章节正文
not a rose to be bought for love or money. Only in the garden of a friend
of mine, in a sunny corner between the oven and the brick wall, there was a
rose tree growing which had on it one bud. It was white, and it had been
promised to the fair haired girl to wear at the party.
The evening came; when I arrived and went to the waiting-room, to take off
my mantle, I found the girl there already. She was dressed in pure white,
with her great white arms and shoulders showing, and her bright hair
glittering in the candle-light, and the white rose fastened at her breast.
She looked like a queen. I said "Good-evening," and turned away quickly to
the glass to arrange my old black scarf across my old black dress.
Then I felt a hand touch my hair.
"Stand still," she said.
I looked in the glass. She had taken the white rose from her breast, and
was fastening it in my hair.
"How nice dark hair is; it sets off flowers so." She stepped back and
looked at me. "It looks much better there!"
I turned round.
"You are so beautiful to me," I said.
"Y-e-s," she said, with her slow Colonial drawl; "I'm so glad."
We stood looking at each other.
Then they came in and swept us away to dance. All the evening we did not
come near to each other. Only once, as she passed, she smiled at me.
The next morning I left the town.
I never saw her again.
Years afterwards I heard she had married and gone to America; it may or may
not be so--but the rose--the rose is in the box still! When my faith in
woman grows dim, and it seems that for want of love and magnanimity she can
play no part in any future heaven; then the scent of that small withered
thing comes back:--spring cannot fail us.
Matjesfontein,
South Africa.
III. "THE POLICY IN FAVOUR OF PROTECTION--".
Was it Right?--Was it Wrong?
A woman sat at her desk in the corner of a room; behind her a fire burnt
brightly.
Presently a servant came in and gave her a card.
"Say I am busy and can see no one now. I have to finish this article by
two o'clock."
The servant came back. The caller said she would only keep her a moment:
it was necessary she should see her.
The woman rose from her desk. "Tell the boy to wait. Ask the lady to come
in."
A young woman in a silk dress, with a cloak reaching to her feet, entered.
She was tall and slight, with fair hair.
"I knew you would not mind. I wished to see you so!"
The woman offered her a seat by the fire. "May I loosen your cloak?--the
room is warm."
"I wanted so to come and see you. You are the only person in the world who
could help me! I know you are so large, and generous, and kind to other
women!" She sat down. Tears stood in her large blue eyes: she was
pulling off her little gloves unconsciously.
"You know Mr.--" (she mentioned the name of a well-known writer): "I know
you meet him often in your work. I want you to do something for me!"
The woman on the hearth-rug looked down at her.
"I couldn't tell my father or my mother, or any one else; but I can tell
you, though I know so little of you. You know, last summer he came and
stayed with us a month. I saw a great deal of him. I don't know if he
liked me; I know he liked my singing, and we rode together--I liked him
more than any man I have ever seen. Oh, you know it isn't true that a
woman can only like a man when he likes her; and I thought, perhaps, he
liked me a little. Since we have been in town we have asked, but he has
never come to see us. Perhaps people have been saying something to him
about me. You know him, you are always meeting him, couldn't you say or do
anything for me?" She looked up with her lips white and drawn. "I feel
sometimes as if I were going mad! Oh, it is so terrible to be a woman!"
The woman looked down at her. "Now I hear he likes another woman. I don't
know who she is, but they say she is so clever, and writes. Oh, it is so
terrible, I can't bear it."
The woman leaned her elbow against the mantelpiece, and her face against
her hand. She looked down into the fire. Then she turned and looked at
the younger woman. "Yes," she said, "it is a very terrible thing to be a
woman." She was silent. She said with some difficulty: "Are you sure you
love him? Are you sure it is not only the feeling a young girl has for an
older man who is celebrated, and of whom every one is talking?"
"I have been nearly mad. I haven't slept for weeks!" She knit her little
hands together, till the jewelled rings almost cut into the fingers. "He
is everything to me; there is nothing else in the world. You, who are so
great, and strong, and clever, and who care only for your work, and for men
as your friends, you cannot understand what it is when one person is
everything to you, when there is nothing else in the world!"
"And what do you want me to do?"
"Oh, I don't know!" She looked up. "A woman knows what she can do. Don't
tell him that I love him." She looked up again. "Just say something to
him. Oh, it's so terrible to be a woman; I can't do anything. You won't
tell him exactly that I love him? That's the thing that makes a man hate a
woman, if you tell it him plainly."
"If I speak to him I must speak openly. He is my friend. I cannot fence
with him. I have never fenced with him in my own affairs." She moved as
though she were going away from the fireplace, then she turned and said:
"Have you thought of what love is between a man and a woman when it means
marriage? That long, long life together, day after day, stripped of all
romance and distance, living face to face: seeing each other as a man sees
his own soul? Do you realize that the end of marriage is to make the man
and woman stronger than they were; and that if you cannot, when you are an
old man and woman and sit by the fire, say, 'Life has been a braver and a
freer thing for us, because we passed it hand in hand, than if we had
passed through it alone,' it has failed? Do you care for him enough to
live for him, not tomorrow, but when he is an old, faded man, and you an
old, faded woman? Can you forgive him his sins and his weaknesses, when
they hurt you most? If he were to lie a querulous invalid for twenty
years, would you be able to fold him in your arms all that time, and
comfort him, as a mother comforts her little child?" The woman drew her
breath heavily.
"Oh, I love him absolutely! I would be glad to die, if only I could once
know that he loved me better than anything in the world!"
The woman stood looking down at her. "Have you never thought of that other
woman; whether she could not perhaps make his life as perfect as you?" she
asked, slowly.
"Oh, no woman ever could be to him what I would be. I would live for him.
He belongs to me." She bent herself forward, not crying, but her shoulders
moving. "It is such a terrible thing to be a woman, to be able to do
nothing and say nothing!"
The woman put her hand on her shoulder; the younger woman looked up into
her face; then the elder turned away and stood looking into the fire.
There was such quiet, you could hear the clock tick above the writing-
table.
The woman said: "There is one thing I can do for you. I do not know if it
will be of any use--I will do it." She turned away.
"Oh, you are so great and good, so beautiful, so different from other
women, who are always thinking only of themselves! Thank you so much. I
know I can trust you. I couldn't have told my mother, or any one but you."
"Now you must go; I have my work to finish."
The younger woman put her arms round her. "Oh, you are so good and
beautiful!"
The silk dress and the fur cloak rustled out of the room.
The woman who was left alone walked up and down, at last faster and faster,
till the drops stood on her forehead. After a time she went up to the
table; there was written illegibly in a man's hand on a fragment of
manuscript paper: "Can I come to see you this afternoon?" Near it was a
closed and addressed envelope. She opened it. In it were written the
words: "Yes, please, come."
She tore it across and wrote the words: "No, I shall not be at liberty."
She closed them in an envelope and addressed them. Then she rolled up the
manuscript on the table and rang the bell. She gave it to the servant.
"Tell the boy to give this to his master, and say the article ends rather
abruptly; they must state it is to be continued; I will finish it tomorrow.
As he passes No. 20 let him leave this note there."
The servant went out. She walked up and down with her hands folded above
her head.
...
Two months after, the older woman stood before the fire. The door opened
suddenly, and the younger woman came in.
"I had to come--I couldn't wait. You have heard, he was married this
morning? Oh, do you think it is true? Do help me!" She put out her
hands.
"Sit down. Yes, it is quite true."
"Oh, it is so terrible, and I didn't know anything! Did you ever say
anything to him?" She caught the woman's hands.
"I never saw him again after the day you were here,--so I could not speak
to him,--but I did what I could." She stood looking passively into the
fire.
"And they say she is quite a child, only eighteen. They say he only saw
her three times before he proposed to her. Do you think it is true?"
"Yes, it is quite true."
"He can't love her. They say he's only marrying her for her rank and her
money."
The woman turned quickly.
"What right have you to say that? No one but I know him. What need has he
of any one's rank or wealth? He is greater than them all! Older women may
have failed him; he has needed to turn to her beautiful, fresh, young life
to compensate him. She is a woman whom any man might have loved, so young
and beautiful; her family are famed for their intellect. If he trains her,
she may make him a better wife than any other woman would have done."
"Oh, but I can't bear it--I can't bear it!" The younger woman sat down in
the chair. "She will be his wife, and have his children."
"Yes." The elder woman moved quickly. "One wants to have the child, and
lay its head on one's breast and feed it." She moved quickly. "It would
not matter if another woman bore it, if one had it to take care of." She
moved restlessly.
"Oh, no, I couldn't bear it to be hers. When I think of her I feel as if I
were dying; all my fingers turn cold; I feel dead. Oh, you were only his
friend; you don't know!"
The older spoke softly and quickly, "Don't you feel a little gentle to her
when you think she's going to be his wife and the mother of his child? I
would like to put my arms round her and touch her once, if she would let
me. She is so beautiful, they say."
"Oh, I could never bear to see her; it would kill me. And they are so
happy together today! He is loving her so!"
"Don't you want him to be happy?" The older woman looked down at her.
"Have you never loved him, at all?"
The younger woman's face was covered with her hands. "Oh, it's so
terrible, so dark! and I shall go on living year after year, always in this
awful pain! Oh, if I could only die!"
The older woman stood looking into the fire; then slowly and measuredly she
said, "There are times, in life, when everything seems dark, when the brain
reels, and we cannot see that there is anything but death. But, if we wait
long enough, after long, long years, calm comes. It may be we cannot say
it was well; but we are contented, we accept the past. The struggle is
ended. That day may come for you, perhaps sooner than you think." She
spoke slowly and with difficulty.
"No, it can never come for me. If once I have loved a thing, I love it for
ever. I can never forget."
"Love is not the only end in life. There are other things to live for."
"Oh, yes, for you! To me love is everything!"
"Now, you must go, dear."
The younger woman stood up. "It has been such a comfort to talk to you. I
think I should have killed myself if I had not come. You help me so. I
shall always be grateful to you."
The older woman took her hand.
"I want to ask something of you."
"What is it?"
of mine, in a sunny corner between the oven and the brick wall, there was a
rose tree growing which had on it one bud. It was white, and it had been
promised to the fair haired girl to wear at the party.
The evening came; when I arrived and went to the waiting-room, to take off
my mantle, I found the girl there already. She was dressed in pure white,
with her great white arms and shoulders showing, and her bright hair
glittering in the candle-light, and the white rose fastened at her breast.
She looked like a queen. I said "Good-evening," and turned away quickly to
the glass to arrange my old black scarf across my old black dress.
Then I felt a hand touch my hair.
"Stand still," she said.
I looked in the glass. She had taken the white rose from her breast, and
was fastening it in my hair.
"How nice dark hair is; it sets off flowers so." She stepped back and
looked at me. "It looks much better there!"
I turned round.
"You are so beautiful to me," I said.
"Y-e-s," she said, with her slow Colonial drawl; "I'm so glad."
We stood looking at each other.
Then they came in and swept us away to dance. All the evening we did not
come near to each other. Only once, as she passed, she smiled at me.
The next morning I left the town.
I never saw her again.
Years afterwards I heard she had married and gone to America; it may or may
not be so--but the rose--the rose is in the box still! When my faith in
woman grows dim, and it seems that for want of love and magnanimity she can
play no part in any future heaven; then the scent of that small withered
thing comes back:--spring cannot fail us.
Matjesfontein,
South Africa.
III. "THE POLICY IN FAVOUR OF PROTECTION--".
Was it Right?--Was it Wrong?
A woman sat at her desk in the corner of a room; behind her a fire burnt
brightly.
Presently a servant came in and gave her a card.
"Say I am busy and can see no one now. I have to finish this article by
two o'clock."
The servant came back. The caller said she would only keep her a moment:
it was necessary she should see her.
The woman rose from her desk. "Tell the boy to wait. Ask the lady to come
in."
A young woman in a silk dress, with a cloak reaching to her feet, entered.
She was tall and slight, with fair hair.
"I knew you would not mind. I wished to see you so!"
The woman offered her a seat by the fire. "May I loosen your cloak?--the
room is warm."
"I wanted so to come and see you. You are the only person in the world who
could help me! I know you are so large, and generous, and kind to other
women!" She sat down. Tears stood in her large blue eyes: she was
pulling off her little gloves unconsciously.
"You know Mr.--" (she mentioned the name of a well-known writer): "I know
you meet him often in your work. I want you to do something for me!"
The woman on the hearth-rug looked down at her.
"I couldn't tell my father or my mother, or any one else; but I can tell
you, though I know so little of you. You know, last summer he came and
stayed with us a month. I saw a great deal of him. I don't know if he
liked me; I know he liked my singing, and we rode together--I liked him
more than any man I have ever seen. Oh, you know it isn't true that a
woman can only like a man when he likes her; and I thought, perhaps, he
liked me a little. Since we have been in town we have asked, but he has
never come to see us. Perhaps people have been saying something to him
about me. You know him, you are always meeting him, couldn't you say or do
anything for me?" She looked up with her lips white and drawn. "I feel
sometimes as if I were going mad! Oh, it is so terrible to be a woman!"
The woman looked down at her. "Now I hear he likes another woman. I don't
know who she is, but they say she is so clever, and writes. Oh, it is so
terrible, I can't bear it."
The woman leaned her elbow against the mantelpiece, and her face against
her hand. She looked down into the fire. Then she turned and looked at
the younger woman. "Yes," she said, "it is a very terrible thing to be a
woman." She was silent. She said with some difficulty: "Are you sure you
love him? Are you sure it is not only the feeling a young girl has for an
older man who is celebrated, and of whom every one is talking?"
"I have been nearly mad. I haven't slept for weeks!" She knit her little
hands together, till the jewelled rings almost cut into the fingers. "He
is everything to me; there is nothing else in the world. You, who are so
great, and strong, and clever, and who care only for your work, and for men
as your friends, you cannot understand what it is when one person is
everything to you, when there is nothing else in the world!"
"And what do you want me to do?"
"Oh, I don't know!" She looked up. "A woman knows what she can do. Don't
tell him that I love him." She looked up again. "Just say something to
him. Oh, it's so terrible to be a woman; I can't do anything. You won't
tell him exactly that I love him? That's the thing that makes a man hate a
woman, if you tell it him plainly."
"If I speak to him I must speak openly. He is my friend. I cannot fence
with him. I have never fenced with him in my own affairs." She moved as
though she were going away from the fireplace, then she turned and said:
"Have you thought of what love is between a man and a woman when it means
marriage? That long, long life together, day after day, stripped of all
romance and distance, living face to face: seeing each other as a man sees
his own soul? Do you realize that the end of marriage is to make the man
and woman stronger than they were; and that if you cannot, when you are an
old man and woman and sit by the fire, say, 'Life has been a braver and a
freer thing for us, because we passed it hand in hand, than if we had
passed through it alone,' it has failed? Do you care for him enough to
live for him, not tomorrow, but when he is an old, faded man, and you an
old, faded woman? Can you forgive him his sins and his weaknesses, when
they hurt you most? If he were to lie a querulous invalid for twenty
years, would you be able to fold him in your arms all that time, and
comfort him, as a mother comforts her little child?" The woman drew her
breath heavily.
"Oh, I love him absolutely! I would be glad to die, if only I could once
know that he loved me better than anything in the world!"
The woman stood looking down at her. "Have you never thought of that other
woman; whether she could not perhaps make his life as perfect as you?" she
asked, slowly.
"Oh, no woman ever could be to him what I would be. I would live for him.
He belongs to me." She bent herself forward, not crying, but her shoulders
moving. "It is such a terrible thing to be a woman, to be able to do
nothing and say nothing!"
The woman put her hand on her shoulder; the younger woman looked up into
her face; then the elder turned away and stood looking into the fire.
There was such quiet, you could hear the clock tick above the writing-
table.
The woman said: "There is one thing I can do for you. I do not know if it
will be of any use--I will do it." She turned away.
"Oh, you are so great and good, so beautiful, so different from other
women, who are always thinking only of themselves! Thank you so much. I
know I can trust you. I couldn't have told my mother, or any one but you."
"Now you must go; I have my work to finish."
The younger woman put her arms round her. "Oh, you are so good and
beautiful!"
The silk dress and the fur cloak rustled out of the room.
The woman who was left alone walked up and down, at last faster and faster,
till the drops stood on her forehead. After a time she went up to the
table; there was written illegibly in a man's hand on a fragment of
manuscript paper: "Can I come to see you this afternoon?" Near it was a
closed and addressed envelope. She opened it. In it were written the
words: "Yes, please, come."
She tore it across and wrote the words: "No, I shall not be at liberty."
She closed them in an envelope and addressed them. Then she rolled up the
manuscript on the table and rang the bell. She gave it to the servant.
"Tell the boy to give this to his master, and say the article ends rather
abruptly; they must state it is to be continued; I will finish it tomorrow.
As he passes No. 20 let him leave this note there."
The servant went out. She walked up and down with her hands folded above
her head.
...
Two months after, the older woman stood before the fire. The door opened
suddenly, and the younger woman came in.
"I had to come--I couldn't wait. You have heard, he was married this
morning? Oh, do you think it is true? Do help me!" She put out her
hands.
"Sit down. Yes, it is quite true."
"Oh, it is so terrible, and I didn't know anything! Did you ever say
anything to him?" She caught the woman's hands.
"I never saw him again after the day you were here,--so I could not speak
to him,--but I did what I could." She stood looking passively into the
fire.
"And they say she is quite a child, only eighteen. They say he only saw
her three times before he proposed to her. Do you think it is true?"
"Yes, it is quite true."
"He can't love her. They say he's only marrying her for her rank and her
money."
The woman turned quickly.
"What right have you to say that? No one but I know him. What need has he
of any one's rank or wealth? He is greater than them all! Older women may
have failed him; he has needed to turn to her beautiful, fresh, young life
to compensate him. She is a woman whom any man might have loved, so young
and beautiful; her family are famed for their intellect. If he trains her,
she may make him a better wife than any other woman would have done."
"Oh, but I can't bear it--I can't bear it!" The younger woman sat down in
the chair. "She will be his wife, and have his children."
"Yes." The elder woman moved quickly. "One wants to have the child, and
lay its head on one's breast and feed it." She moved quickly. "It would
not matter if another woman bore it, if one had it to take care of." She
moved restlessly.
"Oh, no, I couldn't bear it to be hers. When I think of her I feel as if I
were dying; all my fingers turn cold; I feel dead. Oh, you were only his
friend; you don't know!"
The older spoke softly and quickly, "Don't you feel a little gentle to her
when you think she's going to be his wife and the mother of his child? I
would like to put my arms round her and touch her once, if she would let
me. She is so beautiful, they say."
"Oh, I could never bear to see her; it would kill me. And they are so
happy together today! He is loving her so!"
"Don't you want him to be happy?" The older woman looked down at her.
"Have you never loved him, at all?"
The younger woman's face was covered with her hands. "Oh, it's so
terrible, so dark! and I shall go on living year after year, always in this
awful pain! Oh, if I could only die!"
The older woman stood looking into the fire; then slowly and measuredly she
said, "There are times, in life, when everything seems dark, when the brain
reels, and we cannot see that there is anything but death. But, if we wait
long enough, after long, long years, calm comes. It may be we cannot say
it was well; but we are contented, we accept the past. The struggle is
ended. That day may come for you, perhaps sooner than you think." She
spoke slowly and with difficulty.
"No, it can never come for me. If once I have loved a thing, I love it for
ever. I can never forget."
"Love is not the only end in life. There are other things to live for."
"Oh, yes, for you! To me love is everything!"
"Now, you must go, dear."
The younger woman stood up. "It has been such a comfort to talk to you. I
think I should have killed myself if I had not come. You help me so. I
shall always be grateful to you."
The older woman took her hand.
"I want to ask something of you."
"What is it?"
- fastening [´fɑ:səniŋ]
n.(门等)扣绊，拴扣物 (初中英语单词) - colonial [kə´ləuniəl] a.(关于)殖民地的 (初中英语单词)
- generous [´dʒenərəs] a.慷慨的；丰盛的 (初中英语单词)
- well-known [,wel´nəun] a.著名的，众所周知的 (初中英语单词)
- celebrated [´selibreitid] a.著名的 (初中英语单词)
- forgive [fə´giv] vt.原谅，谅解，宽恕 (初中英语单词)
- forehead [´fɔrid] n.额，前部 (初中英语单词)
- fragment [´frægmənt] n.碎片；破片；断片 (初中英语单词)
- envelope [´envələup] n.信封，封皮 (初中英语单词)
- wealth [welθ] n.财富，财产 (初中英语单词)
- softly [´sɔftli] ad.软化地；柔和地 (初中英语单词)
- grateful [´greitful] a.感谢的；令人愉快的 (初中英语单词)
- mantle [´mæntl] n.斗蓬 v.覆盖；笼罩 (高中英语单词)
- loosen [´lu:sən] v.放松；松弛 (高中英语单词)
- saying [´seiŋ, ´sei-iŋ] n.言语；言论；格言 (高中英语单词)
- openly [´əupənli] ad.公开地；直率地 (高中英语单词)
- fireplace [´faiəpleis] n.壁炉，炉灶 (高中英语单词)
- seeing [si:iŋ] see的现在分词 n.视觉 (高中英语单词)
- loving [´lʌviŋ] a.爱的，有爱情的 (高中英语单词)
- contented [kən´tentid] a.满足的；心满意足的 (高中英语单词)
- policy [´pɔlisi] n.政策；权谋；保险单 (英语四级单词)
- invalid [in´vælid] n.病人 a.无效的 (英语四级单词)
- compensate [´kɔmpenseit] v.赔偿；补偿；酬报 (英语四级单词)
- intellect [´intilekt] n.智力；有才智的人 (英语四级单词)
- caller [´kɔ:lə] n.呼喊者；访问者 (英语六级单词)
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