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Gert De Sutter, Marie-Aude Lefer, Isabelle Delaere (Eds.)
Empirical Translation Studies
Trends in Linguistics
Studies and Monographs
Editor
Volker Gast
Editorial Board
Walter Bisang
Jan Terje Faarlund
Hans Henrich Hock
Natalia Levshina
Heiko Narrog
Matthias Schlesewsky
Amir Zeldes
Niina Ning Zhang
Volume 300
Empirical Translation
Studies
Edited by
Gert De Sutter
Marie-Aude Lefer
Isabelle Delaere
ISBN 978-3-11-045684-4
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-045958-6
e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-045729-2
ISSN 1861-4302
www.degruyter.com
Table of contents
Sandra L. Halverson
1 Gravitational pull in translation. Testing a revised model 9
Haidee Kruger
4 The effects of editorial intervention. Implications for studies of the features
of translated language 113
Ekaterina Lapshinova-Koltunski
7 Exploratory Analysis of Dimensions Influencing Variation in Translation.
The case of text register and translation method 207
Index 313
Gert De Sutter, Marie-Aude Lefer and Isabelle Delaere
Introduction
In corpus-based translation studies (CBTS), many scholars have conducted
research based on the hypothesis that translated texts have certain linguistic
characteristics in common which do not, or to a lesser extent, occur in original,
non-translated texts. Baker’s (1993) seminal paper described these characteristics
as “features which typically occur in translated text rather than original utterances
and which are not the result of interference from specific linguistic systems”
(Baker 1993: 243). Research of this kind has resulted in observations of, for
example, how translations conform to the typical characteristics of the target
language (normalization) (Bernardini and Ferraresi 2011; Scott 1998), how
translated texts are linguistically more homogeneous than non-translated texts
(levelling out) (Olohan 2004), how translated texts are more explicit than non-
translated texts (explicitation) (Olohan and Baker 2000; Øverås 1998) or how
translated texts exhibit fewer unique items (under-representation) (Tirkkonen-
Condit 2004). In recent years, however, it has been shown that these detected
characteristics are not only attributable to the difference between translated
and non-translated texts, but co-vary with other (language-external) factors as
well, such as text type, source language and the translator’s educational back-
ground (see e.g. Bernardini and Ferraresi 2011; De Sutter, Delaere, and Plevoets
2012; Kruger and van Rooy 2012; Neumann 2011). As a consequence, linguistic
behaviour in translations versus non-translations has to be considered a multi-
factorial phenomenon rather than a monofactorial one. Multifactorial investiga-
tions into the linguistic behaviour of translators compared to non-translators
remain rather scarce though, and, as a result, standard multivariate statistical
techniques which can be used to visualize, describe, explain and predict patterns
of variation within translations and between translations and non-translations do
not easily find their way into CBTS (e.g. multidimensional scaling, hierarchical
cluster analysis, mixed-effect models). This type of multifactorial investigation,
using highly advanced and adequate statistical techniques, is urgently needed
in order to find out which factors simultaneously affect linguistic behaviour
in translations compared to non-translations. Next to the (language-external)
factors mentioned above, other possibly influencing factors include characteristics
of the writing process (did the translator use translation software?, did the trans-
lator experience any time pressure?, what is the degree of editorial control?,
what is the policy of the publishing house?), typological or usage differences
between source and target languages, the sociological status of the source and
DOI 10.1515/9783110459586-001
2 Gert De Sutter, Marie-Aude Lefer and Isabelle Delaere
target languages, the style of the translator or original author, the sociological
status of different types of translators, etc.
Whereas the identification of the determining factors is a necessary first step
to take, the ultimate goal of CBTS is to find out what these factors reveal – on a
higher level – about underlying sociological, cognitive, . . . causes and motiva-
tions of linguistic choices in translations vs. non-translations. In recent years,
several interesting high-level explanatory mechanisms have been developed,
from different perspectives, but they have not been the object of extensive
empirical testing yet. From a sociological point of view, Pym (2008) has intro-
duced the idea of translators being risk averse: if they can choose between a
safe option (e.g. a variant that is widely accepted as a standard variant), and a
risky option (e.g. a variant that is considered restricted to informal conversa-
tions), translators will most often opt for the former option, depending on
whether they get rewarded or not when taking a risk. From a cognitive point of
view, Halverson (2003, 2010) has introduced the so-called gravitational pull
hypothesis, which seeks to connect translation behaviour with underlying cogni-
tive properties, such as salience and activation. The gravitational pull hypothesis
states that translation characteristics such as under-representation can be ex-
plained by the structure of semantic networks and prototypes, i.e. the distance
between the activated concepts in the semantic network of the bilingual or
multilingual translator.
The present volume aims to push the frontiers of CBTS by presenting original
and innovative research which is methodologically rigorous, descriptively ade-
quate and theoretically relevant. Each of the chapters sheds new light on what
constrains translational behavior – and to what extent – and how this all fits in
an empirical theory of translation. More particularly, this book’s aim is twofold:
(i) to bring together advanced quantitative (multifactorial) studies of translated
texts (compared to non-translated texts on the one hand and/or source texts on
the other hand), building on large-scale, well-structured parallel or comparable
corpora, which provide additional evidence for the effect of (language-external)
factors on translation behavior, resulting in more fine-grained insights into trans-
lational tendencies, and which elaborate on explanatory devices uncovered in
previous studies; (ii) to investigate to what extent other, complementary methods
from related research fields or new data sources can improve the descriptive and
explanatory accuracy of corpus-based results. By embracing other, comple-
mentary methods aiming at descriptive and theoretical progress, the field of
Corpus-Based Translation Studies will eventually emerge as Empirical Transla-
tion Studies, in which different methods and models are confronted, ultimately
leading to a more adequate and fully-fledged empirical theory of translation.
Introduction 3
Acknowledgments
Most of the chapters in this volume were first presented at the New Ways of
Analyzing Translational Behavior in Corpus-Based Translation Studies workshop,
held at the 46th Societas Linguistica Europeae (SLE) meeting in Split, Croatia
in 2013. We would like to thank the organizers of the SLE meeting in Split for
providing us with the most optimal circumstances to discuss the current state
of the art in CBTS and identify some of the future directions that need to be
explored. In editing the present volume we were supported by various reviewers.
We would like to thank them all for sharing their insightful comments and advice.
We are also deeply grateful to the authors for doing such a wonderful job and
for not giving up on us after another round of critical remarks and suggestions.
We are very well aware that it might have annoyed them (and perhaps even
frustrated them at times), but we are convinced that it has greatly contributed
to the quality of the present volume. Finally, we wish to thank most heartedly
Julie Miess at Mouton for taking care of all practical details concerning this
publication.
References
Baker, M. 1993. Corpus linguistics and translation studies. Implications and applications. In
M. Baker, G. Francis & E. Tognini-Bonelli (eds.), Text and technology. In honour of John
Sinclair, 233–250. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Bernardini, S. & A. Ferraresi. 2011. Practice, description and theory come together: Normaliza-
tion or interference in Italian technical translation? Meta 56(2). 226–246.
8 Gert De Sutter, Marie-Aude Lefer and Isabelle Delaere
De Sutter, G., I. Delaere & K. Plevoets. 2012. Lexical lectometry in corpus-based translation
studies. Combining profile-based correspondence analysis and logistic regression modeling.
In M. Oakes & J. Meng (eds.), Quantitative Methods in Corpus-based Translation Studies.
A practical guide to descriptive translation research, 325–345. Amsterdam/Philadelphia:
John Benjamins.
Halverson, S. 2003. The cognitive basis of translation universals. Target. International Journal
of Translation Studies 15(2). 197–241.
Halverson, S. 2010. Cognitive translation studies: developments in theory and method. In G.
Shreve & E. Angelone (eds.), Translation and Cognition, 349–369. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
Kruger, H. & B. van Rooy. 2012. Register and the features of translated language. Across Lan-
guages and Cultures 13(1). 33–65.
Lanstyák, I. & P. Heltai. 2012. Universals in language contact and translation. Across Languages
and Cultures 13(1). 99–121.
Neumann, S. 2011. Contrastive register variation. A quantitative approach to the comparison of
English and German. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Olohan, M. 2004. Introducing corpora in translation studies. Taylor & Francis.
Olohan, M. & M. Baker. 2000. Reporting that in translated English: Evidence for subconscious
processes of explicitation? Across Languages and Cultures 1(2). 141–158.
Øverås, L. 1998. In search of the third code. An investigation of norms in literary translation.
Meta 43(4). 557–570.
Pym, A. 2008. On Toury’s laws of how translators translate. In A. Pym, M. Shlesinger &
D. Simeoni (eds.), Descriptive Translation Studies and beyond. Investigations in Honor of
Gideon Toury, 311–328. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Scott, N. 1998. Normalisation and readers’ expectations: A study of literary translation with
reference to Lispector’s A Hora Da Estrela. Liverpool: University of Liverpool doctoral
dissertation.
Tirkkonen-Condit, S. 2004. Keywords and ideology in translated history texts: A corpus-based
analysis. In A. K. Mauranen & P. Kujamäki (eds.), Translation Universals. Do they exist?,
177–184. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Sandra L. Halverson
1 Gravitational pull in translation.
Testing a revised model1
1 Introduction
Twenty-odd years have passed since Baker’s (1993) call for corpus linguistic
investigation of aggregate patterns in, or features of, translated language (‘trans-
lation universals’). In that period, a body of research has provided evidence of
1 Some of the work presented here was financed by a grant from the Meltzer Foundation (project
number 11498) and by a joint grant from the Research Council of Norway and the Faculty of
Humanities at the University of Bergen. I am indebted to these institutions for this support. I
would like to thank Ingeborg Hitland for the coding of the corpus data, and Josep Marco, the
editors and an anonymous referee for very helpful comments on an earlier version of this
manuscript. All remaining errors are mine alone.
DOI 10.1515/9783110459586-002
10 Sandra L. Halverson
2 Note that the network is a visual metaphor that builds on the conceptual notion of spreading
activation. Langacker has pointed out the problems inherent in taking the discreteness of the
depicted elements too literally, and has proposed a ‘mountain range’ metaphor as an alternative
(2008:227).
3 There is a broad agreement in bilingualism research that a bilingual’s two languages are both
activated during language use, and that some kind of control mechanism is responsible for
inhibiting the undesired language. A number of different models have been proposed to
account for this process (de Groot 2011: 279–338).
14 Sandra L. Halverson
4 I have not factored in here the effect of discourse factors in increasing or decreasing salience.
Langacker refers to the type of salience under consideration (linked to schemas and prototypes)
as ‘less transient cognitive salience’ (1987: 430), while at the same time recognizing that
contextual/discourse factors also impact salience. For the time being, we are attempting to
isolate the less transient type to look for possible translational effects.
5 This reasoning may be linked to the notion of the ‘dominant translation’, or the most frequently
chosen translation for a given word (see Boada et al. 2013).
6 The issue of the bilingual representational model is not dealt with here, but several of the
alternative models share this fundamental assumption. See de Groot (2011: 129–144) for an
overview.
Gravitational pull in translation: testing a revised model 15
Based on these criteria, the network selected for this investigation is the poly-
semous target language verb get. The bilingual network will include, for the
purposes of this study, two Norwegian verbs, få (‘get’) and bli (‘become’).
Though these are not the only two Norwegian verbs that are of relevance to the
entire get network, they overlap semantically with several of get’s senses, and
are consequently the starting point for the development of a partial network
model.
In the following, two types of non-translational data will be used to look for
salience in the semantic network for get and its closest Norwegian counterparts,
få and bli. In section 3.1, corpus data for both English and Norwegian will be
considered, and in section 3.2, an elicitation task is used to investigate possible
network effects in English produced by a group of bilingual Norwegian-English
speakers. The problems associated with using corpus data in the investigation of
16 Sandra L. Halverson
cognitive theoretic notions are well known (see Gilquin 2008; Heylen et al. 2008;
Tummers et al. 2005). In this chapter, we adopt the stance taken by Divjak and
Arppe:
Although corpus data do not reflect the characteristics of mental grammars directly, we do
consider corpus data a legitimate source of data about mental grammars. Since the results
of linguistic cognitive processes, e.g. corpus data, are not independent of, or unrelated to,
the linguistic knowledge that is represented in the brain, we may assume with justification
that characteristics observable in language usage reflect characteristics of the mental
processes and structures yielding usage, even though we do not know the exact form of
these mental representations. (2013: 229)
For the purposes of the current analysis, the corpus data is therefore comple-
mented by performance data7, presented in section 3.2. The two data types are
used to postulate salience and connectivity patterns within the bilingual network,
which will be tested in translational data in section 4.
7 I have previously argued for a three-way classification of translational data, with the term
‘product’ reserved for observational data such as translated texts (either singular ones or
corpora), ‘performance’ used about observational data that is not a translational product as
such, and ‘process’ used about data types that can be immediately linked to theoretical notions
regarding cognitive processing. Thus we would avoid the confusing use of ‘process’ to refer
both to cognitive processing and to the observable behaviors involved in creating a translation,
not all of which may be directly linked to cognitive theoretical accounts (yet).
Gravitational pull in translation: testing a revised model 17
primarily a syntactic one. A number of the same distinctions were later con-
firmed by Berez and Gries (2008) in a corpus analysis using the behavioral profile
methodology8.
In the analysis of the English data, the figures presented here are from the
English original texts in the English Norwegian Parallel Corpus (ENPC) and a
comparable subcorpus of the British National Corpus (BNC). The sense categories
are those given in Gronemeyer (1999), with three simplifications: a) the collapsing
of obligation/permission (which share the syntactic frame get + to infinitive),
b) the grouping together of all of the causative senses and c) the addition of a
category for idioms.
The ENPC (http://www.hf.uio.no/ilos/english/services/omc/enpc) consists
of English originals, Norwegian translations, Norwegian originals, and English
translations (c. 2.6 million words). The translational and non-traditional sub-
corpora are further subdivided into fiction and non-fiction subcorpora and the
fiction subcorpus accounts for roughly 60 percent of the material. The texts
in the non-fiction corpus represent primarily a type of popular science genre,
though there are also a few legal texts. The non-fiction subcorpus is not further
subdivided by genre. It is important to note that genre has not been incorporated
as a variable in this investigation, due to both the relatively coarse descriptions
of genre categories in the corpora and the relatively small size of the ENPC
subcorpora. For the current purpose, an attempt has been made to alleviate the
potential genre effect by matching the BNC subcorpus as closely as possible to
the ENPC, in order to enable the comparison of translated to non-translated
language. This was done by selecting written books and periodicals and written
miscellaneous as the text categories for the BNC. Since the genre categories in
both corpora are relatively imprecise, they do not really ensure complete com-
parability. This is only acceptable in this early stage of hypothesis testing and
development. It is certainly possible that there are genre differences in the
sense distributions, and this variable must be more carefully catered for in later
investigations. For now, the attempt to ensure corpus comparability will have to
8 The sense distinctions utilized by Berez and Gries (2008) were derived from WordNet 2.1, and
the data was taken from ICE-GB. The authors classified the senses in their data and coded each
for a set of semantic, morphological and syntactic information. They used this information in a
cluster analysis to see whether the sense categories identified at the outset were confirmed by
the cluster analysis. Their initial categories were the same as the ones identified in Table 1, with
the exception of the causative senses, which were classified as either passive or inchoative,
the ingressive sense, which was listed as a subsense of movement, and the combination of the
obligation and passive senses. Two variants of cluster analysis confirmed the onset, possession,
movement and must/passive and causative clusters.
18 Sandra L. Halverson
9 Occurrences of the verb were defined as idioms if they were semantically opaque, even if
they exhibited the same syntactic frames as the other senses. Examples include: get wind of,
get on somebody’s nerves, get something over with.
10 The Mann-Whitney is a non-parametric test that can be used to see whether two samples are
independent with regard to one dependent variable (whether the differences between the
two groups are statistically significant). In this test, the calculation makes use of ranks within
groups, so that the rank order of the sense scores is not significantly different.
11 Salience is posited for the three most frequent senses, which account for roughly 70 percent
of the occurrences in both corpora.
Gravitational pull in translation: testing a revised model 19
Table 1: Sense categories for get with corpus frequencies in ENPC originals and BNC
Sense Meaning Example – from ENPC N (%) Rank n (%) Rank
ENPC ENPC BNC BNC
get1 onset of Would you like me to go out 304 (23) 2 324 (28) 2
possession and get some croissants?
get2 stative Have you got any of those? 139 (11) 4 67 (6) 6
possession
get3 Movement I don’t want you to get there 418 (32) 1 340 (30) 1
after dark.
get4 permission/ You’ve got to take into account 36 (3) 7 46 (4) 7
obligation that I’m virtually single-handed
here.
get5 Causation Despite his tuggings with the 28 (2) 8 26 (2) 8
wrench he couldn’t get the
screw to shift.
get6 Inchoative Sit down and get warm 188 (14) 3 164 (14) 3
get7 Passive . . . and you really do have to 66 (5) 6 70 (6) 5
be a winklebrain to get ejected
from there . . .
get8 Ingressive I’m going to get moving. 22 (2) 9 23 (2) 9
get9 Idioms Like the Whistler, they get 122 (9) 5 88 (8) 4
their kicks from watching
people die.
Total 1323 (100) 1148 (100)
12 Askedal’s corpus consisted of eight novels and non-fiction writing, representing contem-
porary Norwegian fiction and non-fiction. It is comparable to the ENPC in text types. The total
size of his corpus is not given, but the total number of occurrences of få equalled 779, or
roughly half the number found in the ENPC. Askedal also has categorized his data on the basis
of primarily syntactic properties, but has incorporated semantic information in certain of the
categories. His discussion also allows for a recategorization into semantic categories. Any faults
in this process are the responsibility of the present author alone.
20 Sandra L. Halverson
of syntactic criteria. Even so, they both provide numerous corpus examples and
they discuss the semantics of each syntactic category. With this verb also, there
is a high degree of isomorphism between the sense distinctions and the set of
verbal constructions. This information was used to reverse the classification
and reclassify the data semantically using the semantic descriptions given in
the two studies. The figures in the table are adapted from the studies by Ebeling
(ENPC) and Askedal (JOA), and any errors are those of the present author alone.
Table 2: Corpus frequencies for sense categories for få in ENPC (based on Ebeling 2003: 207)
and Askedal (2012). Examples from Ebeling (2003)
Table 3: Frequency of sense categories for bli, ENPC (adapted from Ebeling 2003)
The frequencies of the senses of bli in the ENPC demonstrate that, according to
the corpus data, there is one predominant sense, the inchoative one, which
represents 57% of all uses. The verb is also frequently used as a passive auxiliary
(32%). It is important to note that in the inchoative sense, the verb can also take
an NP as its complement (e.g. [. . .] å bli landets lys. . ./to become the light of the
nation; Ebeling 2003: 85). In this case this sense does not correspond to get6, as
inchoative get takes only an adjectival complement. So while the two verb senses
correspond semantically, the verbs are not complete translation equivalents due
to the non-congruity of the syntactic frames in which they can be used.
The corpus data presented here thus provides a basis for establishing sema-
siological salience among the senses of get, få and bli. Of the three most salient
(frequent) senses of get, the first (movement) corresponds to a less frequent
22 Sandra L. Halverson
15 The subjects in the test are classified as ‘bilinguals’, even though they may not be equally
proficient in both languages. They were all native speakers of Norwegian who were highly pro-
ficient L2 speakers of English. In accordance with the multicompetence perspective, we assume
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eloped, tore down the hill by special dâk, and were married at
Saharanpore. Where is she now?”
Wynyard made no reply. Captain Ramsay’s wandering memory had
evidently evoked a vision of his dark-eyed and remarkably pretty
mother. She had run away with the handsome Hussar officer, and
had, in consequence, been cast off by her relations.
“Dead?” inquired the other after a pause.
Wynyard nodded.
“Ah, well, we shall all be dead one day—some sooner—and some
later,” and he fell into one of his sudden silences.
“I think he is better!” whispered his wife to Wynyard, as they parted
at the hall door. “Didn’t he seem almost himself this evening? And he
took great notice of Topsy and Darkie, and made their dinner
himself.”
Two days later, as the chauffeur was leaving Mrs. Hogben’s cottage
after his midday meal, preparatory to getting ready the car, Mrs.
Ramsay suddenly appeared at her gate and beckoned to him
frantically. She looked white and frightened.
“Jim went off this morning,” she began, “and hasn’t been home
since. He never did this before. Oh, I ought to have taken your
advice,” and she wrung her hands. “I’ve been searching for him
since eight o’clock.”
“Did he speak to any one before he left the house?” inquired
Wynyard.
“No. Fanny saw him going out in a terrible hurry; he had on a pair of
white gloves, and said he would be late for parade.”
“Poor fellow!”
“And the stupid girl never said one word to me till she brought me my
hot water at eight o’clock.”
“I’m just off with the car, taking Miss Susan to a croquet tournament,
or I’d go and have a look round. What about the policeman?”
“The policeman! Why, he cannot walk! He weighs sixteen stone.”
“Well, anyway, if you don’t mind, I’ll send Tom Hogben and Jones;
they know the country, and will keep a shut mouth. I’ll just tell them
now,” and he hurried away.
Although Miss Susan had no money wherewith to buy diamonds,
sables, and motor cars, she contrived to extract a great deal of
pleasure out of her elderly spinster life. She enjoyed mild little tea-
parties, followed by bridge at sixpence a hundred—and received her
partner’s scoldings with disarming humility. Her one passion was
croquet. “Miss S. Parrett” was a notable player—her name appeared
in print in connection with local tournaments; her arm was steady,
her aim was deadly, and, not only this, she played the game with her
head as well as with her hands.
On the present occasion Miss Susan had lured her reluctant niece to
a meeting at Upstreet—a village about ten miles from Ottinge; in
fact, she made such a point of Aurea’s company, of Aurea’s support
—whether in success or failure—that the girl felt compelled to go—
and, at any rate, she took a sincere pride in Susan’s modest
triumphs. The tournament was prolonged till seven o’clock; Miss
Susan was detained, being in the Finals. Dusk was closing on the
world when the two ladies, with two prizes (salad bowl and a silver
cigarette-case), took their departure. The prize-winner, in exuberant
spirits, uttering effusive expressions of enjoyment and thanks, had
talked herself into the car, and there were so many after-thoughts
and messages that even the chauffeur became impatient with his
dear Miss Susan; he was desperately anxious to get home and hear
the result of the search for Captain Ramsay.
It was an unusually close evening—there was thunder in the air—
and the interior of the motor was stuffy even with the windows down
on both sides—and how they rattled! The old machine trundled along
at its best speed, as if inspired by the fear of Miss Parrett awaiting its
arrival, watch in hand. Its driver had another and more well-grounded
dread in his mind.
The ladies within discussed the recent party, the play, the prizes, and
the guests.
“The Wendovers were there; did you see them?” said Miss Susan
—“Mrs. Wendover and Gertrude. I thought they both looked very ill.”
“Yes, and I believe it was from hunger, Susan,” was her niece’s
surprising reply. “I never saw such a tea as they had—surreptitiously.
It’s shameful to watch, I know, but I was not playing, and happened
to be sitting near, and could not help myself. I felt so frightfully sorry
for them—I was inclined to cry!”
“My dear girl, surely you are not in earnest?”
“I only wish I wasn’t. Gertrude had a whole plate of sandwiches,
besides cakes; she took them quietly, when no one was looking, and
devoured them ravenously, and her mother pocketed several buns
and lumps of sugar.”
“But why? I don’t understand.”
“Because probably they have nothing to eat at home! Mrs. Lucas,
the parson’s wife, told me in confidence that they are almost
penniless; the little money they had has been lost in some bank that
tempted people with high interest and then went smash. The
Wendovers cling to the old cottage—it’s their own—but they have no
servant; they do their own washing and, very early in the morning,
their own doorstep! Everything is spick and span still. After dark they
steal out and collect firewood and apples, and even field turnips, and
yet they hold up their heads and ‘pretend.’ I heard Mrs. Wade
pressing them to have cake and tea—and they declined.”
“Have they no friends or relations?”
“I don’t know. Mrs. Lucas said she did not like to ask for their
confidence. She always has them to supper on Sundays, and sends
them eggs; but she is poor enough herself with eight children. She
thinks the Wendovers will break down now that the winter is coming,
and yet they won’t allow any one to guess that they are destitute.”
“Dear, dear, dear, how shocking! What is to be done, Aurea?”
“I’ve just had my allowance, and I’ll post them a five-pound note to-
morrow anonymously, and I’ll get something later on from dad.”
“Yes, yes, yes, and I must see what I can do too. Poverty is cruel—a
terrible thing—what a trial of one’s character!”
“It is indeed, and so are riches sometimes. They seem to change
people’s dispositions—if they come in for a fortune.”
“That’s true; but I do hope, dear child, you are not thinking of your
poor Aunt Bella?”
“Aunt Bella was much nicer when she lived in the Red Cottage,
dined at one o’clock, and put a penny in the plate.”
“Oh, now, Aurea, I can’t let you say that; she is very proud of you,
and a dear, kind sister to me. Why, only last week she gave me a
lovely lace parasol, and when she writes to me it is always ‘My own
darling Susan.’”
Aurea was silent. She was thinking of darling Susan’s many
deprivations, humiliations, and hardships.
“We all have our foibles, have we not, Aurea, my child?”
“Oh, I know that, Susan, and I——”
Whatever Aurea was going to add was cut short by her aunt’s
piercing scream. From some thick bushes on the left bank, a tall
figure had shot out; there was a lightning rush, a shout from the
chauffeur, who jammed on the brake, then a violent swerve, an
upheaval, and a sickening, crunching sensation.
A man had deliberately flung himself in front of the car, which had
gone over him, then stopped abruptly, shuddering throughout its
rickety frame.
The driver sprang off and dragged from beneath the wheels a limp
and motionless body. Yes, his vague fears had been justified.
“It’s Captain Ramsay!” he called to Aurea, who had already hurled
herself into the road. “I’m afraid he is done for. Stay where you are.”
As he spoke, he raised a limp and bleeding figure in his arms, which
he carried to the hedgerow; next, he took off his coat and laid him
upon it, and ran and lit a motor lamp. All his actions were surprisingly
prompt and vigorous.
“Now, will you come over here, miss?” he called to Susan
authoritatively, but she was almost beside him. In a crisis, simple,
talkative Susan was another person, and could rise to the occasion.
“And you, Miss Morven, try and find some water—we passed a
stream just now; bring it in anything—your hat or—yes, the salad
bowl! I’m afraid it’s a bad business,” he continued, “and his head is
all cut—and his wrist—it’s an artery. Miss Susan, fetch a stick
quickly, quickly, and I’ll make a tourniquet.”
The chauffeur seemed to have taken complete command of the
situation; he ordered the ladies hither and thither, he bandaged up
Captain Ramsay’s head with Aurea’s white scarf—which he tore into
strips—whilst Aurea stood by, eager to help, but trembling like an
aspen. She had never heard a man moan, or witnessed such a
scene.
“I think I’ve fixed him up just for the moment,” said Owen, rising, “and
now I’ll fetch the doctor. You two ladies won’t mind stopping, will
you?”
“Certainly not! What do you think we are made of?” rejoined Miss
Susan. “Here,”—now sinking down—“place his head in my lap, and
just go as hard as ever you can!”
“He is in a very bad way, I’m afraid, and I really don’t like leaving
you, but there’s no help for it.” Then, after sticking a flaring lamp on
the ground beside them, he climbed into his place and sped away.
In less than half an hour he had returned, accompanied by Dr. Boas;
they found the poor sufferer still alive and moaning, his head
supported by Miss Susan, and his lips bathed by her niece.
“I half expected this,” said the doctor, as he knelt beside Captain
Ramsay. “Internal injuries,” he announced, after a rapid examination,
“and fatal.”
“The stretcher and the parish nurse will be here presently,” said
Owen; and, hearing a familiar voice, Captain Ramsay slowly opened
his eyes and asked—
“Oh, it’s cold. Where am I? Where’s Katie?”
As he recognised Owen bending over him, he murmured—
“Wynyard, Wynyard—hold on—I’m coming!”
“You see he is off his head,” said Miss Susan, “poor fellow; he did
not know what he was doing.”
Then, as the chauffeur relieved her of the dying man’s weight, he
regained consciousness, and, again opening his eyes, he whispered
“Wynyard!” and passed away in the arms of Wynyard’s son.
CHAPTER XXI
BY THE SUNDIAL