Bertha’s he did not intend to go to if he could help it. A couple of hours at tea-time was what he had instituted as his day’s “amount” of her company. Kreisler’s room would be better. This he did. There was a light in Kreisler’s room. The window had been pointed3 out to him. This perhaps was sufficient, Tarr felt. He might now go home, having located[231] him. Still, since he was there he would go up and make sure. He lighted his way up the staircase with matches. Arrived at the top floor he was uncertain at which door to knock. He chose one with a light beneath it and knocked.
In a moment some one called out “Who is it?” Recognizing the voice Tarr answered, and the door opened slowly. Kreisler was standing4 there in his shirt-sleeves, glasses on, and a brush in his hand.
“Ah, come in,” he said.
Tarr sat down, and Kreisler went on brushing his hair. When he had finished he put the brush down quickly, turned round, and pointing to the floor said, in a voice suggesting that that was the first of several questions:
“Why have you come here?”
Tarr at once saw that he had gone a step too far, and either shown bad calculation or chanced on his rival at an unfortunate time. It was felt, no doubt, that—acting more or less as “keeper,” or check, at any rate—he had come to look after his charge, and hear why Kreisler had absented himself from the café.
“Why have you come, here?” Kreisler asked again, in an even tone, pointing again with his forefinger5 to the centre of the floor.
“Only to see you, of course. I thought perhaps you weren’t well.”
“Ah, so! I want you, my dear English friend, now that you are here, to explain yourself a little. Why do you honour me with so much of your company?”
“Is my company disagreeable to you?”
“I wish to know, sir, why I have so much of it!” The Deutscher-student was coming to the top. His voice had risen and the wind of his breath appeared to be making his moustaches whistle.
“I, of course, have reasons, besides the charm of your society, for seeking you out.”
Tarr was sitting stretched on one of Kreisler’s two chairs looking up frowningly. He was annoyed at having let himself in for this interview. Kreisler stood in front of him without any expression in[232] particular, his voice rather less guttural than usual. Tarr felt ill at ease at this sudden breath of storm and kept still with difficulty.
“You have reasons? You have reasons! Heavens! Outside! Quick! Out!”
There was no doubt this time that it was in earnest. He was intended rapidly to depart. Kreisler was pointing to the door. His cold grin was slightly on his face again, and an appearance of his hair having receded6 on his forehead and his ears gone close against his head warned Tarr definitely where he was. He got up. The absurdity7 in the situation he had got himself into chiefly worried him. He stood a moment in a discouraged way, as though trying to remember something. His desire for a row had vanished with the arrival of it. It had come at such an angle that it was difficult to say anything, and he had a superstition8 of the vanity about the marks left by hands, or rather his hands.
“Will you tell me what on earth’s the matter with you to-night?” he asked.
“Yes! I don’t want to be followed about by an underhand swine like you any longer! By what devil’s impudence9 did you come here to-night? For a week I’ve had you in the café. What did you want with me? If you wanted your girl back, why hadn’t you the courage to say so? I saw you with another lady to-night. I’m not going to have you hovering10 and slavering around me. Be careful I don’t come and pull your nose when I see you with that other lady! You’re welcome, besides, to your girl?”
“I recommend you to hold your mouth! Don’t talk about my girl. I’ve had enough of it. Where her sense was when she alighted on a specimen11 like you—” Tarr’s German hesitated and suddenly struck, as though for the rest of the night. He had stepped forward with a suggestion of readiness for drama:
“Heraus, schwein!” shouted Kreisler, in a sort of incredulous drawling crescendo12, shooting his hand[233] towards the door and urging his body like the cox of a boat. Like a sheep-dog he appeared to be collecting Tarr together and urging him out.
Tarr stood staring doubtfully at him.
“What?”
“Heraus! Out! Quicker! Quicker!! Quick!”
His last word, “Schnell!” dropped like a plummet13 to the deepest tone his throat was capable of. It was short and so absolutely final that the grace given, even after it had been uttered, for this hateful visitor to remove himself, was a source of astonishment14 to Tarr. For a man to be ordered out of a room that does not belong to him always puts him at a disadvantage. Should he insist, forcibly and successfully, to remain, it can only be for a limited time. He will have to go sooner or later, and make his exit, unless he establish himself there and make it his home henceforth; a change of lodging16 most people are not, on the spur of the moment, prepared to decide on. The room, somehow, too, seems on its owner’s side, and to be vomiting17 forth15 the intruder. The civilized18 man’s instinct of ownership makes it impossible for any but the most indelicate to resist a feeling of hesitation19 before the idea of resistance in another man’s shell! All Tarr’s attitude to this man had been made up of a sort of comic hypocrisy20. Neither comedy nor hypocrisy were usable for the moment.
Had Tarr foreseen this possible termination of his r?le of “obstacle?” And ought he, he would ask himself, to have gone on with this half-farce if he were not prepared to meet the ultimate consequences? Kreisler was quite unworthy to stand there, with perfect reason, and to be telling him to “get out.” It was absurd to exalt21 Kreisler in that way! But Tarr had probably counted on being equal to any emergency, and baffling or turning Kreisler’s violence in some genial22 manner.
He stood for a few seconds in a tumultuous hesitation, when he saw Kreisler run across the room, bend forward and dive his arm down behind his box. He[234] watched with uncomfortable curiosity this new move, as one might watch a surgeon’s haste at the crisis of an operation, searching for some necessary implement23, mislaid for the moment. He felt schoolboy-like, left waiting there at Kreisler’s disposition24. It was as a reaction against this unpleasant feeling that he stepped towards the door. The wish not to “obey” or to seem to turn tail either had alone kept him where he was. He had just found the door when Kreisler, with a bound, was back from his box, flourishing an old dog-whip in his hand.
“Ah, you go? Look at this!” He cracked the whip once or twice. “This is what I keep for hounds like you!” Crack! He cracked it again in rather an inexperienced way with a certain difficulty. He frowned and stopped in his discourse25, as though it had been some invention he were showing off, that would not quite work at the proper moment, necessitating26 concentration.
“If you wish to see me again, you can always find me here. You won’t get off so easily next time!” He cracked the whip smartly and then slammed the door.
Tarr could imagine him throwing it down in a corner of the room, and then going on with his undressing.
When Kreisler had jumped to the doorway27 Tarr had stepped out with a half-defensive, half-threatening gesture and then gone on with strained slowness, lighting28 a match at the head of the stairs. He felt like a discomfited29 pub-loafer as he raised the match to an imaginary clay pipe rising in his mind. There was the ostentatious coolness of the music-hall comedian30.
The thing that had chiefly struck him in Kreisler under this new aspect was a kind of nimbleness, a pettiness in his behaviour and movements, where perhaps he had expected more stiffness and heroics; the clown-like gibing31 form his anger took, a frigid32 disagreeable slyness and irony33, a juvenile34 quickness and coldness.
Tarr was extremely dissatisfied with the part he had played in this scene. First of all he felt he had withdrawn[235] too quickly at the appearance of the whip, although he had in fact got under way before it had appeared. Then, he argued, he should have stopped at the appearance of this instrument of disgrace. To stop and fight with Kreisler, what objection was there to that, he asked himself? A taking Kreisler too seriously? But what less serious than fighting? He had saved himself an unpleasantness, something ridiculous, merely to find himself outside Kreisler’s door, a feeling of primitive35 dissatisfaction in him. Had he definitely been guilty of a lack of pluck or pride, it would have been better.
There was something mean and improper36 in all this that he could not reason away or mistake. He had undoubtedly37 insulted this man by his attitude, s’en était fiche de lui; and when the other turned, whip in hand, he had walked away. What really should he have done? He should, no doubt, he thought, having humorously instituted himself Kreisler’s keeper, have humorously struggled with him, when the idiot became obstreperous38. At that point his humour had stopped. Then his humour had limitations?
Once and for all and certainly: he had no right to treat a man as he had treated Kreisler and yet claim, when he turned and resented this treatment, immunity39 from action on the score of Kreisler’s idiocy40. In allowing the physical struggle any importance he allowed Kreisler an importance, too, that made his former treatment of him unreal and unjustified. In Kreisler’s eyes he was a blagueur, without resistance at a pinch, who walks away when turned on. This opinion was of no importance, since he had not a shadow of respect for Kreisler. Again he turned on himself. If he was so weak-minded as to care what trash like Kreisler thought or felt! He wandered in the direction of the Café de l’Aigle, gripped in this ratiocination41.
His unreadiness, his dislike for action, his fear of ridicule42, he treated severely43 in turn. He thought of everything he could against himself. And he laughed[236] at himself. But it was no good. At last he gave way to the urgency of his vanity and determined44 not to leave the matter where it was. At once plans for retrieving45 this discomfort46 came crowding on him. He would go to the café as usual on the following evening, sit down smilingly at Kreisler’s table as though nothing had happened. In short, he would altogether endorse47 the opinion that Kreisler had formed of him. And yet why this meanness, even assumed, Tarr asked himself, even while arranging realistically his to-morrow evening’s purification? Always in a contemptuous spirit, some belittlement48 or unsavoury r?le was suggesting itself. His contempt for everybody degraded him.
Still, for a final occasion and since he was going this time to accept any consequences, he would follow his idea. He would be, to Kreisler’s mind for a little, the strange “slaverer and hoverer” who had been kicked out on the previous night. He would even have to “pile it on thick” to be accepted at all, exaggerate in the direction of Kreisler’s unflattering notion of him. Then he would gradually aggravate49 Kreisler, and with the same bonhomie attack him with resolution. He laughed as he came to this point, as a sensible old man might laugh at himself on arriving at a similar decision.
Soothed50 by the prospect51 of this rectification52 of the evening’s blunder, Tarr once more turned to reflect on it, and saw more clearly than ever the parallel morals of his Bertha affair and his Kreisler affair. His sardonic53 dream of life got him, as a sort of Quixotic dreamer of inverse54 illusions, blows from the swift arms of windmills and attacks from indignant and perplexed55 mankind. He, instead of having conceived the world as more chivalrous56 and marvellous than it was, had conceived it as emptied of all dignity, sense, and generousness. The drovers and publicans were angry at not being mistaken for legendary57 chivalry58 or chatelaines. The very windmills resented not being taken for giants! The curse of humour was in him, anchoring him at one end of the[237] see-saw whose movement and contradiction was life.
Reminded of Bertha, he did not, however, hold her responsible. But his protectorate would be wound up. Acquaintance with Anastasya would be left where it was, despite the threatened aggression59 against his nose.
点击
收听单词发音
收听单词发音 |
1
eluded
|
|
| v.（尤指机敏地）避开( elude的过去式和过去分词 )；逃避；躲避；使达不到 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
sluggish
|
|
| adj.懒惰的，迟钝的，无精打采的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
pointed
|
|
| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
standing
|
|
| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
forefinger
|
|
| n.食指 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
receded
|
|
| v.逐渐远离( recede的过去式和过去分词 )；向后倾斜；自原处后退或避开别人的注视；尤指问题 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
absurdity
|
|
| n.荒谬，愚蠢；谬论 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
superstition
|
|
| n.迷信，迷信行为 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
impudence
|
|
| n.厚颜无耻；冒失；无礼 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
hovering
|
|
| 鸟( hover的现在分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
specimen
|
|
| n.样本，标本 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
crescendo
|
|
| n.(音乐)渐强，高潮 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
plummet
|
|
| vi.(价格、水平等)骤然下跌；n.铅坠；重压物 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
astonishment
|
|
| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
forth
|
|
| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
lodging
|
|
| n.寄宿，住所；(大学生的)校外宿舍 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
vomiting
|
|
| 吐 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
civilized
|
|
| a.有教养的，文雅的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
hesitation
|
|
| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
hypocrisy
|
|
| n.伪善，虚伪 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
exalt
|
|
| v.赞扬，歌颂，晋升，提升 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
genial
|
|
| adj.亲切的，和蔼的，愉快的，脾气好的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
implement
|
|
| n.(pl.)工具，器具；vt.实行，实施，执行 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
disposition
|
|
| n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
25
discourse
|
|
| n.论文，演说；谈话；话语；vi.讲述，著述 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
26
necessitating
|
|
| 使…成为必要，需要( necessitate的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
27
doorway
|
|
| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
28
lighting
|
|
| n.照明，光线的明暗，舞台灯光 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
29
discomfited
|
|
| v.使为难( discomfit的过去式和过去分词)；使狼狈；使挫折；挫败 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
30
comedian
|
|
| n.喜剧演员；滑稽演员 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
31
gibing
|
|
| adj.讥刺的，嘲弄的v.嘲笑，嘲弄( gibe的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
|
32
frigid
|
|
| adj.寒冷的，凛冽的；冷淡的；拘禁的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
33
irony
|
|
| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
34
juvenile
|
|
| n.青少年，少年读物；adj.青少年的，幼稚的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
35
primitive
|
|
| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
36
improper
|
|
| adj.不适当的，不合适的，不正确的，不合礼仪的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
37
undoubtedly
|
|
| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
38
obstreperous
|
|
| adj.喧闹的，不守秩序的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
39
immunity
|
|
| n.优惠；免除；豁免，豁免权 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
40
idiocy
|
|
| n.愚蠢 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
41
ratiocination
|
|
| n.推理；推断 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
42
ridicule
|
|
| v.讥讽，挖苦；n.嘲弄 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
43
severely
|
|
| adv.严格地；严厉地；非常恶劣地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
44
determined
|
|
| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
45
retrieving
|
|
| n.检索（过程），取还v.取回( retrieve的现在分词 )；恢复；寻回；检索（储存的信息） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
46
discomfort
|
|
| n.不舒服，不安，难过，困难，不方便 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
47
endorse
|
|
| vt.(支票、汇票等)背书，背署；批注；同意 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
48
belittlement
|
|
| 轻视 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
49
aggravate
|
|
| vt.加重(剧)，使恶化；激怒，使恼火 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
50
soothed
|
|
| v.安慰( soothe的过去式和过去分词 )；抚慰；使舒服；减轻痛苦 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
51
prospect
|
|
| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
52
rectification
|
|
| n. 改正, 改订, 矫正 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
53
sardonic
|
|
| adj.嘲笑的，冷笑的，讥讽的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
54
inverse
|
|
| adj.相反的，倒转的，反转的；n.相反之物；v.倒转 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
55
perplexed
|
|
| adj.不知所措的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
56
chivalrous
|
|
| adj.武士精神的；对女人彬彬有礼的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
57
legendary
|
|
| adj.传奇（中）的，闻名遐迩的；n.传奇（文学） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
58
chivalry
|
|
| n.骑士气概，侠义；（男人）对女人彬彬有礼，献殷勤 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
59
aggression
|
|
| n.进攻，侵略，侵犯，侵害 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |