The social and economical heresies11, of course, were partly due to Ernest Le Breton’s insidious12 influence. At the same time that Berkeley was engaged in partially13 converting Ernest, Ernest was engaged in the counter process of partially converting Berkeley. To say the truth, the conversion14 was not a very difficult matter to effect; the neophyte15 had in him implicitly16 already the chief saving doctrines17 of the socialistic faith, or, if one must put it conversely, the germs of the disease were constitutionally implanted in his system, and only needed a little external encouragement to bring the poison out fully18 in the most virulent19 form of the complaint. The great point of ‘The Duke of Bermondsey’ consisted in the ridiculous contrast it exhibited between the wealth, dignity, and self-importance of the duke himself, and the squalid, miserable20, shrinking poverty of the East-end purlieus from which he drew his enormous revenues. Ernest knew a little about the East-end from practical experience; he had gone there often with Ronald, on his rounds of mercy, and had seen with his own eyes those dens21 of misery22 which most people have only heard or read about. It was Ernest who had suggested this light satirical treatment of the great social problem, whose more serious side he himself had learnt to look at in Max Schurz’s revolutionary salon23; and it was to Ernest that Arthur Berkeley owed the first hint of that famous scene where the young Countess of Coalbrookdale converses24 familiarly on the natural beauties of healthful labour with the chorus of intelligent colliery hands, in the most realistic of grimy costumes, from her father’s estates in Staffordshire. The stalls hardly knew whether to laugh or frown when the intelligent colliers respectfully invited the countess, in her best Ascot flounces and furbelows, to enjoy the lauded25 delights of healthful mine labour in propria persona: but they quite recovered their good humour when the band of theatrical26 buccaneers, got up by the duke in Spanish costumes, with intent to deceive his lawless tenants27 in the East-end, came unexpectedly face to face with the genuine buccaneers of the Isle of Dogs, clothed in real costermonger caps and second-hand28 pilot-jackets of the marine-storedealers’ fashionable pattern. It was all only the ridiculous incongruity29 of our actual society represented in the very faintest shades of caricature upon the stage; but it made the incongruities30 more incongruous still to see them crowded together so closely in a single concentrated tableau31. Unthinking people laughed uproariously at the fun and nonsense of the piece; thinking people laughed too, but not without an uncomfortable side twinge of conscientious32 remorse33 at the pity of it all. Some wise heads even observed with a shrug34 that when this sort of thing was applauded upon the stage, the fine old institutions of England were getting into dangerous contact with these pernicious continental35 socialistic theories. And no doubt those good people were really wise in their generation. ‘When Figaro came,’ Arthur Berkeley said himself to Ernest, ‘the French revolution wasn’t many paces behind on the track of the ages.’
‘Better even than the Primate, Mr. Berkeley,’ said Hilda Tregellis, as she met him in a London drawing-room a few days later. ‘What a delightful36 scene, that of the Countess of Coalbrookdale! You’re doing real good, I do believe, by making people think about these things more seriously, you know. As poor dear Mr. Le Breton would have said, you’ve got an ethical37 purpose—isn’t that the word?—underlying even your comic operas. By the way, do you ever see the Le Bretons now? Poor souls, I hear they’re doing very badly. The elder brother, Herbert Le Breton—horrid38 wretch39!—he’s here to-night; going to marry that pretty Miss Faucit, they say; daughter of old Mr. Faucit, the candle-maker—no, not candles, soap I think it is—but it doesn’t matter twopence nowadays, does it? Well, as I was saying, you’re doing a great deal of good with characters like this Countess of Coalbrookdale. We want more mixture of classes, don’t we? more free intercourse40 between them; more familiarity of every sort. For my part, now, I should really very much like to know more of the inner life of the working classes.’ ‘If only he’d ask me to go to lunch,’ she thought, ‘with his dear old father, the superannuated41 shoemaker! so very romantic, really!’
But Arthur only smiled a sphinx-like smile, and answered lightly, ‘You would probably object to their treatment of you as much as the countess objected to the uupleasant griminess of the too-realistic coal galleries. Suppose you were to fall into the hands of a logical old radical42 workman, for example, who tore you to pieces, mentally speaking, with a shake or two of his big teeth, and calmly informed you that in his opinion you were nothing more than a very empty-headed, pretentious43, ignorant young woman—perhaps even, after the plain-spoken vocabulary of hie kind, a regular downright minx and hussey?’
‘Charming,’ Lady Hilda answered, with perfect candour; ‘so very different from the senseless adulation of all the Hughs, and Guys, and Berties! What I do love in talking to clever men, Mr. Berkeley, is their delicious frankness and transparency. If they think one a fool, they tell one so plainly, or at least they let one see it without any reserve. Now that, you know, is really such a very delightful trait in clever people’s characters!’
‘I don’t know how you can have had the opportunity of judging, Lady Hilda,’ Arthur answered, looking at her handsome open face with a momentary45 glance of passing admiration—Hilda Tregellis was improving visibly as she matured—‘for no one can possibly ever have thought anything of the sort with you, I’m certain: and that I can say quite candidly46, without the slightest tinge47 of flattery or adulation.’
‘What! YOU don’t think me a fool, Mr. Berkeley,’ cried Lady Hilda, delighted even with that very negative bit of favourable48 appreciation49. ‘Now, that I call a real compliment, I assure you, because I know you clever people pitch your standard of intelligence so very, very high! You consider everybody fools, I’m sure, except the few people who are almost as clever as you yourselves are. However, to return to the countess: I do think there ought to be more mixture of classes in England, and somebody told me’—this was a violent effort to be literary on Hilda’s part, by way of rising to the height of the occasion—‘somebody told me that Mr. Matthew Arnold, who’s so dreadfully satirical, and cultivated, and so forth50, thinks exactly the same thing, you know. Why shouldn’t the Countess of Coalbrookdale have really married the foreman of the colliers? I daresay she’d have been a great deal happier with a kind-hearted sensible man like him than with that lumbering51, hunting, pheasant-shooting, horse-racing lout52 of a Lord Coalbrookdale, who would go to Norway on a fishing tour without her—now wouldn’t she?’
‘Very probably,’ Berkeley answered: ‘but in these matters we don’t regard happiness only,—that, you see, would be mere53 base, vulgar, commonplace utilitarianism:—we regard much more that grand impersonal54 overruling entity55, that unseen code of social morals, which we commonly call the CONVENANCES. Proper people don’t take happiness into consideration at all, comparatively: they act religiously after the fashion that the CONVENANCES impose upon them.’
‘Ah, but why, Mr. Berkeley,’ Lady Hilda said, vehemently56, ‘why should the whole world always take it for granted that because a girl happens to be born the daughter of people whose name’s in the peerage, she must necessarily be the slave of the proprieties57, devoid58 of all higher or better instincts? Why should they take it for granted that she’s destitute59 of any appreciation for any kind of greatness except the kind that’s represented by a million and a quarter in the three per cents., or a great-great-grandfather who fought at the battle of Naseby? Why mayn’t she have a spark of originality60? Why mayn’t she be as much attracted by literature, by science, by art, by... by... by beautiful music, as, say, the daughter of a lawyer, a doctor, or, or, or a country shopkeeper? What I want to know is just this, Mr. Berkeley: if people don’t believe in distinctions of birth, why on earth should they suppose that Lady Mary, or Lady Betty, or Lady Winifred, must necessarily be more banale and vulgar-minded, and common-place than plain Miss Jones, or Miss Brown, or Miss Robinson? You admit that these other girls may possibly care for higher subjects: then why on earth shouldn’t we, can you tell me?’
‘Certainly,’ Arthur Berkeley answered, looking down into Lady Hilda’s beautiful eyes after a dreamy fashion, ‘certainly there’s no inherent reason why one person shouldn’t have just as high tastes by nature as another. Everything depends, I suppose, upon inherited qualities, variously mixed, and afterwards modified by society and education.—It’s very hot here, to-night, Lady Hilda, isn’t it?’
‘Very,’ Lady Hilda echoed, taking his arm as she spoke44. ‘Shall we go into the conservatory61?’
‘I was just going to propose it myself,’ Berkeley said, with a faint tremor62 thrilling in his voice. She was a very beautiful woman, certainly, and her unfeigned appreciation of his plays and his music was undeniably very flattering to him.
‘Unless I bring him fairly to book this evening,’ Hilda thought to herself as she swept with him gracefully63 into the conservatory, ‘I shall have to fall back upon the red-haired hurlyburlying Scotch64 professor, after all—if I don’t want to end by getting into the clutches of one of those horrid Monties or Algies!’
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1
primate
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| n.灵长类（目）动物，首席主教；adj.首要的 | |
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ambiguities
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| n.歧义( ambiguity的名词复数 )；意义不明确；模棱两可的意思；模棱两可的话 | |
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3
isle
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| n.小岛，岛 | |
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exultation
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| n.狂喜，得意 | |
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criticise
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| v.批评，评论；非难 | |
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severely
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| adv.严格地；严厉地；非常恶劣地 | |
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murmur
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| n.低语，低声的怨言；v.低语，低声而言 | |
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8
permanently
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| adv.永恒地，永久地，固定不变地 | |
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bias
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| n.偏见，偏心，偏袒；vt.使有偏见 | |
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heresy
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| n.异端邪说；异教 | |
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heresies
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| n.异端邪说，异教( heresy的名词复数 ) | |
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12
insidious
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| adj.阴险的，隐匿的，暗中为害的，（疾病）不知不觉之间加剧 | |
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13
partially
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| adv.部分地，从某些方面讲 | |
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conversion
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| n.转化，转换，转变 | |
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neophyte
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| n.新信徒；开始者 | |
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16
implicitly
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| adv. 含蓄地, 暗中地, 毫不保留地 | |
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17
doctrines
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| n.教条( doctrine的名词复数 )；教义；学说；（政府政策的）正式声明 | |
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18
fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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virulent
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| adj.有毒的，有恶意的，充满敌意的 | |
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miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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21
dens
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| n.牙齿，齿状部分；兽窝( den的名词复数 )；窝点；休息室；书斋 | |
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22
misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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23
salon
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| n.[法]沙龙；客厅；营业性的高级服务室 | |
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converses
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| v.交谈，谈话( converse的第三人称单数 ) | |
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lauded
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| v.称赞，赞美( laud的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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theatrical
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| adj.剧场的，演戏的；做戏似的，做作的 | |
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tenants
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| n.房客( tenant的名词复数 )；佃户；占用者；占有者 | |
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28
second-hand
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| adj.用过的，旧的，二手的 | |
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incongruity
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| n.不协调，不一致 | |
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incongruities
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| n.不协调( incongruity的名词复数 )；不一致；不适合；不协调的东西 | |
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31
tableau
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| n.画面，活人画（舞台上活人扮的静态画面） | |
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32
conscientious
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| adj.审慎正直的，认真的，本着良心的 | |
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remorse
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| n.痛恨，悔恨，自责 | |
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shrug
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| v.耸肩(表示怀疑、冷漠、不知等) | |
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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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delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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ethical
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| adj.伦理的，道德的，合乎道德的 | |
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38
horrid
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| adj.可怕的；令人惊恐的；恐怖的；极讨厌的 | |
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39
wretch
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| n.可怜的人，不幸的人；卑鄙的人 | |
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40
intercourse
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| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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41
superannuated
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| adj.老朽的，退休的；v.因落后于时代而废除，勒令退学 | |
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42
radical
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| n.激进份子，原子团，根号；adj.根本的，激进的，彻底的 | |
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43
pretentious
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| adj.自命不凡的，自负的，炫耀的 | |
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44
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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45
momentary
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| adj.片刻的，瞬息的；短暂的 | |
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46
candidly
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| adv.坦率地，直率而诚恳地 | |
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47
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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48
favourable
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| adj.赞成的，称赞的，有利的，良好的，顺利的 | |
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49
appreciation
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| n.评价；欣赏；感谢；领会，理解；价格上涨 | |
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50
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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51
lumbering
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| n.采伐林木 | |
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52
lout
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| n.粗鄙的人；举止粗鲁的人 | |
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53
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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54
impersonal
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| adj.无个人感情的，与个人无关的，非人称的 | |
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55
entity
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| n.实体，独立存在体，实际存在物 | |
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56
vehemently
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| adv. 热烈地 | |
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57
proprieties
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| n.礼仪，礼节；礼貌( propriety的名词复数 )；规矩；正当；合适 | |
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58
devoid
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| adj.全无的，缺乏的 | |
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59
destitute
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| adj.缺乏的；穷困的 | |
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60
originality
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| n.创造力，独创性；新颖 | |
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61
conservatory
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| n.温室，音乐学院；adj.保存性的，有保存力的 | |
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62
tremor
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| n.震动，颤动，战栗，兴奋，地震 | |
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63
gracefully
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| ad.大大方方地；优美地 | |
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64
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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