登陆注册
5242200000165

第165章 Chapter 7(4)

"And things are NOT too utterly far gone with them?"

She had inevitably, poor woman, her hesitation for this, but she put down her answer as for the purchase of some absolutely indispensable article she would have put down her last shilling. "No."

It made him always grin at her. "Is THAT a lie?"

"Do you think you're worth lying to? If it were n't the truth for me," she added, "I would n't have accepted for Fawns. I CAN, I believe, keep the wretches quiet."

"But how--at the worst?"

"Oh 'the worst'--don't talk about the worst! I can keep them quiet at the best, I seem to feel, simply by our being there. It will work from week to week of itself. You'll see."

He was willing enough to see, but he desired to provide--! "Yet if it does n't work?"

"Ah that's talking about the worst!"

Well, it might be; but what were they doing from (133) morning to night at this crisis but talk? "Who'll keep the others?"

"The others--?"

"Who'll keep THEM quiet? If your couple have had a life together they can't have had it completely without witnesses, without the help of persons, however few, who must have some knowledge, some idea about them. They've had to meet, secretly, protectedly, they've had to arrange; for if they have n't met and have n't arranged and have n't thereby in some quarter or other had to give themselves away, why are we piling it up so? Therefore if there's evidence up and down London--"

"There must be people in possession of it? Ah it is n't all," she always remembered, "up and down London. Some of it must connect them--I mean," she musingly added, "it naturally WOULD--with other places, with who knows what strange adventures, opportunities, dissimulations? But whatever there may have been it will also all have been buried on the spot. Oh they've known HOW--too beautifully! But nothing all the same is likely to find its way to Maggie of itself."

"Because every one who may have anything to tell, you hold, will have been so squared?" And then inveterately, before she could say--he enjoyed so much coming to this: "What will have squared Lady Castledean?"

"The consciousness"--she had never lost her promptness--"of having no stones to throw at any one else's windows. She has enough to do to guard her own glass. That was what she was doing," Fanny (134) said, "that last morning at Matcham when all of us went off and she kept the Prince and Charlotte over. She helped them simply that she might herself be helped--if it was n't perhaps rather, with her ridiculous Mr. Blint, that HE might be. They put in together therefore of course that day; they got it clear--and quite under her eyes; inasmuch as they did n't become traceable again, as we know, till late in the evening." On this historic circumstance Mrs.

Assingham was always ready afresh to brood; but she was no less ready, after her brooding, devoutly to add: "Only we know nothing whatever else--for which all our stars be thanked!"

The Colonel's gratitude was apt to be less marked. "What did they do for themselves, anyway, from the moment they got that free hand to the moment (long after dinner-time, have n't you told me?) of their turning up at their respective homes?"

"Well, it's none of your business!"

"I don't speak of it as mine, but it's only too much theirs. People are always traceable, in England, when tracings are required. Something sooner or later happens; somebody sooner or later breaks the holy calm.

Murder will out."

"Murder will--but this is n't murder. Quite the contrary perhaps! I verily believe," she had her moments of adding, "that for the amusement of the row you'd prefer an explosion."

This however was a remark he seldom noticed; he wound up for the most part, after a long contemplative smoke, with a transition from which no exposed futility in it had succeeded in weaning him. "What (135) I can't for my life make out is your idea of the old boy."

"Charlotte's too inconceivably funny husband? I HAVE no idea."

"I beg your pardon--you've just shown it. You never speak of him but AS too inconceivably funny."

"Well, he is," she always confessed. "That is he may be, for all I know, too inconceivably great. But that's not an idea. It represents only my weak necessity of feeling that he's beyond me--which is n't an idea either.

You see he may be stupid too."

"Precisely--there you are."

"Yet on the other hand," she always went on, "he may be sublime: sublimer even than Maggie herself. He may in fact have already been. But we shall never know." With which her tone betrayed perhaps a shade of soreness for the single exemption she did n't yearningly welcome. "THAT I can see."

"Oh I say--!" It came to affect the Colonel himself with a sense of privation.

"I'm not sure even that Charlotte will."

"Oh my dear, what Charlotte does n't know--!"

But she brooded and brooded. "I'm not sure even that the Prince will."

It seemed privation in short for them all. "They'll be mystified, confounded, tormented. But they won't KNOW--and all their possible putting their heads together won't make them. That," said Fanny Assingham, "will be their punishment."

And she ended, ever, when she had come so far, at the same pitch. "It will probably also--if I get off with so little--be mine." (136) "And what," her husband liked to ask, "will be mine?"

"Nothing--you're not worthy of any. One's punishment is in what one feels, and what will make ours effective is that we SHALL feel." She was splendid with her "ours"; she flared up with this prophecy. "It will be Maggie herself who will mete it out."

"Maggie--?"

"SHE'LL know--about her father; everything. Everything," she repeated.

On the vision of which each time Mrs. Assingham, as with the presentiment of an odd despair, turned away from it. "But she'll never tell us."

同类推荐
  • 王阳明集

    王阳明集

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 投辖录

    投辖录

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 三十六水法

    三十六水法

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 游黄山日记(后)

    游黄山日记(后)

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 太上洞玄灵宝十师度人妙经

    太上洞玄灵宝十师度人妙经

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
热门推荐
  • 阆风

    阆风

    《楚辞·离骚》:“朝吾将济於 白水 兮,登 閬风 而緤马。” 王逸 注:“ 閬风 ,山名,在 崑崙 之上。” 唐 吴筠 《游仙》诗之二十:“扬盖造辰极,乘烟游 閬风 。” 章炳麟 《答铁铮书》:“观其以 閬风 、 玄圃 为神仙羣帝所居,是即以 昆仑 拟之天上。”
  • 怪物典狱长

    怪物典狱长

    噩梦般的灾难从海洋而来。它们…是文明的覆灭……繁华的街头上,有人发了疯似的大喊大叫。“地球是平的…是平的啊!尽头就在南极那边,我们完了,怪物从海洋深处杀来了……”众人惊愕围观,只有陈辰很认真地走上前,脸色颇显凝重,压低声音。“你好…我是怪物监狱的典狱长,能仔细给我描述一下是什么怪物来了吗?”那人愣愣看了一眼陈辰,有些害怕的后退了两步,拿出手机。“喂,是精神病医院吗……?”
  • 用智慧改变自己

    用智慧改变自己

    本书通过精彩故事和永恒的哲理,告诉人们一个简单但又内蕴丰富的道理:智慧改写命运。
  • 我,阴阳师

    我,阴阳师

    选了这条路,我从不后悔。如果给我再来一次的机会,我一定会再一次走上这条路。在路上再一次遇见你。
  • 大学毕业前的婚礼

    大学毕业前的婚礼

    大学生小伟在一次社会实践中结识了娟子并彼此相恋,但不同的人生经历和不同的学历背景造就的不同的思想观念让他们的爱情遭遇重重挫折.....随着毕业的来临,当一对对恋人分道扬镳时,小伟和娟子却顶着巨大的现实压力而毅然走进了婚姻的殿堂.....本部小说采用纪实性写法,并对大学生的爱情和婚姻做出较深刻的思考和探讨。是一部大学生爱情励志小说。
  • 乔布斯到底给苹果留下了什么?

    乔布斯到底给苹果留下了什么?

    在乔布斯去世后的四年里,苹果公司并未如人们所预料的那样陷入低谷,反而不断推出令人耳目一新的产品,并频频刷新销售记录。是什么给予苹果如此旺盛的创造力?是什么让苹果在乔布斯离开后仍然保持着惊人的自我颠覆精神?又是什么造就了如今全球互联网界的持续创新精神?“将创新做到极致”,这句史蒂夫·乔布斯用一生去实践的名言如今已被众多公司奉为圭臬。本书将从创业者的角度,以乔布斯时代苹果公司历代产品的诞生与意义为线索,对乔布斯的创新精神和苹果的产品理念、管理模式进行深度剖析,用鲜活的故事、深刻的分析告诉你乔布斯式创新到底为何物。
  • 修仙败家子

    修仙败家子

    身怀饕餮血脉,手握绝世神通。幸得仙人指点,步入修真大道。一路过关斩将,除尽魑魅魍魉。
  • 首席大人扯个证

    首席大人扯个证

    某小人:“妈妈,您是怎么追上爸爸的?”某女啃着西瓜,美滋滋的对宝贝伸出三根手指,“重抓三点!”“三点?”“第一点,要坚持。”“第二点呢?”“第二点就比较关键了——得不要脸。”某小人:“……”“狗皮膏药一样糊上了就不能放开。”某小人一头黑线……“第三点呢?”正得意洋洋的某女没有注意到这个声音已经换成一道意味不明的磁性男声。……PS:一个偶尔精明却一贯迟钝的女人和一个狡诈腹黑的霸道男人恋爱养可爱小宝宝的故事。
  • 仙乡甜蜜坊

    仙乡甜蜜坊

    她,来自异界的强大元神借胎重生成普通人,却因命运的碰撞,从此改变一生。。。带着神秘的空间,一步步坚强的走下去。由下堂妇最终蜕变成快乐美丽的仙子。他,天之骄子,却从小失爱。冷峻霸道,却为她宁化绕指柔。。。七彩仙株育佳人 万载梦乡养神魂 一朝星动花甜意 今世并蒂蜜相连
  • 云外人

    云外人

    俗子陈恒,意外流落永恒界,却从逆境中杀出一条血路。他敢骂苍天弃日月,敢恨世间多烦忧,敢战乾坤逆八荒,敢爱比翼齐飞客。陈恒,心永恒。