“Of course he is perfectly20 right,” said Lady Caroline Benaresq, calmly rescuing a piled-up plate of caviare sandwiches from the neighbourhood of a trio of young ladies who had established themselves hopefully within easy reach of it. “Art,” she continued, addressing herself to the Rev15. Poltimore Vardon, “has always been geographically21 exclusive. London may be more important from most points of view than Venice, but the art of portrait painting, which would never concern itself with a Lord Mayor, simply grovels22 at the feet of the Doges. As a Socialist23 I’m bound to recognise the right of Ealing to compare itself with Avignon, but one cannot expect the Muses24 to put the two on a level.”
“Exclusiveness,” said the Reverend Poltimore, “has been the salvation25 of Art, just as the lack of it is proving the downfall of religion. My colleagues of the cloth go about zealously26 proclaiming the fact that Christianity, in some form or other, is attracting shoals of converts among all sorts of races and tribes, that one had scarcely ever heard of, except in reviews of books of travel that one never read. That sort of thing was all very well when the world was more sparsely28 populated, but nowadays, when it simply teems29 with human beings, no one is particularly impressed by the fact that a few million, more or less, of converts, of a low stage of mental development, have accepted the teachings of some particular religion. It not only chills one’s enthusiasm, it positively30 shakes one’s convictions when one hears that the things one has been brought up to believe as true are being very favourably31 spoken of by Buriats and Samoyeds and Kanakas.”
The Rev. Poltimore Vardon had once seen a resemblance in himself to Voltaire, and had lived alongside the comparison ever since.
“No modern cult32 or fashion,” he continued, “would be favourably influenced by considerations based on statistics; fancy adopting a certain style of hat or cut of coat, because it was being largely worn in Lancashire and the Midlands; fancy favouring a certain brand of champagne33 because it was being extensively patronised in German summer resorts. No wonder that religion is falling into disuse in this country under such ill-directed methods.”
“You can’t prevent the heathen being converted if they choose to be,” said Lady Caroline; “this is an age of toleration.”
“You could always deny it,” said the Rev. Poltimore, “like the Belgians do with regrettable occurrences in the Congo. But I would go further than that. I would stimulate34 the waning35 enthusiasm for Christianity in this country by labelling it as the exclusive possession of a privileged few. If one could induce the Duchess of Pelm, for instance, to assert that the Kingdom of Heaven, as far as the British Isles36 are concerned, is strictly37 limited to herself, two of the under-gardeners at Pelmby, and, possibly, but not certainly, the Dean of Dunster, there would be an instant reshaping of the popular attitude towards religious convictions and observances. Once let the idea get about that the Christian27 Church is rather more exclusive than the Lawn at Ascot, and you would have a quickening of religious life such as this generation has never witnessed. But as long as the clergy38 and the religious organisations advertise their creed39 on the lines of ‘Everybody ought to believe in us: millions do,’ one can expect nothing but indifference40 and waning faith.”
“Time is just as exclusive in its way as Art,” said Lady Caroline.
“In what way?” said the Reverend Poltimore.
“Your pleasantries about religion would have sounded quite clever and advanced in the early ‘nineties. To-day they have a dreadfully warmed-up flavour. That is the great delusion41 of you would-be advanced satirists; you imagine you can sit down comfortably for a couple of decades saying daring and startling things about the age you live in, which, whatever other defects it may have, is certainly not standing42 still. The whole of the Sherard Blaw school of discursive43 drama suggests, to my mind, Early Victorian furniture in a travelling circus. However, you will always have relays of people from the suburbs to listen to the Mocking Bird of yesterday, and sincerely imagine it is the harbinger of something new and revolutionising.”
“WOULD you mind passing that plate of sandwiches,” asked one of the trio of young ladies, emboldened44 by famine.
“With pleasure,” said Lady Caroline, deftly46 passing her a nearly empty plate of bread-and-butter.
“I meant the place of caviare sandwiches. So sorry to trouble you,” persisted the young lady
Her sorrow was misapplied; Lady Caroline had turned her attention to a newcomer.
“A very interesting exhibition,” Ada Spelvexit was saying; “faultless technique, as far as I am a judge of technique, and quite a master-touch in the way of poses. But have you noticed how very animal his art is? He seems to shut out the soul from his portraits. I nearly cried when I saw dear Winifred depicted47 simply as a good-looking healthy blonde.”
“I wish you had,” said Lady Caroline; “the spectacle of a strong, brave woman weeping at a private view in the Rutland Galleries would have been so sensational48. It would certainly have been reproduced in the next Drury Lane drama. And I’m so unlucky; I never see these sensational events. I was ill with appendicitis49, you know, when Lulu Braminguard dramatically forgave her husband, after seventeen years of estrangement50, during a State luncheon51 party at Windsor. The old queen was furious about it. She said it was so disrespectful to the cook to be thinking of such a thing at such a time.”
Lady Caroline’s recollections of things that hadn’t happened at the Court of Queen Victoria were notoriously vivid; it was the very widespread fear that she might one day write a book of reminiscences that made her so universally respected.
“As for his full-length picture of Lady Brickfield,” continued Ada, ignoring Lady Caroline’s commentary as far as possible, “all the expression seems to have been deliberately52 concentrated in the feet; beautiful feet, no doubt, but still, hardly the most distinctive53 part of a human being.”
“To paint the right people at the wrong end may be an eccentricity, but it is scarcely an indiscretion,” pronounced Lady Caroline.
One of the portraits which attracted more than a passing flutter of attention was a costume study of Francesca Bassington. Francesca had secured some highly desirable patronage54 for the young artist, and in return he had enriched her pantheon of personal possessions with a clever piece of work into which he had thrown an unusual amount of imaginative detail. He had painted her in a costume of the great Louis’s brightest period, seated in front of a tapestry55 that was so prominent in the composition that it could scarcely be said to form part of the background. Flowers and fruit, in exotic profusion56, were its dominant57 note; quinces, pomegranates, passion-flowers, giant convolvulus, great mauve-pink roses, and grapes that were already being pressed by gleeful cupids in a riotous58 Arcadian vintage, stood out on its woven texture59. The same note was struck in the beflowered satin of the lady’s kirtle, and in the pomegranate pattern of the brocade that draped the couch on which she was seated. The artist had called his picture “Recolte.” And after one had taken in all the details of fruit and flower and foliage60 that earned the composition its name, one noted61 the landscape that showed through a broad casement62 in the left-hand corner. It was a landscape clutched in the grip of winter, naked, bleak63, black-frozen; a winter in which things died and knew no rewakening. If the picture typified harvest, it was a harvest of artificial growth.
“It leaves a great deal to the imagination, doesn’t it?” said Ada Spelvexit, who had edged away from the range of Lady Caroline’s tongue.
“At any rate one can tell who it’s meant for,” said Serena Golackly.
“Oh, yes, it’s a good likeness64 of dear Francesca,” admitted Ada; “of course, it flatters her.”
“That, too, is a fault on the right side in portrait painting,” said Serena; “after all, if posterity65 is going to stare at one for centuries it’s only kind and reasonable to be looking just a little better than one’s best.”
“What a curiously66 unequal style the artist has,” continued Ada, almost as if she felt a personal grievance67 against him; “I was just noticing what a lack of soul there was in most of his portraits. Dear Winifred, you know, who speaks so beautifully and feelingly at my gatherings68 for old women, he’s made her look just an ordinary dairy-maidish blonde; and Francesca, who is quite the most soulless woman I’ve ever met, well, he’s given her quite —”
“Hush,” said Serena, “the Bassington boy is just behind you.”
Comus stood looking at the portrait of his mother with the feeling of one who comes suddenly across a once-familiar half-forgotten acquaintance in unfamiliar69 surroundings. The likeness was undoubtedly70 a good one, but the artist had caught an expression in Francesca’s eyes which few people had ever seen there. It was the expression of a woman who had forgotten for one short moment to be absorbed in the small cares and excitements of her life, the money worries and little social plannings, and had found time to send a look of half-wistful friendliness71 to some sympathetic companion. Comus could recall that look, fitful and fleeting72, in his mother’s eyes when she had been a few years younger, before her world had grown to be such a committee-room of ways and means. Almost as a rediscovery he remembered that she had once figured in his boyish mind as a “rather good sort,” more ready to see the laughable side of a piece of mischief73 than to labour forth74 a reproof75. That the bygone feeling of good fellowship had been stamped out was, he knew, probably in great part his own doing, and it was possible that the old friendliness was still there under the surface of things, ready to show itself again if he willed it, and friends were becoming scarcer with him than enemies in these days. Looking at the picture with its wistful hint of a long ago comradeship, Comus made up his mind that he very much wanted things to be back on their earlier footing, and to see again on his mother’s face the look that the artist had caught and perpetuated76 in its momentary77 flitting. If the projected Elaine-marriage came off, and in spite of recent maladroit78 behaviour on his part he still counted it an assured thing, much of the immediate79 cause for estrangement between himself and his mother would be removed, or at any rate, easily removable. With the influence of Elaine’s money behind him he promised himself that he would find some occupation that would remove from himself the reproach of being a waster and idler. There were lots of careers, he told himself, that were open to a man with solid financial backing and good connections. There might yet be jolly times ahead, in which his mother would have her share of the good things that were going, and carking thin-lipped Henry Greech and other of Comus’s detractors could take their sour looks and words out of sight and hearing. Thus, staring at the picture as though he were studying its every detail, and seeing really only that wistful friendly smile, Comus made his plans and dispositions80 for a battle that was already fought and lost.
The crowd grew thicker in the galleries, cheerfully enduring an amount of overcrowding that would have been fiercely resented in a railway carriage. Near the entrance Mervyn Quentock was talking to a Serene81 Highness, a lady who led a life of obtrusive82 usefulness, largely imposed on her by a good-natured inability to say “No.” “That woman creates a positive draught83 with the number of bazaars84 she opens,” a frivolously-spoken exCabinet Minister had once remarked. At the present moment she was being whimsically apologetic.
“When I think of the legions of well-meaning young men and women to whom I’ve given away prizes for proficiency85 in art-school curriculum, I feel that I ought not to show my face inside a picture gallery. I always imagine that my punishment in another world will be perpetually sharpening pencils and cleaning palettes for unending relays of misguided young people whom I deliberately encouraged in their artistic86 delusions87.”
“Do you suppose we shall all get appropriate punishments in another world for our sins in this?” asked Quentock.
“Not so much for our sins as for our indiscretions; they are the things which do the most harm and cause the greatest trouble. I feel certain that Christopher Columbus will undergo the endless torment88 of being discovered by parties of American tourists. You see I am quite old fashioned in my ideas about the terrors and inconveniences of the next world. And now I must be running away; I’ve got to open a Free Library somewhere. You know the sort of thing that happens — one unveils a bust89 of Carlyle and makes a speech about Ruskin, and then people come in their thousands and read ‘Rabid Ralph, or Should he have Bitten Her?’ Don’t forget, please, I’m going to have the medallion with the fat cupid sitting on a sundial. And just one thing more — perhaps I ought not to ask you, but you have such nice kind eyes, you embolden45 one to make daring requests, would you send me the recipe for those lovely chestnut90-and-chicken-liver sandwiches? I know the ingredients of course, but it’s the proportions that make such a difference — just how much liver to how much chestnut, and what amount of red pepper and other things. Thank you so much. I really am going now.”
Staring round with a vague half-smile at everybody within nodding distance, Her Serene Highness made one of her characteristic exits, which Lady Caroline declared always reminded her of a scrambled91 egg slipping off a piece of toast. At the entrance she stopped for a moment to exchange a word or two with a young man who had just arrived. From a corner where he was momentarily hemmed92 in by a group of tea-consuming dowagers, Comus recognised the newcomer as Courtenay Youghal, and began slowly to labour his way towards him. Youghal was not at the moment the person whose society he most craved93 for in the world, but there was at least the possibility that he might provide an opportunity for a game of bridge, which was the dominant desire of the moment. The young politician was already surrounded by a group of friends and acquaintances, and was evidently being made the recipient94 of a salvo of congratulation — presumably on his recent performances in the Foreign Office debate, Comus concluded. But Youghal himself seemed to be announcing the event with which the congratulations were connected. Had some dramatic catastrophe95 overtaken the Government, Comus wondered. And then, as he pressed nearer, a chance word, the coupling of two names, told him the news.
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1
throng
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| n.人群，群众；v.拥挤，群集 | |
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overdue
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| adj.过期的，到期未付的；早该有的，迟到的 | |
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aspiring
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| adj.有志气的；有抱负的；高耸的v.渴望；追求 | |
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wares
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| n. 货物, 商品 | |
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contrived
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| adj.不自然的，做作的；虚构的 | |
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herald
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| vt.预示...的来临，预告，宣布，欢迎 | |
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fanfare
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| n.喇叭；号角之声；v.热闹地宣布 | |
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eccentricity
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| n.古怪，反常，怪癖 | |
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thereby
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| adv.因此，从而 | |
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taint
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| n.污点；感染；腐坏；v.使感染；污染 | |
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sartorial
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| adj.裁缝的 | |
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disorder
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| n.紊乱，混乱；骚动，骚乱；疾病，失调 | |
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bourgeois
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| adj./n.追求物质享受的(人)；中产阶级分子 | |
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prevailing
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| adj.盛行的；占优势的；主要的 | |
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rev
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| v.发动机旋转，加快速度 | |
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reactionary
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| n.反动者，反动主义者；adj.反动的，反动主义的，反对改革的 | |
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gasp
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| n.喘息，气喘；v.喘息；气吁吁他说 | |
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astonishment
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| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
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legitimate
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| adj.合法的，合理的，合乎逻辑的；v.使合法 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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geographically
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| adv.地理学上，在地理上，地理方面 | |
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grovels
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| v.卑躬屈节，奴颜婢膝( grovel的第三人称单数 )；趴 | |
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socialist
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| n.社会主义者；adj.社会主义的 | |
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muses
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| v.沉思，冥想( muse的第三人称单数 )；沉思自语说（某事） | |
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salvation
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| n.（尤指基督）救世，超度，拯救，解困 | |
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zealously
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| adv.热心地；热情地；积极地；狂热地 | |
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Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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sparsely
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| adv.稀疏地；稀少地；不足地；贫乏地 | |
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teems
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| v.充满( teem的第三人称单数 )；到处都是；（指水、雨等）暴降；倾注 | |
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positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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favourably
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| adv. 善意地，赞成地 =favorably | |
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cult
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| n.异教，邪教；时尚，狂热的崇拜 | |
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champagne
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| n.香槟酒；微黄色 | |
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stimulate
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| vt.刺激，使兴奋；激励，使…振奋 | |
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waning
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| adj.（月亮）渐亏的，逐渐减弱或变小的n.月亏v.衰落( wane的现在分词 )；（月）亏；变小；变暗淡 | |
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isles
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| 岛( isle的名词复数 ) | |
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strictly
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| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
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clergy
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| n.[总称]牧师，神职人员 | |
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creed
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| n.信条；信念，纲领 | |
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indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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delusion
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| n.谬见，欺骗，幻觉，迷惑 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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discursive
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| adj.离题的，无层次的 | |
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emboldened
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| v.鼓励，使有胆量( embolden的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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embolden
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| v.给…壮胆，鼓励 | |
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deftly
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| adv.灵巧地，熟练地，敏捷地 | |
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depicted
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| 描绘，描画( depict的过去式和过去分词 )； 描述 | |
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sensational
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| adj.使人感动的，非常好的，轰动的，耸人听闻的 | |
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appendicitis
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| n.阑尾炎，盲肠炎 | |
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estrangement
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| n.疏远，失和，不和 | |
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luncheon
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| n.午宴，午餐，便宴 | |
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deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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distinctive
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| adj.特别的，有特色的，与众不同的 | |
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patronage
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| n.赞助，支援，援助；光顾，捧场 | |
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tapestry
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| n.挂毯，丰富多采的画面 | |
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profusion
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| n.挥霍；丰富 | |
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dominant
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| adj.支配的，统治的；占优势的；显性的；n.主因，要素，主要的人(或物)；显性基因 | |
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riotous
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| adj.骚乱的；狂欢的 | |
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texture
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| n.(织物)质地；(材料)构造；结构；肌理 | |
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foliage
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| n.叶子，树叶，簇叶 | |
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noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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casement
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| n.竖铰链窗；窗扉 | |
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bleak
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| adj.(天气)阴冷的；凄凉的；暗淡的 | |
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likeness
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| n.相像，相似（之处） | |
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posterity
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| n.后裔，子孙，后代 | |
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curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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grievance
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| n.怨愤，气恼，委屈 | |
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gatherings
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| 聚集( gathering的名词复数 )； 收集； 采集； 搜集 | |
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unfamiliar
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| adj.陌生的，不熟悉的 | |
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undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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71
friendliness
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| n.友谊，亲切，亲密 | |
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fleeting
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| adj.短暂的，飞逝的 | |
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mischief
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| n.损害，伤害，危害；恶作剧，捣蛋，胡闹 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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reproof
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| n.斥责，责备 | |
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perpetuated
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| vt.使永存（perpetuate的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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momentary
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| adj.片刻的，瞬息的；短暂的 | |
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maladroit
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| adj.笨拙的 | |
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79
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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80
dispositions
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| 安排( disposition的名词复数 )； 倾向； （财产、金钱的）处置； 气质 | |
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81
serene
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| adj. 安详的，宁静的，平静的 | |
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82
obtrusive
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| adj.显眼的；冒失的 | |
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83
draught
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| n.拉，牵引，拖；一网（饮，吸，阵)；顿服药量，通风；v.起草，设计 | |
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84
bazaars
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| （东方国家的）市场( bazaar的名词复数 )； 义卖； 义卖市场； （出售花哨商品等的）小商品市场 | |
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85
proficiency
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| n.精通，熟练，精练 | |
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86
artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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87
delusions
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| n.欺骗( delusion的名词复数 )；谬见；错觉；妄想 | |
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88
torment
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| n.折磨；令人痛苦的东西(人)；vt.折磨；纠缠 | |
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89
bust
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| vt.打破；vi.爆裂；n.半身像；胸部 | |
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90
chestnut
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| n.栗树，栗子 | |
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91
scrambled
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| v.快速爬行( scramble的过去式和过去分词 )；攀登；争夺；（军事飞机）紧急起飞 | |
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92
hemmed
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| 缝…的褶边( hem的过去式和过去分词 )； 包围 | |
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93
craved
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| 渴望，热望( crave的过去式 )； 恳求，请求 | |
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recipient
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| a.接受的,感受性强的 n.接受者,感受者,容器 | |
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95
catastrophe
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| n.大灾难，大祸 | |
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