Some of these houses remained, and there was an attractive row of old-fashioned shops still surviving. Again, in one place there was the modest cot of late Georgian or early Victorian design, with its trellised porch of faded blue-green paint, its patterned iron balcony, not displeasing3, its little garden in the front, and its walled garden at the back; a small coach-house, a small stable. In another, something more exuberant4 and on a much larger scale: ambitious pilasters and stucco, broad lawns and sweeping5 drives, towering shrubs6, and grass in the back premises7. But on all the territory modernism had delivered its assault. The big houses remaining had been made into maisonettes, the small ones were down-at-heel, no longer objects of love; and everywhere there were blocks of flats in wicked red brick, as if Mrs. Todgers had given Mr. Pecksniff her notion of an up-to-date gaol8, and he had worked out her design. Opposite Canon’s Park, and occupying the site on which Mr. Glanville’s house must have stood, was a technical college; next to it a school of economics. Both buildings curdled9 the blood: in their purpose and in their architecture. They looked as if Mr. H. G. Wells’s bad dreams had come true.
In none of this, whether moderately ancient or grossly modern, could Arnold see anything to his purpose. In the period of which Mr. Hampole wrote, Canon’s Park may have been tolerably pleasant; it was now becoming intolerably unpleasant. But at its best, there could not have been anything in its aspect to suggest the wonderful vision which the clergyman thought he had seen from Glanville’s window. And suburban10 gardens, however well kept, could not explain the farmer’s rhapsodies. Arnold repeated the sacred words of the explanation formula: telepathy, hallucination, hypnotism; but felt very little easier. Hypnotism, for example: that was commonly used to explain the Indian rope trick. There was no such trick, and in any case, hypnotism could not explain that or any other marvel11 seen by a number of people at once, since hypnotism could only be applied12 to individuals, and with their full knowledge, consent, and conscious attention. Telepathy might have taken place between Glanville and Hampole; but whence did Perrott’s cousin receive the impression that he not only saw a sort of Kubla Khan, or Old Man of the Mountain paradise, but actually walked abroad in it? The S.P.R. had, one might say, discovered telepathy, and had devoted13 no small part of their energies for the last forty-five years or more to a minute and thoroughgoing investigation14 of it; but, to the best of his belief, their recorded cases gave no instance of anything so elaborate as this business of Canon’s Park. And again; so far as he could remember, the appearances ascribed to a telepathic agency were all personal; visions of people, not of places: there were no telepathic landscapes. And as for hallucination: that did not carry one far. That stated a fact, but offered no explanation of it. Arnold had suffered from liver trouble: he had come down to breakfast one morning and had been vexed15 to see the air all dancing with black specks16. Though he did not smell the nauseous odour of a smoky chimney, he made no doubt at first that the chimney had been smoking, or that the black specks were floating soot17. It was some time before he realized that, objectively, there were no black specks, that they were optical illusions, and that he had been hallucinated. And no doubt the parson and the farmer had been hallucinated: but the cause, the motive18 power, was to seek. Dickens told how, waking one morning, he saw his father sitting by his bedside, and wondered what he was doing there. He addressed the old man, and got no answer, put out his hand to touch him: and there was no such thing. Dickens was hallucinated; but since his father was perfectly19 well at the time, and in no sort of trouble, the mystery remained insoluble, unaccountable. You had to accept it; but there was no rationale of it. It was a problem that had to be given up.
But Arnold did not like giving problems up. He beat the coverts20 of Stoke Newington, and dived into pubs of promising21 aspect, hoping to meet talkative old men, who might remember their fathers’ stories and repeat them. He found a few, for though London has always been a place of restless, migratory22 tribes, and shifting populations; and now more than ever before; yet there still remains23 in many places, and above all in the remoter northern suburbs, an old fixed24 element, which can go back in memory sometimes for a hundred, even a hundred and fifty years. So in a venerable tavern—it would have been injurious and misleading to call it a pub—on the borders of Canon’s Park he found an ancient circle that gathered nightly for an hour or two in a snug25, if dingy26, parlour. They drank little and that slowly, and went early home. They were small tradesmen of the neighbourhood, and talked their business and the changes they had seen, the curse of multiple shops, the poor stuff sold in them, and the cutting of prices and profits. Arnold edged into the conversation by degrees, after one or two visits—“Well, sir, I am very much obliged to you, and I won’t refuse”—and said that he thought of settling in the neighbourhood: it seemed quiet. “Best wishes, I’m sure. Quiet; well it was, once; but not much of that now in Stoke Newington. All pride and dress and bustle27 now; and the people that had the money and spent it, they’re gone, long ago.”
“There were well-to-do people here?” asked Arnold, treading cautiously, feeling his way, inch by inch.
“There were, I assure you. Sound men—warm men, my father used to call them. There was Mr. Tredegar, head of Tredegar’s Bank. That was amalgamated28 with the City and National many years ago: nearer fifty than forty, I suppose. He was a fine gentleman, and grew beautiful pineapples. I remember his sending us one, when my wife was poorly all one summer. You can’t buy pineapples like that now.”
“You’re right, Mr. Reynolds, perfectly right. I have to stock what they call pineapples, but I wouldn’t touch them myself. No scent29, no flavour. Tough and hard; you can’t compare a crabapple with a Cox’s pippin.”
There was a general assent30 to this proposition; and Arnold felt that it was slow work.
And even when he got to his point, there was not much gained. He said he had heard that Canon’s Park was a quiet part; off the main track.
“Well, there’s something in that,” said the ancient who had accepted the half-pint. “You don’t get very much traffic there, it’s true: no trams or buses or motor coaches. But they’re pulling it all to pieces; building new blocks of flats every few months. Of course, that might suit your views. Very popular these flats are, no doubt, with many people; most economical, they tell me. But I always liked a house of my own, myself.”
“I’ll tell you one way a flat is economical,” the greengrocer said with a preparatory chuckle31. “If you’re fond of the wireless32, you can save the price and the licence. You’ll hear the wireless on the floor above, and the wireless on the floor below, and one or two more besides when they’ve got their windows open on summer evenings.”
“Very true, Mr. Batts, very true. Still, I must say, I’m rather partial to the wireless myself. I like to listen to a cheerful tune33, you know, at tea time.”
“You don’t tell me, Mr. Potter, that you like that horrible jazz, as they call it ?”
“Well, Mr. Dickson, I must confess...” and so forth34, and so forth. It became evident that there were modernists even here: Arnold thought that he heard the term “hot blues” distinctly uttered. He forced another half-pint—“very kind of you; mild this time, if you don’t mind”—on his neighbour, who turned out to be Mr. Reynolds, the pharmaceutical35 chemist, and tried back.
“So you wouldn’t recommend Canon’s Park as a desirable residence.”
“Well, no, sir; not to a gentleman who wants quiet, I should not. You can’t have quiet when a place is being pulled down about your ears, as you may say. It certainly was quiet enough in former days. Wouldn’t you say so, Mr. Batts?”—breaking in on the musical discussion—“Canon’s Park was quiet enough in our young days, wasn’t it? It would have suited this gentleman then, I’m sure.”
“Perhaps so,” said Mr. Batts. “Perhaps so, and perhaps not. There’s quiet, and quiet.”
And a certain stillness fell upon the little party of old men. They seemed to ruminate36, to drink their beer in slower sips37.
“There was always something about the place I didn’t altogether like,” said one of them at last. “But I’m sure I don’t know why.”
“Wasn’t there some tale of a murder there, a long time ago? Or was it a man that killed himself, and was buried at the crossroads by the green, with a stake through his heart?”
“I never heard of that, but I’ve heard my father say that there was a lot of fever about there formerly38.”
“I think you’re all wide of the mark, gentlemen, if you’ll excuse my saying so”—this from an elderly man in a corner, who had said very little hitherto. “I wouldn’t say Canon’s Park had a bad name, far from it. But there certainly was something about it that many people didn’t like; fought shy of, you may say. And it’s my belief that it was all on account of the lunatic asylum39 that used to be there, awhile ago.”
“A lunatic asylum was there?” Arnold’s particular friend asked. “Well, I think I remember hearing something to that effect in my very young days, now you recall the circumstances. I know we boys used to be very shy of going through Canon’s Park after dark. My father used to send me on errands that way now and again, and I always got another boy to come along with me if I could. But I don’t remember that we were particularly afraid of the lunatics either. In fact, I hardly know what we were afraid of, now I come to think of it.”
“Well, Mr. Reynolds, it’s a long time ago; but I do think it was that madhouse put people off Canon’s Park in the first place. You know where it was, don’t you?”
“I can’t say I do.”
“Well, it was that big house right in the middle of the park, that had been empty years and years—forty years, I dare say, and going to ruin.”
“You mean the place where Empress Mansions40 are now? Oh, yes, of course. Why they pulled it down more than twenty years ago, and then the land was lying idle all through the war and long after. A dismal-looking old place it was; I remember it well: the ivy41 growing over the chimney-pots, and the windows smashed, and the ‘To Let’ boards smothered42 in creepers. Was that house an asylum in its day?”
“That was the very house, sir. Himalaya House, it was called. In the first place it was built on to an old farmhouse43 by a rich gentleman from India, and when he died, having no children, his relations sold the property to a doctor. And he turned it into a madhouse. And as I was saying, I think people didn’t much like the idea of it. You know, those places weren’t so well looked after as they say they are now, and some very unpleasant stories got about; I’m not sure if the doctor didn’t get mixed up in a lawsuit44 over a gentleman, of good family, I believe, who had been shut up in Himalaya House by his relations for years, and as sensible as you or me all the time. And then there was that young fellow that managed to escape: that was a queer business. Though there was no doubt that he was mad enough for anything.”
“One of them got away, did he?” Arnold inquired, wishing to break the silence that again fell on the circle.
“That was so. I don’t know how he managed it, as they were said to be very strictly45 kept, but he contrived46 to climb out or creep out somehow or other, one evening about tea time, and walked as quietly as you please up the road, and took lodgings47 close by here, in that row of old red-brick houses that stood where the technical college is now. I remember well hearing Mrs. Wilson that kept the lodgings—she lived to be a very old woman—telling my mother that she never saw a nice-looking, better-spoken young man than this Mr. Valiance—I think he called himself: not his real name, of course. He told her a proper story enough about coming from Norwich, and having to be very quiet on account of his studies and all that. He had his carpetbag in his hand, and said the heavy luggage was coming later, and paid a fortnight in advance, quite regular. Of course, the doctor’s men were after him directly and making inquiries49 in all directions, but Mrs. Wilson never thought for a moment that this quiet young lodger50 of hers was the missing madman. Not for some time, that is.”
Arnold took advantage of a rhetorical pause in the story. He leaned forward to the landlord, who was leaning over the bar, and listening like the rest. Presently orders round were solicited51, and each of the circle voted for a small drop of gin, feeling “mild” or even “bitter” to be inadequate52 to the crisis of such a tale. And then, with courteous53 expressions, they drank the health of “our friend sitting by our friend Mr. Reynolds.” And one of them said:
“So she found out, did she?”
“I believe,” the narrator continued, “that it was a week or thereabouts before Mrs. Wilson saw there was something wrong. It was when she was clearing away his tea, he suddenly spoke48 up, and says:
“‘What I like about these apartments of yours, Mrs. Wilson, is the amazing view you have from your windows.’
“Well, you know, that was enough to startle her. We all of us know what there was to see from the windows of Rodman’s Row: Fothergill Terrace, and Chatham Street, and Canon’s Park: very nice properties, no doubt, all of them, but nothing to write home about, as the young people say. So Mrs. Wilson didn’t know how to take it quite, and thought it might be a joke. She put down the tea-tray, and looked the lodger straight in the face.
“‘What is it, sir, you particularly admire, if I might ask?’
“‘What do I admire?’ said he. ‘Everything.’ And then, it seems, he began to talk the most outrageous54 nonsense about golden and silver and purple flowers, and the bubbling well, and the walk that went under the trees right into the wood, and the fairy house on the hill; and I don’t know what. He wanted Mrs. Wilson to come to the window and look at it all. She was frightened, and took up her tray, and got out of the room as quick as she could; and I don’t wonder at it. And that night, when she was going up to bed, she passed her lodger’s door, and heard him talking out loud, and she stopped to listen. Mind you, I don’t think you can blame the woman for listening. I dare say she wanted to know who and what she had got in her house. At first she couldn’t make out what he was saying. He was jabbering55 in what sounded like a foreign language; and then he cried out in plain English as if he were talking to a young lady, and making use of very affectionate expressions.
“That was too much for Mrs. Wilson, and she went off to bed with her heart in her boots, and hardly got to sleep all through the night. The next morning the gentleman seemed quiet enough, but Mrs. Wilson knew he wasn’t to be trusted, and directly after breakfast she went round to the neighbours, and began to ask questions. Then, of course, it came out who her lodger must be, and she sent word round to Himalaya House. And the doctor’s men took the young fellow back. And, bless my soul, gentlemen; it’s close on ten o’clock.”
The meeting broke up in a kind of cordial bustle. The old man who had told the story of the escaped lunatic had remarked, it appeared, the very close attention that Arnold had given to the tale. He was evidently gratified. He shook Arnold warmly by the hand, remarking: “So you see, sir, the grounds I have for my opinion that it was that madhouse that gave Canon’s Park rather a bad name in our neighbourhood.”
And Arnold, revolving56 many things, set out on the way back to London. Much seemed heavily obscure, but he wondered whether Mrs. Wilson’s lodger was a madman at all; any madder than Mr. Hampole, or the farmer from Somerset or Charles Dickens, when he saw the appearance of his father by his bed.
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1
laborious
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| adj.吃力的，努力的，不流畅 | |
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inquisitive
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| adj.求知欲强的，好奇的，好寻根究底的 | |
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displeasing
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| 不愉快的，令人发火的 | |
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exuberant
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| adj.充满活力的；（植物）繁茂的 | |
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sweeping
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| adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的 | |
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shrubs
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| 灌木( shrub的名词复数 ) | |
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7
premises
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| n.建筑物，房屋 | |
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gaol
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| n.(jail)监狱；(不加冠词)监禁；vt.使…坐牢 | |
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curdled
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| v.（使）凝结( curdle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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suburban
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| adj.城郊的，在郊区的 | |
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marvel
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| vi.(at)惊叹vt.感到惊异；n.令人惊异的事 | |
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applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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investigation
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| n.调查，调查研究 | |
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vexed
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| adj.争论不休的；（指问题等）棘手的；争论不休的问题；烦恼的v.使烦恼( vex的过去式和过去分词 )；使苦恼；使生气；详细讨论 | |
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16
specks
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| n.眼镜；斑点，微粒，污点( speck的名词复数 ) | |
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soot
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| n.煤烟，烟尘；vt.熏以煤烟 | |
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18
motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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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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coverts
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| n.隐蔽的，不公开的，秘密的( covert的名词复数 )；复羽 | |
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promising
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| adj.有希望的，有前途的 | |
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migratory
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| n.候鸟，迁移 | |
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remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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25
snug
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| adj.温暖舒适的，合身的，安全的；v.使整洁干净，舒适地依靠，紧贴；n.（英）酒吧里的私房 | |
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dingy
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| adj.昏暗的，肮脏的 | |
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bustle
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| v.喧扰地忙乱，匆忙，奔忙；n.忙碌；喧闹 | |
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28
amalgamated
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| v.（使）（金属）汞齐化( amalgamate的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）合并；联合；结合 | |
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scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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30
assent
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| v.批准，认可；n.批准，认可 | |
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chuckle
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| vi.／n.轻声笑，咯咯笑 | |
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32
wireless
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| adj.无线的；n.无线电 | |
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33
tune
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| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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pharmaceutical
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| adj.药学的，药物的；药用的，药剂师的 | |
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ruminate
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| v.反刍；沉思 | |
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sips
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| n.小口喝，一小口的量( sip的名词复数 )v.小口喝，呷，抿( sip的第三人称单数 ) | |
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38
formerly
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| adv.从前，以前 | |
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asylum
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| n.避难所，庇护所，避难 | |
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40
mansions
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| n.宅第，公馆，大厦( mansion的名词复数 ) | |
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ivy
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| n.常青藤，常春藤 | |
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42
smothered
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| （使）窒息， （使）透不过气( smother的过去式和过去分词 )； 覆盖； 忍住； 抑制 | |
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43
farmhouse
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| n.农场住宅（尤指主要住房） | |
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44
lawsuit
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| n.诉讼，控诉 | |
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45
strictly
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| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
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46
contrived
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| adj.不自然的，做作的；虚构的 | |
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47
lodgings
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| n. 出租的房舍, 寄宿舍 | |
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48
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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49
inquiries
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| n.调查( inquiry的名词复数 )；疑问；探究；打听 | |
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50
lodger
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| n.寄宿人，房客 | |
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51
solicited
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| v.恳求( solicit的过去式和过去分词 )；（指娼妇）拉客；索求；征求 | |
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52
inadequate
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| adj.(for,to)不充足的，不适当的 | |
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53
courteous
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| adj.彬彬有礼的，客气的 | |
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54
outrageous
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| adj.无理的，令人不能容忍的 | |
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55
jabbering
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| v.急切而含混不清地说( jabber的现在分词 )；急促兴奋地说话；结结巴巴 | |
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56
revolving
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| adj.旋转的，轮转式的；循环的v.（使）旋转( revolve的现在分词 )；细想 | |
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