It was past nine and dark when they reached Dowdenhame. The street yielded no accommodation, and while debating where to go they passed the church, with a square tower, and next to it a house which was certainly the parsonage.
“Suppose,” said Crocker, leaning on his arms upon the gate, “we ask him where to go”; and, without waiting for Shelton's answer, he rang the bell.
The door was opened by the parson, a bloodless and clean-shaven man, whose hollow cheeks and bony hands suggested a perpetual struggle. Ascetically12 benevolent14 were his grey eyes; a pale and ghostly smile played on the curves of his thin lips.
“What can I do for you?” he asked. “Inn? yes, there's the Blue Chequers, but I 'm afraid you 'll find it shut. They 're early people, I 'm glad to say”; and his eyes seemed to muse15 over the proper fold for these damp sheep. “Are you Oxford16 men, by any chance?” he asked, as if that might throw some light upon the matter. “Of Mary's? Really! I'm of Paul's myself. Ladyman—Billington Ladyman; you might remember my youngest brother. I could give you a room here if you could manage without sheets. My housekeeper17 has two days' holiday; she's foolishly taken the keys.”
Shelton accepted gladly, feeling that the intonation18 in the parson's voice was necessary unto his calling, and that he did not want to patronise.
“You 're hungry, I expect, after your tramp. I'm very much afraid there 's—er—nothing in the house but bread; I could boil you water; hot lemonade is better than nothing.”
Conducting them into the kitchen, he made a fire, and put a kettle on to boil; then, after leaving them to shed their soaking clothes, returned with ancient, greenish coats, some carpet slippers19, and some blankets. Wrapped in these, and carrying their glasses, the travellers followed to the study, where, by doubtful lamp-light, he seemed, from books upon the table, to have been working at his sermon.
“We 're giving you a lot of trouble,” said Shelton, “it's really very good of you.”
“Not at all,” the parson answered; “I'm only grieved the house is empty.”
It was a truly dismal20 contrast to the fatness of the land they had been passing through, and the parson's voice issuing from bloodless lips, although complacent21, was pathetic. It was peculiar22, that voice of his, seeming to indicate an intimate acquaintanceship with what was fat and fine, to convey contempt for the vulgar need of money, while all the time his eyes—those watery23, ascetic13 eyes—as plain as speech they said, “Oh, to know what it must be like to have a pound or two to spare just once a year, or so!”
Everything in the room had been bought for cheapness; no luxuries were there, and necessaries not enough. It was bleak24 and bare; the ceiling cracked, the wall-paper discoloured, and those books—prim, shining books, fat-backed, with arms stamped on them—glared in the surrounding barrenness.
“My predecessor,” said the parson, “played rather havoc25 with the house. The poor fellow had a dreadful struggle, I was told. You can, unfortunately, expect nothing else these days, when livings have come down so terribly in value! He was a married man—large family!”
Crocker, who had drunk his steaming lemonade, was smiling and already nodding in his chair; with his black garment buttoned closely round his throat, his long legs rolled up in a blanket, and stretched towards the feeble flame of the newly-lighted fire, he had a rather patchy air. Shelton, on the other hand, had lost his feeling of fatigue26; the strangeness of the place was stimulating27 his brain; he kept stealing glances at the scantiness28 around; the room, the parson, the furniture, the very fire, all gave him the feeling caused by seeing legs that have outgrown29 their trousers. But there was something underlying30 that leanness of the landscape, something superior and academic, which defied all sympathy. It was pure nervousness which made him say:
“Ah! why do they have such families?”
A faint red mounted to the parson's cheeks; its appearance there was startling, and Crocker chuckled31, as a sleepy man will chuckle32 who feels bound to show that he is not asleep.
“It's very unfortunate,” murmured the parson, “certainly, in many cases.”
Shelton would now have changed the subject, but at this moment the unhappy Crocker snored. Being a man of action, he had gone to sleep.
“It seems to me,” said Shelton hurriedly, as he saw the parson's eyebrows33 rising at the sound, “almost what you might call wrong.”
“Dear me, but how can it be wrong?”
“I don't know,” he said, “only one hears of such a lot of cases—clergymen's families; I've two uncles of my own, who—”
A new expression gathered on the parson's face; his mouth had tightened35, and his chin receded36 slightly. “Why, he 's like a mule37!” thought Shelton. His eyes, too, had grown harder, greyer, and more parroty. Shelton no longer liked his face.
“Perhaps you and I,” the parson said, “would not understand each other on such matters.”
And Shelton felt ashamed.
“I should like to ask you a question in turn, however,” the parson said, as if desirous of meeting Shelton on his low ground: “How do you justify marriage if it is not to follow the laws of nature?”
“I can only tell you what I personally feel.”
“My dear sir, you forget that a woman's chief delight is in her motherhood.”
“I should have thought it a pleasure likely to pall38 with too much repetition. Motherhood is motherhood, whether of one or of a dozen.”
“I 'm afraid,” replied the parson, with impatience39, though still keeping on his guest's low ground, “your theories are not calculated to populate the world.”
“Have you ever lived in London?” Shelton asked. “It always makes me feel a doubt whether we have any right to have children at all.”
“Surely,” said the parson with wonderful restraint, and the joints40 of his fingers cracked with the grip he had upon his chair, “you are leaving out duty towards the country; national growth is paramount41!”
“There are two ways of looking at that. It depends on what you want your country to become.”
“I did n't know,” said the parson—fanaticism now had crept into his smile—“there could be any doubt on such a subject.”
The more Shelton felt that commands were being given him, the more controversial he naturally became—apart from the merits of this subject, to which he had hardly ever given thought.
“I dare say I'm wrong,” he said, fastening his eyes on the blanket in which his legs were wrapped; “but it seems to me at least an open question whether it's better for the country to be so well populated as to be quite incapable42 of supporting itself.”
On Shelton this phrase had a mysterious effect. Resisting an impulse to discover what he really was, he answered hastily:
“Of course I'm not!”
The parson followed up his triumph, and, shifting the ground of the discussion from Shelton's to his own, he gravely said:
“Surely you must see that your theory is founded in immorality45. It is, if I may say so, extravagant46, even wicked.”
But Shelton, suffering from irritation47 at his own dishonesty, replied with heat:
“Why not say at once, sir, 'hysterical48, unhealthy'. Any opinion which goes contrary to that of the majority is always called so, I believe.”
“Well,” returned the parson, whose eyes seemed trying to bind49 Shelton to his will, “I must say your ideas do seem to me both extravagant and unhealthy. The propagation of children is enjoined50 of marriage.”
Shelton bowed above his blanket, but the parson did not smile.
“We live in very dangerous times,” he said, “and it grieves me when a man of your standing51 panders52 to these notions.”
“Those,” said Shelton, “whom the shoe does n't pinch make this rule of morality, and thrust it on to such as the shoe does pinch.”
“The rule was never made,” said the parson; “it was given us.”
“Oh!” said Shelton, “I beg your pardon.” He was in danger of forgetting the delicate position he was in. “He wants to ram8 his notions down my throat,” he thought; and it seemed to him that the parson's face had grown more like a mule's, his accent more superior, his eyes more dictatorial53: To be right in this argument seemed now of great importance, whereas, in truth, it was of no importance whatsoever54. That which, however, was important was the fact that in nothing could they ever have agreed.
But Crocker had suddenly ceased to snore; his head had fallen so that a peculiar whistling arose instead. Both Shelton and the parson looked at him, and the sight sobered them.
“Your friend seems very tired,” said the parson.
Shelton forgot all his annoyance55, for his host seemed suddenly pathetic, with those baggy56 garments, hollow cheeks, and the slightly reddened nose that comes from not imbibing57 quite enough. A kind fellow, after all!
The kind fellow rose, and, putting his hands behind his back, placed himself before the blackening fire. Whole centuries of authority stood behind him. It was an accident that the mantelpiece was chipped and rusty58, the fire-irons bent59 and worn, his linen60 frayed61 about the cuffs62.
“I don't wish to dictate,” said he, “but where it seems to me that you are wholly wrong in that your ideas foster in women those lax views of the family life that are so prevalent in Society nowadays.”
Thoughts of Antonia with her candid63 eyes, the touch of freckling64 on her pink-white skin, the fair hair gathered back, sprang up in Shelton, and that word—“lax” seemed ridiculous. And the women he was wont65 to see dragging about the streets of London with two or three small children, Women bent beneath the weight of babies that they could not leave, women going to work with babies still unborn, anaemic-looking women, impecunious66 mothers in his own class, with twelve or fourteen children, all the victims of the sanctity of marriage, and again the word “lax” seemed to be ridiculous.
“We are not put into the world to exercise our wits,”—muttered Shelton.
“That, sir, may have been all right for the last generation, the country is more crowded now. I can't see why we should n't decide it for ourselves.”
“Such a view of morality,” said the parson, looking down at Crocker with a ghostly smile, “to me is unintelligible68.”
Cracker's whistling grew in tone and in variety.
“What I hate,” said Shelton, “is the way we men decide what women are to bear, and then call them immoral44, decadent69, or what you will, if they don't fall in with our views.”
“Mr. Shelton,” said the parson, “I think we may safely leave it in the hands of God.”
Shelton was silent.
“The questions of morality,” said the parson promptly70, “have always lain through God in the hands of men, not women. We are the reasonable sex.”
Shelton stubbornly replied
“This is too bad,” exclaimed the parson with some heat.
“I 'm sorry, sir; but how can you expect women nowadays to have the same views as our grandmothers? We men, by our commercial enterprise, have brought about a different state of things; yet, for the sake of our own comfort, we try to keep women where they were. It's always those men who are most keen about their comfort”—and in his heat the sarcasm72 of using the word “comfort” in that room was lost on him—“who are so ready to accuse women of deserting the old morality.”
“Old morality! new morality!” he said. “These are strange words.”
“Forgive me,” explained Shelton; “we 're talking of working morality, I imagine. There's not a man in a million fit to talk of true morality.”
The eyes of his host contracted.
“I think,” he said—and his voice sounded as if he had pinched it in the endeavour to impress his listener—“that any well-educated man who honestly tries to serve his God has the right humbly—I say humbly—to claim morality.”
Shelton was on the point of saying something bitter, but checked himself. “Here am I,” thought he, “trying to get the last word, like an old woman.”
At this moment there was heard a piteous mewing; the parson went towards the door.
“Excuse me a moment; I 'm afraid that's one of my cats out in the wet.” He returned a minute later with a wet cat in his arms. “They will get out,” he said to Shelton, with a smile on his thin face, suffused74 by stooping. And absently he stroked the dripping cat, while a drop of wet ran off his nose. “Poor pussy75, poor pussy!” The sound of that “Poor pussy!” like nothing human in its cracked superiority, the softness of that smile, like the smile of gentleness itself, haunted Shelton till he fell asleep.
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1
sluggishly
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| adv.懒惰地；缓慢地 | |
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ironic
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| adj.讽刺的，有讽刺意味的，出乎意料的 | |
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bland
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| adj.淡而无味的，温和的，无刺激性的 | |
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grumbling
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| adj. 喃喃鸣不平的, 出怨言的 | |
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magpies
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| 喜鹊（magpie的复数形式） | |
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drenched
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| adj.湿透的；充满的v.使湿透( drench的过去式和过去分词 )；在某人（某物）上大量使用（某液体） | |
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harping
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| n.反复述说 | |
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ram
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| (random access memory)随机存取存储器 | |
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cadge
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| v.乞讨 | |
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exasperating
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| adj. 激怒的 动词exasperate的现在分词形式 | |
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exhaustion
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| n.耗尽枯竭，疲惫，筋疲力尽，竭尽，详尽无遗的论述 | |
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ascetically
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| 苦行地 | |
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ascetic
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| adj.禁欲的；严肃的 | |
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benevolent
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| adj.仁慈的，乐善好施的 | |
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muse
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| n.缪斯（希腊神话中的女神），创作灵感 | |
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Oxford
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| n.牛津（英国城市） | |
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housekeeper
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| n.管理家务的主妇，女管家 | |
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intonation
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| n.语调，声调；发声 | |
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slippers
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| n. 拖鞋 | |
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dismal
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| adj.阴沉的，凄凉的，令人忧郁的，差劲的 | |
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complacent
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| adj.自满的；自鸣得意的 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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watery
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| adj.有水的，水汪汪的；湿的，湿润的 | |
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bleak
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| adj.(天气)阴冷的；凄凉的；暗淡的 | |
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havoc
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| n.大破坏，浩劫，大混乱，大杂乱 | |
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fatigue
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| n.疲劳，劳累 | |
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stimulating
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| adj.有启发性的，能激发人思考的 | |
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scantiness
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| n.缺乏 | |
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outgrown
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| 长[发展] 得超过（某物）的范围( outgrow的过去分词 )； 长[发展]得不能再要（某物）； 长得比…快； 生长速度超过 | |
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underlying
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| adj.在下面的，含蓄的，潜在的 | |
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chuckled
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| 轻声地笑( chuckle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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chuckle
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| vi.／n.轻声笑，咯咯笑 | |
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eyebrows
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| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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34
justify
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| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
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35
tightened
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| 收紧( tighten的过去式和过去分词 )； （使）变紧； （使）绷紧； 加紧 | |
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36
receded
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| v.逐渐远离( recede的过去式和过去分词 )；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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37
mule
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| n.骡子，杂种，执拗的人 | |
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pall
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| v.覆盖，使平淡无味；n.柩衣，棺罩；棺材；帷幕 | |
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impatience
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| n.不耐烦，急躁 | |
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joints
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| 接头( joint的名词复数 )； 关节； 公共场所（尤指价格低廉的饮食和娱乐场所） （非正式）； 一块烤肉 （英式英语） | |
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paramount
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| a.最重要的，最高权力的 | |
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incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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regained
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| 复得( regain的过去式和过去分词 )； 赢回； 重回； 复至某地 | |
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immoral
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| adj.不道德的，淫荡的，荒淫的，有伤风化的 | |
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immorality
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| n. 不道德, 无道义 | |
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extravagant
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| adj.奢侈的；过分的；(言行等)放肆的 | |
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irritation
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| n.激怒，恼怒，生气 | |
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48
hysterical
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| adj.情绪异常激动的，歇斯底里般的 | |
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49
bind
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| vt.捆，包扎；装订；约束；使凝固；vi.变硬 | |
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50
enjoined
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| v.命令( enjoin的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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51
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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52
panders
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| v.迎合（他人的低级趣味或淫欲）( pander的第三人称单数 )；纵容某人；迁就某事物 | |
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53
dictatorial
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| adj. 独裁的，专断的 | |
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54
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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55
annoyance
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| n.恼怒，生气，烦恼 | |
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56
baggy
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| adj.膨胀如袋的，宽松下垂的 | |
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57
imbibing
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| v.吸收( imbibe的现在分词 )；喝；吸取；吸气 | |
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58
rusty
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| adj.生锈的；锈色的；荒废了的 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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60
linen
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| n.亚麻布，亚麻线，亚麻制品；adj.亚麻布制的，亚麻的 | |
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61
frayed
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| adj.磨损的v.（使布、绳等）磨损，磨破( fray的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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62
cuffs
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| n.袖口( cuff的名词复数 )v.掌打，拳打( cuff的第三人称单数 ) | |
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63
candid
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| adj.公正的，正直的；坦率的 | |
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freckling
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| n.斑点v.雀斑，斑点( freckle的现在分词 ) | |
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65
wont
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| adj.习惯于；v.习惯；n.习惯 | |
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66
impecunious
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| adj.不名一文的，贫穷的 | |
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67
severely
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| adv.严格地；严厉地；非常恶劣地 | |
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68
unintelligible
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| adj.无法了解的，难解的，莫明其妙的 | |
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decadent
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| adj.颓废的，衰落的，堕落的 | |
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70
promptly
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| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
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71
humbugs
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| 欺骗( humbug的名词复数 )； 虚伪； 骗子； 薄荷硬糖 | |
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72
sarcasm
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| n.讥讽，讽刺，嘲弄，反话 （adj.sarcastic） | |
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73
irony
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| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
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74
suffused
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| v.（指颜色、水气等）弥漫于，布满( suffuse的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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75
pussy
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| n.(儿语)小猫，猫咪 | |
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