【国外文学】Hide and Seek.docx

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1、【国外文学】Hide and Seek PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITIONThis novel ranks the third, in order of succession, of the works of fiction which I have produced. The history of its reception, on its first appearance, is soon told.Unfortunately for me, “Hide And Seek” was originally published in the year eighteen

2、 hundred and fifty-four, at the outbreak of the Crimean War. All England felt the absorbing interest of watching that serious national event; and new bookssome of them books of far higher pretensions than minefound the minds of readers in general pre-occupied or indifferent. My own little venture in

3、 fiction necessarily felt the adverse influence of the time. The demand among the booksellers was just large enough to exhaust the first edition, and there the sale of this novel, in its original form, terminated.Since that period, the book has been, in the technical phrase, “out of print.” Proposal

4、s have reached me, at various times, for its republication; but I have resolutely abstained from availing myself of them for two reasons.In the first place, I was anxious to wait until “Hide And Seek” could make its re-appearance on a footing of perfect equality with my other works. In the second pl

5、ace, I was resolved to keep it back until it might obtain the advantage of a careful revisal, guided by the light of the authors later experience. The period for the accomplishment of both these objects has now presented itself. “Hide And Seek,” in this edition, forms one among the uniform series of

6、 my novels, which has begun with “Antonina,” “The Dead Secret,” and “The Woman In White;” and which will be continued with “Basil,” and “The Queen Of Hearts.” My project of revisal has, at the same time, been carefully and rigidly executed. I have abridged, and in many cases omitted, several passage

7、s in the first edition, which made larger demands upon the readers patience than I should now think it desirable to venture on if I were writing a new book; and I have, in one important respect, so altered the termination of the story as to make it, I hope, more satisfactory and more complete than i

8、t was in its original form.With such advantages, therefore, as my diligent revision can give it, “Hide And Seek” now appeals, after an interval of seven years, for another hearing. I cannot think it becomingespecially in this age of universal self-assertionto state the grounds on which I believe my

9、book to be worthy of gaining more attention than it obtained, through accidental circumstances, when it was first published. Neither can I consent to shelter myself under the favorable opinions which many of my brother writersand notably, the great writer to whom “Hide And Seek” is dedicatedexpresse

10、d of these pages when I originally wrote them. I leave it to the reader to compare this novelespecially in reference to the conception and delineation of characterwith the two novels (“Antonina” and “Basil”) which preceded it; and then to decide whether my third attempt in fiction, with all its faul

11、ts, was, or was not, an advance in Art on my earlier efforts. This is all the favor I ask for a work which I once wrote with anxious carewhich I have since corrected with no sparing handwhich I have now finally dismissed to take its second journey through the world of letters as usefully and prosper

12、ously as it can.HARLEY STREET, LONDON, SEPTEMBER, 1861. OPENING CHAPTER. A CHILDS SUNDAY.At a quarter to one oclock, on a wet Sunday afternoon, in November 1837, Samuel Snoxell, page to Mr. Zachary Thorpe, of Baregrove Square, London, left the area gate with three umbrellas under his arm, to meet hi

13、s master and mistress at the church door, on the conclusion of morning service. Snoxell had been specially directed by the housemaid to distribute his three umbrellas in the following manner: the new silk umbrella was to be given to Mr. and Mrs. Thorpe; the old silk umbrella was to be handed to Mr.

14、Goodworth, Mrs. Thorpes father; and the heavy gingham was to be kept by Snoxell himself, for the special protection of “Master Zack,” aged six years, and the only child of Mr. Thorpe. Furnished with these instructions, the page set forth on his way to the church.The morning had been fine for Novembe

15、r; but before midday the clouds had gathered, the rain had begun, and the inveterate fog of the season had closed dingily over the wet streets, far and near. The garden in the middle of Baregrove Squarewith its close-cut turf, its vacant beds, its bran-new rustic seats, its withered young trees that

16、 had not yet grown as high as the railings around themseemed to be absolutely rotting away in yellow mist and softly-steady rain, and was deserted even by the cats. All blinds were drawn down for the most part over all windows; what light came from the sky came like light seen through dusty glass; t

17、he grim brown hue of the brick houses looked more dirtily mournful than ever; the smoke from the chimney-pots was lost mysteriously in deepening superincumbent fog; the muddy gutters gurgled; the heavy rain-drops dripped into empty areas audibly. No object great or small, no out-of-door litter whate

18、ver appeared anywhere, to break the dismal uniformity of line and substance in the perspective of the square. No living being moved over the watery pavement, save the solitary Snoxell. He plodded on into a Crescent, and still the awful Sunday solitude spread grimly humid all around him. He next ente

19、red a street with some closed shops in it; and here, at last, some consoling signs of human life attracted his attention. He now saw the crossing-sweeper of the district (off duty till church came out) smoking a pipe under the covered way that led to a mews. He detected, through half closed shutters

20、, a chemists apprentice yawing over a large book. He passed a navigator, an ostler, and two costermongers wandering wearily backwards and forwards before a closed public-house door. He heard the heavy clop clop of thickly-booted feet advancing behind him, and a stern voice growling, “Now then! be of

21、f with you, or youll get locked up!”and, looking round, saw an orange-girl, guilty of having obstructed an empty pavement by sitting on the curb-stone, driven along before a policeman, who was followed admiringly by a ragged boy gnawing a piece of orange-peel. Having delayed a moment to watch this S

22、unday procession of three with melancholy curiosity as it moved by him, Snoxell was about to turn the corner of a street which led directly to the church, when a shrill series of cries in a childs voice struck on his ear and stopped his progress immediately.The page stood stock-still in astonishment

23、 for an instantthen pulled the new silk umbrella from under his arm, and turned the corner in a violent hurry. His suspicions had not deceived him. There was Mr. Thorpe himself walking sternly homeward through the rain, before church was over. He led by the hand “Master Zack,” who was trotting along

24、 under protest, with his hat half off his head, hanging as far back from his fathers side as he possibly could, and howling all the time at the utmost pitch of a very powerful pair of lungs.Mr. Thorpe stopped as he passed the page, and snatched the umbrella out of Snoxells hand, with unaccustomed im

25、petuity; said sharply, “Go to your mistress, go on to the church;” and then resumed his road home, dragging his son after him faster than ever.“Snoxy! Snoxy!” screamed Master Zack, turning round towards the page, so that he tripped himself up and fell against his fathers legs at every third step; “I

26、ve been a naughty boy at church!”“Ah! you look like it, you do,” muttered Snoxell to himself sarcastically, as he went on. With that expression of opinion, the page approached the church portico, and waited sulkily among his fellow servants and their umbrellas for the congregation to come out.When M

27、r. Goodworth and Mrs. Thorpe left the church, the old gentleman, regardless of appearances, seized eagerly on the despised gingham umbrella, because it was the largest he could get, and took his daughter home under it in triumph. Mrs. Thorpe was very silent, and sighed dolefully once or twice, when

28、her fathers attention wandered from her to the people passing along the street.“Youre fretting about Zack,” said the old gentleman, looking round suddenly at his daughter. “Never mind! leave it to me. Ill undertake to beg him off this time.”“Its very disheartening and shocking to find him behaving s

29、o,” said Mrs. Thorpe, “after the careful way weve brought him up in, too!”“Nonsense, my love! No, I dont mean thatI beg your pardon. But who can be surprised that a child of six years old should be tired of a sermon forty minutes long by my watch? I was tired of it myself I know, though I wasnt cand

30、id enough to show it as the boy did. There! there! we wont begin to argue: Ill beg Zack off this time, and well say no more about it.”Mr. Goodworths announcement of his benevolent intentions towards Zack seemed to have very little effect on Mrs. Thorpe; but she said nothing on that subject or any ot

31、her during the rest of the dreary walk home, through rain, fog, and mud, to Baregrove Square.Rooms have their mysterious peculiarities of physiognomy as well as men. There are plenty of rooms, all of much the same size, all furnished in much the same manner, which, nevertheless, differ completely in

32、 expression (if such a term may be allowed) one from the other; reflecting the various characters of their inhabitants by such fine varieties of effect in the furniture-features generally common to all, as are often, like the infinitesimal varieties of eyes, noses, and mouths, too intricately minute

33、 to be traceable. Now, the parlor of Mr. Thorpes house was neat, clean, comfortably and sensibly furnished. It was of the average size. It had the usual side-board, dining-table, looking-glass, scroll fender, marble chimney-piece with a clock on it, carpet with a drugget over it, and wire window-bli

34、nds to keep people from looking in, characteristic of all respectable London parlors of the middle class. And yet it was an inveterately severe-looking rooma room that seemed as if it had never been convivial, never uproarious, never anything but sternly comfortable and serenely dulla room which app

35、eared to be as unconscious of acts of mercy, and easy unreasoning over-affectionate forgiveness to offenders of any kindjuvenile or otherwiseas if it had been a cell in Newgate, or a private torturing chamber in the Inquisition. Perhaps Mr. Goodworth felt thus affected by the parlor (especially in N

36、ovember weather) as soon as he entered itfor, although he had promised to beg Zack off, although Mr. Thorpe was sitting alone by the table and accessible to petitions, with a book in his hand, the old gentleman hesitated uneasily for a minute or two, and suffered his daughter to speak first.“Where i

37、s Zack?” asked Mrs. Thorpe, glancing quickly and nervously all round her.“He is locked up in my dressing-room,” answered her husband without taking his eyes off the book.“In your dressing-room!” echoed Mrs. Thorpe, looking as startled and horrified as if she had received a blow instead of an answer;

38、 “in your dressing-room! Good heavens, Zachary! how do you know the child hasnt got at your razors?”“They are locked up,” rejoined Mr. Thorpe, with the mildest reproof in his voice, and the mournfullest self-possession in his manner. “I took care before I left the boy, that he should get at nothing

39、which could do him any injury. He is locked up, and will remain locked up, because”“I say, Thorpe! wont you let him off this time?” interrupted Mr. Goodworth, boldly plunging head foremost, with his petition for mercy, into the conversation.“If you had allowed me to proceed, sir,” said Mr. Thorpe, w

40、ho always called his father-in-law Sir, “I should have simply remarked that, after having enlarged to my son (in such terms, you will observe, as I thought best fitted to his comprehension) on the disgrace to his parents and himself of his behavior this morning, I set him as a task three verses to l

41、earn out of the Select Bible Texts for Children; choosing the verses which seemed most likely, if I may trust my own judgment on the point, to impress on him what his behavior ought to be for the future in church. He flatly refused to learn what I told him. It was, of course, quite impossible to all

42、ow my authority to be set at defiance by my own child (whose disobedient disposition has always, God knows, been a source of constant trouble and anxiety to me); so I locked him up, and locked up he will remain until he has obeyed me. My dear,” (turning to his wife and handing her a key), “I have no

43、 objection, if you wish, to your going and trying what you can do towards overcoming the obstinacy of this unhappy child.”Mrs. Thorpe took the key, and went up stairs immediatelywent up to do what all women have done, from the time of the first mother; to do what Eve did when Cain was wayward in his

44、 infancy, and cried at her breastin short, went up to coax her child.Mr. Thorpe, when his wife closed the door, carefully looked down the open page on his knee for the place where he had left offfound itreferred back a moment to the last lines of the preceding leafand then went on with his book, not

45、 taking the smallest notice of Mr. Goodworth.“Thorpe!” cried the old gentleman, plunging head-foremost again, into his son-in-laws reading this time instead of his talk, “You may say what you please; but your notion of bringing up Zack is a wrong one altogether.”With the calmest imaginable expressio

46、n of face, Mr. Thorpe looked up from his book; and, first carefully putting a paper-knife between the leaves, placed it on the table. He then crossed one of his legs over the other, rested an elbow on each arm of his chair, and clasped his hands in front of him. On the wall opposite hung several lit

47、hographed portraits of distinguished preachers, in and out of the Establishmentmostly represented as very sturdily-constructed men with bristly hair, fronting the spectator interrogatively and holding thick books in their hands. Upon one of these portraitsthe name of the original of which was stated

48、 at the foot of the print to be the Reverend Aaron YollopMr. Thorpe now fixed his eyes, with a faint approach to a smile on his face (he never was known to laugh), and with a look and manner which said as plainly as if he had spoken it: “This old man is about to say something improper or absurd to m

49、e; but he is my wifes father, it is my duty to bear with him, and therefore I am perfectly resigned.”“Its no use looking in that way, Thorpe,” growled the old gentleman; “Im not to be put down by looks at my time of life. I may have my own opinions I suppose, like other people; and I dont see why I shouldnt express them, especially when they relate to my own daughters bo