Perhaps he was more at his ease. He lay, at any rate, before his tent, full length upon his stomach, his crook’d elbows supported his face, which was wrinkled between his hands. His pipe, grown cold by delay, lay on the sward before him. One leg, from the knee, made frequent excursions towards the sky, and when it did, discovered itself lean and sinewy2, bare of sock. His sweater was now blue, and his trousers were grey; it was probably he had no more clothing upon him. Upon a camp-stool near by sat Lord Bramleigh of the round face, corded and gaitered, high-collared and astare. To express bewilderment, he whistled; concerned, he smiled.
“Well,” he said presently, “I think you might. We’re short of a gun—I’ve told you so.”
“My dear man,” said the other, “I shoot no birds. I’d as soon shoot my sister.”
“That’s rot, you know, Jack.”
“To me it’s plain sense. God save you, Bramleigh, have you ever seen a bird fly? It’s the most marvellous—no, it’s not, because we’re all marvels3 together; but I’ll tell you this—boys frisking after a full meal, girls at knucklebones, a leopard4 stalking from a bough5, horses in a windy pasture—whatever you like of the sort has been done, and well done—but a bird in flight, never! There’s no greater sight—and you’ll flare6 into it with your filthy7 explosives and shatter a miracle into blood and feathers. Beastly work, my boy, butchers’ work.”
“Rot,” said Bramleigh—“But of course you’re mad. Why are my cartridges8 filthier9 than your pots of paint? Hey?”
“Well, I make something, you see—or try to, and you blow it to smithereens—However, we won’t wrangle10, Bramleigh. You’re a nice little man, after all. Those Ramondias—it was really decent of you.”
“Much obliged,” said the young lord; and then—“I say, talking of the Pyrenees, you knew Duplessis? He’s our man short. He’s chucked, you know. He’s awfully11 sick.” Senhouse was but faintly interested.
“Gel. Gel goin’ to be married—to-day or something—end of September, I know. Tristram’s mad about it. He was at San Sebastian with me when he heard about it—and bolted off like a rabbit—mad rabbit.”
Senhouse yawned. “We’re all mad according to you, you know. So I take something off. I can understand his sort of madness, anyhow. Who’s the lady?”
“Oh, I don’t know her myself. Gel down at his place—in a poor sort of way, I b’lieve. Companion or something—he played about—and now she’s been picked up by a swell13 connexion of his—old Germain of Southover. Be shot, if he’s not going to marry her.”
The lengthy14 philosopher smiled to himself, but gave no other sign of recognition until he said, “I know that lady. Brown-eyed, sharp-eyed, quick, sleek15, mouse of a girl.”
“Dessay,” said Lord Bramleigh. “They know their way about.” The philosopher threw himself upon his back and gazed into the sky.
“Yes, and what a way, good Lord! Idol-hunting—panting after idols16. Maims herself and expects Heaven as a reward. I don’t suppose that she has been herself since she left her mother’s lap. And now, with an alternative of being sucked dry and pitched away, she is to be slowly starved to death. I only saw her once—no, twice. She had what struck me as unusual capacities for happiness—zest, curiosity, health—but no chances of it whatsoever17. Ignorant—oh, Lord! They make me weep, that sort. So pretty and so foolish. But there, if I once began to cry, I should dissolve in mist.”
“Oh, come,” said Lord Bramleigh, “I don’t think she’s doin’ badly for herself. She was nobody, you know, and old Germain—well, he’s a somebody. He’s a connexion of mine, through his sister-in-law—she was Constantia Telfer—so I know he’s all right.”
“I’ll do her the justice to say,” Senhouse reflected aloud, “that she didn’t sell herself—she’s not a prostitute. She’s a baby—pure baby. She was dazzled, and misunderstood the sensation. She thought she was touched. She’s positively18 grateful to the man—didn’t see how she was to refuse. She’s a donkey, no doubt—but she had pretty ways. She could have been inordinately19 happy—but she’s not going to be. She’s in for troubles, and I’m sorry. I liked her.”
“She’d better look out for Tristram, I can tell you,” said Bramleigh. “He’s an ugly customer, if he don’t have his rights. Not that there were any rights, so far as I know—but that makes no difference to Tristram.”
“Is she worth his while? I doubt it.”
“She will be. Germain’s rich. Besides, Tristram sticks up for his rights—tenacious beggar.”
“Should have been kicked young,” quoth the philosopher, and sped Lord Bramleigh on his way.
“Mary Middleham, O Mary of the brown eyes and pretty mouth, I should like to see you married!” he thought, as he packed his tent. “There’s a woman inside you, my friend; you weren’t given her form for nothing. You are not going to be married yet awhile, you know. It’ll take more than a going to church to do that. You’ve got to be a woman first—and you’re not yet born!”
He lifted a shallow box of earth, and fingered some plants in it. “Ramondias—beauties! One of these springs there’ll be a cloud of your mauve flushing a black cliff over the green water. There’s a palette to have given old England! Mauve, wet black, and sea-green. I have the very place for you, out of reach of any save God and the sea-mews and me. But even with them you won’t have a bad ‘assistance.’ That’s a clever word, for how is the artist going to make a masterpiece unless the public makes half of it? Black, mauve, and green—all wet together! We’ll make a masterpiece in England yet. . . .
“That girl’s great eyes haunt me. Lakes of brown wonder—they were the colour of moorland water—a dainty piece! I could see love in her—she was made for it. A dark hot night in summer, and she in your arms. . . .! Good Lord, when the beast in a man gets informed by the mind of a god—there’s no ecstasy20 beyond the sun to compare with it. . . .
“Two things worth the world—: Power, and Giving. When a girl gives you her soul in her body, and you pour it all back into her lap, you are spending like a king. Why do women mourn Christ on His cross? Where else would He choose to be? A royal giver! To have the thing to give—and to give it all! He was to be envied, not mourned. . . .
“Old Germain—what’s he doing but playing the King on the Cross. He feels it—we all feel it—but has he got anything to give? It’s an infernal shame. He’s bought the child. She’ll never forgive him; she’ll harden, she’ll be pitiless—have no mercy when the hour strikes. There’ll be horrors—it ought to be stopped. I’ve half a mind——
“To school? To Duplessis? Is he to school her, poor wretch22? What are his ‘rights?’ Squatter’s rights, you may suppose. So she’s to be a doll for Germain to dandle, or an orange for Duplessis to suck, and betwixt the feeding and the draining a woman’s to be born! Wife, who’s no wife, mistress for an hour—and a pretty flower with the fruit unformed. . . .
“If I bedeck the bosom23 of England and star it with flowers, do I do better than Germain with his money, or Duplessis with his rights? And if I were to court her bosom . . . Oh, my brown-eyed venturer in deep waters, I could serve you well! Go to school, go to school, missy—and when you are tired, there’s Halfway24 House!”
That evening under the hunter’s moon he struck his camp. He had told young Bramleigh that he was soon for the West, where he preferred to winter. “I shall be in Cornwall by November,” he had said, “and that’s time enough;” and this being late September, it is clear that he projected a leisurely25 progress from Northamptonshire, where he now was, to the Cornish Sea. He had indeed no reason for hurry, but many for delay. That fairest of all seasons to the poet’s mind—that “close bosom-friend of the maturing sun” was to him foster-mother, whether her drowsy26 splendours fed him or he felt the tonic27 of her chill after-breath. He worked out, he said, in winter what he had dreamed in the autumn, and he could afford to lose no hours from her lap.
Loafer deliberately28, incurably29 a tramp, he was never idle—whether mending kettles or painting masterpieces (for he had a knack30 of colour which now and then warranted that word), his real interest was in watching life and in establishing a base broad enough or simple enough to uphold it all. He was not too proud to learn from the beasts, nor enough of a prig to ignore his two-legged neighbours: but for the life of him he could not see wherein a Lord Bramleigh differed from a ploughboy, or a Mary Middleham from a hen partridge—and it was a snare31 laid for him that he was constantly to be tempted32 to overlook the fact that they differed at least in this, that they had the chance of differing considerably33. He would have been greatly shocked to be told that he was a cynic, and yet intellectually he was nothing more. He did himself the honour of believing most people to be donkeys: if they were not, why under the sun did they not do as he was doing?
The answer to that was that if they did, he would immediately do something else, and find plenty reasons to support him. He had not worked that out—but it’s true.
It was also true—as he had told Mary Middleham—that he lived from hand to mouth. His father, Alderman Senhouse, J.P., of Dingeley, in the Northern Midlands, was proprietor34 of the famous Dingeley Main Colliery, and extremely rich. His mother had been a Battersby, well connected, therefore. He had been to Rugby and to Cambridge, just as Duplessis had been, and at the same times; like Duplessis he idled, but unlike him, he cost no man anything. For his needs, which were very simple, he could make enough by his water-colours, a portrait here and there, an essay, a poem. Then—and that was true, too—he had the art and mystery of tinkering at his disposition35. He had earned his place in the guild36 of tinkers—a very real body—by more than one battle. He was accepted as an eccentric whose whim37 was to be taken seriously—and as such he made his way. He had never asked his father for a sixpence since he left Cambridge and was on very friendly terms with him. His brothers took the world more strenuously38; one was partner at the colliery, another in Parliament, a third—the first born—was Recorder of Towcester.
So much for his talents—now for his accomplishments39. He was an expert woodman, a friend to every furred and feathered thing, could handle adders40 without fear, and was said to know more about pole-cats, where they could still be found, and when, than any man in England. He had seen more badgers41 at ease than most people, and was infallible at finding a fox. All herbs he loved, and knew their virtues42; a very good gardener in the West said that the gentleman-tinker could make a plant grow. There’s no doubt he had a knack, as the rock-faces between Land’s End and St. Ives could testify—and may yet. He had a garden out there, which he was now on the way to inspect. But he had many gardens—that was his passion. He was but newly come from one in Cumberland.
He said of himself that he was a pagan suckled in a creed43 outworn, and that he was safely weaned. There was a touch of the faun about him; he had no self-consciousness and occasionally more frankness than was convenient. The number of his acquaintance was extraordinary, and, in a sense, so was that of his friends—for he had none at all. Accessible as he was up to a point, beyond that point I know nobody who could say he had ever explored Senhouse. That was where the secretiveness of the wild creature peeped out. Nobody had ever said of him that he had loved, either because nobody knew—or because nobody told. Yet his way with women was most effective; it was to ignore their sex. “I liked her,” he would say meditatively44 of a woman—and add, “She was a donkey, of course.” You could make little of a phrase of the sort—yet one would be glad to know the woman’s opinion. We have seen that he could be a sympathetic listener, we know that he could be more, in moments of difficulty—and there we stop.
Lastly, I am not aware that he had any shame. He seems always to have done exactly as he pleased—until he was stopped by some guardian45 of custom or privilege. This frequently happened; but so far as I can learn the only effect upon Senhouse was to set him sauntering elsewhere—to do exactly as he pleased. He never lost his temper, was never out of spirits, drank wine when he could get it, but found water quite palatable46. He was perfectly47 sincere in his professions, and owned nothing in the world but his horse and cart, Bingo, the materials of his trade, and some clothes which had not been renewed for five years. We leave him at present, pushing to the West.
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1
jack
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| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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sinewy
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| adj.多腱的，强壮有力的 | |
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3
marvels
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| n.奇迹( marvel的名词复数 )；令人惊奇的事物（或事例）；不平凡的成果；成就v.惊奇，对…感到惊奇( marvel的第三人称单数 ) | |
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4
leopard
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| n.豹 | |
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bough
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| n.大树枝，主枝 | |
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flare
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| v.闪耀，闪烁；n.潮红；突发 | |
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7
filthy
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| adj.卑劣的；恶劣的，肮脏的 | |
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8
cartridges
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| 子弹( cartridge的名词复数 )； （打印机的）墨盒； 录音带盒； （唱机的）唱头 | |
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9
filthier
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| filthy（肮脏的，污秽的）的比较级形式 | |
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10
wrangle
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| vi.争吵 | |
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11
awfully
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| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
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12
ass
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| n.驴；傻瓜，蠢笨的人 | |
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13
swell
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| vi.膨胀，肿胀；增长，增强 | |
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14
lengthy
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| adj.漫长的，冗长的 | |
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15
sleek
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| adj.光滑的，井然有序的；v.使光滑，梳拢 | |
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16
idols
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| 偶像( idol的名词复数 )； 受崇拜的人或物； 受到热爱和崇拜的人或物； 神像 | |
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17
whatsoever
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| adv.（用于否定句中以加强语气）任何；pron.无论什么 | |
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18
positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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inordinately
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| adv.无度地，非常地 | |
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ecstasy
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| n.狂喜，心醉神怡，入迷 | |
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21
travail
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| n.阵痛；努力 | |
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wretch
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| n.可怜的人，不幸的人；卑鄙的人 | |
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bosom
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| n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的 | |
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halfway
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| adj.中途的，不彻底的，部分的；adv.半路地，在中途，在半途 | |
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25
leisurely
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| adj.悠闲的；从容的，慢慢的 | |
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drowsy
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| adj.昏昏欲睡的，令人发困的 | |
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27
tonic
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| n./adj.滋补品，补药，强身的，健体的 | |
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deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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incurably
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| ad.治不好地 | |
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30
knack
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| n.诀窍，做事情的灵巧的，便利的方法 | |
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31
snare
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| n.陷阱，诱惑，圈套；（去除息肉或者肿瘤的）勒除器；响弦，小军鼓；vt.以陷阱捕获，诱惑 | |
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32
tempted
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| v.怂恿（某人）干不正当的事；冒…的险（tempt的过去分词） | |
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33
considerably
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| adv.极大地；相当大地；在很大程度上 | |
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proprietor
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| n.所有人；业主；经营者 | |
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disposition
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| n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署 | |
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guild
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| n.行会，同业公会，协会 | |
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whim
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| n.一时的兴致，突然的念头；奇想，幻想 | |
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38
strenuously
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| adv.奋发地，费力地 | |
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39
accomplishments
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| n.造诣；完成( accomplishment的名词复数 )；技能；成绩；成就 | |
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40
adders
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| n.加法器，（欧洲产）蝰蛇（小毒蛇），（北美产无毒的）猪鼻蛇( adder的名词复数 ) | |
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41
badgers
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| n.獾( badger的名词复数 )；獾皮；（大写）獾州人（美国威斯康星州人的别称）；毛鼻袋熊 | |
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42
virtues
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| 美德( virtue的名词复数 )； 德行； 优点； 长处 | |
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43
creed
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| n.信条；信念，纲领 | |
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44
meditatively
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| adv.冥想地 | |
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45
guardian
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| n.监护人；守卫者，保护者 | |
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46
palatable
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| adj.可口的，美味的；惬意的 | |
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47
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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