The owner of the shop was standing12 in the doorway13, a little man, grizzle-bearded and with eyes very active round the corners of the spectacles that bridged his long, sharp nose.
“Trade is good?” I inquired.
“Better in my grandfather’s day,” he told me, shaking his head sadly.
“We grow progressively more Philistine,” I suggested.
“It is our cheap press. The ephemeral overwhelms the permanent, the classical.”
“This journalism,” I agreed, “or call [Pg 261]it rather this piddling quotidianism, is the curse of our age.”
“Fit only for——” He gesticulated clutchingly with his hands as though seeking the word.
“For the fire.”
I laughed sympathetically at his passion. “We are delightfully18 at one in our views,” I told him. “May I look about me a little among your treasures?”
Within the shop was a brown twilight19, redolent with old leather and the smell of that fine subtle dust that clings to the pages of forgotten books, as though preservative20 of their secrets—like the dry sand of Asian deserts beneath which, still incredibly intact, lie the treasures and the rubbish of a thousand years ago. I opened the first volume that came to my hand. It was a book of fashion-plates, tinted21 elaborately by hand in magenta22 and purple, maroon23 and solferino and puce and those melting shades of green that a yet earlier generation had called “the sorrows of Werther.” Beauties in crinolines swam with the amplitude24 [Pg 262]of pavilioned ships across the pages. Their feet were represented as thin and flat and black, like tea-leaves shyly protruding25 from under their petticoats. Their faces were egg-shaped, sleeked26 round with hair of glossy27 black, and expressive28 of an immaculate purity. I thought of our modern fashion figures, with their heels and their arch of instep, their flattened29 faces and smile of pouting30 invitation. It was difficult not to be a deteriorationist. I am easily moved by symbols; there is something of a Quarles in my nature. Lacking the philosophic31 mind, I prefer to see my abstractions concretely imaged. And it occurred to me then that if I wanted an emblem32 to picture the sacredness of marriage and the influence of the home I could not do better than choose two little black feet like tea-leaves peeping out decorously from under the hem14 of wide, disguising petticoats. While heels and thoroughbred insteps should figure—oh well, the reverse.
The current of my thoughts was turned aside by the old man’s voice. “I expect you are musical,” he said.
[Pg 263]
Oh yes, I was a little; and he held out to me a bulky folio.
“Did you ever hear this?” he asked.
Robert the Devil: no, I never had. I did not doubt that it was a gap in my musical education.
The old man took the book and drew up a chair from the dim penetralia of the shop. It was then that I noticed a surprising fact: what I had, at a careless glance, taken to be a common counter I perceived now to be a piano of a square, unfamiliar33 shape. The old man sat down before it. “You must forgive any defects in its tone,” he said, turning to me. “An early Broadwood, Georgian, you know, and has seen a deal of service in a hundred years.”
He opened the lid, and the yellow keys grinned at me in the darkness like the teeth of an ancient horse.
The old man rustled34 pages till he found a desired place. “The ballet music,” he said: “it’s fine. Listen to this.”
His bony, rather tremulous hands began suddenly to move with an astonishing nimbleness, and there rose up, faint [Pg 264]and tinkling35 against the roar of the traffic, a gay pirouetting music. The instrument rattled36 considerably37 and the volume of sound was thin as the trickle38 of a drought-shrunken stream: but, still, it kept tune39 and the melody was there, filmy, aerial.
“And now for the drinking-song,” cried the old man, warming excitedly to his work. He played a series of chords that mounted modulating40 upwards41 towards a breaking-point; so supremely42 operatic as positively43 to be a parody44 of that moment of tautening suspense45, when the singers are bracing46 themselves for a burst of passion. And then it came, the drinking chorus. One pictured to oneself cloaked men, wildly jovial47 over the emptiness of cardboard flagons.
“Versiam’ a tazza piena
Il generoso umor . . .”
The old man’s voice was cracked and shrill48, but his enthusiasm made up for any defects in execution. I had never seen anyone so wholeheartedly a reveller49.
He turned over a few more pages. “Ah, the ‘Valse Infernale,’” he said. [Pg 265]“That’s good.” There was a little melancholy50 prelude51 and then the tune, not so infernal perhaps as one might have been led to expect, but still pleasant enough. I looked over his shoulder at the words and sang to his accompaniment.
“Demoni fatali
Fantasmi d’orror,
Dei regni infernali
Plaudite al signor.”
A great steam-driven brewer’s lorry roared past with its annihilating52 thunder and utterly53 blotted54 out the last line. The old man’s hands still moved over the yellow keys, my mouth opened and shut; but there was no sound of words or music. It was as though the fatal demons55, the phantasms of horror, had made a sudden irruption into this peaceful, abstracted place.
I looked out through the narrow door. The traffic ceaselessly passed; men and women hurried along with set faces. Phantasms of horror, all of them: infernal realms wherein they dwelt. Outside, men lived under the tyranny of things. Their every action was determined56 [Pg 266]by the orders of mere57 matter, by money, and the tools of their trade and the unthinking laws of habit and convention. But here I seemed to be safe from things, living at a remove from actuality; here where a bearded old man, improbable survival from some other time, indomitably played the music of romance, despite the fact that the phantasms of horror might occasionally drown the sound of it with their clamour.
“So: will you take it?” The voice of the old man broke across my thoughts. “I will let you have it for five shillings.” He was holding out the thick, dilapidated volume towards me. His face wore a look of strained anxiety. I could see how eager he was to get my five shillings, how necessary, poor man! for him. He has been, I thought with an unreasonable58 bitterness—he has been simply performing for my benefit, like a trained dog. His aloofness59, his culture—all a business trick. I felt aggrieved60. He was just one of the common phantasms of horror masquerading as the angel of this somewhat comic paradise of contemplation. I gave him a couple of [Pg 267]half-crowns and he began wrapping the book in paper.
“I tell you,” he said, “I’m sorry to part with it. I get attached to my books, you know; but they always have to go.”
He sighed with such an obvious genuineness of feeling that I repented61 of the judgment62 I had passed upon him. He was a reluctant inhabitant of the infernal realms, even as was I myself.
Outside they were beginning to cry the evening papers: a ship sunk, trenches63 captured, somebody’s new stirring speech. We looked at one another—the old bookseller and I—in silence. We understood one another without speech. Here were we in particular, and here was the whole of humanity in general, all faced by the hideous64 triumph of things. In this continued massacre65 of men, in this old man’s enforced sacrifice, matter equally triumphed. And walking homeward through Regent’s Park, I too found matter triumphing over me. My book was unconscionably heavy, and I wondered what in the world I should do with a piano score of Robert the Devil [Pg 268]when I had got it home. It would only be another thing to weigh me down and hinder me; and at the moment it was very, oh, abominably66, heavy. I leaned over the railings that ring round the ornamental67 water, and as unostentatiously as I could, I let the book fall into the bushes.
I often think it would be best not to attempt the solution of the problem of life. Living is hard enough without complicating68 the process by thinking about it. The wisest thing, perhaps, is to take for granted the “wearisome condition of humanity, born under one law, to another bound,” and to leave the matter at that, without an attempt to reconcile the incompatibles. Oh, the absurd difficulty of it all! And I have, moreover, wasted five shillings, which is serious, you know, in these thin times.
点击收听单词发音
1 purveying | |
v.提供,供应( purvey的现在分词 ) | |
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2 specious | |
adj.似是而非的;adv.似是而非地 | |
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3 tracts | |
大片土地( tract的名词复数 ); 地带; (体内的)道; (尤指宣扬宗教、伦理或政治的)短文 | |
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4 glutinous | |
adj.粘的,胶状的 | |
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5 linoleum | |
n.油布,油毯 | |
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6 shuffling | |
adj. 慢慢移动的, 滑移的 动词shuffle的现在分词形式 | |
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7 marketing | |
n.行销,在市场的买卖,买东西 | |
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8 overflowed | |
溢出的 | |
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9 fabulously | |
难以置信地,惊人地 | |
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10 discreet | |
adj.(言行)谨慎的;慎重的;有判断力的 | |
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11 junction | |
n.连接,接合;交叉点,接合处,枢纽站 | |
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12 standing | |
n.持续,地位;adj.永久的,不动的,直立的,不流动的 | |
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13 doorway | |
n.门口,(喻)入门;门路,途径 | |
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14 hem | |
n.贴边,镶边;vt.缝贴边;(in)包围,限制 | |
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15 triumphantly | |
ad.得意洋洋地;得胜地;成功地 | |
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16 emphatic | |
adj.强调的,着重的;无可置疑的,明显的 | |
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17 sewer | |
n.排水沟,下水道 | |
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18 delightfully | |
大喜,欣然 | |
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19 twilight | |
n.暮光,黄昏;暮年,晚期,衰落时期 | |
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20 preservative | |
n.防腐剂;防腐料;保护料;预防药 | |
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21 tinted | |
adj. 带色彩的 动词tint的过去式和过去分词 | |
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22 magenta | |
n..紫红色(的染料);adj.紫红色的 | |
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23 maroon | |
v.困住,使(人)处于孤独无助之境;n.逃亡黑奴;孤立的人;酱紫色,褐红色;adj.酱紫色的,褐红色的 | |
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24 amplitude | |
n.广大;充足;振幅 | |
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25 protruding | |
v.(使某物)伸出,(使某物)突出( protrude的现在分词 );凸 | |
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26 sleeked | |
使…光滑而发亮( sleek的过去式 ) | |
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27 glossy | |
adj.平滑的;有光泽的 | |
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28 expressive | |
adj.表现的,表达…的,富于表情的 | |
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29 flattened | |
[医](水)平扁的,弄平的 | |
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30 pouting | |
v.撅(嘴)( pout的现在分词 ) | |
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31 philosophic | |
adj.哲学的,贤明的 | |
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32 emblem | |
n.象征,标志;徽章 | |
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33 unfamiliar | |
adj.陌生的,不熟悉的 | |
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34 rustled | |
v.发出沙沙的声音( rustle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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35 tinkling | |
n.丁当作响声 | |
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36 rattled | |
慌乱的,恼火的 | |
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37 considerably | |
adv.极大地;相当大地;在很大程度上 | |
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38 trickle | |
vi.淌,滴,流出,慢慢移动,逐渐消散 | |
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39 tune | |
n.调子;和谐,协调;v.调音,调节,调整 | |
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40 modulating | |
调整( modulate的现在分词 ); (对波幅、频率的)调制; 转调; 调整或改变(嗓音)的音调 | |
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41 upwards | |
adv.向上,在更高处...以上 | |
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42 supremely | |
adv.无上地,崇高地 | |
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43 positively | |
adv.明确地,断然,坚决地;实在,确实 | |
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44 parody | |
n.打油诗文,诙谐的改编诗文,拙劣的模仿;v.拙劣模仿,作模仿诗文 | |
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45 suspense | |
n.(对可能发生的事)紧张感,担心,挂虑 | |
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46 bracing | |
adj.令人振奋的 | |
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47 jovial | |
adj.快乐的,好交际的 | |
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48 shrill | |
adj.尖声的;刺耳的;v尖叫 | |
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49 reveller | |
n.摆设酒宴者,饮酒狂欢者 | |
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50 melancholy | |
n.忧郁,愁思;adj.令人感伤(沮丧)的,忧郁的 | |
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51 prelude | |
n.序言,前兆,序曲 | |
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52 annihilating | |
v.(彻底)消灭( annihilate的现在分词 );使无效;废止;彻底击溃 | |
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53 utterly | |
adv.完全地,绝对地 | |
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54 blotted | |
涂污( blot的过去式和过去分词 ); (用吸墨纸)吸干 | |
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55 demons | |
n.恶人( demon的名词复数 );恶魔;精力过人的人;邪念 | |
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56 determined | |
adj.坚定的;有决心的 | |
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57 mere | |
adj.纯粹的;仅仅,只不过 | |
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58 unreasonable | |
adj.不讲道理的,不合情理的,过度的 | |
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59 aloofness | |
超然态度 | |
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60 aggrieved | |
adj.愤愤不平的,受委屈的;悲痛的;(在合法权利方面)受侵害的v.令委屈,令苦恼,侵害( aggrieve的过去式);令委屈,令苦恼,侵害( aggrieve的过去式和过去分词) | |
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61 repented | |
对(自己的所为)感到懊悔或忏悔( repent的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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62 judgment | |
n.审判;判断力,识别力,看法,意见 | |
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63 trenches | |
深沟,地沟( trench的名词复数 ); 战壕 | |
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64 hideous | |
adj.丑陋的,可憎的,可怕的,恐怖的 | |
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65 massacre | |
n.残杀,大屠杀;v.残杀,集体屠杀 | |
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66 abominably | |
adv. 可恶地,可恨地,恶劣地 | |
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67 ornamental | |
adj.装饰的;作装饰用的;n.装饰品;观赏植物 | |
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68 complicating | |
使复杂化( complicate的现在分词 ) | |
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