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哈代的短篇小說
有一篇漢普頓的公爵夫人
"The Duchess of Hamptonshire" (1878)
(collected in A Group of Noble Dames)
他情節是說 一個修士愛上公爵夫人
夫人要跟他私奔 可是他礙於良心道德 所以就拋棄她 自己搭船離開
後來修士在船上看到一個死人 被白布蓋起來
修士基於職業 所以幫這具屍體禱告
許多年後 修士從外地回來 想去看看這位公爵夫人
這才聽說 原來那天在船上看到的那具屍體 就是她
她悄悄跟著修士偷渡 因為環境跟營養都不好 就死在船上
以上
被我改寫成一篇短篇
如果有原文控喜歡看原文練英文 本小公主貼給你聞香
Dame the Ninth
The Duchess of Hamptonshire
By the Quiet Gentleman.
Some fifty years ago the then Duke of Hamptonshire, fifth
of that title, was incontestably the head man in his
county, and particularly in the neighbourhood of Batton. He
came of the ancient and loyal family of Saxelbye, which,
before its ennoblement, had numbered many knightly and
ecclesiastical celebrities in its male line. It would have
occupied a painstaking county historian a whole afternoon
to take rubbings of the numerous effigies and heraldic
devices graven to their memory on the brasses, tablets, and
altar-tombs in the aisle of the parish church. The Duke
himself, however, was a man little attracted by ancient
chronicles in stone and metal, even when they concerned his
own beginnings. He allowed his mind to linger by preference
on the many graceless and unedifying pleasures which his
position placed at his command. He could on occasion close
the mouths of his dependents by a good bomb-like oath, and
he argued doggedly with the parson on the virtues of
cock-fighting and baiting the bull.
This nobleman’s personal appearance was somewhat
impressive. His complexion was that of the copper-beech
tree. His frame was stalwart, though slightly stooping. His
mouth was large, and he carried an unpolished sapling as
his walking-stick, except when he carried a spud for
cutting up any thistle he encountered on his walks. His
castle stood in the midst of a park, surrounded by dusky
elms, except to the southward; and when the moon shone out,
the gleaming stone façade, backed by heavy boughs, was
visible from the distant high road as a white spot on the
surface of darkness. Though called a castle, the building
was little fortified, and had been erected with greater eye
to internal convenience than those crannied places of
defence to which the name strictly appertains. It was a
castellated mansion as regular as a chessboard on its
ground-plan, ornamented with make-believe bastions and
machicolations, behind which were stacks of battlemented
chimneys. On still mornings, at the fire-lighting hour,
when ghostly housemaids stalk the corridors, and thin
streaks of light through the shutter-chinks lend startling
winks and smiles to ancestors on canvas, twelve or fifteen
thin stems of blue smoke sprouted upwards from these
chimney-tops, and spread into a flat canopy on high. Around
the site stretched ten thousand acres of good, fat,
unimpeachable soil, plentiful in glades and lawns wherever
visible from the castle-windows, and merging in homely
arable where screened from the too curious eye by
ingeniously-contrived plantations.
Some way behind the owner of all this came the second man
in the parish, the rector, the Honourable and Reverend Mr.
Oldbourne, a widower, over stiff and stern for a clergyman,
whose severe white neckcloth, well-kept gray hair, and
right-lined face betokened none of those sympathetic traits
whereon depends so much of a parson’s power to do good
among his fellow-creatures. The last, far-removed man of
the series—altogether the Neptune of these local primaries
—was the curate, Mr. Alwyn Hill. He was a handsome young
deacon with curly hair, dreamy eyes—so dreamy that to look
long into them was like ascending and floating among summer
clouds—a complexion as fresh as a flower, and a chin
absolutely beardless. Though his age was about twenty-five,
he looked not much over nineteen.
The rector had a daughter called Emmeline, of so sweet and
simple a nature that her beauty was discovered, measured,
and inventoried by almost everybody in that part of the
country before it was suspected by herself to exist. She
had been bred in comparative solitude; a rencounter with
men troubled and confused her. Whenever a strange visitor
came to her father’s house she slipped into the orchard
and remained till he was gone, ridiculing her weakness in
apostrophes, but unable to overcome it. Her virtues lay in
no resistant force of character, but in a natural
inappetency for evil things, which to her were as unmeaning
as joints of flesh to a herbivorous creature. Her charms of
person, manner, and mind, had been clear for some time to
the Antinous in orders, and no less so to the Duke, who,
though scandalously ignorant of dainty phrases, ever
showing a clumsy manner towards the gentler sex, and, in
short, not at all a lady’s man, took fire to a degree that
was wellnigh terrible at sudden sight of Emmeline, a short
time after she was turned seventeen.
It occurred one afternoon at the corner of a shrubbery
between the castle and the rectory, where the Duke was
standing to watch the heaving of a mole, when the fair girl
brushed past at a distance of a few yards, in the full
light of the sun, and without hat or bonnet. The Duke went
home like a man who had seen a spirit. He ascended to the
picture-gallery of his castle, and there passed some time
in staring at the bygone beauties of his line as if he had
never before considered what an important part those
specimens of womankind had played in the evolution of the
Saxelbye race. He dined alone, drank rather freely, and
declared to himself that Emmeline Oldbourne must be his.
Meanwhile there had unfortunately arisen between the curate
and this girl some sweet and secret understanding.
Particulars of the attachment remained unknown then and
always, but it was plainly not approved of by her father.
His procedure was cold, hard, and inexorable. Soon the
curate disappeared from the parish, almost suddenly, after
bitter and hard words had been heard to pass between him
and the rector one evening in the garden, intermingled with
which, like the cries of the dying in the din of battle,
were the beseeching sobs of a woman. Not long after this it
was announced that a marriage between the Duke and Miss
Oldbourne was to be solemnized at a surprisingly early date.
The wedding-day came and passed; and she was a Duchess.
Nobody seemed to think of the ousted man during the day, or
else those who thought of him concealed their meditations.
Some of the less subservient ones were disposed to speak in
a jocular manner of the august husband and wife, others to
make correct and pretty speeches about them, according as
their sex and nature dictated. But in the evening, the
ringers in the belfry, with whom Alwyn had been a
favourite, eased their minds a little concerning the gentle
young man, and the possible regrets of the woman he had
loved.
‘Don’t you see something wrong in it all? said the third
bell as he wiped his face. ‘I know well enough where she
would have liked to stable her horses to-night, when they
have done their journey.’
‘That is, you would know if you could tell where young Mr.
Hill is living, which is known to none in the parish.’
‘Except to the lady that this ring o’ grandsire triples
is in honour of.’
Yet these friendly cottagers were at this time far from
suspecting the real dimensions of Emmeline’s misery, nor
was it clear even to those who came into much closer
communion with her than they, so well had she concealed her
heart-sickness. But bride and bridegroom had not long been
home at the castle when the young wife’s unhappiness
became plainly enough perceptible. Her maids and men said
that she was in the habit of turning to the wainscot and
shedding stupid scalding tears at a time when a
right-minded lady would have been overhauling her wardrobe.
She prayed earnestly in the great church-pew, where she sat
lonely and insignificant as a mouse in a cell, instead of
counting her rings, falling asleep, or amusing herself in
silent laughter at the queer old people in the
congregation, as previous beauties of the family had done
in their time. She seemed to care no more for eating and
drinking out of crystal and silver than from a service of
earthen vessels. Her head was, in truth, full of something
else; and that such was the case was only too obvious to
the Duke, her husband. At first he would only taunt her for
her folly in thinking of that milk-and-water parson; but as
time went on his charges took a more positive shape. He
would not believe her assurance that she had in no way
communicated with her former lover, nor he with her, since
their parting in the presence of her father. This led to
some strange scenes between them which need not be
detailed; their result was soon to take a catastrophic
shape.
One dark quiet evening, about two months after the
marriage, a man entered the gate admitting from the highway
to the park and avenue which ran up to the house. He
arrived within two hundred yards of the walls, when he left
the gravelled drive and drew near to the castle by a
roundabout path leading into a shrubbery. Here he stood
still. In a few minutes the strokes of the castle-clock
resounded, and then a female figure entered the same
secluded nook from an opposite direction. There the two
indistinct persons leapt together like a pair of dewdrops
on a leaf; and then they stood apart, facing each other,
the woman looking down.
‘Emmeline, you begged me to come, and here I am, Heaven
forgive me!’ said the man hoarsely.
‘You are going to emigrate, Alwyn,’ she said in broken
accents. ‘I have heard of it; you sail from Plymouth in
three days in the Western Glory?’
‘Yes. I can live in England no longer. Life is as death to
me here,’ says he.
‘My life is even worse—worse than death. Death would not
have driven me to this extremity. Listen, Alwyn—I have
sent for you to beg to go with you, or at least to be near
you—to do anything so that it be not to stay here.’
‘To go away with me?’ he said in a startled tone.
‘Yes, yes—or under your direction, or by your help in
some way! Don’t be horrified at me—you must bear with me
whilst I implore it. Nothing short of cruelty would have
driven me to this. I could have borne my doom in silence
had I been left unmolested; but he tortures me, and I shall
soon be in the grave if I cannot escape.’
To his shocked inquiry how her husband tortured her, the
Duchess said that it was by jealousy. ‘He tries to wring
admissions from me concerning you,’ she said, ‘and will
not believe that I have not communicated with you since my
engagement to him was settled by my father, and I was
forced to agree to it.’
The poor curate said that this was the heaviest news of
all. ‘He has not personally ill-used you?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ she whispered.
‘What has he done?’
She looked fearfully around, and said, sobbing: ‘In trying
to make me confess to what I have never done, he adopts
plans I dare not describe for terrifying me into a weak
state, so that I may own to anything! I resolved to write
to you, as I had no other friend.’ She added, with dreary
irony, ‘I thought I would give him some ground for his
suspicion, so as not to disgrace his judgment.’
‘Do you really mean, Emmeline,’ he tremblingly inquired,
‘that you—that you want to fly with me?’
‘Can you think that I would act otherwise than in earnest
at such a time as this?’
He was silent for a minute or more. ‘You must not go with
me,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘It would be sin.’
‘It cannot be sin, for I have never wanted to commit sin
in my life; and it isn’t likely I would begin now, when I
pray every day to die and be sent to Heaven out of my
misery!’
‘But it is wrong, Emmeline, all the same.’
‘Is it wrong to run away from the fire that scorches you?’
‘It would look wrong, at any rate, in this case.’
‘Alwyn, Alwyn, take me, I beseech you!’ she burst out. ‘
It is not right in general, I know, but it is such an
exceptional instance, this. Why has such a severe strain
been put upon me? I was doing no harm, injuring no one,
helping many people, and expecting happiness; yet trouble
came. Can it be that God holds me in derision? I had no
supporter—I gave way; and now my life is a burden and a
shame to me…. O, if you only knew how much to me this
request to you is—how my life is wrapped up in it, you
could not deny me!’
‘This is almost beyond endurance—Heaven support us,’ he
groaned. ‘Emmy, you are the Duchess of Hamptonshire, the
Duke of Hamptonshire’s wife; you must not go with me!’
‘And am I then refused?—O, am I refused?’ she cried
frantically. ‘Alwyn, Alwyn, do you say it indeed to me?’
‘Yes, I do, dear, tender heart! I do most sadly say it.
You must not go. Forgive me, for there is no alternative
but refusal. Though I die, though you die, we must not fly
together. It is forbidden in God’s law. Good-bye, for
always and ever!’
He tore himself away, hastened from the shrubbery, and
vanished among the trees.
Three days after this meeting and farewell, Alwyn, his
soft, handsome features stamped with a haggard hardness
that ten years of ordinary wear and tear in the world could
scarcely have produced, sailed from Plymouth on a drizzling
morning, in the passenger-ship Western Glory. When the land
had faded behind him he mechanically endeavoured to school
himself into a stoical frame of mind. His attempt, backed
up by the strong moral staying power that had enabled him
to resist the passionate temptation to which Emmeline, in
her reckless trustfulness, had exposed him, was rewarded by
a certain kind of success, though the murmuring stretch of
waters whereon he gazed day after day too often seemed to
be articulating to him in tones of her well-remembered
voice.
He framed on his journey rules of conduct for reducing to
mild proportions the feverish regrets which would
occasionally arise and agitate him, when he indulged in
visions of what might have been had he not hearkened to the
whispers of conscience. He fixed his thoughts for so many
hours a day on philosophical passages in the volumes he had
brought with him, allowing himself now and then a few
minutes’ thought of Emmeline, with the strict yet
reluctant niggardliness of an ailing epicure proportioning
the rank drinks that cause his malady. The voyage was
marked by the usual incidents of a sailing-passage in those
days—a storm, a calm, a man overboard, a birth, and a
funeral—the latter sad event being one in which he, as the
only clergyman on board, officiated, reading the service
ordained for the purpose. The ship duly arrived at Boston
early in the month following, and thence he proceeded to
Providence to seek out a distant relative.
After a short stay at Providence he returned again to
Boston, and by applying himself to a serious occupation
made good progress in shaking off the dreary melancholy
which enveloped him even now. Distracted and weakened in
his beliefs by his recent experiences, he decided that he
could not for a time worthily fill the office of a minister
of religion, and applied for the mastership of a school.
Some introductions, given him before starting, were useful
now, and he soon became known as a respectable scholar and
gentleman to the trustees of one of the colleges. This
ultimately led to his retirement from the school and
installation in the college as Professor of rhetoric and
oratory.
Here and thus he lived on, exerting himself solely because
of a conscientious determination to do his duty. He passed
his winter evenings in turning sonnets and elegies, often
giving his thoughts voice in ‘Lines to an Unfortunate Lady,
’ while his summer leisure at the same hour would be spent
in watching the lengthening shadows from his window, and
fancifully comparing them with the shades of his own life.
If he walked, he mentally inquired which was the eastern
quarter of the landscape, and thought of two thousand miles
of water that way, and of what was beyond it. In a word he
was at all spare times dreaming of her who was only a
memory to him, and would probably never be more.
Nine years passed by, and under their wear and tear Alwyn
Hill’s face lost a great many of the attractive
characteristics which had formerly distinguished it. He was
kind to his pupils and affable to all who came in contact
with him; but the kernel of his life, his secret, was kept
as snugly shut up as though he had been dumb. In talking to
his acquaintances of England and his life there, he omitted
the episode of Batton Castle and Emmeline as if it had no
existence in his calendar at all. Though of towering
importance to himself, it had filled but a short and small
fragment of time, an ephemeral season which would have been
wellnigh imperceptible, even to him, at this distance, but
for the incident it enshrined.
One day, at this date, when cursorily glancing over an old
English newspaper, he observed a paragraph which, short as
it was, contained for him whole tomes of thrilling
information—rung with more passion-stirring rhythm than
the collected cantos of all the poets. It was an
announcement of the death of the Duke of Hamptonshire,
leaving behind him a widow, but no children.
The current of Alwyn’s thoughts now completely changed. On
looking again at the newspaper he found it to be one that
was sent him long ago, and had been carelessly thrown
aside. But for an accidental overhauling of the waste
journals in his study he might not have known of the event
for years. At this moment of reading the Duke had already
been dead seven months. Alwyn could now no longer bind
himself down to machine-made synecdoche, antithesis, and
climax, being full of spontaneous specimens of all these
rhetorical forms, which he dared not utter. Who shall
wonder that his mind luxuriated in dreams of a sweet
possibility just laid open for the first time these many
years? for Emmeline was to him now as ever the one dear
thing in all the world. The issue of his silent romancing
was that he resolved to return to her at the very earliest
moment.
But he could not abandon his professional work on the
instant. He did not get really quite free from engagements
till four months later; but, though suffering throes of
impatience continually, he said to himself every day: ‘If
she has continued to love me nine years she will love me
ten; she will think the more tenderly of me when her
present hours of solitude shall have done their proper
work; old times will revive with the cessation of her
recent experience, and every day will favour my return.’
The enforced interval soon passed, and he duly arrived in
England, reaching the village of Batton on a certain winter
day between twelve and thirteen months subsequent to the
time of the Duke’s death.
It was evening; yet such was Alwyn’s impatience that he
could not forbear taking, this very night, one look at the
castle which Emmeline had entered as unhappy mistress ten
years before. He threaded the park trees, gazed in passing
at well-known outlines which rose against the dim sky, and
was soon interested in observing that lively
country-people, in parties of two and three, were walking
before and behind him up the interlaced avenue to the
castle gateway. Knowing himself to be safe from
recognition, Alwyn inquired of one of these pedestrians
what was going on.
‘Her Grace gives her tenantry a ball to-night, to keep up
the old custom of the Duke and his father before him, which
she does not wish to change.’
‘Indeed. Has she lived here entirely alone since the Duke’
s death?’
‘Quite alone. But though she doesn’t receive company
herself, she likes the village people to enjoy themselves,
and often has ’em here.’
‘Kind-hearted, as always!’ thought Alwyn.
On reaching the castle he found that the great gates at the
tradesmen’s entrance were thrown back against the wall as
if they were never to be closed again; that the passages
and rooms in that wing were brilliantly lighted up, some of
the numerous candles guttering down over the green leaves
which decorated them, and upon the silk dresses of the
happy farmers’ wives as they passed beneath, each on her
husband’s arm. Alwyn found no difficulty in marching in
along with the rest, the castle being Liberty Hall
to-night. He stood unobserved in a corner of the large
apartment where dancing was about to begin.
‘Her Grace, though hardly out of mourning, will be sure to
come down and lead off the dance with neighbour Bates,’
said one.
‘Who is neighbour Bates?’ asked Alwyn.
‘An old man she respects much—the oldest of her
tenant-farmers. He was seventy-eight his last birthday.’
‘Ah, to be sure!’ said Alwyn, at his ease. ‘I remember.’
The dancers formed in line, and waited. A door opened at
the further end of the hall, and a lady in black silk came
forth. She bowed, smiled, and proceeded to the top of the
dance.
‘Who is that lady?’ said Alwyn, in a puzzled tone. ‘I
thought you told me that the Duchess of Hamptonshire——’
‘That is the Duchess,’ said his informant.
‘But there is another?’
‘No; there is no other.’
‘But she is not the Duchess of Hamptonshire—who used to—
—’ Alwyn’s tongue stuck to his mouth, he could get no
farther.
‘What’s the matter?’ said his acquaintance. Alwyn had
retired, and was supporting himseif against the wall.
The wretched Alwyn murmured something about a stitch in his
side from walking. Then the music struck up, the dance went
on, and his neighbour became so interested in watching the
movements of this strange Duchess through its mazes as to
forget Alwyn for a while.
It gave him an opportunity to brace himself up. He was a
man who had suffered, and he could suffer again. ‘How came
that person to be your Duchess?’ he asked in a firm,
distinct voice, when he had attained complete self-command.
‘Where is her other Grace of Hamptonshire? There certainly
was another. I know it.’
‘Oh, the previous one! Yes, yes. She ran away years and
years ago with the young curate. Mr. Hill was the young man
’s name, if I recollect.’
‘No! She never did. What do you mean by that?’ he said.
‘Yes, she certainly ran away. She met the curate in the
shrubbery about a couple of months after her marriage with
the Duke. There were folks who saw the meeting and heard
some words of their talk. They arranged to go, and she
sailed from Plymouth with him a day or two afterward.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘Then ’tis the queerest lie ever told by man. Her father
believed and knew to his dying day that she went with him;
and so did the Duke, and everybody about here. Ay, there
was a fine upset about it at the time. The Duke traced her
to Plymouth.’
‘Traced her to Plymouth?’
‘He traced her to Plymouth, and set on his spies; and they
found that she went to the shipping-office, and inquired if
Mr. Alwyn Hill had entered his name as passenger by the
Western Glory; and when she found that he had, she booked
herself for the same ship, but not in her real name. When
the vessel had sailed a letter reached the Duke from her,
telling him what she had done. She never came back here
again. His Grace lived by himself a number of years, and
married this lady only twelve months before he died.’
Alwyn was in a state of indescribable bewilderment. But,
unmanned as he was, he called the next day on the, to him,
spurious Duchess of Hamptonshire. At first she was alarmed
at his statement, then cold, then she was won over by his
condition to give confidence for confidence. She showed him
a letter which had been found among the papers of the late
Duke, corroborating what Alwyn’s informant had detailed.
It was from Emmeline, bearing the postmarked date at which
the Western Glory sailed, and briefly stated that she had
emigrated by that ship to America.
Alwyn applied himself body and mind to unravel the
remainder of the mystery. The story repeated to him was
always the same: ‘She ran away with the curate.’ A
strangely circumstantial piece of intelligence was added to
this when he had pushed his inquiries a little further.
There was given him the name of a waterman at Plymouth, who
had come forward at the time that she was missed and sought
for by her husband, and had stated that he put her on board
the Western Glory at dusk one evening before that vessel
sailed.
After several days of search about the alleys and quays of
Plymouth Barbican, during which these impossible words, ‘
She ran off with the curate,’ became branded on his brain,
Alwyn found this important waterman. He was positive as to
the truth of his story, still remembering the incident
well, and he described in detail the lady’s dress, as he
had long ago described it to her husband, which description
corresponded in every particular with the dress worn by
Emmeline on the evening of their parting.
Before proceeding to the other side of the Atlantic to
continue his inquiries there, the puzzled and distracted
Alwyn set himself to ascertain the address of Captain
Wheeler, who had commanded the Western Glory in the year of
Alwyn’s voyage out, and immediately wrote a letter to him
on the subject.
The only circumstances which the sailor could recollect or
discover from his papers in connection with such a story
were, that a woman bearing the name which Alwyn had
mentioned as fictitious certainly did come aboard for a
voyage he made about that time; that she took a common
berth among the poorest emigrants; that she died on the
voyage out, at about five days’ sail from Plymouth; that
she seemed a lady in manners and education. Why she had not
applied for a first-class passage, why she had no trunks,
they could not guess, for though she had little money in
her pocket she had that about her which would have fetched
it. ‘We buried her at sea,’ continued the captain. ‘A
young parson, one of the cabin-passengers, read the
burial-service over her, I remember well.’
The whole scene and proceedings darted upon Alwyn’s
recollection in a moment. It was a fine breezy morning on
that long-past voyage out, and he had been told that they
were running at the rate of a hundred and odd miles a day.
The news went round that one of the poor young women in the
other part of the vessel was ill of fever, and delirious.
The tidings caused no little alarm among all the
passengers, for the sanitary conditions of the ship were
anything but satisfactory. Shortly after this the doctor
announced that she had died. Then Alwyn had learnt that she
was laid out for burial in great haste, because of the
danger that would have been incurred by delay. And next the
funeral scene rose before him, and the prominent part that
he had taken in that solemn ceremony. The captain had come
to him, requesting him to officiate, as there was no
chaplain on board. This he had agreed to do; and as the sun
went down with a blaze in his face he read amidst them all
assembled: ‘We therefore commit her body to the deep, to
be turned into corruption, looking for the resurrection
of the body when the sea shall give up her dead.’
The captain also forwarded the addresses of the ship’s
matron and of other persons who had been engaged on board
at the date. To these Alwyn went in the course of time. A
categorical description of the clothes of the dead truant,
the colour of her hair, and other things, extinguished for
ever all hope of a mistake in identity.
At last, then, the course of events had become clear. On
that unhappy evening when he left Emmeline in the
shrubbery, forbidding her to follow him because it would be
a sin, she must have disobeyed. She must have followed at
his heels silently through the darkness, like a poor pet
animal that will not be driven back. She could have
accumulated nothing for the journey more than she might
have carried in her hand; and thus poorly provided she must
have embarked. Her intention had doubtless been to make her
presence on board known to him as soon as she could muster
courage to do so.
Thus the ten years’ chapter of Alwyn Hill’s romance wound
itself up under his eyes. That the poor young woman in the
steerage had been the young Duchess of Hamptonshire was
never publicly disclosed. Hill had no longer any reason for
remaining in England, and soon after left its shores with
no intention to return. Previous to his departure he
confided his story to an old friend from his native town—
grandfather of the person who now relates it to you.
A few members, including the Bookworm, seemed to be
impressed by the quiet gentleman’s tale; but the member we
have called the Spark—who, by the way, was getting
somewhat tinged with the light of other days, and owned to
eight-and-thirty—walked daintily about the room instead of
sitting down by the fire with the majority, and said that
for his part he preferred something more lively than the
last story—something in which such long-separated lovers
were ultimately united. He also liked stories that were
more modern in their date of action than those he had heard
to-day.
Members immediately requested him to give them a specimen,
to which the Spark replied that he didn’t mind, as far as
that went. And though the Vice-President, the Man of
Family, the Colonel, and others, looked at their watches,
and said they must soon retire to their respective quarters
in the hotel adjoining, they all decided to sit out the
Spark’s story.