When a wild rose tries to become a hothouse variety there is certain, some time during the transition, to be a bad scratching of thorns which was all that ailed8 Thurley.
In the morning Bliss9 Hobart dropped in to see her and Thurley brightened so visibly that the nurse left the room, grinning superciliously10.
“Bother opera things,” Bliss said. “I’m really glad you fainted yesterday; you fainted enough for me, too, didn’t you? I was just considering getting up on top of Grant’s Tomb and dancing a Highland11 fling—masculine form of nerve fag.... I say, Thurley, do you know you’re coming with me to my hermitage? I’m leaving[360] to-night and we’re to bully12 Miss Clergy into being chaperone.” Here they both laughed at each other like children and the pellets almost lost the sugar coating in wrath13 at the small part they played in curing this wild rose person! “Oh, yes, you are coming. I was just leaving for Blessed Memory myself when they told me you were ill. A month there will set you right.”
“You mean the place you disappear to—”
“And Lissa hints of a harem, a dope den14, a gambling15 lair16 and what not? Yes, ma’am, Blessed Memory is its name. You’ll be there this time to-morrow. Remember, rouge17 boxes and high heels not admitted.”
He left her to thank her kind fortune she had had sense enough to faint and bruise18 herself slightly. Why, oh, why, had she never thought of doing so beforehand? She was humming as she waited for her maid to come and get a steamer trunk.... Miss Clergy watched from the corner of the doorway unawares. But what she thought she kept to herself.
Blessed Memory, buried in the wildest part of Maine, with the nearest post office entirely19 unpronounceable, proved to be an advance sample of paradise. Being perfect there was nothing complex about it—and very little to tell concerning it. Time flew, the hours tumbling over themselves like babies at play. It was exactly like the thirsty traveller coming upon the ice-cold mountain spring and drinking his fill with no comment but the satisfied and grateful, “A-a-h, man alive!” So it was with Thurley.
It seemed that Hobart had come into the wilderness20 prepared to prove that he could make it habitable, as he told her. After he had built a shack21, found his food and water, lived by himself for weeks at a time to experiment with bark, twigs22 and logs—learning the call of wood[361] beasties and forgetting the cries of men—he permitted himself a few extravagances in the way of tools and furnishings until Blessed Memory, as he called the small, silvery shingled23 house set in a sand dune24 like a great moonstone in palest gold, came to be a reputable habitation where he took refuge each year, “living,” he said, in order that he might “exist the rest of the time.”
Miss Clergy was ill at ease in her nunlike25 bedroom without ornament26 and scant27 of furnishings. But she found thought for reflection in watching Thurley and Bliss as they went off to try for fresh fish. Her queer, bright eyes would blink rapidly as if a succession of unpleasing thoughts had attacked her conscience and she refused to give way to them. When they would return and hallo for her to answer, she would usually take refuge in the plea of eternal neuralgia and leave them to their own ways for the remainder of the day!
The rooms contained old-style braided rugs and a spinning wheel which, to Hobart’s delight, Thurley knew how to use, thanks to Betsey Pilrig, old blue china and pewter, a square piano on which Hobart played jingling28 tunes29 while Thurley sang them as gloriously as when she played missionary with Philena. The beds were mahogany, so was the fire settle, and there was an outdoor Dutch oven which her host insisted on using, a pump and a well and a tiny barn where his wheezy little automobile30 rested when it was not chasing up and down country roads in search of supplies.
He had no real neighbors nor did he wish for them. He had bought enough acres on all sides of Blessed Memory to secure him freedom from molestation31. He wanted to feel, so he explained, that even lavender and black velvety32 butterflies, great, golden bees and humming-birds might come and go at will.
[362]
There were no books or even writing materials in the house. “When I have to go in to town for supplies, I get my extremely urgent mail and reply to it while at the post office,” he explained. “But I wish nothing inky about the hermitage.”
Thurley, who had first viewed the little house and the wild surroundings with dismay as to what she would ever do with herself, fell to work within a few days and became a busy Martha engrossed33 with house and outdoor work, plying34 the axe35 while Hobart was away, replanting flower beds, picking berries, climbing trees to sit astride some sturdy limb and dream of nothing, actually to forget language, as it were, entering the realm of delicious thought, rejoicing in merely singing sounds as did the birds, instead of clumsy words needing to be phrased and accented.
“I never knew any one could be so busy in such a wilderness,” she told Hobart one late afternoon when they had tramped clear to the sea-coast and sat resting before they journeyed homeward with the aid of barn lanterns.
“Because you and I and other creatures who live by their wits most of the time and have the tasks of physical existence performed for them, need to remember that one can almost see and feel the truth of eternity36 ... the eternal seasons, Thurley, the ever-dying, ever-reviving blossoms, the migration37 of the birds, the continual progress and continual decay of all forms of life—that is what makes us really seem so busy. Because most of the time we are nibbling38 at a fragment of this supreme39 truth, boxed up in a steam-heated apartment with a man and a maid and an engagement tablet to be our aids, we sing some silly opera and return to the apartment convinced we are quite indispensable to mankind. We need to come[363] to such a place as this and humbly40 realize eternity. That is why I named the little house Blessed Memory, because I carry the thought with me when I lock the door for the long, white winter.”
Thurley was silent, the most sympathetic answer she could have made. She was mentally quoting,
“Bright hollows of billowy foam”
—as suitable for the scene.
It was a quiet sea haven42 they had found. Bliss had tramped there many times, he told her. Around them were wet sea wrack43 and pungent44 bog45 myrtle, tall protruding46 cliffs with the green grass clinging to them and dusky birds incessantly47 slipping about. The sea itself was a shadowy, gray wilderness broken with rosy48 trails which led to darkish mystery. In the sky a star trembled.
“Tell me more,” she demanded childishly.
“What about? I must seem as bad as a complete reading course shipped on without warning,” he began, playing with pebbles49, “but do you know what I was thinking, Thurley? That the art vanguard are certain to succeed, that this time of strife50 should not be for merely freedom of seas and colony disputes—it is the time of discord51 in which all matters shall have their hearing. And then, one sees absurd glimpses now and then that make one want to shout for joy—”
“What?
“Oh, a life insurance agent with a well worn copy of Keats in his inner pocket or the apparently52 frivolous53 hairdresser who reads Ruskin’s essays with the girl who sells fountain pens during lunch hour—or a very famous prima donna who finally admits that the shadow can never be the substance and that works without faith are dead, too!”
[364]
Thurley was thinking in disconnected fashion. “Tell me, will the war level class as well, so that it will result in there being no very rich or no poor?”
He shook his head. “We must always have wealth demonstrate herself with freedom; we must always have class. Let each man be what he was best intended; we cannot have one class, one rule, one creed54 any more than one dimension. The Cause who made such eternal contrasts as the snowbound north and orchid-decorated tropics, the sagebrush desert and the French vineyards—has the example not been set us for all time? There must be wealth and its opposite poverty and the sunny, useful medium running between the two and understanding each alike. Remember, player and worker are like the wings of a bird, equal and necessary. Class must exist the same as vicarious atonement—the mother bearing the child, soldiers fighting for stay-at-homes. The ancient but sometimes forgotten or denied unity55 of the race is the belief in immortality56.”
It was dark; the sea with the white rocks rising out of the water here and there gave the effect of the black and white cathedral front at Siena. Hobart lit their lanterns and urged a homeward journey.
“I don’t want to go,” Thurley begged. “Tell me more—”
“Yet you try to make me think you do not believe my vision,” he said, “that you will not be like the soldier in the old song, who did not halt but ‘he gave the bridle-reins another shake.’”
“Tell me why artists have different lives from the world in general,” she retorted.
“There are some isolated57, superb but lonely souls whose work robs them of human ties and leaves them chaste58 yet wistful. True, again, on the firm yet terrible[365] foundation of expiated59 sins is genius often laid—the splendid blossom of the tree of experience. The greatest leaders have often, to their enemies’ delight, pleaded guilty to a youth of folly60, small faults, petty actions—and yet there has come an awakening61 and with the handicap of the past as a ballast, they forge on to the heights. I sometimes think handicaps are as necessary for an artist as ballast for a balloon. Without them we would sail upwards62 beyond ordinary comprehension and the whole purpose would be of no avail. Let us stay sufficiently63 earthbound to insure usefulness and proper responsibility.... Come, Thurley, even if the poets say the children of dark and the children of light tread the same pathway, our lanterns may fail us and we would have to scramble64 to find the house.” He helped her up.
“You mean, too,” she said, not content to stop the argument, “that artists should set the example—as well as prescribe one—”
“Those who are not sufficiently developed to perceive the higher cosmic laws must have man-made laws to teach the first great principle—which is to obey. Obedience65 either forced or voluntary is the first requisite66 in moulding character. Those of us who can glimpse the higher laws must also keep annoying man-made ones to help those less developed by our example.”
Thurley began picking her way along the beach, singing softly:
If all the seas were one sea—what a great sea it would be!
If all the trees were one tree—what a great tree it would be!
If all the axes were one axe—what a great axe that would be!
And if all the men were one man—what a great man Bliss would be!
Three weeks later when Hobart drove Thurley into[366] the nearest station, he asked almost timidly if she felt it had been worth while.
“So worth while,” she said, “it showed me what I must not do.”
Miss Clergy gave a sigh of relief as she was settled on the local train running down to the main line.
“You look like a little girl again,” she told Thurley. “I’m sure it was very kind of him.... Did you ever fancy he might fall in love with you? Imagine how distressing67 it would be for him—knowing your position!”
Thurley resigned herself to the inevitable68, and as they jolted69 onward70 she thought of how very great and how very small was love and that from atom to apostle the personal equation would come blundering in on one’s most sacred thoughts.
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1
clergy
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| n.[总称]牧师，神职人员 | |
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doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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3
apprehension
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| n.理解，领悟；逮捕，拘捕；忧虑 | |
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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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suave
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| adj.温和的；柔和的；文雅的 | |
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6
sneaked
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| v.潜行( sneak的过去式和过去分词 )；偷偷溜走；（儿童向成人）打小报告；告状 | |
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7
missionary
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| adj.教会的，传教(士)的；n.传教士 | |
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ailed
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| v.生病( ail的过去式和过去分词 )；感到不舒服；处境困难；境况不佳 | |
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bliss
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| n.狂喜，福佑，天赐的福 | |
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10
superciliously
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| adv.高傲地；傲慢地 | |
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11
highland
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| n.(pl.)高地，山地 | |
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12
bully
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| n.恃强欺弱者，小流氓；vt.威胁，欺侮 | |
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13
wrath
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| n.愤怒，愤慨，暴怒 | |
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14
den
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| n.兽穴；秘密地方；安静的小房间，私室 | |
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15
gambling
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| n.赌博；投机 | |
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16
lair
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| n.野兽的巢穴；躲藏处 | |
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17
rouge
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| n.胭脂，口红唇膏；v.(在…上)擦口红 | |
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18
bruise
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| n.青肿，挫伤；伤痕；vt.打青；挫伤 | |
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19
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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20
wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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21
shack
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| adj.简陋的小屋，窝棚 | |
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22
twigs
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| 细枝，嫩枝( twig的名词复数 ) | |
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23
shingled
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| adj.盖木瓦的；贴有墙面板的v.用木瓦盖(shingle的过去式和过去分词形式) | |
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24
dune
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| n.(由风吹积而成的)沙丘 | |
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25
nunlike
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| adj.太阳似的，非常明亮的，辉煌的 | |
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26
ornament
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| v.装饰，美化；n.装饰，装饰物 | |
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27
scant
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| adj.不充分的，不足的；v.减缩，限制，忽略 | |
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28
jingling
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| 叮当声 | |
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29
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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30
automobile
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| n.汽车，机动车 | |
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31
molestation
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| n.骚扰，干扰，调戏；折磨 | |
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32
velvety
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| adj. 像天鹅绒的, 轻软光滑的, 柔软的 | |
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engrossed
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| adj.全神贯注的 | |
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34
plying
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| v.使用（工具）( ply的现在分词 )；经常供应（食物、饮料）；固定往来；经营生意 | |
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35
axe
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| n.斧子；v.用斧头砍，削减 | |
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36
eternity
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| n.不朽，来世；永恒，无穷 | |
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37
migration
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| n.迁移，移居，（鸟类等的）迁徙 | |
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38
nibbling
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| v.啃，一点一点地咬（吃）( nibble的现在分词 )；啃出（洞），一点一点咬出（洞）；慢慢减少；小口咬 | |
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39
supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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40
humbly
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| adv. 恭顺地，谦卑地 | |
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41
crests
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| v.到达山顶（或浪峰）( crest的第三人称单数 )；到达洪峰，达到顶点 | |
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42
haven
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| n.安全的地方，避难所，庇护所 | |
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43
wrack
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| v.折磨；n.海草 | |
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44
pungent
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| adj.（气味、味道）刺激性的，辛辣的；尖锐的 | |
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45
bog
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| n.沼泽；室...陷入泥淖 | |
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46
protruding
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| v.（使某物）伸出，（使某物）突出( protrude的现在分词 )；凸 | |
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47
incessantly
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| ad.不停地 | |
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48
rosy
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| adj.美好的，乐观的，玫瑰色的 | |
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49
pebbles
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| [复数]鹅卵石； 沙砾； 卵石，小圆石( pebble的名词复数 ) | |
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50
strife
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| n.争吵，冲突，倾轧，竞争 | |
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51
discord
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| n.不和，意见不合，争论，（音乐）不和谐 | |
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52
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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53
frivolous
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| adj.轻薄的；轻率的 | |
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54
creed
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| n.信条；信念，纲领 | |
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unity
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| n.团结，联合，统一；和睦，协调 | |
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56
immortality
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| n.不死，不朽 | |
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57
isolated
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| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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58
chaste
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| adj.贞洁的；有道德的；善良的；简朴的 | |
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59
expiated
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| v.为（所犯罪过）接受惩罚，赎（罪）( expiate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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60
folly
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| n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话 | |
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61
awakening
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| n.觉醒，醒悟 adj.觉醒中的；唤醒的 | |
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62
upwards
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| adv.向上，在更高处...以上 | |
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sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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64
scramble
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| v.爬行，攀爬，杂乱蔓延，碎片，片段，废料 | |
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65
obedience
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| n.服从，顺从 | |
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66
requisite
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| adj.需要的，必不可少的；n.必需品 | |
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67
distressing
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| a.使人痛苦的 | |
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68
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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69
jolted
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| （使）摇动， （使）震惊( jolt的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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onward
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| adj.向前的，前进的；adv.向前，前进，在先 | |
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