；激动 (初中英语单词) - appreciate [ə´pri:ʃieit] v.评价；珍惜；感激 (初中英语单词)
- thoroughly [´θʌrəli] ad.完全地，彻底地 (初中英语单词)
- miserable [´mizərəbəl] a.悲惨的；可怜的 (初中英语单词)
- pursue [pə´sju:] v.追赶；追踪；从事 (初中英语单词)
- affection [ə´fekʃən] n.友爱；慈爱 (初中英语单词)
- dislike [dis´laik] vt.&n.不喜爱，厌恶 (初中英语单词)
- emotional [i´məuʃənəl] a.易动感情的；情感的 (初中英语单词)
- knowing [´nəuiŋ] a.会意的，心照不宣的 (初中英语单词)
- cottage [´kɔtidʒ] n.村舍；小屋；小别墅 (初中英语单词)
- canvas [´kænvəs] n.帆布；油画(布) (初中英语单词)
- likewise [´laikwaiz] ad.同样地；也，又 (初中英语单词)
- doubtless [´dautlis] ad.无疑地；大概，多半 (初中英语单词)
- reasonable [´rizənəbəl] a.合理的；有理智的 (初中英语单词)
- anywhere [´eniweə] ad.无论何处；任何地方 (初中英语单词)
- disappointment [,disə´pɔintmənt] n.失望；挫折 (初中英语单词)
- horror [´hɔrə] n.恐怖；战栗 (初中英语单词)
- violence [´vaiələns] n.猛烈；暴力(行) (初中英语单词)
- sensible [´sensəbəl] a.感觉得到的 (初中英语单词)
- temper [´tempə] n.韧度 v.锻炼；调和 (初中英语单词)
- interrupt [,intə´rʌpt] v.中断；打扰 (初中英语单词)
- presently [´prezəntli] ad.不久；目前 (初中英语单词)
- responsible [ri´spɔnsəbəl] a.尽责的；责任重大的 (初中英语单词)
- character [´kæriktə] n.特性；性质；人物；字 (初中英语单词)
- knitting [´nitiŋ] n.编织(物)；接合；联合 (初中英语单词)
- affectionate [ə´fekʃənit] a.亲爱的 (高中英语单词)
- upright [´ʌprait] a.直立的 ad.直立地 (高中英语单词)
- innumerable [i´nju:mərəbəl] a.无数的，数不清的 (高中英语单词)
- bachelor [´bætʃələ] n.未婚男子；学士 (高中英语单词)
- sewing [´səuiŋ] n.缝纫；(书的)装订 (高中英语单词)
- formula [´fɔ:mjulə] n.公式；配方；原则 (高中英语单词)
- concrete [´kɔŋkri:t] a.具体的 n.混凝土 (高中英语单词)
- madness [´mædnis] n.疯狂；狂热 (高中英语单词)
- pretence [pri´tens] n.假装；托词；无理要求 (高中英语单词)
- cunningly [´kʌniŋli] ad.狡猾地；精巧地 (高中英语单词)
- congratulate [kən´grætjuleit] vt.祝贺 (高中英语单词)
- profound [prə´faund] a.深奥的；渊博的 (高中英语单词)
- bellow [´beləu] v.吼叫；轰鸣 (高中英语单词)
- tenant [´tenənt] n.租户，佃户 (高中英语单词)
- extravagant [ik´strævəgənt] a.奢侈的；过度的 (高中英语单词)
- amongst [ə´mʌŋst] prep.其中之一 =among (高中英语单词)
- bankrupt [´bæŋkrʌpt] n.破产者 a.破产了的 (英语四级单词)
- hurriedly [´hʌridli] ad.仓促地，忙乱地 (英语四级单词)
- rational [´ræʃənəl] a.(有)理性的；合理的 (英语四级单词)
- hopeful [´həupfəl] a.有希望的，激励人的 (英语四级单词)
- warehouse [´weəhaus] n.仓库 v.存入仓库 (英语四级单词)
- upstairs [,ʌp´steəz] ad.在楼上 a.楼上的 (英语四级单词)
- incredulous [in´kredjuləs] a.不(轻易)相信的 (英语六级单词)
- amazingly [ə´meiziŋli] ad.惊人地；惊奇地 (英语六级单词)
- calling [´kɔ:liŋ] n.点名；职业；欲望 (英语六级单词)
- varnish [´vɑ:niʃ] n.清漆 vt.上清漆；粉饰 (英语六级单词)
- paternal [pə´tə:nl] a.(象)父亲的；父方的 (英语六级单词)
- downcast [´daunkɑ:st] a.沮丧的；向下看的 (英语六级单词)
- incurable [in´kjuərəbəl] a.不能治疗的 (英语六级单词)
- maritime [´mæritaim] a.海(上)的；海运的 (英语六级单词)
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章节正文
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