Will paused, and surveyed him. He was a good-looking young man, with much swagger in his air, and a black moustache on his upper lip; but his face seemed somehow strangely familiar to Will, while his voice stirred at once some latent chord in the dim depths of his memory. But he wasn’t one of Will’s fine London acquaintances?—?the poet saw that much at once by the cheap pretentiousness9 of his coat and hat, the flaring11 blue of his made-up silk tie, the obtrusive12 glitter of the false diamond pin which adorned13 its centre. The stranger’s get-up, indeed, was redolent of the music halls. Yet he was handsome for all that, with a certain strange air of native distinction, not wholly concealed14 by the vulgar tone of his costume and his solicitous15 jewellery. Will held out his hand with that dubitative air which we all of us display in the first moment of uncertainty16 towards half-recognised acquaintances.
“I see you have forgotten me, zen,” the stranger said, in very decent English, drawing himself up with great dignity, and twirling his black moustache airily between one thumb and forefinger17. “It is long, to be sure, since we met in ze Tyrol. And I have changed much since zen, no doubt: I have mixed with ze world; I have grown what you call in English cosmopolitan18. But I see it comes back; I see you remember me now; my voice recalls it to you.”
Will grasped his hand more cordially. “Yes, perfectly19, when you speak,” he said; “though you are very much changed indeed, as you say; but I see you’re Franz Lindner.”
“Yes; I’m Mr Franz Lindner,” the stranger replied, half-imperceptibly correcting him?—?for it was indeed the Robbler. Will scanned him from head to foot, and took him in at a glance. He was a fiery20 young man still, and his mien21, as of old, was part fierce, part saucy22. But, oh, what a difference the change of dress had made in him! No conical hat, no blackcock’s feather now, whether “turned” or otherwise. In his Tyrolese costume, with his rifle in his hand, and his cartridges23 at his side, Franz Lindner had looked and moved of yore a typical Alpine24 j?ger. But, in black frock-coat and shiny tall hat, strolling like a civilised snob25 that he was down the flags of Bond Street, all the romance and poetry had faded utterly26 out of him. The glamour27 was gone. He looked and moved for all the world to-day like any other young man of the baser mock-swell sort, dressed up in his Sunday best to lounge and ogle28 and bandy vulgar chaff29 in Burlington Arcade30 with his predestined companions.
“Why, what has brought you to London, then?” Will asked, much astonished.
“Art, art,” the transfigured Robbler responded, offhand31, with inimitable swagger. “You must surely zen know my stage name, zough you don’t seem to have heard me.” He pulled out a printed card, and handed it to Will with a flourish. “I am ze Signor Francesco,” he continued, “all ze world is talking about.” And he threw back his chin and cocked his head on one side, looking, even as he spoke32, more pretentious10 than ever.
“Oh, indeed!” Will answered with a bewildered little laugh. But it was the non-committing “Oh, indeed!” of mere33 polite acquiescence34.
Franz Lindner caught the tinge35 of implied non-recognition in the Englishman’s voice, and hastened to add, as if parenthetically, “I perform at ze Pavilion.”
“What, the London Pavilion at the top of the Hay market?” Will exclaimed, beginning to realise.
Franz Lindner looked hurt. “I’ve seen your name often enough,” he said, asserting himself still more vigorously as Will seemed to know less of him; “and I sought, as you were a pillar of ze profession yourself, you would certainly have seen mine, if it were only on ze posters. I’m advertised largely. All London rings wis me. Ze County Council has even taken notice of me. I’m a public character! And I have had ze intention more zan once of looking you up, as also Mr Florian. But zere, here in London our time is so occupied! You and I, who are public men, wis professional engagements?—?we are ever overtaxed; we know not how to find ze leisure or ze space for ze claims of friendship.”
“Have you been long in London?” Will asked, turning down with him towards Piccadilly.
“More zan two years now,” the Robbler answered briskly, lounging on at his own pace, with a cane36 in his gloved hand, and staring hard, as he passed, at every pretty girl he saw on foot or in the carriages. “After I leave you at Meran, I worked my way slowly?—?singing, singing, ever singing?—?by degrees to Paris. But Paris didn’t suit me; zere is too much blague zere; zey go in for buffoons37; zey laugh at a man of modest merit. I hate blague myself. So zen I came on pretty soon to London. At first I had to sing in common low music halls?—?sous side and zat; but talent, talent is sure to make its way in ze end. I rose very quick, and now?—?I am at ze head of my branch of ze profession.”
“You sing, of course?” Will interposed, restraining a smile at the Robbler’s delicious self-satisfaction. The man himself was the very same as ever, to be sure; but ’twas strange what a difference mere externals had made in him!
“Yes; I sing, and sometimes, too, I play ze zither. But mostly, I sing. It surprises me, indeed, you should not have heard of my singing.”
“And what’s the particular branch of which you’re the acknowledged head?” Will asked, still amused at the Tyroler’s complacency.
Franz Lindner held his head very high in the air, and gave a twirl to his cane, as he answered, with much importance, “My line is ze Mammoss Continental38 Comique; ze serio-comic foreigner; zey call me Frenchy. I sing ze well-known songs in broken English zat are in everybody’s mous?—?‘Mossoo Robert is my name,’ or ‘Lay-ces-terre Squarre,’ or ‘Ze leetle black dawg,’ or ‘Zat lohvely Matilda.’ I wonder you have not heard of me. ‘Mossoo Robert’ is all ze talk of London. Frank Wilkins writes songs especially for my voice. If you look in ze music shops, you will see on ze covers, ‘Written expressly for Signor Francesco.’ Signor Francesco?—?zat’s me!” And he tapped his breast, and swelled39 himself visibly.
“I remember to have seen the name, I think,” Will answered, with a slight internal shudder40, well pleased, none the less, to give some tardy41 salve to his companion’s wounded vanity. “I’m glad you’ve got on, and delighted to find you have such kindly42 recollections of me.”
Franz Lindner laughed. “Oh, zat!” he said, snapping his fingers in the air very jauntily43. “I was a hot young man zen; I knew little of ze world. You mustn’t sink much of what a young man did in ze days before he knew how Society is managed. I owe you no grudge44. We were bose of us younger. Besides, our friend Hausberger has wiped out our old scores. I have transferred to him, entire, all my feelings in ze matter.”
“That’s well,” Will replied, anxious indeed to learn whether the Tyroler had heard anything fresh of late years about Linnet. “And Hausberger himself? What of him . . . and his wife? Have you ever knocked up against them?”
The Robbler’s brow gathered; his hand clenched45 his cane hard. It was clear civilisation46 and cosmopolitanism47, however neatly48 veneered, hadn’t made much serious change in his underlying49 nature. “Zat rascal50!” he exclaimed, bringing his stick down on the pavement with a noisy little thud; “zat rogue51; zat liar8! If ever I had come across him, it would be bad for his head. Sousand devils, what a man! . . . Here, we’re close to ze Cri; will you come and have a drink? We can talk zis over afterward52. I like to offer somesing to a friend new discovered.”
“It’s not much in my line,” Will answered, smiling; “but still, for old times’ sake, I’ll go in and have a glass with you.” To say the truth, he was so eager to find out what Franz might have to communicate that he stretched a point for once, and broke through his otherwise invariable rule never to drink anything anywhere except at meal times.
Franz stalked along Piccadilly, and strode airily into the Criterion like one who knew his way well about the London restaurants. “What’ll you take?” he asked of Will in an assured tone, which showed the question in English was a very familiar one to him.
“Whatever you take yourself,” Will answered, much amused, for the Tyroler was far more at home than himself in a London bar, and far more at his ease with the London barmaid.
“Two half porters and two small Scotch53, miss,” the Robbler cried briskly to the tousely-haired young woman who attended to his call. “You’ll find it a very good mixture for zis time of day, Mr Deverill. I always take it myself. It softens54 ze organ.”
The young woman fulfilled the order with unwonted alacrity55?—?Franz was a favourite at the bar, and gave his commands leaning across it with the arch smile of an habitué?—?and Will then discovered that the mixture in question consisted of a glass of Dublin stout56, well fortified57 with a thimbleful of Highland58 whisky. He also observed, what he had not at first sight noticed, that Franz Lindner’s face, somewhat redder than of old, bore evidence, perhaps, of too frequent efforts for the softening59 of the organ. Franz nodded to the barmaid.
“Here’s our meeting!” he said to Will. “Shall we step a little aside here? We can talk wisout overhearing.”
They drew aside to a round table for their unfinished gossip. “You’re not in town often, I suppose,” the Tyroler began, scanning his companion from head to foot with a critical scrutiny60.
“Why, I live here,” Will answered, taken aback?—?“in Craven Street, Strand61; I’ve always lived here.”
“Oh, indeed,” the Robbler responded, with a somewhat superior air; “I sought from your costume you’d just come up from ze country.”
Will smiled good-humouredly. He was wearing, in point of fact, a soft slouch hat and a dusty brown suit of somewhat poetical62 cut, which contrasted in more ways than one with the music-hall singer’s too elaborate parody63 of the glossy64 silk chimney-pot and regulation frock-coat of the orthodox Belgravian.
Then Franz came back at a bound to the subject he had quitted on the flags of Piccadilly. He explained, with much circumlocution65 and many needless expletives, how he had heard from time to time, through common friends at St Valentin, that Andreas Hausberger and his wife had fluctuated of late years between summer at Munich, Leipzig, Stuttgart, and winter at Milan, Florence, Naples, Venice. Linnet got on with him very well?—?oh, very well indeed?—?yes; Linnet, you know, was just the sort of girl to get on very well with pretty nearly anyone. No doubt by this time she’d settled down into tolerably amicable66 relations with Andreas Hausberger! Any children? Oh dear, no; Hausberger’d take care of that; a public singer’s time is far too valuable to be wasted on the troubles of a growing young family. Had she come out yet? Well, yes; that is to say, from time to time she’d sung at concerts in Munich, Florence, and elsewhere. Successfully? Of course; she’d a very good voice, as voices go, for her sort, and training was sure to do something at least for it. Franz had heard rumours67 she was engaged next season for San Carlo at Naples; you might count upon Hausberger’s doing his very best, now he’d invested his savings68 in preparing her for the stage, to make money out of his bargain.
Through all Franz said, however, there ran still, as of yore, one constant thread of undying hatred69 to the man who had outwitted him at Meran and St Valentin. “Then you haven’t forgiven him yet?” Will inquired at last, after one such spiteful allusion70 to Andreas’s meanness.
The Robbler’s hand moved instinctively71 of itself to his left breast pocket. He had changed his coat, but not his customs. “I carry it here still,” he answered, with the same old defiant air, just defining with finger and thumb the vague outline of the knife that bulged72 between them through the glossy broadcloth. “It’s always ready for him. Ze day I meet him?—?” and he stopped short suddenly, with a face like a bulldog’s.
“You Tyrolers have long memories,” Will answered, with a little shudder. “It’s very unfashionable you know, to stab a rival in London.”
Franz showed his handsome teeth. “Unfashionable or not,” he replied, with a shrug73, “it is so I was born; it is so I live ever. As we say in ze song, I am made zat way. I cannot help it. I never forget an injury. . . . Zough, mind you,” he continued, after a telling little pause, during which he drove many times an imaginary knife into an invisible enemy, “it isn’t so much now zat I grudge him Linnet. Let him keep his fine Frau. Zere are better girls in ze world, you and I have found out, zan Lina Telser?—?to-day Frau Hausberger. We were younger zen; we are men of ze world now; we know higher sings, I sink, zan a Zillerthal sennerin. What I feel wis him at present is not so much zat he took away ze girl, as zat he played me so mean a trick to take her.”
Will smiled to himself in silence. How strangely human feelings and ideas differ! He himself had never forgotten the beautiful alp-girl with the divine voice; in the midst of London drawing-rooms he never ceased to miss her; while Franz Lindner thought he had left Linnet far, far behind, since he became acquainted with those higher and nobler types, the music-hall stars of the London Pavilion! “There’s no accounting74 for tastes,” people say; oh, most inept75 of proverbs! surely it’s easy for anyone to account for the reasons which made Linnet appear so different now in Franz Lindner’s eyes and in her English poet’s.
But before Franz and Will parted at the Circus that afternoon, they had made mutual76 promises, for old acquaintance’s sake?—?Franz, that he would graciously accept a stall, on an off-night, at the Duke of Edinburgh’s, to see Will’s new piece, The Duchess of Modena; and Will, that he would betake himself to the London Pavilion one of these next few evenings, to hear Signor Francesco, alias77 the Frenchy, in his celebrated78 and universally encored impersonation of Mossoo Robert in Regent Street.
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收听单词发音
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1
throng
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| n.人群，群众；v.拥挤，群集 | |
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2
tunes
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| n.曲调，曲子( tune的名词复数 )v.调音( tune的第三人称单数 )；调整；（给收音机、电视等）调谐；使协调 | |
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3
hubbub
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| n.嘈杂；骚乱 | |
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din
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| n.喧闹声，嘈杂声 | |
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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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defiant
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| adj.无礼的，挑战的 | |
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7
metropolitan
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| adj.大城市的，大都会的 | |
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liar
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| n.说谎的人 | |
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pretentiousness
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| n.矫饰；炫耀；自负；狂妄 | |
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pretentious
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| adj.自命不凡的，自负的，炫耀的 | |
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11
flaring
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| a.火焰摇曳的，过份艳丽的 | |
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obtrusive
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| adj.显眼的；冒失的 | |
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adorned
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| [计]被修饰的 | |
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concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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15
solicitous
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| adj.热切的，挂念的 | |
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16
uncertainty
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| n.易变，靠不住，不确知，不确定的事物 | |
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forefinger
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| n.食指 | |
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cosmopolitan
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| adj.世界性的，全世界的，四海为家的，全球的 | |
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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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fiery
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| adj.燃烧着的，火红的；暴躁的；激烈的 | |
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21
mien
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| n.风采；态度 | |
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saucy
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| adj.无礼的；俊俏的；活泼的 | |
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23
cartridges
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| 子弹( cartridge的名词复数 )； （打印机的）墨盒； 录音带盒； （唱机的）唱头 | |
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24
alpine
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| adj.高山的；n.高山植物 | |
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snob
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| n.势利小人，自以为高雅、有学问的人 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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glamour
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| n.魔力，魅力；vt.迷住 | |
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ogle
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| v.看；送秋波；n.秋波，媚眼 | |
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chaff
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| v.取笑，嘲笑；n.谷壳 | |
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arcade
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| n.拱廊；(一侧或两侧有商店的)通道 | |
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offhand
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| adj.临时，无准备的；随便，马虎的 | |
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32
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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33
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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acquiescence
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| n.默许；顺从 | |
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tinge
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| vt.(较淡)着色于，染色；使带有…气息；n.淡淡色彩，些微的气息 | |
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36
cane
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| n.手杖，细长的茎，藤条；v.以杖击，以藤编制的 | |
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buffoons
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| n.愚蠢的人( buffoon的名词复数 )；傻瓜；逗乐小丑；滑稽的人 | |
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continental
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| adj.大陆的，大陆性的，欧洲大陆的 | |
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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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40
shudder
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| v.战粟，震动，剧烈地摇晃；n.战粟，抖动 | |
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41
tardy
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| adj.缓慢的，迟缓的 | |
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42
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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43
jauntily
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| adv.心满意足地；洋洋得意地；高兴地；活泼地 | |
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44
grudge
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| n.不满，怨恨，妒嫉；vt.勉强给，不情愿做 | |
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45
clenched
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| v.紧握，抓紧，咬紧( clench的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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46
civilisation
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| n.文明，文化，开化，教化 | |
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47
cosmopolitanism
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| n. 世界性,世界主义 | |
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48
neatly
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| adv.整洁地，干净地，灵巧地，熟练地 | |
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49
underlying
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| adj.在下面的，含蓄的，潜在的 | |
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50
rascal
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| n.流氓；不诚实的人 | |
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51
rogue
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| n.流氓；v.游手好闲 | |
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52
afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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53
scotch
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| n.伤口，刻痕；苏格兰威士忌酒；v.粉碎，消灭，阻止；adj.苏格兰(人)的 | |
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54
softens
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| （使）变软( soften的第三人称单数 )； 缓解打击； 缓和； 安慰 | |
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55
alacrity
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| n.敏捷，轻快，乐意 | |
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57
fortified
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| adj. 加强的 | |
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58
highland
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| n.(pl.)高地，山地 | |
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59
softening
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| 变软，软化 | |
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60
scrutiny
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| n.详细检查，仔细观察 | |
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61
strand
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| vt.使（船）搁浅，使（某人）困于（某地） | |
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poetical
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| adj.似诗人的；诗一般的；韵文的；富有诗意的 | |
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63
parody
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| n.打油诗文，诙谐的改编诗文，拙劣的模仿；v.拙劣模仿，作模仿诗文 | |
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64
glossy
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| adj.平滑的；有光泽的 | |
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65
circumlocution
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| n. 绕圈子的话，迂回累赘的陈述 | |
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66
amicable
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| adj.和平的，友好的；友善的 | |
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67
rumours
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| n.传闻( rumour的名词复数 )；风闻；谣言；谣传 | |
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68
savings
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| n.存款，储蓄 | |
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hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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70
allusion
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| n.暗示，间接提示 | |
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71
instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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72
bulged
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| 凸出( bulge的过去式和过去分词 )； 充满； 塞满（某物） | |
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73
shrug
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| v.耸肩(表示怀疑、冷漠、不知等) | |
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74
accounting
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| n.会计，会计学，借贷对照表 | |
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75
inept
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| adj.不恰当的，荒谬的，拙劣的 | |
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76
mutual
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| adj.相互的，彼此的；共同的，共有的 | |
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77
alias
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| n.化名；别名；adv.又名 | |
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78
celebrated
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| adj.有名的，声誉卓著的 | |
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