“Heavens!” cried Anne. “The Fair—I had forgotten all about it. What a nightmare! Couldn’t you put a stop to it, Uncle Henry?”
Mr. Wimbush sighed and shook his head. “Alas,” he said, “I fear I cannot. I should have liked to put an end to it years ago; but the claims of Charity are strong.”
“It’s not charity we want,” Anne murmured rebelliously1; “it’s justice.”
“Besides,” Mr. Wimbush went on, “the Fair has become an institution. Let me see, it must be twenty-two years since we started it. It was a modest affair then. Now...” he made a sweeping2 movement with his hand and was silent.
It spoke3 highly for Mr. Wimbush’s public spirit that he still continued to tolerate the Fair. Beginning as a sort of glorified4 church bazaar5, Crome’s yearly Charity Fair had grown into a noisy thing of merry-go-rounds, cocoanut shies, and miscellaneous side shows—a real genuine fair on the grand scale. It was the local St. Bartholomew, and the people of all the neighbouring villages, with even a contingent6 from the county town, flocked into the park for their Bank Holiday amusement. The local hospital profited handsomely, and it was this fact alone which prevented Mr. Wimbush, to whom the Fair was a cause of recurrent and never-diminishing agony, from putting a stop to the nuisance which yearly desecrated7 his park and garden.
“I’ve made all the arrangements already,” Henry Wimbush went on. “Some of the larger marquees will be put up to-morrow. The swings and the merry-go-round arrive on Sunday.”
“So there’s no escape,” said Anne, turning to the rest of the party. “You’ll all have to do something. As a special favour you’re allowed to choose your slavery. My job is the tea tent, as usual, Aunt Priscilla...”
“My dear,” said Mrs. Wimbush, interrupting her, “I have more important things to think about than the Fair. But you need have no doubt that I shall do my best when Monday comes to encourage the villagers.”
“That’s splendid,” said Anne. “Aunt Priscilla will encourage the villagers. What will you do, Mary?”
“I won’t do anything where I have to stand by and watch other people eat.”
“Then you’ll look after the children’s sports.”
“All right,” Mary agreed. “I’ll look after the children’s sports.”
“And Mr. Scogan?”
Mr. Scogan reflected. “May I be allowed to tell fortunes?” he asked at last. “I think I should be good at telling fortunes.”
“But you can’t tell fortunes in that costume!”
“Can’t I?” Mr. Scogan surveyed himself.
“You’ll have to be dressed up. Do you still persist?”
“I’m ready to suffer all indignities8.”
“Good!” said Anne; and turning to Gombauld, “You must be our lightning artist,” she said. “‘Your portrait for a shilling in five minutes.’”
“It’s a pity I’m not Ivor,” said Gombauld, with a laugh. “I could throw in a picture of their Auras for an extra sixpence.”
Mary flushed. “Nothing is to be gained,” she said severely9, “by speaking with levity10 of serious subjects. And, after all, whatever your personal views may be, psychical11 research is a perfectly12 serious subject.”
“And what about Denis?”
Denis made a deprecating gesture. “I have no accomplishments,” he said, “I’ll just be one of those men who wear a thing in their buttonholes and go about telling people which is the way to tea and not to walk on the grass.”
“No, no,” said Anne. “That won’t do. You must do something more than that.”
“But what? All the good jobs are taken, and I can do nothing but lisp in numbers.”
“Well, then, you must lisp,” concluded Anne. “You must write a poem for the occasion—an ‘Ode on Bank Holiday.’ We’ll print it on Uncle Henry’s press and sell it at twopence a copy.”
“Sixpence,” Denis protested. “It’ll be worth sixpence.”
Anne shook her head. “Twopence,” she repeated firmly. “Nobody will pay more than twopence.”
“And now there’s Jenny,” said Mr Wimbush. “Jenny,” he said, raising his voice, “what will you do?”
Denis thought of suggesting that she might draw caricatures at sixpence an execution, but decided13 it would be wiser to go on feigning14 ignorance of her talent. His mind reverted15 to the red notebook. Could it really be true that he looked like that?
“What will I do,” Jenny echoed, “what will I do?” She frowned thoughtfully for a moment; then her face brightened and she smiled. “When I was young,” she said, “I learnt to play the drums.”
“The drums?”
Jenny nodded, and, in proof of her assertion, agitated16 her knife and fork, like a pair of drumsticks, over her plate. “If there’s any opportunity of playing the drums...” she began.
“But of course,” said Anne, “there’s any amount of opportunity. We’ll put you down definitely for the drums. That’s the lot,” she added.
“And a very good lot too,” said Gombauld. “I look forward to my Bank Holiday. It ought to be gay.”
“It ought indeed,” Mr Scogan assented17. “But you may rest assured that it won’t be. No holiday is ever anything but a disappointment.”
“Come, come,” protested Gombauld. “My holiday at Crome isn’t being a disappointment.”
“No, it isn’t,” he answered.
“I’m delighted to hear it.”
“It’s in the very nature of things,” Mr. Scogan went on; “our holidays can’t help being disappointments. Reflect for a moment. What is a holiday? The ideal, the Platonic19 Holiday of Holidays is surely a complete and absolute change. You agree with me in my definition?” Mr. Scogan glanced from face to face round the table; his sharp nose moved in a series of rapid jerks through all the points of the compass. There was no sign of dissent20; he continued: “A complete and absolute change; very well. But isn’t a complete and absolute change precisely21 the thing we can never have—never, in the very nature of things?” Mr. Scogan once more looked rapidly about him. “Of course it is. As ourselves, as specimens22 of Homo Sapiens, as members of a society, how can we hope to have anything like an absolute change? We are tied down by the frightful23 limitation of our human faculties24, by the notions which society imposes on us through our fatal suggestibility, by our own personalities25. For us, a complete holiday is out of the question. Some of us struggle manfully to take one, but we never succeed, if I may be allowed to express myself metaphorically26, we never succeed in getting farther than Southend.”
“You’re depressing,” said Anne.
“I mean to be,” Mr. Scogan replied, and, expanding the fingers of his right hand, he went on: “Look at me, for example. What sort of a holiday can I take? In endowing me with passions and faculties Nature has been horribly niggardly27. The full range of human potentialities is in any case distressingly28 limited; my range is a limitation within a limitation. Out of the ten octaves that make up the human instrument, I can compass perhaps two. Thus, while I may have a certain amount of intelligence, I have no aesthetic29 sense; while I possess the mathematical faculty30, I am wholly without the religious emotions; while I am naturally addicted31 to venery, I have little ambition and am not at all avaricious32. Education has further limited my scope. Having been brought up in society, I am impregnated with its laws; not only should I be afraid of taking a holiday from them, I should also feel it painful to try to do so. In a word, I have a conscience as well as a fear of gaol33. Yes, I know it by experience. How often have I tried to take holidays, to get away from myself, my own boring nature, my insufferable mental surroundings!” Mr. Scogan sighed. “But always without success,” he added, “always without success. In my youth I was always striving—how hard!—to feel religiously and aesthetically34. Here, said I to myself, are two tremendously important and exciting emotions. Life would be richer, warmer, brighter, altogether more amusing, if I could feel them. I try to feel them. I read the works of the mystics. They seemed to me nothing but the most deplorable claptrap—as indeed they always must to anyone who does not feel the same emotion as the authors felt when they were writing. For it is the emotion that matters. The written work is simply an attempt to express emotion, which is in itself inexpressible, in terms of intellect and logic35. The mystic objectifies a rich feeling in the pit of the stomach into a cosmology. For other mystics that cosmology is a symbol of the rich feeling. For the unreligious it is a symbol of nothing, and so appears merely grotesque36. A melancholy37 fact! But I divagate.” Mr. Scogan checked himself. “So much for the religious emotion. As for the aesthetic—I was at even greater pains to cultivate that. I have looked at all the right works of art in every part of Europe. There was a time when, I venture to believe, I knew more about Taddeo da Poggibonsi, more about the cryptic38 Amico di Taddeo, even than Henry does. To-day, I am happy to say, I have forgotten most of the knowledge I then so laboriously39 acquired; but without vanity I can assert that it was prodigious40. I don’t pretend, of course, to know anything about nigger sculpture or the later seventeenth century in Italy; but about all the periods that were fashionable before 1900 I am, or was, omniscient41. Yes, I repeat it, omniscient. But did that fact make me any more appreciative42 of art in general? It did not. Confronted by a picture, of which I could tell you all the known and presumed history—the date when it was painted, the character of the painter, the influences that had gone to make it what it was—I felt none of that strange excitement and exaltation which is, as I am informed by those who do feel it, the true aesthetic emotion. I felt nothing but a certain interest in the subject of the picture; or more often, when the subject was hackneyed and religious, I felt nothing but a great weariness of spirit. Nevertheless, I must have gone on looking at pictures for ten years before I would honestly admit to myself that they merely bored me. Since then I have given up all attempts to take a holiday. I go on cultivating my old stale daily self in the resigned spirit with which a bank clerk performs from ten till six his daily task. A holiday, indeed! I’m sorry for you, Gombauld, if you still look forward to having a holiday.”
Gombauld shrugged43 his shoulders. “Perhaps,” he said, “my standards aren’t as elevated as yours. But personally I found the war quite as thorough a holiday from all the ordinary decencies and sanities, all the common emotions and preoccupations, as I ever want to have.”
“Yes,” Mr. Scogan thoughtfully agreed. “Yes, the war was certainly something of a holiday. It was a step beyond Southend; it was Weston-super-Mare; it was almost Ilfracombe.”
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1
rebelliously
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| adv.造反地，难以控制地 | |
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2
sweeping
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| adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的 | |
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3
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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glorified
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| 美其名的，变荣耀的 | |
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bazaar
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| n.集市，商店集中区 | |
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contingent
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| adj.视条件而定的；n.一组，代表团，分遣队 | |
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7
desecrated
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| 毁坏或亵渎( desecrate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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8
indignities
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| n.侮辱，轻蔑( indignity的名词复数 ) | |
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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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levity
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| n.轻率，轻浮，不稳定，多变 | |
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psychical
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| adj.有关特异功能现象的；有关特异功能官能的；灵魂的；心灵的 | |
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12
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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14
feigning
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| 假装，伪装( feign的现在分词 )； 捏造（借口、理由等） | |
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15
reverted
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| 恢复( revert的过去式和过去分词 )； 重提； 回到…上； 归还 | |
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16
agitated
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| adj.被鼓动的，不安的 | |
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assented
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| 同意，赞成( assent的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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18
ingenuous
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| adj.纯朴的，单纯的；天真的；坦率的 | |
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platonic
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| adj.精神的；柏拉图（哲学）的 | |
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dissent
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| n./v.不同意，持异议 | |
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precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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specimens
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| n.样品( specimen的名词复数 )；范例；（化验的）抽样；某种类型的人 | |
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frightful
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| adj.可怕的；讨厌的 | |
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faculties
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| n.能力( faculty的名词复数 )；全体教职员；技巧；院 | |
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25
personalities
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| n. 诽谤，（对某人容貌、性格等所进行的）人身攻击； 人身攻击；人格, 个性, 名人( personality的名词复数 ) | |
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26
metaphorically
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| adv. 用比喻地 | |
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niggardly
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| adj.吝啬的，很少的 | |
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distressingly
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| adv. 令人苦恼地；悲惨地 | |
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aesthetic
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| adj.美学的，审美的，有美感 | |
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faculty
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| n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员 | |
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31
addicted
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| adj.沉溺于....的，对...上瘾的 | |
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32
avaricious
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| adj.贪婪的，贪心的 | |
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33
gaol
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| n.(jail)监狱；(不加冠词)监禁；vt.使…坐牢 | |
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34
aesthetically
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| adv.美地，艺术地 | |
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35
logic
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| n.逻辑(学)；逻辑性 | |
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36
grotesque
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| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
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melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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38
cryptic
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| adj.秘密的，神秘的，含义模糊的 | |
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39
laboriously
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| adv.艰苦地；费力地；辛勤地；（文体等）佶屈聱牙地 | |
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40
prodigious
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| adj.惊人的，奇妙的；异常的；巨大的；庞大的 | |
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41
omniscient
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| adj.无所不知的；博识的 | |
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42
appreciative
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| adj.有鉴赏力的，有眼力的；感激的 | |
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43
shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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