章节正文
connected with the desire she presently showed to know more.
"When was it--on the tower?"
"About the middle of the month. At this same hour."
"Almost at dark," said Mrs. Grose.
"Oh, no, not nearly. I saw him as I see you."
"Then how did he get in?"
"And how did he get out?" I laughed. "I had no opportunity to ask him!
This evening, you see," I pursued, "he has not been able to get in."
"He only peeps?"
"I hope it will be confined to that!" She had now let go my hand;
she turned away a little. I waited an instant; then I brought out:
"Go to church. Goodbye. I must watch."
Slowly she faced me again. "Do you fear for them?"
We met in another long look. "Don't YOU?" Instead of answering she came
nearer to the window and, for a minute, applied her face to the glass.
"You see how he could see," I meanwhile went on.
She didn't move. "How long was he here?"
"Till I came out. I came to meet him."
Mrs. Grose at last turned round, and there was still more in her face.
"_I_ couldn't have come out."
"Neither could I!" I laughed again. "But I did come.
I have my duty."
"So have I mine," she replied; after which she added:
"What is he like?"
"I've been dying to tell you. But he's like nobody."
"Nobody?" she echoed.
"He has no hat." Then seeing in her face that she already,
in this, with a deeper dismay, found a touch of picture,
I quickly added stroke to stroke. "He has red hair, very red,
close-curling, and a pale face, long in shape, with straight,
good features and little, rather queer whiskers that are as red
as his hair. His eyebrows are, somehow, darker; they look
particularly arched and as if they might move a good deal.
His eyes are sharp, strange--awfully; but I only know clearly
that they're rather small and very fixed. His mouth's wide,
and his lips are thin, and except for his little whiskers he's
quite clean-shaven. He gives me a sort of sense of looking
like an actor."
"An actor!" It was impossible to resemble one less, at least,
than Mrs. Grose at that moment.
"I've never seen one, but so I suppose them. He's tall, active, erect,"
I continued, "but never--no, never!--a gentleman."
My companion's face had blanched as I went on; her round
eyes started and her mild mouth gaped. "A gentleman?"
she gasped, confounded, stupefied: "a gentleman HE?"
"You know him then?"
She visibly tried to hold herself. "But he IS handsome?"
I saw the way to help her. "Remarkably!"
"And dressed--?"
"In somebody's clothes. "They're smart, but they're not his own."
She broke into a breathless" target="_blank" title="a.屏息的">breathless affirmative groan: "They're the master's!"
I caught it up. "You DO know him?"
She faltered but a second. "Quint!" she cried.
"Quint?"
"Peter Quint--his own man, his valet, when he was here!"
"When the master was?"
Gaping still, but meeting me, she pieced it all together.
"He never wore his hat, but he did wear--well, there were
waistcoats missed. They were both here--last year.
Then the master went, and Quint was alone."
I followed, but halting a little. "Alone?"
"Alone with US." Then, as from a deeper depth, "In charge," she added.
"And what became of him?"
She hung fire so long that I was still more mystified.
"He went, too," she brought out at last.
"Went where?"
Her expression, at this, became extraordinary. "God knows where!
He died."
"Died?" I almost shrieked.
She seemed fairly to square herself, plant herself more firmly to utter
the wonder of it. "Yes. Mr. Quint is dead."
VI
It took of course more than that particular passage to place us
together in presence of what we had now to live with as we could--
my dreadfulliability to impressions of the order so vividly
exemplified, and my companion's knowledge, henceforth--a knowledge
half consternation and half compassion--of that liability.
There had been, this evening, after the revelation left me,
for an hour, so prostrate--there had been, for either of us,
no attendance on any service but a little service of tears and vows,
of prayers and promises, a climax to the series of mutual challenges
and pledges that had straightway ensued on our retreating together to
the schoolroom and shutting ourselves up there to have everything out.
The result of our having everything out was simply to reduce
our situation to the last rigor of its elements. She herself had
seen nothing, not the shadow of a shadow, and nobody in the house
but the governess was in the governess's plight; yet she accepted
without directly impugning my sanity the truth as I gave it to her,
and ended by showing me, on this ground, an awestricken tenderness,
an expression of the sense of my more than questionable privilege,
of which the very breath has remained with me as that of the sweetest
of human charities.
What was settled between us, accordingly, that night, was that we
thought we might bear things together; and I was not even sure that,
in spite of her exemption, it was she who had the best of the burden.
I knew at this hour, I think, as well as I knew later, what I was
capable of meeting to shelter my pupils; but it took me some time
to be wholly sure of what my honest ally was prepared for to keep
terms with so compromising a contract. I was queer company enough--
quite as queer as the company I received; but as I trace over
what we went through I see how much common ground we must have
found in the one idea that, by good fortune, COULD steady us.
It was the idea, the second movement, that led me straight out,
as I may say, of the inner chamber of my dread. I could take
the air in the court, at least, and there Mrs. Grose could join me.
Perfectly can I recall now the particular way strength came to me
before we separated for the night. We had gone over and over every
feature of what I had seen.
"He was looking for someone else, you say--someone who was not you?"
"He was looking for little Miles." A portentous clearness now possessed me.
"THAT'S whom he was looking for."
"But how do you know?"
"I know, I know, I know!" My exaltation grew. "And YOU know, my dear!"
She didn't deny this, but I required, I felt, not even so much
telling as that. She resumed in a moment, at any rate:
"What if HE should see him?"
"Little Miles? That's what he wants!"
She looked immensely scared again. "The child?"
"Heaven forbid! The man. He wants to appear to THEM."
That he might was an awful conception, and yet, somehow, I could
keep it at bay; which, moreover, as we lingered there,
was what I succeeded in practically proving. I had an absolute
certainty that I should see again what I had already seen,
but something within me said that by offering myself bravely
as the sole subject of such experience, by accepting, by inviting,
by surmounting it all, I should serve as an expiatory victim
and guard the tranquility of my companions. The children,
in especial, I should thus fence about and absolutely save.
I recall one of the last things I said that night to Mrs. Grose.
"It does strike me that my pupils have never mentioned--"
She looked at me hard as I musingly pulled up. "His having been
here and the time they were with him?"
"The time they were with him, and his name, his presence, his history,
in any way."
"Oh, the little lady doesn't remember. She never heard or knew."
"The circumstances of his death?" I thought with some intensity.
"Perhaps not. But Miles would remember--Miles would know."
"Ah, don't try him!" broke from Mrs. Grose.
I returned her the look she had given me. "Don't be afraid."
I continued to think. "It IS rather odd."
"That he has never spoken of him?"
"Never by the least allusion. And you tell me they were `great friends'?"
"Oh, it wasn't HIM!" Mrs. Grose with emphasis declared.
"It was Quint's own fancy. To play with him, I mean--
to spoil him." She paused a moment; then she added:
"Quint was much too free."
This gave me, straight from my vision of his face--SUCH a face!--
a sudden sickness of disgust. "Too free with MY boy?"
"Too free with everyone!"
I forbore, for the moment, to analyze this description further than
by the reflection that a part of it applied to several of the members
of the household, of the half-dozen maids and men who were still
of our small colony. But there was everything, for our apprehension,
in the lucky fact that no discomfortable legend, no perturbation
of scullions, had ever, within anyone's memory attached to the kind
old place. It had neither bad name nor ill fame, and Mrs. Grose,
most apparently, only desired to cling to me and to quake in silence.
I even put her, the very last thing of all, to the test. It was when,
at midnight, she had her hand on the schoolroom door to take leave.
"I have it from you then--for it's of great importance--that he was
definitely and admittedly bad?"
"Oh, not admittedly. _I_ knew it--but the master didn't."
"And you never told him?"
"Well, he didn't like tale-bearing--he hated complaints.
He was terribly short with anything of that kind, and if people
were all right to HIM--"
"He wouldn't be bothered with more?" This squared well enough
with my impressions of him: he was not a trouble-loving gentleman,
nor so very particular perhaps about some of the company HE kept.
All the same, I pressed my interlocutress. "I promise you _I_
would have told!"
She felt my discrimination. "I daresay I was wrong.
But, really, I was afraid."
"Afraid of what?"
"Of things that man could do. Quint was so clever--he was so deep."
I took this in still more than, probably, I showed.
"You weren't afraid of anything else? Not of his effect--?"
"His effect?" she repeated with a face of anguish and waiting
while I faltered.
"On innocent little precious lives. They were in your charge."
"No, they were not in mine!" she roundly and distressfully returned.
"The master believed in him and placed him here because he was
supposed not to be well and the country air so good for him.
So he had everything to say. Yes"--she let me have it--"even
about THEM."
"Them--that creature?" I had to smother a kind of howl.
"And you could bear it!"
"No. I couldn't--and I can't now!" And the poor woman burst into tears.
A rigid control, from the next day, was, as I have said, to follow them;
yet how often and how passionately, for a week, we came back together
to the subject! Much as we had discussed it that Sunday night, I was,
in the immediate later hours in especial--for it may be imagined whether
I slept--still haunted with the shadow of something she had not told me.
I myself had kept back nothing, but there was a word Mrs. Grose had
kept back. I was sure, moreover, by morning, that this was not from
a failure of frankness, but because on every side there were fears.
It seems to me indeed, in retrospect, that by the time the morrow's sun
was high I had restlessly read into the fact before us almost all the
meaning they were to receive from subsequent and more cruel occurrences.
What they gave me above all was just the sinister figure of the living man--
the dead one would keep awhile!--and of the months he had continuously
"When was it--on the tower?"
"About the middle of the month. At this same hour."
"Almost at dark," said Mrs. Grose.
"Oh, no, not nearly. I saw him as I see you."
"Then how did he get in?"
"And how did he get out?" I laughed. "I had no opportunity to ask him!
This evening, you see," I pursued, "he has not been able to get in."
"He only peeps?"
"I hope it will be confined to that!" She had now let go my hand;
she turned away a little. I waited an instant; then I brought out:
"Go to church. Goodbye. I must watch."
Slowly she faced me again. "Do you fear for them?"
We met in another long look. "Don't YOU?" Instead of answering she came
nearer to the window and, for a minute, applied her face to the glass.
"You see how he could see," I meanwhile went on.
She didn't move. "How long was he here?"
"Till I came out. I came to meet him."
Mrs. Grose at last turned round, and there was still more in her face.
"_I_ couldn't have come out."
"Neither could I!" I laughed again. "But I did come.
I have my duty."
"So have I mine," she replied; after which she added:
"What is he like?"
"I've been dying to tell you. But he's like nobody."
"Nobody?" she echoed.
"He has no hat." Then seeing in her face that she already,
in this, with a deeper dismay, found a touch of picture,
I quickly added stroke to stroke. "He has red hair, very red,
close-curling, and a pale face, long in shape, with straight,
good features and little, rather queer whiskers that are as red
as his hair. His eyebrows are, somehow, darker; they look
particularly arched and as if they might move a good deal.
His eyes are sharp, strange--awfully; but I only know clearly
that they're rather small and very fixed. His mouth's wide,
and his lips are thin, and except for his little whiskers he's
quite clean-shaven. He gives me a sort of sense of looking
like an actor."
"An actor!" It was impossible to resemble one less, at least,
than Mrs. Grose at that moment.
"I've never seen one, but so I suppose them. He's tall, active, erect,"
I continued, "but never--no, never!--a gentleman."
My companion's face had blanched as I went on; her round
eyes started and her mild mouth gaped. "A gentleman?"
she gasped, confounded, stupefied: "a gentleman HE?"
"You know him then?"
She visibly tried to hold herself. "But he IS handsome?"
I saw the way to help her. "Remarkably!"
"And dressed--?"
"In somebody's clothes. "They're smart, but they're not his own."
She broke into a breathless" target="_blank" title="a.屏息的">breathless affirmative groan: "They're the master's!"
I caught it up. "You DO know him?"
She faltered but a second. "Quint!" she cried.
"Quint?"
"Peter Quint--his own man, his valet, when he was here!"
"When the master was?"
Gaping still, but meeting me, she pieced it all together.
"He never wore his hat, but he did wear--well, there were
waistcoats missed. They were both here--last year.
Then the master went, and Quint was alone."
I followed, but halting a little. "Alone?"
"Alone with US." Then, as from a deeper depth, "In charge," she added.
"And what became of him?"
She hung fire so long that I was still more mystified.
"He went, too," she brought out at last.
"Went where?"
Her expression, at this, became extraordinary. "God knows where!
He died."
"Died?" I almost shrieked.
She seemed fairly to square herself, plant herself more firmly to utter
the wonder of it. "Yes. Mr. Quint is dead."
VI
It took of course more than that particular passage to place us
together in presence of what we had now to live with as we could--
my dreadfulliability to impressions of the order so vividly
exemplified, and my companion's knowledge, henceforth--a knowledge
half consternation and half compassion--of that liability.
There had been, this evening, after the revelation left me,
for an hour, so prostrate--there had been, for either of us,
no attendance on any service but a little service of tears and vows,
of prayers and promises, a climax to the series of mutual challenges
and pledges that had straightway ensued on our retreating together to
the schoolroom and shutting ourselves up there to have everything out.
The result of our having everything out was simply to reduce
our situation to the last rigor of its elements. She herself had
seen nothing, not the shadow of a shadow, and nobody in the house
but the governess was in the governess's plight; yet she accepted
without directly impugning my sanity the truth as I gave it to her,
and ended by showing me, on this ground, an awestricken tenderness,
an expression of the sense of my more than questionable privilege,
of which the very breath has remained with me as that of the sweetest
of human charities.
What was settled between us, accordingly, that night, was that we
thought we might bear things together; and I was not even sure that,
in spite of her exemption, it was she who had the best of the burden.
I knew at this hour, I think, as well as I knew later, what I was
capable of meeting to shelter my pupils; but it took me some time
to be wholly sure of what my honest ally was prepared for to keep
terms with so compromising a contract. I was queer company enough--
quite as queer as the company I received; but as I trace over
what we went through I see how much common ground we must have
found in the one idea that, by good fortune, COULD steady us.
It was the idea, the second movement, that led me straight out,
as I may say, of the inner chamber of my dread. I could take
the air in the court, at least, and there Mrs. Grose could join me.
Perfectly can I recall now the particular way strength came to me
before we separated for the night. We had gone over and over every
feature of what I had seen.
"He was looking for someone else, you say--someone who was not you?"
"He was looking for little Miles." A portentous clearness now possessed me.
"THAT'S whom he was looking for."
"But how do you know?"
"I know, I know, I know!" My exaltation grew. "And YOU know, my dear!"
She didn't deny this, but I required, I felt, not even so much
telling as that. She resumed in a moment, at any rate:
"What if HE should see him?"
"Little Miles? That's what he wants!"
She looked immensely scared again. "The child?"
"Heaven forbid! The man. He wants to appear to THEM."
That he might was an awful conception, and yet, somehow, I could
keep it at bay; which, moreover, as we lingered there,
was what I succeeded in practically proving. I had an absolute
certainty that I should see again what I had already seen,
but something within me said that by offering myself bravely
as the sole subject of such experience, by accepting, by inviting,
by surmounting it all, I should serve as an expiatory victim
and guard the tranquility of my companions. The children,
in especial, I should thus fence about and absolutely save.
I recall one of the last things I said that night to Mrs. Grose.
"It does strike me that my pupils have never mentioned--"
She looked at me hard as I musingly pulled up. "His having been
here and the time they were with him?"
"The time they were with him, and his name, his presence, his history,
in any way."
"Oh, the little lady doesn't remember. She never heard or knew."
"The circumstances of his death?" I thought with some intensity.
"Perhaps not. But Miles would remember--Miles would know."
"Ah, don't try him!" broke from Mrs. Grose.
I returned her the look she had given me. "Don't be afraid."
I continued to think. "It IS rather odd."
"That he has never spoken of him?"
"Never by the least allusion. And you tell me they were `great friends'?"
"Oh, it wasn't HIM!" Mrs. Grose with emphasis declared.
"It was Quint's own fancy. To play with him, I mean--
to spoil him." She paused a moment; then she added:
"Quint was much too free."
This gave me, straight from my vision of his face--SUCH a face!--
a sudden sickness of disgust. "Too free with MY boy?"
"Too free with everyone!"
I forbore, for the moment, to analyze this description further than
by the reflection that a part of it applied to several of the members
of the household, of the half-dozen maids and men who were still
of our small colony. But there was everything, for our apprehension,
in the lucky fact that no discomfortable legend, no perturbation
of scullions, had ever, within anyone's memory attached to the kind
old place. It had neither bad name nor ill fame, and Mrs. Grose,
most apparently, only desired to cling to me and to quake in silence.
I even put her, the very last thing of all, to the test. It was when,
at midnight, she had her hand on the schoolroom door to take leave.
"I have it from you then--for it's of great importance--that he was
definitely and admittedly bad?"
"Oh, not admittedly. _I_ knew it--but the master didn't."
"And you never told him?"
"Well, he didn't like tale-bearing--he hated complaints.
He was terribly short with anything of that kind, and if people
were all right to HIM--"
"He wouldn't be bothered with more?" This squared well enough
with my impressions of him: he was not a trouble-loving gentleman,
nor so very particular perhaps about some of the company HE kept.
All the same, I pressed my interlocutress. "I promise you _I_
would have told!"
She felt my discrimination. "I daresay I was wrong.
But, really, I was afraid."
"Afraid of what?"
"Of things that man could do. Quint was so clever--he was so deep."
I took this in still more than, probably, I showed.
"You weren't afraid of anything else? Not of his effect--?"
"His effect?" she repeated with a face of anguish and waiting
while I faltered.
"On innocent little precious lives. They were in your charge."
"No, they were not in mine!" she roundly and distressfully returned.
"The master believed in him and placed him here because he was
supposed not to be well and the country air so good for him.
So he had everything to say. Yes"--she let me have it--"even
about THEM."
"Them--that creature?" I had to smother a kind of howl.
"And you could bear it!"
"No. I couldn't--and I can't now!" And the poor woman burst into tears.
A rigid control, from the next day, was, as I have said, to follow them;
yet how often and how passionately, for a week, we came back together
to the subject! Much as we had discussed it that Sunday night, I was,
in the immediate later hours in especial--for it may be imagined whether
I slept--still haunted with the shadow of something she had not told me.
I myself had kept back nothing, but there was a word Mrs. Grose had
kept back. I was sure, moreover, by morning, that this was not from
a failure of frankness, but because on every side there were fears.
It seems to me indeed, in retrospect, that by the time the morrow's sun
was high I had restlessly read into the fact before us almost all the
meaning they were to receive from subsequent and more cruel occurrences.
What they gave me above all was just the sinister figure of the living man--
the dead one would keep awhile!--and of the months he had continuously
- presently [´prezəntli]
ad.不久；目前 (初中英语单词) - instant [´instənt] a.立即的 n.紧迫；瞬间 (初中英语单词)
- meanwhile [´mi:n´wail] n.&ad.其间；同时 (初中英语单词)
- dismay [dis´mei] n.惊慌 vt.使惊慌 (初中英语单词)
- resemble [ri´zembəl] vt.类似，象 (初中英语单词)
- extraordinary [ik´strɔ:dinəri] a.非常的；额外的 (初中英语单词)
- firmly [´fə:mli] ad.坚固地，稳定地 (初中英语单词)
- dreadful [´dredful] a.可怕的；讨厌的 (初中英语单词)
- series [´siəri:z] n.连续；系列；丛书 (初中英语单词)
- breath [breθ] n.呼吸；气息 (初中英语单词)
- accordingly [ə´kɔ:diŋli] ad.因此；从而；依照 (初中英语单词)
- wholly [´həul-li] ad.完全，十足；统统 (初中英语单词)
- movement [´mu:vmənt] n.活动；运动；动作 (初中英语单词)
- moreover [mɔ:´rəuvə] ad.再者，此外，而且 (初中英语单词)
- absolutely [´æbsəlu:tli] ad.绝对地；确实 (初中英语单词)
- spoken [´spəukən] speak的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
- vision [´viʒən] n.视觉；想象力；幻影 (初中英语单词)
- sickness [´siknis] n.生病；呕吐，恶心 (初中英语单词)
- disgust [dis´gʌst] n.厌恶 vt.令(人)作呕 (初中英语单词)
- description [di´skripʃən] n.描写 (初中英语单词)
- reflection [ri´flekʃən] n.反射；映象；想法 (初中英语单词)
- midnight [´midnait] n.午夜；漆黑 (初中英语单词)
- terribly [´terəbli] ad.可怕地 (初中英语单词)
- innocent [´inəsənt] a.无罪的；单纯的 (初中英语单词)
- haunted [´hɔ:tid] a.常出现鬼的，闹鬼的 (初中英语单词)
- failure [´feiljə] n.失败；衰竭；破产 (初中英语单词)
- seeing [si:iŋ] see的现在分词 n.视觉 (高中英语单词)
- breathless [´breθlis] a.屏息的 (高中英语单词)
- revelation [,revə´leiʃən] n.展现；揭露(的事物) (高中英语单词)
- climax [´klaimæks] n.顶点；高潮 (高中英语单词)
- mutual [´mju:tʃuəl] a.相互的；共同的 (高中英语单词)
- straightway [´streitwei] ad.立刻 (高中英语单词)
- plight [plait] n.境况；困境；苦境 (高中英语单词)
- chamber [´tʃeimbə] n.房间；议院；会议室 (高中英语单词)
- conception [kən´sepʃən] n.构思；概念；怀孕 (高中英语单词)
- offering [´ɔfəriŋ] n.提供；礼物；捐献 (高中英语单词)
- emphasis [´emfəsis] n.强调；重点 (高中英语单词)
- apparently [ə´pærəntli] ad.显然，表面上地 (高中英语单词)
- repeated [ri´pi:tid] a.反复的；重复的 (高中英语单词)
- anguish [´æŋgwiʃ] n.(极度的)痛苦；苦恼 (高中英语单词)
- smother [´smʌðə] v.抑制；覆盖 n.浓烟 (高中英语单词)
- subsequent [´sʌbsikwənt] a.其次的；其后的 (高中英语单词)
- liability [,laiə´biliti] n.责任 负债 (英语四级单词)
- schoolroom [´sku:lru:m, -rum] n.教室 (英语四级单词)
- immensely [i´mensli] ad.极大地，无限地 (英语四级单词)
- tranquility [træŋ´kwiliti] n.安静；平静；安宁 (英语四级单词)
- allusion [ə´lu:ʒən] n.暗指；提及；引喻 (英语四级单词)
- passionately [´pæʃənitli] ad.多情地；热烈地 (英语四级单词)
- sinister [´sinistə] a.阴险的；不吉的 (英语四级单词)
- continuously [kən´tinjuəsli] ad.连续(不断)地 (英语四级单词)
- applied [ə´plaid] a.实用的，应用的 (英语六级单词)
- arched [´ɑ:tʃid] a.弓形(结构)的 (英语六级单词)
- consternation [,kɔnstə´neiʃən] n.惊愕；惊恐；惊慌失措 (英语六级单词)
- governess [´gʌvənis] n.女家庭教师 (英语六级单词)
- questionable [´kwestʃənəbəl] a.可疑的，不可靠的 (英语六级单词)
- clearness [´kliənis] n.清楚；明白；明确 (英语六级单词)
- especial [i´speʃəl] a.特别的，特殊的 (英语六级单词)
- discrimination [di,skrimi´neiʃən] n.区别，歧视 (英语六级单词)
- frankness [´fræŋknis] n.坦白，直率，真诚 (英语六级单词)
- restlessly [´restlisli] ad.不安定地；烦躁地 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
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