At present I have no time to write a complete account of that decisive period in my history. I must content myself [Pg 246]therefore with describing a single incident of my undergraduate days. I have selected this one because it is curious and at the same time wholly characteristic of Oxford life before the war.
My friend Lykeham was an Exhibitioner at Swellfoot College. He combined blood (he was immensely proud of his Anglo-Saxon descent and the derivation of his name from Old English lycam, a corpse) with brains. His tastes were eccentric, his habits deplorable, the range of his information immense. As he is now dead, I will say no more about his character.
To proceed with my anecdote6: I had gone one evening, as was my custom, to visit him in his rooms at Swellfoot. It was just after nine when I mounted the stairs, and great Tom was still tolling7.
“In Thomae laude
Resono bim bam sine fraude,”
as the charmingly imbecile motto used to run, and to-night he was living up to it by bim-bamming away in a persistent8 basso profondo that made an astonishing background of discord9 to the sound of [Pg 247]frantic guitar playing which emanated10 from Lykeham’s room. From the fury of his twanging I could tell that something more than usually cataclysmic had happened, for mercifully it was only in moments of the greatest stress that Lykeham touched his guitar.
I entered the room with my hands over my ears. “For God’s sake——” I implored11. Through the open window Tom was shouting a deep E flat, with a spread chord of under- and over-tones, while the guitar gibbered shrilly12 and hysterically13 in D natural. Lykeham laughed, banged down his guitar on to the sofa with such violence that it gave forth15 a trembling groan16 from all its strings17, and ran forward to meet me. He slapped me on the shoulder with painful heartiness18; his whole face radiated joy and excitement.
I can sympathize with people’s pains, but not with their pleasures. There is something curiously19 boring about somebody else’s happiness.
“You are perspiring20,” I said coldly.
Lykeham mopped himself, but went grinning.
[Pg 248]
“Well, what is it this time?” I asked. “Are you engaged to be married again?”
Lykeham burst forth with the triumphant21 pleasure of one who has at last found an opportunity of disburdening himself of an oppressive secret. “Far better than that,” he cried.
I groaned22. “Some more than usually unpleasant amour, I suppose.” I knew that he had been in London the day before, a pressing engagement with the dentist having furnished an excuse to stay the night.
“Don’t be gross,” said Lykeham, with a nervous laugh which showed that my suspicions had been only too well founded.
“Well, let’s hear about the delectable23 Flossie or Effie or whatever her name was,” I said, with resignation.
“I tell you she was a goddess.”
“The goddess of reason, I suppose.”
“A goddess,” Lykeham continued; “the most wonderful creature I’ve ever seen. And the extraordinary thing is,” he added confidentially24, and with ill-suppressed pride, “that it seems I myself am a god of sorts.”
[Pg 249]
“Of gardens; but do come down to facts.”
“I’ll tell you the whole story. It was like this: Last night I was in town, you know, and went to see that capital play that’s running at the Prince Consort’s. It’s one of those ingenious combinations of melodrama25 and problem play, which thrill you to the marrow26 and at the same time give you a virtuous27 feeling that you’ve been to see something serious. Well, I rolled in rather late, having secured an admirable place in the front row of the dress circle. I trampled28 in over the populace, and casually29 observed that there was a girl sitting next me, whom I apologized to for treading on her toes. I thought no more about her during the first act. In the interval30, when the lights were on again, I turned round to look at things in general and discovered that there was a goddess sitting next me. One only had to look at her to see she was a goddess. She was quite incredibly beautiful—rather pale and virginal and slim, and at the same time very stately. I can’t describe her; she was simply perfect—there’s nothing more to be said.”
[Pg 250]
“Perfect,” I repeated, “but so were all the rest.”
“Fool!” Lykeham answered impatiently. “All the rest were just damned women. This was a goddess, I tell you. Don’t interrupt me any more. As I was looking with astonishment32 at her profile, she turned her head and looked squarely at me. I’ve never seen anything so lovely; I almost swooned away. Our eyes met——”
“What an awful novelist’s expression!” I expostulated.
“I can’t help it; there’s no other word. Our eyes did meet, and we both fell simultaneously33 in love.”
“Speak for yourself.”
“I could see it in her eyes. Well, to go on. We looked at one another several times during that first interval, and then the second act began. In the course of the act, entirely34 accidentally, I knocked my programme on to the floor, and reaching down to get it I touched her hand. Well, there was obviously nothing else to do but to take hold of it.”
“And what did she do?”
[Pg 251]
“Nothing. We sat like that the whole of the rest of the act, rapturously happy and——”
“And quietly perspiring palm to palm. I know exactly, so we can pass over that. Proceed.”
“Of course you don’t know in the least; you’ve never held a goddess’s hand. When the lights went up again I reluctantly dropped her hand, not liking35 the thought of the profane36 crowd seeing us, and for want of anything better to say, I asked her if she actually was a goddess. She said it was a curious question, as she’d been wondering what god I was. So we said, how incredible: and I said I was sure she was a goddess, and she said she was certain I was a god, and I bought some chocolates, and the third act began. Now, it being a melodrama, there was of course in the third act a murder and burglary scene, in which all the lights were turned out. In this thrilling moment of total blackness I suddenly felt her kiss me on the cheek.”
“I thought you said she was virginal.”
“So she was—absolutely, frozenly [Pg 252]virginal; but she was made of a sort of burning ice, if you understand me. She was virginally passionate37—just the combination you’d expect to find in a goddess. I admit I was startled when she kissed me, but with infinite presence of mind I kissed her back, on the mouth. Then the murder was finished and the lights went on again. Nothing much more happened till the end of the show, when I helped her on with her coat and we went out together, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, and got into a taxi. I told the man to drive somewhere where we could get supper, and he drove there.”
“Not without embracements by the way?”
“No, not without certain embracements.”
“Always passionately38 virginal?”
“Always virginally passionate.”
“Proceed.”
“Well, we had supper—a positively39 Olympian affair, nectar and ambrosia40 and stolen hand-pressures. She became more and more wonderful every moment. My God, you should have seen her eyes! [Pg 253]The whole soul seemed to burn in their depths, like fire under the sea——”
“For narrative,” I interrupted him, “the epic41 or heroic style is altogether more suitable than the lyrical.”
“Well, as I say, we had supper, and after that my memory becomes a sort of burning mist.”
“Let us make haste to draw the inevitable42 veil. What was her name?”
Lykeham confessed that he didn’t know; as she was a goddess, it didn’t really seem to matter what her earthly name was. How did he expect to find her again? He hadn’t thought of that, but knew she’d turn up somehow. I told him he was a fool, and asked which particular goddess he thought she was and which particular god he himself.
“We discussed that,” he said. “We first thought Ares and Aphrodite; but she wasn’t my idea of Aphrodite, and I don’t know that I’m very much like Ares.”
He looked pensively43 in the old Venetian mirror which hung over the fireplace. It was a complacent44 look, for Lykeham was rather vain about his personal appearance, [Pg 254]which was, indeed, repulsive45 at first sight, but had, when you looked again, a certain strange and fascinating ugly beauty. Bearded, he would have made a passable Socrates. But Ares—no, certainly he wasn’t Ares.
“Perhaps you’re Heph?stus,” I suggested; but the idea was received coldly.
Was he sure that she was a goddess? Mightn’t she just have been a nymph of sorts? Europa, for instance. Lykeham repudiated46 the implied suggestion that he was a bull, nor would he hear of himself as a swan or a shower of gold. It was possible, however, he thought, that he was Apollo and she Daphne, reincarnated47 from her vegetable state. And though I laughed heartily48 at the idea of his being Ph?bus Apollo, Lykeham stuck to the theory with increasing obstinacy49. The more he thought of it the more it seemed to him probable that his nymph, with her burning cold virginal passion, was Daphne, while to doubt that he himself was Apollo seemed hardly to occur to him.
It was about a fortnight later, in June, [Pg 255]towards the end of term, that we discovered Lykeham’s Olympian identity. We had gone, Lykeham and I, for an after-dinner walk. We set out through the pale tranquillity50 of twilight51, and following the towpath up the river as far as Godstow, halted at the inn for a glass of port and a talk with the glorious old female Falstaff in black silk who kept it. We were royally entertained with gossip and old wine, and after Lykeham had sung a comic song which had reduced the old lady to a quivering jelly of hysterical14 laughter, we set out once more, intending to go yet a little farther up the river before we turned back. Darkness had fallen by this time; the stars were lighted in the sky; it was the sort of summer night to which Marlowe compared Helen of Troy. Over the meadows invisible peewits wheeled and uttered their melancholy52 cry; the far-off thunder of the weir53 bore a continuous, even burden to all the other small noises of the night. Lykeham and I walked on in silence. We had covered perhaps a quarter of a mile when all at once my companion stopped and began [Pg 256]looking fixedly54 westward55 towards Witham Hill. I paused too, and saw that he was staring at the thin crescent of the moon, which was preparing to set in the dark woods that crowned the eminence56.
“What are you looking at?” I asked.
But Lykeham paid no attention, only muttered something to himself. Then suddenly he cried out, “It’s she!” and started off at full gallop57 across the fields in the direction of the hill. Conceiving that he had gone suddenly mad, I followed. We crashed through the first hedge twenty yards apart. Then came the backwater; Lykeham leapt, flopped58 in three-quarters of the way across, and scrambled59 oozily ashore60. I made a better jump and landed among the mud and rushes of the farther bank. Two more hedges and a ploughed field, a hedge, a road, a gate, another field, and then we were in Witham Wood itself. It was pitch black under the trees, and Lykeham had perforce to slacken his pace a little. I followed him by the noise he made crashing through the undergrowth and cursing when he hurt himself. That [Pg 257]wood was a nightmare, but we got through it somehow and into the open glade61 at the top of the hill. Through the trees on the farther side of the clearing shone the moon, seeming incredibly close at hand. Then, suddenly, along the very path of the moonlight, the figure of a woman came walking through the trees into the open. Lykeham rushed towards her and flung himself at her feet and embraced her knees; she stooped down and smoothed his ruffled62 hair. I turned and walked away; it is not for a mere63 mortal to look on at the embracements of the gods.
As I walked back, I wondered who on earth—or rather who in heaven—Lykeham could be. For here was chaste64 Cynthia giving herself to him in the most unequivocal fashion. Could he be Endymion? No, the idea was too preposterous65 to be entertained for a moment. But I could think of no other loved by the virgin31 moon. Yet surely I seemed dimly to recollect66 that there had been some favoured god; for the life of me I could not remember who. All the way back along the river path I searched [Pg 258]my mind for his name, and always it eluded67 me.
But on my return I looked up the matter in Lemprière, and almost died of laughing when I discovered the truth. I thought of Lykeham’s Venetian mirror and his complacent side glances at his own image, and his belief that he was Apollo, and I laughed and laughed. And when, considerably68 after midnight, Lykeham got back to college, I met him in the porch and took him quietly by the sleeve, and in his ear I whispered, “GOAT-FOOT,” and then I roared with laughter once again.
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1
Oxford
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| n.牛津（英国城市） | |
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2
monstrous
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| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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3
gulf
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| n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂 | |
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4
stimulant
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| n.刺激物，兴奋剂 | |
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5
memoirs
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| n.回忆录；回忆录传( mem,自oir的名词复数) | |
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anecdote
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| n.轶事，趣闻，短故事 | |
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7
tolling
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| [财]来料加工 | |
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8
persistent
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| adj.坚持不懈的，执意的；持续的 | |
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9
discord
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| n.不和，意见不合，争论，（音乐）不和谐 | |
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10
emanated
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| v.从…处传出，传出( emanate的过去式和过去分词 )；产生，表现，显示 | |
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11
implored
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| 恳求或乞求（某人）( implore的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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12
shrilly
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| 尖声的； 光亮的，耀眼的 | |
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13
hysterically
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| ad. 歇斯底里地 | |
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14
hysterical
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| adj.情绪异常激动的，歇斯底里般的 | |
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15
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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16
groan
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| vi./n.呻吟，抱怨；(发出)呻吟般的声音 | |
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17
strings
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| n.弦 | |
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18
heartiness
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| 诚实，热心 | |
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19
curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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20
perspiring
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| v.出汗，流汗( perspire的现在分词 ) | |
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21
triumphant
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| adj.胜利的，成功的；狂欢的，喜悦的 | |
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22
groaned
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| v.呻吟( groan的过去式和过去分词 )；发牢骚；抱怨；受苦 | |
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23
delectable
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| adj.使人愉快的；美味的 | |
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24
confidentially
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| ad.秘密地，悄悄地 | |
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25
melodrama
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| n.音乐剧；情节剧 | |
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26
marrow
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| n.骨髓；精华；活力 | |
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27
virtuous
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| adj.有品德的，善良的，贞洁的，有效力的 | |
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28
trampled
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| 踩( trample的过去式和过去分词 )； 践踏； 无视； 侵犯 | |
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29
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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30
interval
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| n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息 | |
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31
virgin
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| n.处女，未婚女子；adj.未经使用的；未经开发的 | |
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32
astonishment
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| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
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33
simultaneously
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| adv.同时发生地，同时进行地 | |
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34
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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35
liking
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| n.爱好；嗜好；喜欢 | |
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36
profane
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| adj.亵神的，亵渎的；vt.亵渎，玷污 | |
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37
passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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38
passionately
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| ad.热烈地，激烈地 | |
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39
positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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40
ambrosia
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| n.神的食物；蜂食 | |
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41
epic
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| n.史诗，叙事诗；adj.史诗般的，壮丽的 | |
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42
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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43
pensively
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| adv.沉思地，焦虑地 | |
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44
complacent
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| adj.自满的；自鸣得意的 | |
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45
repulsive
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| adj.排斥的，使人反感的 | |
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46
repudiated
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| v.（正式地）否认( repudiate的过去式和过去分词 )；拒绝接受；拒绝与…往来；拒不履行（法律义务） | |
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47
reincarnated
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| v.赋予新形体，使转世化身( reincarnate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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48
heartily
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| adv.衷心地，诚恳地，十分，很 | |
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49
obstinacy
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| n.顽固；（病痛等）难治 | |
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50
tranquillity
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| n. 平静, 安静 | |
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51
twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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52
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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53
weir
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| n.堰堤，拦河坝 | |
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54
fixedly
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| adv.固定地；不屈地，坚定不移地 | |
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55
westward
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| n.西方，西部；adj.西方的，向西的；adv.向西 | |
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56
eminence
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| n.卓越，显赫；高地，高处；名家 | |
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57
gallop
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| v./n.(马或骑马等)飞奔；飞速发展 | |
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58
flopped
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| v.（指书、戏剧等）彻底失败( flop的过去式和过去分词 )；（因疲惫而）猛然坐下；（笨拙地、不由自主地或松弛地）移动或落下；砸锅 | |
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59
scrambled
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| v.快速爬行( scramble的过去式和过去分词 )；攀登；争夺；（军事飞机）紧急起飞 | |
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60
ashore
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| adv.在(向)岸上，上岸 | |
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61
glade
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| n.林间空地，一片表面有草的沼泽低地 | |
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62
ruffled
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| adj. 有褶饰边的, 起皱的 动词ruffle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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63
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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64
chaste
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| adj.贞洁的；有道德的；善良的；简朴的 | |
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65
preposterous
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| adj.荒谬的，可笑的 | |
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66
recollect
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| v.回忆，想起，记起，忆起，记得 | |
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67
eluded
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| 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 | |
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68
considerably
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| adv.极大地；相当大地；在很大程度上 | |
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