“What! Wanborough in Northamptonshire?” Bertram exclaimed with sudden interest. “Do you really live there?”
“I'm lord of the manor7,” General Claviger answered, with a little access of dignity. “The Clavigers or Clavigeros were a Spanish family of Andalusian origin, who settled down at Wanborough under Philip and Mary, and retained the manor, no doubt by conversion8 to the Protestant side, after the accession of Elizabeth.”
“That's interesting to me,” Bertram answered, with his frank and fearless truthfulness9, “because my people came originally from Wanborough before—well, before they emigrated.” (Philip, listening askance, pricked10 up his ears eagerly at the tell-tale phrase; after all, then, a colonist11!) “But they weren't anybody distinguished—certainly not lords of the manor,” he added hastily as the General turned a keen eye on him. “Are there any Ingledews living now in the Wanborough district? One likes, as a matter of scientific heredity, to know all one can about one's ancestors, and one's county, and one's collateral12 relatives.”
“Well, there ARE some Ingledews just now at Wanborough,” the General answered, with some natural hesitation13, surveying the tall, handsome young man from head to foot, not without a faint touch of soldierly approbation14; “but they can hardly be your relatives, however remote.... They're people in a most humble15 sphere of life. Unless, indeed—well, we know the vicissitudes16 of families—perhaps your ancestors and the Ingledews that I know drifted apart a long time ago.”
“Is he a cobbler?” Bertram inquired, without a trace of mauvaise honte.
The General nodded. “Well, yes,” he said politely, “that's exactly what he is; though, as you seemed to be asking about presumed relations, I didn't like to mention it.”
“Oh, then, he's my ancestor,” Bertram put in, quite pleased at the discovery. “That is to say,” he added after a curious pause, “my ancestor's descendant. Almost all my people, a little way back, you see, were shoe-makers or cobblers.”
He said it with dignity, exactly as he might have said they were dukes or lord chancellors17; but Philip could not help pitying him, not so much for being descended18 from so mean a lot, as for being fool enough to acknowledge it on a gentleman's lawn at Brackenhurst. Why, with manners like his, if he had not given himself away, one might easily have taken him for a descendant of the Plantagenets.
So the General seemed to think too, for he added quickly, “But you're very like the duke, and the duke's a Bertram. Is he also a relative?”
The young man coloured slightly. “Ye-es,” he answered, hesitating; “but we're not very proud of the Bertram connection. They never did much good in the world, the Bertrams. I bear the name, one may almost say by accident, because it was handed down to me by my grandfather Ingledew, who had Bertram blood, but was a vast deal a better man than any other member of the Bertram family.”
“I'll be seeing the duke on Wednesday,” the General put in, with marked politeness, “and I'll ask him, if you like, about your grandfather's relationship. Who was he exactly, and what was his connection with the present man or his predecessor19?”
“Oh, don't, please,” Bertram put in, half-pleadingly, it is true, but still with that same ineffable20 and indefinable air of a great gentleman that never for a moment deserted21 him. “The duke would never have heard of my ancestors, I'm sure, and I particularly don't want to be mixed up with the existing Bertrams in any way.”
He was happily innocent and ignorant of the natural interpretation22 the others would put upon his reticence23, after the true English manner; but still he was vaguely24 aware, from the silence that ensued for a moment after he ceased, that he must have broken once more some important taboo25, or offended once more some much-revered fetich. To get rid of the awkwardness he turned quietly to Frida. “What do you say, Mrs. Monteith,” he suggested, “to a game of tennis?”
As bad luck would have it, he had floundered from one taboo headlong into another. The Dean looked up, open-mouthed, with a sharp glance of inquiry26. Did Mrs. Monteith, then, permit such frivolities on the Sunday? “You forget what day it is, I think,” Frida interposed gently, with a look of warning.
Bertram took the hint at once. “So I did,” he answered quickly. “At home, you see, we let no man judge us of days and of weeks, and of times and of seasons. It puzzles us so much. With us, what's wrong to-day can never be right and proper to-morrow.”
“But surely,” the Dean said, bristling27 up, “some day is set apart in every civilised land for religious exercises.”
“Oh, no,” Bertram replied, falling incautiously into the trap. “We do right every day of the week alike,—and never do poojah of any sort at any time.”
“Then where do you come from?” the Dean asked severely28, pouncing29 down upon him like a hawk30. “I've always understood the very lowest savages31 have at least some outer form or shadow of religion.”
“Yes, perhaps so; but we're not savages, either low or otherwise,” Bertram answered cautiously, perceiving his error. “And as to your other point, for reasons of my own, I prefer for the present not to say where I come from. You wouldn't believe me, if I told you—as you didn't, I saw, about my remote connection with the Duke of East Anglia's family. And we're not accustomed, where I live, to be disbelieved or doubted. It's perhaps the one thing that really almost makes us lose our tempers. So, if you please, I won't go any further at present into the debatable matter of my place of origin.”
He rose to stroll off into the gardens, having spoken all the time in that peculiarly grave and dignified33 tone that seemed natural to him whenever any one tried to question him closely. Nobody save a churchman would have continued the discussion. But the Dean was a churchman, and also a Scot, and he returned to the attack, unabashed and unbaffled. “But surely, Mr. Ingledew,” he said in a persuasive34 voice, “your people, whoever they are, must at least acknowledge a creator of the universe.”
Bertram gazed at him fixedly35. His eye was stern. “My people, sir,” he said slowly, in very measured words, unaware36 that one must not argue with a clergyman, “acknowledge and investigate every reality they can find in the universe—and admit no phantoms37. They believe in everything that can be shown or proved to be natural and true; but in nothing supernatural, that is to say, imaginary or non-existent. They accept plain facts: they reject pure phantasies. How beautiful those lilies are, Mrs. Monteith! such an exquisite38 colour! Shall we go over and look at them?”
“Not just now,” Frida answered, relieved at the appearance of Martha with the tray in the distance. “Here's tea coming.” She was glad of the diversion, for she liked Bertram immensely, and she could not help noticing how hopelessly he had been floundering all that afternoon right into the very midst of what he himself would have called their taboos39 and joss-business.
But Bertram was not well out of his troubles yet. Martha brought the round tray—Oriental brass40, finely chased with flowing Arabic inscriptions—and laid it down on the dainty little rustic41 table. Then she handed about the cups. Bertram rose to help her. “Mayn't I do it for you?” he said, as politely as he would have said it to a lady in her drawing-room.
“No, thank you, sir,” Martha answered, turning red at the offer, but with the imperturbable42 solemnity of the well-trained English servant. She “knew her place,” and resented the intrusion. But Bertram had his own notions of politeness, too, which were not to be lightly set aside for local class distinctions. He could not see a pretty girl handing cups to guests without instinctively43 rising from his seat to assist her. So, very much to Martha's embarrassment45, he continued to give his help in passing the cake and the bread-and-butter. As soon as she was gone, he turned round to Philip. “That's a very pretty girl and a very nice girl,” he said simply. “I wonder, now, as you haven't a wife, you've never thought of marrying her.”
The remark fell like a thunderbolt on the assembled group. Even Frida was shocked. Your most open-minded woman begins to draw a line when you touch her class prejudices in the matter of marriage, especially with reference to her own relations. “Why, really, Mr. Ingledew,” she said, looking up at him reproachfully, “you can't mean to say you think my brother could marry the parlour-maid!”
Bertram saw at a glance he had once more unwittingly run his head against one of the dearest of these strange people's taboos; but he made no retort openly. He only reflected in silence to himself how unnatural46 and how wrong they would all think it at home that a young man of Philip's age should remain nominally47 celibate48; how horrified49 they would be at the abject50 misery51 and degradation52 such conduct on the part of half his caste must inevitably53 imply for thousands of innocent young girls of lower station, whose lives he now knew were remorselessly sacrificed in vile54 dens32 of tainted55 London to the supposed social necessity that young men of a certain class should marry late in a certain style, and “keep a wife in the way she's been accustomed to.” He remembered with a checked sigh how infinitely56 superior they would all at home have considered that wholesome57, capable, good-looking Martha to an empty-headed and useless young man like Philip; and he thought to himself how completely taboo had overlaid in these people's minds every ethical58 idea, how wholly it had obscured the prime necessities of healthy, vigorous, and moral manhood. He recollected59 the similar though less hideous60 taboos he had met with elsewhere: the castes of India, and the horrible pollution that would result from disregarding them; the vile Egyptian rule, by which the divine king, in order to keep up the so-called purity of his royal and god-descended blood, must marry his own sister, and so foully61 pollute with monstrous62 abortions63 the very stock he believed himself to be preserving intact from common or unclean influences. His mind ran back to the strange and complicated forbidden degrees of the Australian Blackfellows, who are divided into cross-classes, each of which must necessarily marry into a certain other, and into that other only, regardless of individual tastes or preferences. He remembered the profound belief of all these people that if they were to act in any other way than the one prescribed, some nameless misfortune or terrible evil would surely overtake them. Yet, nowhere, he thought to himself, had he seen any system which entailed64 in the end so much misery on both sexes, though more particularly on the women, as that system of closely tabooed marriage, founded upon a broad basis of prostitution and infanticide, which has reached its most appalling65 height of development in hypocritical and puritan England. The ghastly levity66 with which all Englishmen treated this most serious subject, and the fatal readiness with which even Frida herself seemed to acquiesce67 in the most inhuman68 slavery ever devised for women on the face of this earth, shocked and saddened Bertram's profoundly moral and sympathetic nature. He could sit there no longer to listen to their talk. He bethought him at once of the sickening sights he had seen the evening before in a London music-hall; of the corrupting69 mass of filth70 underneath71, by which alone this abomination of iniquity72 could be kept externally decent, and this vile system of false celibacy73 whitened outwardly to the eye like Oriental sepulchres: and he strolled off by himself into the shrubbery, very heavy in heart, to hide his real feelings from the priest and the soldier, whose coarser-grained minds could never have understood the enthusiasm of humanity which inspired and informed him.
Frida rose and followed him, moved by some unconscious wave of instinctive44 sympathy. The four children of this world were left together on the lawn by the rustic table, to exchange views by themselves on the extraordinary behaviour and novel demeanour of the mysterious Alien.
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1
superseding
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| 取代，接替( supersede的现在分词 ) | |
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2
superstitions
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| 迷信，迷信行为( superstition的名词复数 ) | |
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3
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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4
bleak
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| adj.(天气)阴冷的；凄凉的；暗淡的 | |
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discourse
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| n.论文，演说；谈话；话语；vi.讲述，著述 | |
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casually
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| adv.漠不关心地，无动于衷地，不负责任地 | |
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manor
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| n.庄园，领地 | |
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conversion
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| n.转化，转换，转变 | |
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truthfulness
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| n. 符合实际 | |
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10
pricked
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| 刺，扎，戳( prick的过去式和过去分词 )； 刺伤； 刺痛； 使剧痛 | |
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11
colonist
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| n.殖民者，移民 | |
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collateral
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| adj.平行的；旁系的；n.担保品 | |
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hesitation
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| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
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approbation
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| n.称赞；认可 | |
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15
humble
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| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
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16
vicissitudes
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| n.变迁，世事变化；变迁兴衰( vicissitude的名词复数 )；盛衰兴废 | |
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17
chancellors
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| 大臣( chancellor的名词复数 )； （某些美国大学的）校长； （德国或奥地利的）总理； （英国大学的）名誉校长 | |
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18
descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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predecessor
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| n.前辈，前任 | |
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ineffable
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| adj.无法表达的，不可言喻的 | |
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21
deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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22
interpretation
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| n.解释，说明，描述；艺术处理 | |
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reticence
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| n.沉默，含蓄 | |
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24
vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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taboo
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| n.禁忌，禁止接近，禁止使用；adj.禁忌的；v.禁忌，禁制，禁止 | |
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26
inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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bristling
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| a.竖立的 | |
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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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29
pouncing
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| v.突然袭击( pounce的现在分词 )；猛扑；一眼看出；抓住机会（进行抨击） | |
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30
hawk
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| n.鹰，骗子；鹰派成员 | |
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31
savages
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| 未开化的人，野蛮人( savage的名词复数 ) | |
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32
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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33
dignified
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| a.可敬的，高贵的 | |
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34
persuasive
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| adj.有说服力的，能说得使人相信的 | |
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fixedly
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| adv.固定地；不屈地，坚定不移地 | |
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unaware
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| a.不知道的，未意识到的 | |
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37
phantoms
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| n.鬼怪，幽灵( phantom的名词复数 ) | |
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38
exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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39
taboos
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| 禁忌( taboo的名词复数 )； 忌讳； 戒律； 禁忌的事物（或行为） | |
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40
brass
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| n.黄铜；黄铜器，铜管乐器 | |
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41
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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42
imperturbable
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| adj.镇静的 | |
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43
instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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44
instinctive
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| adj.(出于)本能的；直觉的；(出于)天性的 | |
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45
embarrassment
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| n.尴尬；使人为难的人(事物)；障碍；窘迫 | |
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46
unnatural
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| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
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47
nominally
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| 在名义上，表面地； 应名儿 | |
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48
celibate
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| adj.独身的，独身主义的；n.独身者 | |
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49
horrified
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| a.(表现出)恐惧的 | |
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50
abject
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| adj.极可怜的，卑屈的 | |
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51
misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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52
degradation
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| n.降级；低落；退化；陵削；降解；衰变 | |
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53
inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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54
vile
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| adj.卑鄙的，可耻的，邪恶的；坏透的 | |
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55
tainted
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| adj.腐坏的；污染的；沾污的；感染的v.使变质( taint的过去式和过去分词 )；使污染；败坏；被污染，腐坏，败坏 | |
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56
infinitely
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| adv.无限地，无穷地 | |
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57
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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58
ethical
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| adj.伦理的，道德的，合乎道德的 | |
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recollected
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| adj.冷静的；镇定的；被回忆起的；沉思默想的v.记起，想起( recollect的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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60
hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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foully
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| ad.卑鄙地 | |
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62
monstrous
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| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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63
abortions
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| n.小产( abortion的名词复数 )；小产胎儿；（计划）等中止或夭折；败育 | |
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64
entailed
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| 使…成为必要( entail的过去式和过去分词 )； 需要； 限定继承； 使必需 | |
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65
appalling
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| adj.骇人听闻的，令人震惊的，可怕的 | |
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levity
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| n.轻率，轻浮，不稳定，多变 | |
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67
acquiesce
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| vi.默许，顺从，同意 | |
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68
inhuman
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| adj.残忍的，不人道的，无人性的 | |
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69
corrupting
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| （使）败坏( corrupt的现在分词 )； （使）腐化； 引起（计算机文件等的）错误； 破坏 | |
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70
filth
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| n.肮脏，污物，污秽；淫猥 | |
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71
underneath
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| adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面 | |
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72
iniquity
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| n.邪恶；不公正 | |
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celibacy
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| n.独身(主义) | |
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