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Lady Baltimore-Part1_Owen Wister(1860-1938)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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if I proved my qualifications, my name might be favorably considered by

the Selected Salic Scions--I say no more; I blush, though you cannot see



me; when I am tempted, I seem to be human, after all.

At first, to be sure, I met Aunt Carola's suggestion in the way that I am



too ready to meet many of her remarks; for you must know she once, with

sincere simplicity and good-will, told my Uncle Andrew (her husband; she



is only my Aunt by marriage) that she had married beneath her; and she

seemed unprepared for his reception of this candid statement: Uncle



Andrew was unaffectedly merry over it. Ever since then all of us wait

hopefully every day for what she may do or say next.



She is from old New York, oldest New York; the family manor is still

habitable, near Cold Spring; she was, in her youth, handsome, I am



assured by those whose word I have always trusted; her appearance even

to-day causes people to turn and look; she is not tall in feet and



inches--I have to stoop considerably when she commands from me the

familiarity of a kiss; but in the quality which we call force, in moral



stature, she must be full eight feet high. When rebuking me, she can

pronounce a single word, my name, "Augustus!" in a tone that renders



further remark needless; and you should see her eye when she says of

certain newcomers in our society, "I don't know them." She can make her



curtsy as appalling as a natural law; she knows also how to "take

umbrage," which is something that I never knew any one else to take



outside of a book; she is a highly pronounced Christian, holding all

Unitarians wicked and all Methodists vulgar; and once, when she was



talking (as she does frequently) about King James and the English

religion and the English Bible, and I reminded her that the Jews wrote



it, she said with displeasure that she made no doubt King James had--

"well, seen to it that all foreign matter was expunged"--I give you her



own words. Unless you have moved in our best American society (and by

this I do not at all mean the lower classes with dollars and no



grandfathers, who live in palaces at Newport, and look forward to every-

thing and back to nothing, but those Americans with grandfathers and no



dollars, who live in boarding-houses, and look forward to nothing and

back to everything)--unless you have known this haughty and improving



milieu, you have never seen anything like my Aunt Carola. Of course, with

Uncle Andrew's money, she does not live in a boarding-house; and I shall



finish this brief attempt to place her before you by adding that she can

be very kind, very loyal, very public-spirited, and that I am truly



attached to her.

"Upon your mother's side of the family," she said, "of course."



"Me!" I did not have to feign amazement.

My Aunt was silent. "Me descended from a king?"



My Aunt nodded with an indulgent stateliness. "There seems to be the

possibility of it."



"Royal blood in my veins, Aunt?"

"I have said so, Augustus. Why make me repeat it?"



It was now, I fear, that I met Aunt Carola in that unfitting spirit, that

volatile mood, which, as I have said already, her remarks often rouse in



me.

"And from what sovereign may I hope that I--?"



"If you will consult a recent admirable compilation, entitled The

American Almanach de Gotha, you will find that Henry the Seventh--"



"Aunt, I am so much relieved! For I think that I might have hesitated to

trace it back had you said--well--Charles the Second, for example, or



Elizabeth."

At this point I should have been wise to notice my Aunt's eye; but I did



not, and I continued imprudently:--

"Though why hesitate? I have never heard that there was anybody present



to marry Adam and Eve, and so why should we all make such a to-do

about--"



"Augustus!"

She uttered my name in that quiet but prodigious tone to which I have



alluded above.

It was I who was now silent.



"Augustus, if you purpose trifling, you may leave the room."

"Oh, Aunt, I beg your pardon. I never meant--"



"I cannot understand what impels you to adopt such a manner to me, when I

am trying to do something for you."



I hastened to strengthen my apologies with a manner becoming the possible

descendant of a king toward a lady of distinction, and my Aunt was






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