Prospects9 in Canteloup may not please; but man, on the other hand, tends to be less vile10 there than in many other places. There is an equal profusion11 at Canteloup of Firsts and Blues12; there are union orators13 of every shade of opinion and young men so languidly well bred as to take no interest in politics of any kind; there are drinkers of cocoa and drinkers of champagne14. Canteloup is a microcosm, a whole world in miniature; and whatever your temperament15 and habits may be, whether you wish to drink, or row, or work, or hunt, Canteloup will provide you with congenial companions and a spiritual home.
Lack of athletic16 distinction had prevented Dick from being, at ?sop17, a hero or anything like one. At Canteloup, in a less barbarically ordered state of society, things were different. His rooms in the [Pg 29]Venetian gazebo over the North Gate became the meeting-place of all that was most intellectually distinguished in Canteloup and the University at large. He had had his sitting-room18 austerely19 upholstered and papered in grey. A large white Chinese figure of the best period stood pedestalled in one corner, and on the walls there hung a few uncompromisingly good drawings and lithographs21 by modern artists. Fletton, who had accompanied Dick from ?sop to Canteloup, called it the “cerebral22 chamber23”; and with its prevailing24 tone of brain-coloured grey and the rather dry intellectual taste of its decorations it deserved the name.
To-night the cerebral chamber had been crammed25. The Canteloup branch of the Fabian Society, under Dick’s presidency26, had been holding a meeting. “Art in the Socialist27 State” was what they had been discussing. And now the meeting had broken up, leaving nothing but three empty jugs28 that had once contained mulled claret and a general air of untidiness to testify to its having taken place at all. Dick stood leaning an elbow on the mantelpiece and absent-mindedly [Pg 30]kicking, to the great detriment29 of his pumps, at the expiring red embers in the grate. From the depths of a huge and cavernous arm-chair, Fletton, pipe in mouth, fumed30 like a sleepy volcano.
“I liked the way, Dick,” he said, with a laugh—“the way you went for the Arty-Crafties. You utterly31 destroyed them.”
“I merely pointed32 out, what is sufficiently33 obvious, that crafts are not art, nor anything like it, that’s all.” Dick snapped out the words. He was nervous and excited, and his body felt as though it were full of compressed springs ready to jump at the most imponderable touch. He was always like that after making a speech.
“You did it very effectively,” said Fletton. There was a silence between the two young men.
A noise like the throaty yelling of savages34 in rut came wafting35 up from the quadrangle on which the windows of the cerebral chamber opened. Dick started; all the springs within him had gone off at once—a thousand simultaneous Jack-in-the-boxes.
“It’s only Francis Quarles’ dinner-party [Pg 31]becoming vocal,” Fletton explained. “Blind mouths, as Milton would call them.”
Dick began restlessly pacing up and down the room. When Fletton spoke36 to him, he did not reply or, at best, gave utterance37 to a monosyllable or a grunt38.
“My dear Dick,” said the other at last, “you’re not very good company to-night,” and heaving himself up from the arm-chair, Fletton went shuffling39 in his loose, heelless slippers40 towards the door. “I’m going to bed.”
Dick paused in his lion-like prowling to listen to the receding41 sound of feet on the stairs. All was silent now: Gott sei dank. He went into his bedroom. It was there that he kept his piano, for it was a piece of furniture too smugly black and polished to have a place in the cerebral chamber. He had been thirsting after his piano all the time Fletton was sitting there, damn him! He drew up a chair and began to play over and over a certain series of chords. With his left hand he struck an octave G in the base, while his right dwelt lovingly on F, B, and E. A luscious42 chord, beloved by Mendelssohn—a chord in which the native [Pg 32]richness of the dominant43 seventh is made more rich, more piercing sweet by the addition of a divine discord44. G, F, B, and E—he let the notes hang tremulously on the silence, savoured to the full their angelic overtones; then, when the sound of the chord had almost died away, he let it droop45 reluctantly through D to the simple, triumphal beauty of C natural—the diapason closing full in what was for Dick a wholly ineffable46 emotion.
He repeated that dying fall again and again, perhaps twenty times. Then, when he was satiated with its deliciousness, he rose from the piano and opening the lowest drawer of the wardrobe pulled out from under his evening clothes a large portfolio47. He undid48 the strings49; it was full of photogravure reproductions from various Old Masters. There was an almost complete set of Greuze’s works, several of the most striking Ary Scheffers, some Alma Tadema, some Leighton, photographs of sculpture by Torwaldsen and Canova, Boecklin’s “Island of the Dead,” religious pieces by Holman Hunt, and a large packet of miscellaneous pictures from the Paris Salons50 of the last forty years. [Pg 33]He took them into the cerebral chamber where the light was better, and began to study them, lovingly, one by one. The Cézanne lithograph20, the three admirable etchings by Van Gogh, the little Picasso looked on, unmoved, from the walls.
It was three o’clock before Dick got to bed. He was stiff and cold, but full of the satisfaction of having accomplished51 something. And, indeed, he had cause to be satisfied; for he had written the first four thousand words of a novel, a chapter and a half of Heartsease Fitzroy: the Story of a Young Girl.
Next morning Dick looked at what he had written overnight, and was alarmed. He had never produced anything quite like this since the days of the Quarles incident at ?sop. A relapse? He wondered. Not a serious one in any case; for this morning he felt himself in full possession of all his ordinary faculties52. He must have got overtired speaking to the Fabians in the evening. He looked at his manuscript again, and read: “‘Daddy, do the little girl angels in heaven have toys and kittens and teddy-bears?’
“‘I don’t know,’ said Sir Christopher [Pg 34]gently. ‘Why does my little one ask?’
“‘Because, daddy,” said the child—‘because I think that soon I too may be a little angel, and I should so like to have my teddy-bear with me in heaven.’
“Sir Christopher clasped her to his breast. How frail53 she was, how ethereal, how nearly an angel already! Would she have her teddy-bear in heaven? The childish question rang in his ears. Great, strong man though he was, he was weeping. His tears fell in a rain upon her auburn curls.
“‘Tell me, daddy,’ she insisted, ‘will dearest God allow me my teddy-bear?’
The blushes mounted hot to his cheeks; he turned away his head in horror. He would really have to look after himself for a bit, go to bed early, take exercise, not do much work. This sort of thing couldn’t be allowed to go on.
He went to bed at half-past nine that night, and woke up the following morning to find that he had added a dozen or more closely written pages to his original [Pg 35]manuscript during the night. He supposed he must have written them in his sleep. It was all very disquieting55. The days passed by; every morning a fresh instalment was added to the rapidly growing bulk of Heartsease Fitzroy. It was as though some goblin, some Lob-lie-by-the-Fire, came each night to perform the appointed task, vanishing before the morning. In a little while Dick’s alarm wore off; during the day he was perfectly56 well; his mind functioned with marvellous efficiency. It really didn’t seem to matter what he did in his sleep provided he was all right in his waking hours. He almost forgot about Heartsease, and was only reminded of her existence when by chance he opened the drawer in which the steadily57 growing pile of manuscript reposed58.
In five weeks Heartsease Fitzroy was finished. Dick made a parcel of the manuscript and sent it to a literary agent. He had no hopes of any publisher taking the thing; but he was in sore straits for money at the moment, and it seemed worth trying, on the off-chance. A fortnight later Dick received a letter[Pg 36] beginning: “DEAR MADAM,—Permit me to hail in you a new authoress of real talent. Heartsease Fitzroy is GREAT,”—and signed “EBOR W. SIMS, Editor, Hildebrand’s Home Weekly.”
Details of the circulation of Hildebrand’s Home Weekly were printed at the head of the paper; its average net sale was said to exceed three and a quarter millions. The terms offered by Mr. Sims seemed to Dick positively59 fabulous60. And there would be the royalties61 on the thing in book form after the serial62 had run its course.
The letter arrived at breakfast; Dick cancelled all engagements for the day and set out immediately for a long and solitary63 walk. It was necessary to be alone, to think. He made his way along the Seven Bridges Road, up Cumnor Hill, through the village, and down the footpath64 to Bablock Hithe, thence to pursue the course of the “stripling Thames”—haunted at every step by the Scholar Gipsy, damn him! He drank beer and ate some bread and cheese in a little inn by a bridge, farther up the river; and it was there, in the inn [Pg 37]parlour, surrounded by engravings of the late Queen, and breathing the slightly mouldy preserved air bottled some three centuries ago into that hermetically sealed chamber—it was there that he solved the problem, perceived the strange truth about himself.
He was a hermaphrodite.
A hermaphrodite, not in the gross obvious sense, of course, but spiritually. Two persons in one, male and female. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: or rather a new William Sharp and Fiona MacLeod—a more intelligent William, a vulgarer Fiona. Everything was explained; the deplorable Quarles incident was simple and obvious now. A sentimental65 young lady of literary tastes writing sonnets66 to her Ouida guardsman. And what an unerring flair67 Mr. Sims had shown by addressing him so roundly and unhesitatingly as “madam”!
Dick was elated at this discovery. He had an orderly mind that disliked mysteries. He had been a puzzle to himself for a long time; now he was solved. He was not in the least distressed68 to discover this abnormality in his character. [Pg 38]As long as the two parts of him kept well apart, as long as his male self could understand mathematics, and as long as his lady novelist’s self kept up her regular habit of writing at night and retiring from business during the day, the arrangement would be admirable. The more he thought about it, the more it seemed an ideal state of affairs. His life would arrange itself so easily and well. He would devote the day to the disinterested69 pursuit of knowledge, to philosophy and mathematics, with perhaps an occasional excursion into politics. After midnight he would write novels with a feminine pen, earning the money that would make his unproductive male labours possible. A kind of spiritual souteneur. But the fear of poverty need haunt him no more; no need to become a wage-slave, to sacrifice his intelligence to the needs of his belly70. Like a gentleman of the East, he would sit still and smoke his philosophic71 pipe while the womenfolk did the dirty work. Could anything be more satisfactory?
He paid for his bread and beer, and walked home, whistling as he went.
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1
frightful
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| adj.可怕的；讨厌的 | |
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Oxford
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| n.牛津（英国城市） | |
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possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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razed
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| v.彻底摧毁，将…夷为平地( raze的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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6
ERECTED
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| adj. 直立的，竖立的，笔直的 vt. 使 ... 直立，建立 | |
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perpendicular
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| adj.垂直的，直立的；n.垂直线，垂直的位置 | |
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outweighed
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| v.在重量上超过( outweigh的过去式和过去分词 )；在重要性或价值方面超过 | |
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prospects
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| n.希望，前途(恒为复数) | |
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vile
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| adj.卑鄙的，可耻的，邪恶的；坏透的 | |
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profusion
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| n.挥霍；丰富 | |
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blues
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| n.抑郁，沮丧；布鲁斯音乐 | |
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13
orators
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| n.演说者，演讲家( orator的名词复数 ) | |
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14
champagne
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| n.香槟酒；微黄色 | |
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15
temperament
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| n.气质，性格，性情 | |
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16
athletic
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| adj.擅长运动的，强健的；活跃的，体格健壮的 | |
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17
sop
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| n.湿透的东西，懦夫；v.浸，泡，浸湿 | |
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18
sitting-room
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| n.（BrE）客厅，起居室 | |
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19
austerely
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| adv.严格地，朴质地 | |
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20
lithograph
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| n.平板印刷，平板画；v.用平版印刷 | |
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21
lithographs
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| n.平版印刷品( lithograph的名词复数 ) | |
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22
cerebral
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| adj.脑的，大脑的；有智力的，理智型的 | |
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chamber
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| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
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24
prevailing
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| adj.盛行的；占优势的；主要的 | |
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crammed
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| adj.塞满的，挤满的；大口地吃；快速贪婪地吃v.把…塞满；填入；临时抱佛脚( cram的过去式) | |
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26
presidency
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| n.总统(校长，总经理)的职位(任期) | |
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socialist
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| n.社会主义者；adj.社会主义的 | |
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28
jugs
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| （有柄及小口的）水壶( jug的名词复数 ) | |
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detriment
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| n.损害；损害物，造成损害的根源 | |
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30
fumed
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| 愤怒( fume的过去式和过去分词 )； 大怒； 发怒； 冒烟 | |
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31
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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savages
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| 未开化的人，野蛮人( savage的名词复数 ) | |
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35
wafting
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| v.吹送，飘送，（使）浮动( waft的现在分词 ) | |
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36
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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utterance
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| n.用言语表达，话语，言语 | |
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38
grunt
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| v.嘟哝；作呼噜声；n.呼噜声，嘟哝 | |
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39
shuffling
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| adj. 慢慢移动的, 滑移的 动词shuffle的现在分词形式 | |
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40
slippers
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| n. 拖鞋 | |
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41
receding
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| v.逐渐远离( recede的现在分词 )；向后倾斜；自原处后退或避开别人的注视；尤指问题 | |
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42
luscious
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| adj.美味的；芬芳的；肉感的，引与性欲的 | |
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43
dominant
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| adj.支配的，统治的；占优势的；显性的；n.主因，要素，主要的人(或物)；显性基因 | |
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44
discord
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| n.不和，意见不合，争论，（音乐）不和谐 | |
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45
droop
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| v.低垂，下垂；凋萎，萎靡 | |
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46
ineffable
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| adj.无法表达的，不可言喻的 | |
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47
portfolio
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| n.公事包；文件夹；大臣及部长职位 | |
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48
Undid
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| v. 解开, 复原 | |
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49
strings
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| n.弦 | |
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50
salons
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| n.（营业性质的）店( salon的名词复数 )；厅；沙龙（旧时在上流社会女主人家的例行聚会或聚会场所）；（大宅中的）客厅 | |
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51
accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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52
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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53
frail
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| adj.身体虚弱的；易损坏的 | |
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54
sobbed
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| 哭泣，啜泣( sob的过去式和过去分词 )； 哭诉，呜咽地说 | |
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55
disquieting
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| adj.令人不安的，令人不平静的v.使不安，使忧虑，使烦恼( disquiet的现在分词 ) | |
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56
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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57
steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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58
reposed
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| v.将（手臂等）靠在某人（某物）上( repose的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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59
positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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60
fabulous
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| adj.极好的；极为巨大的；寓言中的，传说中的 | |
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61
royalties
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| 特许权使用费 | |
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62
serial
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| n.连本影片，连本电视节目；adj.连续的 | |
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63
solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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64
footpath
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| n.小路，人行道 | |
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65
sentimental
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| adj.多愁善感的，感伤的 | |
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66
sonnets
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| n.十四行诗( sonnet的名词复数 ) | |
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67
flair
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| n.天赋，本领，才华；洞察力 | |
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68
distressed
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| 痛苦的 | |
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69
disinterested
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| adj.不关心的，不感兴趣的 | |
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70
belly
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| n.肚子，腹部；(像肚子一样)鼓起的部分，膛 | |
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philosophic
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| adj.哲学的，贤明的 | |
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