Andreas Hausberger gazed at him with a self-contained smile that was extremely characteristic. He bowed a sarcastic13 bow which Florian misinterpreted for polite subservience14. “Are you running this show or am I?” he asked, after a fresh pause, with a quaint15 reminiscence of his Western experience.
“You are, undoubtedly,” Florian answered, taken aback at this unexpected assault. “But you ought to run it, all the same, on rational and humane16 and intelligent principles. You owe this girl’s voice, as a delight and a treasure, to US, the enlightened and critical connoisseurs17 of two eager continents. Nature produced it that we might enjoy it. It was intended to give us some of those exquisite18 moments of artistic19 pleasure which are the sole excuse creative caprice can plead for the manifold defects of the Universe.”
Andreas Hausberger looked down at him with a half-pitying curl on those stern thin lips of his. Florian had attacked him lightly where his position was strongest. “That’s all right,” he said, slowly, with a chilly20 drawl?—?’twas his favourite expression. “And do you think then,” he went on, bursting forth21 almost scornfully, in spite of his outward deference22, “we Zillerthalers get our fine singing voices and our musical ears by pure chance and accident? Not so, you may be sure of it. It’s no mere23 coincidence that our men and women can almost without exception sing like birds from their childhood upwards24 by the light of Nature. What gives them this power? Why, they live their lives long, in summer especially, in the thin clear atmosphere of our higher mountains. There isn’t much sour-stuff in it?—?what do you call it in English??—?oh, oxygen, don’t you? Wal, there isn’t much oxygen in that thin upper air?—?rarefied, I think you say?—?and therefore they’re obliged to fill their lungs well and expand their chests”?—?he swelled25 himself out as he spoke26, and showed off his own splendid girth to the fullest advantage?—?“and that gives them large reservoirs and rich, pure-toned voices.”
“I never thought of that before,” Will Deverill interposed, much struck by the landlord’s plausible27 reasoning. “I suppose that’s why mountain races, like the Welsh and the Tyrolese, are so often musical. The rarefied air must tend to strengthen and develop the larynx.”
“No; you never thought of that before,” Andreas Hausberger echoed. “You haven’t had to think of it. And you haven’t had to select and train a choir28 of our Tyrolese peasants. But I have thought of it for years, and satisfied myself it’s true. Is it for nothing, do you suppose, that on our cold mountain tops the vocal29 chords, as they say, are braced30 up and tightened31? Is it for nothing that in that clear, pure, limpid32 air the very nerves of the ear, strained hard to catch quickly at distant sounds, are exercised and educated? Do you think, if I wanted to pick out voices for a musical troupe33, I would go for them to Holland, or to Lombardy, or to Hamburg? No, no; I would go right away to the gründe there, the upper forks of the Zillerthal, in the crystal air just below the glaciers34, and pick out my best singers from the cow-boys and the alp-girls.”
He spoke of what he knew and had long reflected upon. Acquaintance with his subject supplied in part the unimportant deficiencies of his English vocabulary; and, besides, he had said the same things before a dozen times over, to other English travellers.
“Perhaps you may be right,” Florian responded, blandly36, as the wirth paused for breath in his eager harangue37. It was a way of Florian’s to be bland35 when he saw he was getting the worst of an argument.
“Right!” Andreas Hausberger repeated. “Never mind about that! You’d know I was right if only you’d seen as much of these people as I have. Look here, Mr Wood, you say it’s desecration to send a girl like Linnet after butter and cheese in a sennerin’s hut on the lonely mountains. You say I owe her voice as a treasure to humanity. Wal, I acknowledge the debt, and I try to discharge it to the best of my ability. I send her to the hills?—?the free open hills?—?where she will breathe fresh air, develop her throat and lungs, eat wholesome38 food, grow strong and brown and hearty39. If I clothed her in purple and fine linen, as you wish, and fed her every day on champagne and turtle, do you really imagine I’d be doing her a good turn? I’d be ruining her voice for her. In the summer, she gains breath and good health on the grassy40 mountains; in the winter, she gets training and advice and assistance from Lindner and myself, and whatever other teachers we can find in the Zillerthal.”
“I surrender at discretion,” Florian answered, with a yawn, rising up and flinging his small person lazily on the home-made sofa. “I admit your contention41. You interest me strangely. Your peasants and your country girls have finely developed ears and capital voices. No doubt you’re correct in attributing these splendid gifts to the clearness of the atmosphere and the wild life of the mountains. I’m a musical critic in London myself, and I know what a voice is the moment I hear it. Indeed, after all, what does it matter in the end if these divine creatures spend a joyless life for years in sordid42 and squalid surroundings, provided only, when they burst forth at last in the full effulgence43 of their musical prime, they afford us, who can appreciate them, and for whose sake they exist, one vivid thrill of pure artistic enjoyment44?” And he stroked his own smooth and girlish cheek with one plump hand, lovingly.
“You’re a musical critic, are you?” Andreas Hausberger repeated, with marked interest, disregarding the last few words of Florian’s flowing rhapsody. “Then you shall hear Linnet sing. You can say after that whether I’m right in my system or not.” He opened the door hastily. “Linnet, Linnet,” he called out in the Tyrolese dialect, “come in here at once. I want the Herrschaft to hear you singing.”
For a minute after he spoke, there was a flutter and a rustling45 at the door outside; somebody seemed to be pushing some unwilling46 person bit by bit along the passage. A murmur47 of whispered voices in the local dialect floated faintly to Will’s ears. “You must!” “But I can’t.” “You shall!” “I won’t.” “He says you are to.” “Ah, no; I’m ashamed! Not before those gentlemen!”
In the end, as it seemed, the first voice had its way. The door opened brusquely, and Linnet, all trembling, her face in her hands, and crimson48 with shame, was pushed bodily forward by unseen arms into the strangers’ presence. For a moment she stood there like a frightened child. Will’s cheek burned hot with sympathetic tingling49. Florian leaned back philosophically50 as he lay, and regarded this pretty picture of beauty in distress51 with observant complacency. She was charming, so, to be sure! That red flush became her.
“Sing to the gentlemen,” Andreas Hausberger said, calmly, in a tone of command. “Take your hands from your face at once; don’t behave like a baby.”
He spoke in German, but Florian followed him all the same. ’Twas delicious to watch this pretty little comedy of rustic52 ingenuousness53.
“Oh, I can’t!” Linnet cried, all abashed54, removing her hands for a second from her burning cheeks, and clasping them hard on her throbbing55 breast for one fiery56 moment before she clapped them up hastily again. “To bid one like this! It’s so hard! It’s so dreadful!”
“Don’t ask her just now,” Will Deverill put in pleadingly. “One can see she has such a natural shrinking and disinclination at first. Some other night, perhaps. When we’ve been here a little longer, she may be less afraid of us.”
Linnet let her hand drop once more, and gave him a grateful glance, sidling away towards the door like a timid child in her misery57. But Andreas Hausberger, for his part, was not so to be put off. “No, no,” he said, sternly, fixing his eye with a determined58 gaze on the poor shrinking girl; “she must sing if I tell her to. That’s all right. This shyness is absurd. How can she ever appear on a platform, I should like to know, before a couple of hundred people, if she won’t sing here when she’s told before just you two Englishmen? Do as I bid you, Linnet! No nonsense, my girl! Stand here by the table, and give us ‘The Bride of Hinter-Dux.’?”
Thus authoritatively59 commanded, poor Linnet took her stand where Andreas Hausberger motioned her, steadied herself with one trembling little fist on the edge of the table, raised her eyes to the ceiling away from the two young men, and, drawing a deep breath, with her throat held out and her mouth opened tremulously, began to trill forth, in her rich, silvery voice, a deep bell-like song of her own native mountain. For the first minute or two she was nervous, and quivered and paused unduly60; after awhile, however, inborn61 artistic instinct overcame her nervousness: she let her eyes drop and rest in a flash once or twice on Will Deverill’s. They were kindly62 eyes, Will’s; they reassured63 and encouraged her. “Bravo!” they seemed to say; “you’re rendering64 it admirably.” Emboldened65 by his friendly glance, she took heart and went through with it. Towards the end, her courage and self-possession returned, for, like all Tyrolese, she was brave and self-reliant in her inmost soul, though shy at first sight, and bashful on the surface. The two last stanzas66 she sang to perfection. As she finished, Will looked up and said simply, “Thank you; that was beautiful, beautiful.” But Florian clapped his hands in obtrusive67 applause. “Well done!” he cried; “well done! you have given us such a treat. We can forgive Herr Hausberger now for insisting on a performance.”
“And you must accustom68 yourself to an audience,” the wirth said in German, with that same quiet air of iron resolution Will had already marked in him. “If ever you’re to face a whole roomful of people, you must be able first to come in upon the platform without all this silly fuss and hang-back nonsense.”
Linnet’s nostrils69 quivered. She steadied herself with her hand on the table once more, and made answer boldly, “I think I could more easily face a roomful of people I’d never seen than sing before two in the parlour of the inn here; that seems less personal. But,” she added shyly, with half an appealing glance towards Will, “I’m not so nervous now. If this gentleman wishes, I?—?I would sing another song to him?”
And so she did?—?a second and a third. As she went on, she grew braver, and sang each time more naturally. At last the wirth dismissed her. Linnet curtsied, and disappeared. “Well, what do you say to her now?” the landlord asked in a tone of triumph, turning round to the young men as the door closed behind her.
Florian assumed his most studiously judicial70 air. The perfect critic should, above all things, be critical. Before Linnet’s face, indeed, he had been enthusiastic enough, as politeness and due respect for her sex demanded; but behind her back, and in her teacher’s presence, regard for his reputation compelled him to adopt the severest tone of incorruptible impartiality71. “I think,” he said slowly, fingering his chin in one hand, and speaking with great deliberation, like a recognised authority, “with time and training she ought to serve your purpose well for popular entertainments. Her organ, though undeveloped, is not wholly without some natural power and compass.”
“And I think,” Will Deverill added, with a glow of generous enthusiasm, “you’ve lighted on one of the very finest voices in all Europe.”
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收听单词发音
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1
distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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agog
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| adj.兴奋的，有强烈兴趣的； adv.渴望地 | |
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tune
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| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
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solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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alpine
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| adj.高山的；n.高山植物 | |
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desecration
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| n. 亵渎神圣, 污辱 | |
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prodigy
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| n.惊人的事物，奇迹，神童，天才，预兆 | |
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8
linen
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| n.亚麻布，亚麻线，亚麻制品；adj.亚麻布制的，亚麻的 | |
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sumptuously
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| 奢侈地，豪华地 | |
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champagne
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| n.香槟酒；微黄色 | |
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herd
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| n.兽群，牧群；vt.使集中，把…赶在一起 | |
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inclement
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| adj.严酷的，严厉的，恶劣的 | |
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sarcastic
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| adj.讥讽的，讽刺的，嘲弄的 | |
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14
subservience
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| n.有利，有益；从属（地位），附属性；屈从，恭顺；媚态 | |
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15
quaint
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| adj.古雅的，离奇有趣的，奇怪的 | |
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humane
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| adj.人道的，富有同情心的 | |
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connoisseurs
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| n.鉴赏家，鉴定家，行家( connoisseur的名词复数 ) | |
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18
exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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19
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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20
chilly
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| adj.凉快的，寒冷的 | |
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21
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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deference
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| n.尊重，顺从；敬意 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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upwards
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| adv.向上，在更高处...以上 | |
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25
swelled
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| 增强( swell的过去式和过去分词 )； 肿胀； （使）凸出； 充满（激情） | |
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26
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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27
plausible
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| adj.似真实的，似乎有理的，似乎可信的 | |
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choir
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| n.唱诗班，唱诗班的席位，合唱团，舞蹈团；v.合唱 | |
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vocal
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| adj.直言不讳的；嗓音的；n.[pl.]声乐节目 | |
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30
braced
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| adj.拉牢的v.支住( brace的过去式和过去分词 )；撑牢；使自己站稳；振作起来 | |
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31
tightened
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| 收紧( tighten的过去式和过去分词 )； （使）变紧； （使）绷紧； 加紧 | |
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limpid
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| adj.清澈的，透明的 | |
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troupe
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| n.剧团，戏班；杂技团；马戏团 | |
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glaciers
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| 冰河，冰川( glacier的名词复数 ) | |
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bland
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| adj.淡而无味的，温和的，无刺激性的 | |
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blandly
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| adv.温和地，殷勤地 | |
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harangue
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| n.慷慨冗长的训话，言辞激烈的讲话 | |
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wholesome
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| adj.适合；卫生的；有益健康的；显示身心健康的 | |
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39
hearty
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| adj.热情友好的；衷心的；尽情的，纵情的 | |
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grassy
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| adj.盖满草的；长满草的 | |
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contention
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| n.争论，争辩，论战；论点，主张 | |
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42
sordid
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| adj.肮脏的，不干净的，卑鄙的，暗淡的 | |
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43
effulgence
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| n.光辉 | |
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44
enjoyment
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| n.乐趣；享有；享用 | |
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45
rustling
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| n. 瑟瑟声，沙沙声 adj. 发沙沙声的 | |
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46
unwilling
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| adj.不情愿的 | |
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47
murmur
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| n.低语，低声的怨言；v.低语，低声而言 | |
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48
crimson
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| n./adj.深(绯)红色(的)；vi.脸变绯红色 | |
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49
tingling
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| v.有刺痛感( tingle的现在分词 ) | |
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50
philosophically
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| adv.哲学上；富有哲理性地；贤明地；冷静地 | |
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51
distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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52
rustic
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| adj.乡村的，有乡村特色的；n.乡下人，乡巴佬 | |
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53
ingenuousness
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| n.率直；正直；老实 | |
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54
abashed
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| adj.窘迫的，尴尬的v.使羞愧，使局促，使窘迫( abash的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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55
throbbing
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| a. 跳动的,悸动的 | |
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56
fiery
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| adj.燃烧着的，火红的；暴躁的；激烈的 | |
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57
misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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58
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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59
authoritatively
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| 命令式地，有权威地，可信地 | |
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60
unduly
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| adv.过度地，不适当地 | |
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61
inborn
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| adj.天生的，生来的，先天的 | |
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62
kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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63
reassured
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| adj.使消除疑虑的；使放心的v.再保证，恢复信心( reassure的过去式和过去分词) | |
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64
rendering
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| n.表现，描写 | |
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65
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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66
stanzas
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| 节，段( stanza的名词复数 ) | |
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67
obtrusive
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| adj.显眼的；冒失的 | |
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68
accustom
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| vt.使适应，使习惯 | |
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69
nostrils
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| 鼻孔( nostril的名词复数 ) | |
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70
judicial
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| adj.司法的，法庭的，审判的，明断的，公正的 | |
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71
impartiality
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| n. 公平, 无私, 不偏 | |
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