EWIS RAYCIE stood on a projecting rock and surveyed the sublime1 spectacle of Mont Blanc.
It was a brilliant August day, and the air, at that height, was already so sharp that he had had to put on his fur-lined pelisse. Behind him, at a respectful distance, was the travelling servant who, at a signal, had brought it up to him; below, in the bend of the mountain road, stood the light and elegant carriage which had carried him thus far on his travels.
Scarcely more than a year had passed since he had waved a farewell to New York from the deck of the packet-ship headed down the bay; yet, to the young
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man confidently facing Mont Blanc, nothing seemed left in him of that fluid and insubstantial being, the former Lewis Raycie, save a lurking2 and abeyant3 fear of Mr. Raycie senior. Even that, however, was so attenuated4 by distance and time, so far sunk below the horizon, and anchored on the far side of the globe, that it stirred in its sleep only when a handsomely folded and wafered letter in his parent’s writing was handed out across the desk of some continental5 counting-house. Mr. Raycie senior did not write often, and when he did it was in a bland6 and stilted7 strain. He felt at a disadvantage on paper, and his natural sarcasm8 was swamped in the rolling periods which it cost him hours of labour to bring forth9; so that the dreaded10 quality lurked11 for his son only in the curve of certain letters, and in a positively12 awful way of
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writing out, at full length, the word Esquire.
It was not that Lewis had broken with all the memories of his past of a year ago. Many still lingered in him, or rather had been transferred to the new man he had become—as for instance his tenderness for Treeshy Kent, which, somewhat to his surprise, had obstinately13 resisted all the assaults of English keepsake beauties and almond-eyed houris of the East. It startled him, at times, to find Treeshy’s short dusky face, with its round forehead, the widely spaced eyes and the high cheek-bones, starting out at him suddenly in the street of some legendary14 town, or in a landscape of languid beauty, just as he had now and again been arrested in an exotic garden by the very scent15 of the verbena under the verandah at home. His travels had confirmed
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rather than weakened the family view of Treeshy’s plainness; she could not be made to fit into any of the patterns of female beauty so far submitted to him; yet there she was, ensconced in his new heart and mind as deeply as in the old, though her kisses seemed less vivid, and the peculiar16 rough notes of her voice hardly reached him. Sometimes, half irritably17, he said to himself that with an effort he could disperse18 her once for all; yet she lived on in him, unseen yet ineffaceable, like the image on a daguerreotype19 plate, no less there because so often invisible.
To the new Lewis, however, the whole business was less important than he had once thought it. His suddenly acquired maturity20 made Treeshy seem a petted child rather than the guide, the Beatrice, he had once considered her; and he prom
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ised himself, with an elderly smile, that as soon as he got to Italy he would write her the long letter for which he was now considerably21 in her debt.
His travels had first carried him to England. There he spent some weeks in collecting letters and recommendations for his tour, in purchasing his travelling-carriage and its numerous appurtenances, and in driving in it from cathedral town to storied castle, omitting nothing, from Abbotsford to Kenilworth, which deserved the attention of a cultivated mind. From England he crossed to Calais, moving slowly southward to the Mediterranean22; and there, taking ship for the Piræus, he plunged23 into pure romance, and the tourist became a Giaour.
It was the East which had made him into a new Lewis Raycie; the East, so squalid and splendid, so pestilent and so
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poetic, so full of knavery24 and romance and fleas25 and nightingales, and so different, alike in its glories and its dirt, from what his studious youth had dreamed. After Smyrna and the bazaars26, after Damascus and Palmyra, the Acropolis, Mytilene and Sunium, what could be left in his mind of Canal Street and the lawn above the Sound? Even the mosquitoes, which seemed at first the only connecting link, were different, because he fought with them in scenes so different; and a young gentleman who had journeyed across the desert in Arabian dress, slept under goats’-hair tents, been attacked by robbers in the Peloponnesus and despoiled27 by his own escort at Baalbek, and by customs’ officials everywhere, could not but look with a smile on the terrors that walk New York and the Hudson river. Encased in security and monotony, that
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other Lewis Raycie, when his little figure bobbed up to the surface, seemed like a new-born babe preserved in alcohol. Even Mr. Raycie senior’s thunders were now no more than the far-off murmur28 of summer lightning on a perfect evening. Had Mr. Raycie ever really frightened Lewis? Why, now he was not even frightened by Mont Blanc!
He was still gazing with a sense of easy equality at its awful pinnacles29 when another travelling-carriage paused near his own, and a young man, eagerly jumping from it, and also followed by a servant with a cloak, began to mount the slope. Lewis at once recognized the carriage, and the light springing figure of the young man, his blue coat and swelling30 stock, and the scar slightly distorting his handsome and eloquent31 mouth. It was the Englishman who had arrived at
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the Montanvert inn the night before with a valet, a guide, and such a cargo32 of books, maps and sketching33-materials as threatened to overshadow even Lewis’s outfit34.
Lewis, at first, had not been greatly drawn35 to the newcomer, who, seated aloof36 in the dining-room, seemed not to see his fellow-traveller. The truth was that Lewis was dying for a little conversation. His astonishing experiences were so tightly packed in him (with no outlet37 save the meagre trickle38 of his nightly diary) that he felt they would soon melt into the vague blur39 of other people’s travels unless he could give them fresh reality by talking them over. And the stranger with the deep-blue eyes that matched his coat, the scarred cheek and eloquent lip, seemed to Lewis a worthy40 listener. The Englishman appeared to think otherwise. He preserved an air of moody41 abstraction,
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which Lewis’s vanity imagined him to have put on as the gods becloud themselves for their secret errands; and the curtness42 of his goodnight was (Lewis flattered himself) surpassed only by the young New Yorker’s.
But today all was different. The stranger advanced affably, raised his hat from his tossed statue-like hair, and enquired43 with a smile: “Are you by any chance interested in the forms of cirrous clouds?”
His voice was as sweet as his smile, and the two were reinforced by a glance so winning that it made the odd question seem not only pertinent44 but natural. Lewis, though surprised, was not disconcerted. He merely coloured with the unwonted sense of his ignorance, and replied ingenuously45: “I believe, sir, I am interested in everything.
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”
“A noble answer!” cried the other, and held out his hand.
“But I must add,” Lewis continued with courageous46 honesty, “that I have never as yet had occasion to occupy myself particularly with the forms of cirrous clouds.”
His companion looked at him merrily. “That,” said he, “is no reason why you shouldn’t begin to do so now!” To which Lewis as merrily agreed. “For in order to be interested in things,” the other continued more gravely, “it is only necessary to see them; and I believe I am not wrong in saying that you are one of the privileged beings to whom the seeing eye has been given.”
Lewis blushed his agreement, and his interlocutor continued: “You are one of those who have been on the road to Damascus.
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”
“On the road? I’ve been to the place itself!” the wanderer exclaimed, bursting with the particulars of his travels; and then blushed more deeply at the perception that the other’s use of the name had of course been figurative.
The young Englishman’s face lit up. “You’ve been to Damascus—literally been there yourself? But that may be almost as interesting, in its quite different way, as the formation of clouds or lichens47. For the present,” he continued with a gesture toward the mountain, “I must devote myself to the extremely inadequate48 rendering49 of some of these delicate aiguilles; a bit of drudgery50 not likely to interest you in the face of so sublime a scene. But perhaps this evening—if, as I think, we are staying in the same inn—you will give me a few minutes of your society, and tell me something of your travels. My father,
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” he added with his engaging smile, “has had packed with my paint-brushes a few bottles of a wholly trustworthy Madeira; and if you will favour me with your company at dinner....”
He signed to his servant to undo51 the sketching materials, spread his cloak on the rock, and was already lost in his task as Lewis descended52 to the carriage.
The Madeira proved as trustworthy as his host had promised. Perhaps it was its exceptional quality which threw such a golden lustre53 over the dinner; unless it were rather the conversation of the blue-eyed Englishman which made Lewis Raycie, always a small drinker, feel that in his company every drop was nectar.
When Lewis joined his host it had been with the secret hope of at last being able to talk; but when the evening was over
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(and they kept it up to the small hours) he perceived that he had chiefly listened. Yet there had been no sense of suppression, of thwarted54 volubility; he had been given all the openings he wanted. Only, whenever he produced a little fact it was instantly overflowed55 by the other’s imagination till it burned like a dull pebble56 tossed into a rushing stream. For whatever Lewis said was seen by his companion from a new angle, and suggested a new train of thought; each commonplace item of experience became a many-faceted crystal flashing with unexpected fires. The young Englishman’s mind moved in a world of associations and references far more richly peopled than Lewis’s; but his eager communicativeness, his directness of speech and manner, instantly opened its gates to the simpler youth. It was certainly not the Madeira which sped the
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hours and flooded them with magic; but the magic gave the Madeira—excellent, and reputed of its kind, as Lewis afterward57 learned—a taste no other vintage was to have for him.
“Oh, but we must meet again in Italy—there are many things there that I could perhaps help you to see,” the young Englishman declared as they swore eternal friendship on the stairs of the sleeping inn.
点击收听单词发音
1 sublime | |
adj.崇高的,伟大的;极度的,不顾后果的 | |
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2 lurking | |
潜在 | |
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3 abeyant | |
adj.暂时搁置的,所有权未定的,暂缓执行的 | |
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4 attenuated | |
v.(使)变细( attenuate的过去式和过去分词 );(使)变薄;(使)变小;减弱 | |
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5 continental | |
adj.大陆的,大陆性的,欧洲大陆的 | |
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6 bland | |
adj.淡而无味的,温和的,无刺激性的 | |
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7 stilted | |
adj.虚饰的;夸张的 | |
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8 sarcasm | |
n.讥讽,讽刺,嘲弄,反话 (adj.sarcastic) | |
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9 forth | |
adv.向前;向外,往外 | |
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10 dreaded | |
adj.令人畏惧的;害怕的v.害怕,恐惧,担心( dread的过去式和过去分词) | |
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11 lurked | |
vi.潜伏,埋伏(lurk的过去式与过去分词形式) | |
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12 positively | |
adv.明确地,断然,坚决地;实在,确实 | |
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13 obstinately | |
ad.固执地,顽固地 | |
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14 legendary | |
adj.传奇(中)的,闻名遐迩的;n.传奇(文学) | |
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15 scent | |
n.气味,香味,香水,线索,嗅觉;v.嗅,发觉 | |
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16 peculiar | |
adj.古怪的,异常的;特殊的,特有的 | |
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17 irritably | |
ad.易生气地 | |
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18 disperse | |
vi.使分散;使消失;vt.分散;驱散 | |
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19 daguerreotype | |
n.银板照相 | |
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20 maturity | |
n.成熟;完成;(支票、债券等)到期 | |
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21 considerably | |
adv.极大地;相当大地;在很大程度上 | |
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22 Mediterranean | |
adj.地中海的;地中海沿岸的 | |
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23 plunged | |
v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 );暴跌;骤降;突降 | |
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24 knavery | |
n.恶行,欺诈的行为 | |
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25 fleas | |
n.跳蚤( flea的名词复数 );爱财如命;没好气地(拒绝某人的要求) | |
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26 bazaars | |
(东方国家的)市场( bazaar的名词复数 ); 义卖; 义卖市场; (出售花哨商品等的)小商品市场 | |
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27 despoiled | |
v.掠夺,抢劫( despoil的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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28 murmur | |
n.低语,低声的怨言;v.低语,低声而言 | |
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29 pinnacles | |
顶峰( pinnacle的名词复数 ); 顶点; 尖顶; 小尖塔 | |
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30 swelling | |
n.肿胀 | |
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31 eloquent | |
adj.雄辩的,口才流利的;明白显示出的 | |
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32 cargo | |
n.(一只船或一架飞机运载的)货物 | |
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33 sketching | |
n.草图 | |
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34 outfit | |
n.(为特殊用途的)全套装备,全套服装 | |
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35 drawn | |
v.拖,拉,拔出;adj.憔悴的,紧张的 | |
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36 aloof | |
adj.远离的;冷淡的,漠不关心的 | |
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37 outlet | |
n.出口/路;销路;批发商店;通风口;发泄 | |
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38 trickle | |
vi.淌,滴,流出,慢慢移动,逐渐消散 | |
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39 blur | |
n.模糊不清的事物;vt.使模糊,使看不清楚 | |
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40 worthy | |
adj.(of)值得的,配得上的;有价值的 | |
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41 moody | |
adj.心情不稳的,易怒的,喜怒无常的 | |
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42 curtness | |
n.简短;草率;简略 | |
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43 enquired | |
打听( enquire的过去式和过去分词 ); 询问; 问问题; 查问 | |
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44 pertinent | |
adj.恰当的;贴切的;中肯的;有关的;相干的 | |
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45 ingenuously | |
adv.率直地,正直地 | |
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46 courageous | |
adj.勇敢的,有胆量的 | |
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47 lichens | |
n.地衣( lichen的名词复数 ) | |
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48 inadequate | |
adj.(for,to)不充足的,不适当的 | |
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49 rendering | |
n.表现,描写 | |
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50 drudgery | |
n.苦工,重活,单调乏味的工作 | |
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51 undo | |
vt.解开,松开;取消,撤销 | |
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52 descended | |
a.为...后裔的,出身于...的 | |
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53 lustre | |
n.光亮,光泽;荣誉 | |
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54 thwarted | |
阻挠( thwart的过去式和过去分词 ); 使受挫折; 挫败; 横过 | |
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55 overflowed | |
溢出的 | |
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56 pebble | |
n.卵石,小圆石 | |
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57 afterward | |
adv.后来;以后 | |
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