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Penelope's Irish Experiences-Part1_Kate Douglas Wiggin(1856-1923)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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England, Scotland and Ireland unless they are writing an Itinerary



of the British Isles. The situation is possible, certainly, but it

isn't simple, or natural, or probable. We are behaving precisely



like characters in fiction, who, having been popular in the first

volume, are exploited again and again until their popularity wanes.



We are like the Trotty books or the Elsie Dinmore series. England

was our first volume, Scotland our second, and here we are, if you



please, about to live a third volume in Ireland. We fall in love,

we marry and are given in marriage, we promote and take part in



international alliances, but when the curtain goes up again, our

accumulations, acquisitions--whatever you choose to call them--have



disappeared. We are not to the superficial eye the spinster-

philanthropist, the bride to be, the wife of a year; we are the same



old Salemina, Francesca and Penelope. It is so dramatic that my

husband should be called to America; as a woman I miss him and need



him; as a character I am much better single. I don't suppose

publishers like married heroines any more than managers like married



leading ladies. Then how entirely proper it is that Ronald

Macdonald cannot leave his new parish in the Highlands. The one, my



husband, belongs to the first volume; Francesca's lover to the

second; and good gracious, Salemina, don't you see the inference?"



"I may be dull," she replied, "but I confess I do not."

"We are three?"



"Who is three?"

"That is not good English, but I repeat with different emphasis WE



are three. I fell in love in England, Francesca fell in love in

Scotland-" And here I paused, watching the blush mount rosily to



Salemina's grey hair; pink is very becoming to grey, and that, we

always say, accounts more satisfactorily for Salemina's frequent



blushes than her modesty, which is about of the usual sort.

"Your argument is interesting, and even ingenious," she replied,



"but I fail to see my responsibility. If you persist in thinking of

me as a character in fiction, I shall rebel. I am not the stuff of



which heroines are made; besides, I would never appear in anything

so cheap and obvious as a series, and the three-volume novel is as



much out of fashion as the Rollo books."

"But we are unconscious heroines, you understand," I explained.



"While we were experiencing our experiences we did not notice them,

but they have attained by degrees a sufficient bulk so that they are



visible to the naked eye. We can look back now and perceive the

path we have travelled."



"It isn't retrospect I object to, but anticipation," she retorted;

"not history, but prophecy. It is one thing to gaze sentimentally



at the road you have travelled, quite another to conjure up

impossible pictures of the future."



Salemina calls herself a trifle over forty, but I am not certain of

her age, and think perhaps that she is uncertain herself. She has



good reason to forget it, and so have we. Of course she could

consult the Bible family record daily, but if she consulted her



looking-glass afterward the one impression would always nullify the

other. Her hair is silvered, it is true, but that is so clearly a



trick of Nature that it makes her look younger rather than older.

Francesca came into the room just here. I said a moment ago that



she was the same old Francesca, but I was wrong; she is softening,

sweetening, expanding; in a word, blooming. Not only this, but



Ronald Macdonald's likeness has been stamped upon her in some

magical way, so that, although she has not lost her own personality,



she seems to have added a reflection of his. In the glimpses of

herself, her views, feelings, opinions, convictions, which she gives



us in a kind of solution, as it were, there are always traces of

Ronald Macdonald; or, to be more poetical, he seems to have bent



over the crystal pool, and his image is reflected there.

You remember in New England they allude to a bride as 'she that was'



a so-and-so. In my private interviews with Salemina I now

habitually allude to Francesca as 'she that was a Monroe'; it is so



significant of her present state of absorption. Several times this

week I have been obliged to inquire, "Was I, by any chance, as



absent-minded and dull in Pettybaw as Francesca is under the same

circumstances in Dublin?"



"Quite."

"Duller if anything."



These candid replies being uttered in cheerfulunison I change the

subject, but cannot resist telling them both casually that the






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