酷兔英语
    当前位置:
  1. 首页
  2. 文章
  3. 娱乐英语
  4. 原版小说
  5. 正文

The Pupil-Part1_HENRY JAMES(1843-1916)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

0 收藏 0 分享 0 赞

章节正文
文章总共2页
he had perhaps taken too much for granted it would only disgust

him. As he left the villa after his interview he looked up at the



balcony and saw the child leaning over it. "We shall have great

larks!" he called up.



Morgan hung fire a moment and then gaily returned: "By the time

you come back I shall have thought of something witty!"



This made Pemberton say to himself "After all he's rather nice."

CHAPTER II



On the Friday he saw them all, as Mrs. Moreen had promised, for her

husband had come back and the girls and the other son were at home.



Mr. Moreen had a white moustache, a confiding manner and, in his

buttonhole, the ribbon of a foreign order - bestowed, as Pemberton



eventually learned, for services. For what services he never

clearly ascertained: this was a point - one of a large number -



that Mr. Moreen's manner never confided. What it emphatically did

confide was that he was even more a man of the world than you might



first make out. Ulick, the firstborn, was in visible training for

the same profession - under the disadvantage as yet, however, of a



buttonhole but feebly floral and a moustache with no pretensions to

type. The girls had hair and figures and manners and small fat



feet, but had never been out alone. As for Mrs. Moreen Pemberton

saw on a nearer view that her elegance was intermittent and her



parts didn't always match. Her husband, as she had promised, met

with enthusiasm Pemberton's ideas in regard to a salary. The young



man had endeavoured to keep these stammerings modest, and Mr.

Moreen made it no secret that HE found them wanting in "style." He



further mentioned that he aspired to be intimate with his children,

to be their best friend, and that he was always looking out for



them. That was what he went off for, to London and other places -

to look out; and this vigilance was the theory of life, as well as



the real occupation, of the whole family. They all looked out, for

they were very frank on the subject of its being necessary. They



desired it to be understood that they were earnest people, and also

that their fortune, though quite adequate for earnest people,



required the most careful administration. Mr. Moreen, as the

parent bird, sought sustenance for the nest. Ulick invoked support



mainly at the club, where Pemberton guessed that it was usually

served on green cloth. The girls used to do up their hair and



their frocks themselves, and our young man felt appealed to to be

glad, in regard to Morgan's education, that, though it must



naturally be of the best, it didn't cost too much. After a little

he WAS glad, forgetting at times his own needs in the interest



inspired by the child's character and culture and the pleasure of

making easy terms for him.



During the first weeks of their acquaintance Morgan had been as

puzzling as a page in an unknown language - altogether different



from the obvious little Anglo-Saxons who had misrepresented

childhood to Pemberton. Indeed the whole mysticvolume in which



the boy had been amateurishly bound demanded some practice in

translation. To-day, after a considerableinterval, there is



something phantasmagoria, like a prismatic reflexion or a serial

novel, in Pemberton's memory of the queerness of the Moreens. If



it were not for a few tangible tokens - a lock of Morgan's hair cut

by his own hand, and the half-dozen letters received from him when



they were disjoined - the whole episode and the figures peopling it

would seem too inconsequent for anything but dreamland. Their



supreme quaintness was their success - as it appeared to him for a

while at the time; since he had never seen a family so brilliantly



equipped for failure. Wasn't it success to have kept him so

hatefully long? Wasn't it success to have drawn him in that first



morning at dejeuner, the Friday he came - it was enough to MAKE one

superstitious - so that he utterly committed himself, and this not



by calculation or on a signal, but from a happy instinct which made

them, like a band of gipsies, work so neatly together? They amused



him as much as if they had really been a band of gipsies. He was

still young and had not seen much of the world - his English years






文章总共2页
文章标签:名著  

章节正文
Copyright © 2023 Qeto All rights reserved.
商务合作 | 联系我们 | 关于我们 | 版权声明 | 隐私条款 | 如果智培

京ICP备05059198号-1 京公网安备 11011202003401号