§ 1
But although Dolly did not pursue her husband with any sustained criticism, he seemed now to feel always that her attitude was critical and needed an answer. The feeling made him something of a thinker and something of a talker. Sometimes the thinker was uppermost, and then he would sit silent and rather in profile (his profile, it has already been stated, was a good one, and much enhanced by a romantic bang of warm golden hair that hung down over one eye), very picturesque2 in his beautiful blue linen3 blouse, listening to whatever was said; and sometimes he would turn upon the company and talk with a sort of experimental dogmatism, as is the way with men a little insecure in their convictions, but quite good talk. He would talk of education, and work, and Peter, and of love and beauty, and the finer purposes of life, and things like that.
A lot of talk came the way of Peter’s father.
Along the Limpsfield ridge4 and away east and west and north, there was a scattered5 community of congenial intellectuals. It spread along the ridge beyond Dorking, and resumed again at Haslemere and Hindhead, where Grant Allen and Richard Le Gallienne were established. They were mostly people of the same detached and independent class as the Stublands; they were the children of careful people who had created considerable businesses, or the children of the more successful of middle Victorian celebrities6, or dons, or writers themselves, or they came from Hampstead, which was in those days a nest of considerable people’s children, inheritors of reputations and writers of memoirs7, an hour’s ’bus drive from London and outside the cab radius8. 14A thin flavour of Hampstead spread out, indeed, over all Surrey. Some of these newcomers lived in old adapted cottages; some of them had built little houses after the fashion of the Stublands; some had got into the real old houses that already existed. There was much Sunday walking and “dropping in” and long evenings and suppers. Safety bicycles were coming into use and greatly increasing intercourse9. And there was a coming and going of Stubland aunts and uncles and of Sydenhams and Dolly’s “people.” Nearly all were youngish folk; it was a new generation and a new sort of population for the countryside. They were dotted among the farms and the estates and preserves and “places” of the old county family pattern. The “county” wondered a little at them, kept busy with horse and dog and gun, and, except for an occasional stiff call, left them alone. The church lamented10 their neglected Sabbaths. The doctors were not unfriendly.
One of the frequent visitors, indeed, at The Ingle-Nook—that was the name of Peter’s birthplace—was Doctor Fremisson, the local general practitioner11. He was a man, he said, who liked “Ideas.” The aborigines lacked Ideas, it seemed; but Stubland was a continual feast of them. The doctor’s diagnosis12 of the difference between these new English and the older English of the country rested entirely13 on the presence or absence of Ideas. But there he was wrong. The established people were people of fixed14 ideas; the immigrants had abandoned fixed ideas for discussion. So far from their having no ideas, those occasional callers who came dropping in so soon as the Stublands were settled in The Ingle-Nook before Peter was born, struck the Stublands as having ideas like monstrous15 and insurmountable cliffs. To fling your own ideas at them was like trying to lob stones into Zermatt from Macugnana.
One day when Mrs. Darcy, old Lady Darcy’s daughter-in-law, had driven over, some devil prompted Arthur to shock her. He talked his extremest Fabianism. He would have the government control all railways, land, natural products; nobody should have a wage of less than two pounds a week; the whole country should be administered for the universal benefit; everybody should be educated.
15“I’m sure the dear old Queen does all she can,” said Mrs. Darcy.
“I’m a democratic republican,” said Arthur.
He might as well have called himself a Christadelphian for any idea he conveyed.
Presently, seized by a gust16 of unreasonable17 irritation18, he went out of the room.
“Mr. Stubland talks,” said Mrs. Darcy; “really——” She paused. She hesitated. She spoke19 with a little disarming20 titter lest what she said should seem too dreadful. “He says such things. I really believe he’s more than half a Liberal. There! You mustn’t mind what I say, Mrs. Stubland....”
Dolly, by virtue21 of her vicarage training, understood these people better than Peter’s father. She had read herself out of the great Anglican culture, but she remembered things from the inside. She was still in close touch with numerous relations who were quite completely inside. Before the little green gate had clicked behind their departing backs, Arthur would protest to her and heaven that these visitors were impossible, that such visitors could not be, they were phantoms22 or bad practical jokes, undergraduates dressed up to pull his leg.
“They know nothing,” he said.
“They know all sorts of things you don’t know,” she corrected.
“What do they know? There isn’t a topic one can start on which they are not just blank.”
“You start the wrong topics. They can tell you all sorts of things about the dear Queen’s grandchildren. They know things about horses. And about regiments23 and barracks. Tell me, Arthur, how is the charming young Prince of Bulgaria, who is just getting married, related to the late Prince Consort24.”
“Damn their Royal Marriages!”
“If you say that, then they have an equal right to say, ‘damn your Wildes and Beardsleys and William Morrises and Swinburnes.’”
“They read nothing.”
“They read Mrs. Henry Wood. They read lots of authors 16you have never heard of, nice authors. They read so many of them that for the most part they forget their names. The bold ones read Ouida—who isn’t half bad. They read every scrap25 they can find about the marriage of the Princess Marie to the Crown Prince of Roumania. Mrs. Bagshot-Fawcett talked about it yesterday. It seems he’s really a rarer and better sort of Hohenzollern than the young German Emperor, our sailor grandson that is. She isn’t very clear about it, but she seems to think that the Prince of Hohenzollern ought rightfully to be German Emperor.”
“Oh, what rot!”
“But perhaps she’s right. How do you know? I don’t. She takes an almost voluptuous26 delight in the two marriage ceremonies. You know, I suppose, dear, that there were two ceremonies, a Protestant one and a Catholic one, because the Roumanian Hohenzollerns are Catholic Hohenzollerns. Of course, the dear princess would become a Catholic——”
“Oh, don’t!” cried Peter’s father; “don’t!”
“I had to listen to three-quarters of an hour of it yesterday. Such a happy and convenient occurrence, the princess’s conversion27, but—archly—of course, my dear, I suppose there’s sometimes just a little persuasion28 in these cases.”
“Dolly, you go too far!”
“But that isn’t, of course, the great interest just at present. The great interest just at present is George and May. You know they’re going to be married.”
Arthur lifted a protesting profile. “My dear! Who is May?” he tenored.
“Affected ignorance! She is the Princess May who was engaged to the late Duke of Clarence, the Princess Mary of Teck. And now he’s dead, she’s going to marry the Duke of York. Surely you understand about that. He is your Future Sovereign. Mrs. Bagshot-Fawcett gets positively30 lush about him. It was George she always lurved, Mrs. Bagshot-Fawcett says, but she accepted his brother for Reasons of State. So after all it’s rather nice and romantic that the elder brother——”
Arthur roared and tore his hair and walked up and down the low room. “What are these people to me?” he shouted. “What are these people to me?”
17“But there is twenty times as much about that sort of thing in the papers as there is about our sort of things.”
There was no disputing it.
“We’re in a foreign country,” cried Arthur, going off at a tangent. “We’re in a foreign country. We English are a subject people.... Talk of Home Rule for Ireland!... Why are there no English Nationalists? One of these days I will hoist31 the cross of St. George outside this cottage. But I doubt if any one on this countryside will know it for the English flag.”
§ 2
Whatever is seems right, and it is only now, after five and twenty years of change, that we do begin to see as a remarkable32 thing the detached life that great masses of the English were leading beneath the canopy33 of the Hanoverian monarchy34. For in those days the court thought in German; Teutonized Anglicans, sentimental35, materialistic36 and resolutely37 “loyal,” dominated society; Gladstone was notoriously disliked by them for his anti-German policy and his Irish and Russian sympathies, and the old Queen’s selection of bishops38 guided feeling in the way it ought to go. But there was a leakage39 none the less. More and more people were drifting out of relationship to church and state, exactly as Peter’s parents had drifted out. The Court dominated, but it did not dominate intelligently; it controlled the church to no effect, its influence upon universities and schools and art and literature was merely deadening; it responded to flattery but it failed to direct; it was the court of an alien-spirited old lady, making much of the pathos40 of her widowhood and trading still on the gallantry and generosity41 that had welcomed her as a “girl queen.” The real England separated itself more and more from that superficial England of the genteel that looked to Osborne and Balmoral. To the real England, dissentient England, court taste was a joke, court art was a scandal; of English literature and science notoriously the court knew nothing. In the huge pacific industrial individualism of Great Britain it did not seem a serious matter that the army and navy and the Indian administration 18were orientated42 to the court. Peter’s parents and the large class of detached people to which they belonged, were out of politics, out of the system, scornful, or facetious43 and aloof44. Just as they were out of religion. These things did not concern them.
The great form of the empire contained these indifferents, the great roof of church and state hung over them. Royal visits, diplomatic exchanges and the like passed to and fro, alien, uninteresting proceedings45; Heligoland was given to the young Emperor William the Second by Lord Salisbury, the old Queen’s favourite prime minister, English politicians jostled the French in Africa as roughly as possible to “larn them to be” republicans, and resisted the Home Rule aspirations46 and the ill-concealed republicanism of the “Keltic fringe”; one’s Anglican neighbours of the “ruling class” went off to rule India and the empire with manners that would have maddened Job; they stood for Parliament and played the game of politics upon factitious issues. Sir Charles Dilke, the last of the English Republicans, and Charles Stewart Parnell, the uncrowned King of Ireland, had both been extinguished by opportune47 divorce cases. (Liberal opinion, it was felt, must choose between the private and the public life. You could not have it both ways.) It did not seem to be a state of affairs to make a fuss about. The general life went on comfortably enough. We built our pretty rough-cast houses, taught Shirley poppies to spring artlessly between the paving-stones in our garden paths, begot48 the happy children who were to grow up under that roof of a dynastic system that was never going to fall in. (Because it never had fallen in.)
Never before had nurseries been so pretty as they were in that glowing pause at the end of the nineteenth century.
Peter’s nursery was a perfect room in which to hatch the soul of a little boy. Its walls were done in a warm cream-coloured paint, and upon them Peter’s father had put the most lovely pattern of trotting49 and jumping horses and dancing cats and dogs and leaping lambs, a carnival50 of beasts. He had copied these figures from books, enlarging them as he did so; he had cut them out in paper, stuck them on the wall, and then flicked51 bright blue paint at them until they were all 19outlined in a penumbra52 of stippled53 blue. Then he unpinned the paper and took it on to another part of the wall and so made his pattern. There was a big brass54 fireguard in Peter’s nursery that hooked on to the jambs of the fireplace, and all the tables had smoothly55 rounded corners against the days when Peter would run about. The floor was of cork56 carpet on which Peter would put his toys, and there was a crimson57 hearthrug on which Peter was destined58 to crawl. And a number of stuffed dogs and elephants, whose bead59 eyes had been carefully removed by Dolly and replaced with eyes of black cloth that Peter would be less likely to worry off and swallow, awaited his maturing clutch. (But there were no Teddy Bears yet; Teddy Bears had still to come into the world. America had still to discover the charm of its Teddy.) There were scales in Peter’s nursery to weigh Peter every week, and tables to show how much he ought to weigh and when one should begin to feel anxious. There was nothing casual about the early years of Peter.
Peter began well, a remarkably60 fine child, Dr. Fremisson said, of nine pounds. Although he was born in warm summer weather we never went back upon that. He favoured his mother perhaps more than an impartial61 child should, but that was at any rate a source of satisfaction to Cousin Oswald (of the artificial eye).
Cousin Oswald was doing his best to behave nicely and persuade himself that all this show had been got up by Dolly and was Dolly’s show—and that Arthur just happened to be about.
“Look at him,” said Cousin Oswald as Peter regarded the world with unwinking intelligence from behind an appreciated bottle; “the Luck of him. He’s the Heir of the Ages. Look at this room and this house and every one about him.”
Dolly remarked foolishly that Peter was a “nittle darum. ’E dizzerves-i-tall. Nevything.”
“The very sunshine on the wall looks as though it had been got for him specially,” said Cousin Oswald.
“It was got for him specially,” said Dolly, with a light of amusement in her eyes that reminded him of former times.
This visit was a great occasion. It was the first time Cousin Oswald had seen either Arthur or Peter. Almost 20directly after he had learnt about Dolly’s engagement and jerked out his congratulations, he had cut short his holiday in England and gone back to Central Africa. Now he was in England again, looked baked and hard, and his hair, which had always been stubby, more stubby than ever. The scarred half of him had lost its harsh redness and become brown. He was staying with his aunt, Dolly’s second cousin by marriage, Lady Charlotte Sydenham, not ten miles away towards Tonbridge, and he took to bicycling over to The Ingle-Nook every other day or so and gossiping.
“These bicycles,” he said, “are most useful things. Wonderful things. As soon as they get cheap—bound to get cheap—they will play a wonderful part in Central Africa.”
“But there are no roads in Central Africa!” said Arthur.
“Better. Foot tracks padded by bare feet for generations. You could ride for hundreds of miles without dismounting....”
“Compared with our little black babies,” said Cousin Oswald, “Peter seems immobile. He’s like a baby on a lotus flower meditating62 existence. Those others are like young black indiarubber kittens—all acrawl. But then they’ve got to look sharp and run for themselves as soon as possible, and he hasn’t.... Things happen there.”
“I wonder,” said Arthur in his lifting tenor29, “how far all this opening up of Africa to civilization and gin and Bibles is justifiable63.”
The one living eye glared at him. “It isn’t exactly like that,” said Oswald stiffly, and offered no occasion for further controversy64 at the moment.
The conversation hung for a little while. Dolly wanted to say to her cousin: “He isn’t thinking of you. It’s just his way of generalizing about things....”
“Anyhow this young man has a tremendous future,” said Oswald, going back to the original topic. “Think of what lies before him. Never has the world been so safe and settled—most of it that is—as it is now. I suppose really the world’s hardly begun to touch education. In this house everything seems educational—pictures, toys, everything. When one sees how small niggers can be moulded and changed even in a missionary65 school, it makes one think. I wish I 21knew more about education. I lie awake at nights thinking of the man I might be, if I knew all I don’t know, and of all I could do if I did. And it’s the same with others. Every one who seems worth anything seems regretting his education wasn’t better. Hitherto of course there’s always been wars, interruptions, religious rows; the world’s been confused and poor, a thorough muddle66; there’s never been a real planned education for people. Just scraps67 and hints. But we’re changing all that. Here’s a big safe world at last. No wars in Europe since ’71 and no likelihood in our time of any more big wars. Things settle down. And he comes in for it all.”
“I hope all this settling down won’t make the world too monotonous68,” said Arthur.
“You artists and writers have got to see to that. No, I don’t see it getting monotonous. There’s always differences of climate and colour. Temperament69. All sorts of differences.”
“And Nature,” said Arthur profoundly. “Old Mother Nature.”
“Have you christened Peter yet?” Oswald asked abruptly70.
“He’s not going to be christened,” said Dolly. “Not until he asks to be. We’ve just registered him. He’s a registered baby.”
“So he won’t have two godfathers and a godmother to be damned for him.”
“We’ve weighed the risk,” said Arthur.
“He might have a godfather just—pour rire,” said Oswald.
“That’s different,” Dolly encouraged promptly71. “We must get him one.”
“I’d like to be Peter’s godfather,” said Oswald.
“I will deny him no advantage,” said Arthur. “The ceremony—— The ceremony shall be a simple one. Godfather, Peter; Peter, godfather. Peter, my son, salute72 your godfather.”
Oswald seemed trying to remember a formula. “I promise and vow73 three things in his name; first a beautiful mug; secondly74 that he shall be duly instructed in chemistry, biology, mathematics, the French and German tongues and 22all that sort of thing; and thirdly, that—what is thirdly? That he shall renounce75 the devil and all his works. But there isn’t a devil nowadays.”
Peter having consumed his bottle to the dregs and dreamt over it for a space, now thrust it from him and turning towards Oswald, regurgitated—but within the limits of nursery good manners. Then he smiled a toothless, slightly derisive76 smile.
“Intelligent ’e is!” crooned Dolly. “Unstand evlyfling ’e does....”
§ 3
This conversation about Peter’s future, once it had been started, rambled77 on for the next three weeks, and then Oswald very abruptly saw fit to be called away to Africa again....
Various interlocutors dropped in while that talk was in progress. Arthur felt his way to his real opinions through a series of experimental dogmas.
Arthur’s disposition78 was towards an extreme Rousseauism. It is the tendency of the interrogative class in all settled communities. He thought that a boy or girl ought to run wild until twelve and not be bothered by lessons, ought to eat little else but fruit and nuts, go bareheaded and barefooted. Why not? Oswald’s disposition would have been to oppose Arthur anyhow, but against these views all his circle of ideas fought by necessity. If Arthur was Ruskinite and Morrisite, Oswald was as completely Huxleyite. If Arthur thought the world perishing for need of Art and Nature, Oswald stood as strongly for the saving power of Science. In this matter of bare feet——
“There’s thorns, pins, snakes, tetanus,” reflected Oswald.
“The foot hardens.”
“Only the sole,” said Oswald. “And not enough.”
“Shielded from all the corruptions79 of town and society,” said Arthur presently.
“There’s no such corruptor as that old Mother Nature of 23yours. You daren’t leave that bottle of milk to her for half an hour but what she turns it sour or poisons it with one of her beastly germs.”
“I never approved of the bottle,” said Arthur, bringing a flash of hot resentment80 into Dolly’s eyes....
Oswald regretted his illustration.
“Old Mother Nature is a half-wit,” he said. “She’s distraught. You overrate the jade81. She’s thinking of everything at once. All her affairs got into a hopeless mess from the very start. Most of her world is desert with water running to waste. A tropical forest is three-quarters death and decay, and what is alive is either murdering or being murdered. It’s only when you come to artificial things, such as a ploughed field, for example, that you get space and health and every blade doing its best.”
“I don’t call a ploughed field an artificial thing,” said Arthur.
“But it is,” said Oswald.
Dr. Fremisson was dragged into this dispute. “A ploughed field,” he maintained, “is part of the natural life of man.”
“Like boots and reading.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” said Dr. Fremisson warily82. He had the usual general practitioner’s belief that any education whatever is a terrible strain on the young, and he was quite on the side of Rousseau and Arthur in that matter. Moreover, as a result of his professional endeavours he had been forced to a belief that Nature’s remedies are the best.
“I’d like to know just what does belong to the natural life of man and what is artificial,” said Oswald. “If a ploughed field belongs then a plough belongs. And if a plough belongs a foundry belongs—and a coal mine. And you wouldn’t plough in bare feet—not in those Weald Clays down there? You want good stout83 boots for those. And you’d let your ploughman read at least a calendar? Boots and books come in, you see.”
“You’re a perfect lawyer, Mr. Sydenham,” said the doctor, and pretended the discussion had become fanciful....
“But you’ll not leave him to go unlettered until he is half 24grown up!” said Oswald to Dolly in real distress84. “It’s so easy to teach ’em to read early and so hard later. I remember my little brother....”
“I am the mother and I muth,” said Dolly. “When Peter displays the slightest interest in the alphabet, the alphabet it shall be.”
Oswald felt reassured85. He had a curious confidence that Dolly could be trusted to protect his godchild.
§ 4
One day Aunt Phyllis and Aunt Phœbe came down.
Both sisters participated in the Stubland break back to colour, but while Aunt Phyllis was a wit and her hats a spree Aunt Phœbe was fantastically serious and her hats went beyond a joke. They got their stuffs apparently86 from the shop of William Morris and Co., they had their dresses built upon Pre-Raphaelite lines, they did their hair plainly and simply but very carelessly, and their hats were noble brimmers or extravagant87 toques. Their profiles were as fine almost as Arthur’s, a type of profile not so suitable for young women as for golden youth. They were bright-eyed and a little convulsive in their movements. Beneath these extravagances and a certain conversational88 wildness they lived nervously89 austere90 lives. They were greatly delighted with Peter, but they did not know what to do with him. Phyllis held him rather better than Phœbe, but Phœbe with her chatelaine amused him rather more than Phyllis.
“How happy a tinker’s baby must be,” said Aunt Phœbe, rattling91 her trinkets: “Or a tin-smith’s.”
“I begin to see some use in a Hindoo woman’s bangles,” said Aunt Phyllis, “or in that clatter92 machine of yours, Phœbe. Every young mother should rattle93. Make a note of it, Phœbe dear, for your book....”
“Whatever you do with him, Dolly,” said Aunt Phœbe, “teach him anyhow to respect women and treat them as his equals. From the Very First.”
“Meaning votes,” said Aunt Phyllis. “Didums want give um’s mummy a Vote den1.”
25“Never let him touch butcher’s meat in any shape or form,” said Aunt Phœbe. “Once a human child tastes blood the mischief94 is done.”
“Avoid patriotic95 songs and symbols,” prompted Aunt Phyllis, who had heard these ideas already in the train coming down.
“And never buy him toy soldiers, drums, guns, trumpets96. These things soak deeper into the mind than people suppose. They make wickedness domestic.... Surround him with beautiful things. Accustom97 him——”
She winced98 that Arthur should hear her, but she spoke as one having a duty to perform.
“Accustom him to the nude99, Dolly, from his early years. Associate it with innocent amusements. Retrieve100 the fall. Never let him wear a hat upon his head nor boots upon his feet. As soon tie him up into a papoose. As soon tight-lace. A child’s first years should be one long dream of loveliness and spontaneous activity.”
But at this point Peter betrayed signs that he found his aunts overstimulating. He released his grip upon the thimble-case of the chatelaine. His face puckered101, ridges102 and waves and puckers103 of pink fatness ran distractedly over it, and he threw his head back and opened a large square toothless mouth.
“Mary,” cried Dolly, and a comfortable presence that had been hovering104 mistrustfully outside the door ever since the aunts appeared, entered with alacrity105 and bore Peter protectingly away.
“He must be almost entirely lungs,” said Aunt Phœbe, when her voice could be heard through the receding106 bawl107. “Other internal organs no doubt develop later.”
“Come out to the stone table under the roses,” said Dolly. “We argue there about Peter’s upbringing almost every afternoon.”
“Argue, I grant you,” said Aunt Phœbe, following her hostess and dangling108 her chatelaine from one hand as if to illustrate109 her remarks, “but argue rightly.”
When Oswald came over in the afternoon he was disposed to regard the two aunts as serious reinforcements to Arthur’s educational heresies110. Phyllis and Phœbe were a little inclined 26to be shy with him as a strange man, and he and Arthur did most of the talking, but they made their positions plain by occasional interpolations. Arthur, supported by their presence, was all for letting Peter grow up a wild untrammelled child of nature. Oswald became genuinely distressed111.
“But education,” he protested, “is as natural to a human being as nests to birds.”
“Then why force it?” said Phyllis with dexterity112.
“Even a cat boxes its kittens’ ears!”
“A domesticated113 cat,” said Phœbe. “A civilized114 cat.”
“But I’ve seen a wild lioness——”
“Are we to learn how to manage our young from lions and hyenas115!” cried Phœbe.
They were too good for Oswald. He saw Peter already ruined, a fat, foolish, undisciplined cub116.
Dolly with sympathetic amusement watched his distress, which his living half face betrayed in the oddest contrast to his left hand calm.
Arthur had been thinking gracefully117 while his sisters tackled their adversary118. Now he decided119 to sum up the discussion. His authoritative120 manner on these occasions was always slightly irritating to Oswald. Like so many who read only occasionally and take thought as a special exercise, Arthur had a fixed persuasion that nobody else ever read or thought at all. So that he did not so much discuss as adjudicate.
“Of course,” he said, “we have to be reasonable in these things. For men a certain artificiality is undoubtedly121 natural. That is, so to speak, the human paradox122. But artificiality is the last resort. Instinct is our basis. For the larger part the boy has just to grow. But We watch his growth. Education is really watching—keeping the course. The human error is to do too much, to distrust instinct too much, to over-teach, over-legislate, over-manage, over-decorate——”
“No, you don’t, my gentleman,” came the voice of Mary from the shadow under the old pear tree.
“Now I wonder——” said Arthur, craning his neck to look over the rose bushes.
27“Diddums then,” said Mary. “Woun’t they lettim put’tt in ’s mouf? Oooh!”
“Trust her instinct,” said Dolly, and Arthur was restrained.
Oswald took advantage of the interruption to take the word from Arthur.
“We joke and sharpen our wits in this sort of talk,” he said, “but education, you know, isn’t a joke. It might be the greatest power in the world. If I didn’t think I was a sort of schoolmaster in Africa.... That’s the only decent excuse a white man has for going there.... I’m getting to be a fanatic123 about education. Give me the schools of the world and I would make a Millennium124 in half a century.... You don’t mean to let Peter drift. You say it, but you can’t mean it. Drift is waste. We don’t make half of what we could make of our children. We don’t make a quarter—not a tenth. They could know ever so much more, think ever so much better. We’re all at sixes and sevens.”
He realized he wasn’t good at expressing his ideas. He had intended something very clear and compelling, a sort of ultimatum125 about Peter.
“I believe in Sir Francis Galton,” Aunt Phœbe remarked in his pause; saying with stern resolution things that she felt had to be said. They made her a little breathless, and she fixed her eye on the view until they were said. “Eugenics. It is a new idea. A revival126. Plato had it. Men ought to be bred like horses. No marriage or any nonsense of that kind. Just a simple scientific blending of points. Then Everything would be different.”
“Almost too different,” Arthur reflected....
“When I consider Peter and think of all one could do for him——” said Oswald, still floundering for some clenching127 way of putting it....
§ 5
One evening Dolly caught her cousin looking at her husband with an expression that stuck in her memory. It was Oswald’s habit to sit if he could in such a position that he could rest the obliterated128 cheek of his face upon a shadowing 28hand, his fingers on his forehead. Then one saw what a pleasant-faced man he would have been if only he had left that Egyptian shell alone. So he was sitting on this occasion, his elbow on the arm of the settle. His brow was knit, his one eye keen and steady. He was listening to his host discoursing129 upon the many superiorities of the artisan in the middle ages to his successor of today. And he seemed to be weighing and estimating Arthur with some little difficulty.
Then, as if it was a part of the calculation he was making, he turned to look at Dolly. Their eyes met; for a moment he could not mask himself.
Then he turned to Arthur again with his expression restored to polite interest.
It was the most trivial of incidents, but it stayed, a mental burr.
§ 6
A little accident which happened a few weeks after Oswald’s departure put the idea of making a will into Arthur’s head. Dolly had wanted to ride a bicycle, but he had some theory that she would not need to ride alone or that it would over-exert her to ride alone, and so he had got a tandem130 bicycle instead, on which they could ride together. Those were the days when all England echoed to the strains of
“Disy, Disy, tell me your answer true;
I’m arf crizy
All fer the love of you-oo ...
Yew’d look sweet
Upon the seat
Of-a-bicycle-mide-fer-two.”
A wandering thrush of a cockney whistled it on their first expedition. Dolly went out a little resentfully with Arthur’s broad back obscuring most of her landscape, and her third ride ended in a destructive spill down Ipinghanger Hill. The bicycle brake was still in a primitive131 stage in those days; one steadied one’s progress down a hill by the art, since lost to mankind again, of “back-pedalling,” and Dolly’s feet were carried over and thrown off the pedals and the machine 29got away. Arthur’s nerve was a good one. He fought the gathering132 pace and steered133 with skill down to the very last bend of that downland descent. The last corner got them. They took the bank and hedge sideways and the crumpled134 tandem remained on one side of the bank and Arthur and Dolly found themselves torn and sprained135 but essentially136 unbroken in a hollow of wet moss137 and marsh-mallows beyond the hedge.
The sense of adventure helped them through an afternoon of toilsome return....
“But we might both have been killed that time,” said Arthur with a certain gusto.
“If we had,” said Arthur presently, expanding that idea, “what would have become of Peter?”...
They had both made simple wills copied out of Whitaker’s Almanack, leaving everything to each other; it had not occurred to them before that two young parents who cross glaciers138 together, go cycling together, travel in the same trains, cross the seas in the same boats, might very easily get into the same smash. In that case the law, it appeared, presumed that the wife, being the weaker vessel139, would expire first, and so Uncle Rigby, who had relapsed more and more stuffily140 into evangelical narrowness since his marriage, would extend a dark protection over Peter’s life. “Lucy wouldn’t even feed him properly,” said Dolly. “She’s so close and childlessly inhuman141. I can’t bear to think of it.”
On the other hand, if by any chance Dolly should show a flicker142 of life after the extinction143 of Arthur, Peter and all his possessions would fall under the hand of Dolly’s shady brother, the failure of the family, a being of incalculable misdemeanours, a gross, white-faced literary man, an artist in parody144 (itself a vice), who smelt145 of tobacco always, and already at thirty-eight, it was but too evident, preferred port and old brandy to his self-respect.
“We ought to remake our wills and each appoint the same guardian146,” said Arthur.
It was not very easy to find the perfect guardian.
Then as Arthur sat at lunch one day the sunshine made a glory of the little silver tankard that adorned147 the Welsh dresser at the end of the room.
30“Dolly,” he said, “old Oswald would like this job.”
She’d known that by instinct from the first, but she had never expected Arthur to discover it.
“He’s got a sort of fancy for Peter,” he said.
“I think we could trust him,” said Dolly temperately148.
“Poor old Oswald,” said Arthur; “he’s a tragic149 figure. That mask of his cuts him off from so much. He idolizes you and Peter, Dolly. You don’t suspect it, but he does. He’s our man.”
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1
den
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| n.兽穴；秘密地方；安静的小房间，私室 | |
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2
picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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3
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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ridge
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| n.山脊；鼻梁；分水岭 | |
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scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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celebrities
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| n.（尤指娱乐界的）名人( celebrity的名词复数 )；名流；名声；名誉 | |
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7
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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8
radius
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| n.半径，半径范围；有效航程，范围，界限 | |
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9
intercourse
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| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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10
lamented
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| adj.被哀悼的，令人遗憾的v.（为…）哀悼，痛哭，悲伤( lament的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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practitioner
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| n.实践者，从事者；(医生或律师等)开业者 | |
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12
diagnosis
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| n.诊断，诊断结果，调查分析，判断 | |
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13
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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14
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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15
monstrous
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| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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gust
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| n.阵风，突然一阵（雨、烟等），（感情的）迸发 | |
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17
unreasonable
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| adj.不讲道理的，不合情理的，过度的 | |
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18
irritation
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| n.激怒，恼怒，生气 | |
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19
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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20
disarming
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| adj.消除敌意的，使人消气的v.裁军( disarm的现在分词 )；使息怒 | |
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21
virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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22
phantoms
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| n.鬼怪，幽灵( phantom的名词复数 ) | |
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23
regiments
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| （军队的）团( regiment的名词复数 )； 大量的人或物 | |
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24
consort
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| v.相伴；结交 | |
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25
scrap
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| n.碎片；废料；v.废弃，报废 | |
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26
voluptuous
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| adj.肉欲的，骄奢淫逸的 | |
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27
conversion
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| n.转化，转换，转变 | |
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28
persuasion
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| n.劝说；说服；持有某种信仰的宗派 | |
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29
tenor
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| n.男高音（歌手），次中音（乐器），要旨，大意 | |
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30
positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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31
hoist
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| n.升高，起重机，推动；v.升起，升高，举起 | |
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32
remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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33
canopy
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| n.天篷，遮篷 | |
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34
monarchy
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| n.君主，最高统治者；君主政体，君主国 | |
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35
sentimental
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| adj.多愁善感的，感伤的 | |
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36
materialistic
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| a.唯物主义的，物质享乐主义的 | |
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37
resolutely
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| adj.坚决地，果断地 | |
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38
bishops
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| （基督教某些教派管辖大教区的）主教( bishop的名词复数 )； （国际象棋的）象 | |
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39
leakage
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| n.漏，泄漏；泄漏物；漏出量 | |
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40
pathos
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| n.哀婉，悲怆 | |
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41
generosity
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| n.大度，慷慨，慷慨的行为 | |
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42
orientated
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| v.朝向( orientate的过去式和过去分词 )；面向；确定方向；使适应 | |
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43
facetious
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| adj.轻浮的，好开玩笑的 | |
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44
aloof
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| adj.远离的；冷淡的，漠不关心的 | |
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45
proceedings
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| n.进程，过程，议程；诉讼(程序)；公报 | |
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46
aspirations
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| 强烈的愿望( aspiration的名词复数 )； 志向； 发送气音； 发 h 音 | |
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47
opportune
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| adj.合适的，适当的 | |
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48
begot
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| v.为…之生父( beget的过去式 )；产生，引起 | |
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49
trotting
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| 小跑，急走( trot的现在分词 )； 匆匆忙忙地走 | |
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50
carnival
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| n.嘉年华会，狂欢，狂欢节，巡回表演 | |
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51
flicked
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| （尤指用手指或手快速地）轻击( flick的过去式和过去分词 )； （用…）轻挥； （快速地）按开关； 向…笑了一下（或瞥了一眼等） | |
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52
penumbra
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| n.（日蚀）半影部 | |
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53
stippled
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| v.加点、绘斑，加粒( stipple的过去式和过去分词 )；（把油漆、水泥等的表面）弄粗糙 | |
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54
brass
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| n.黄铜；黄铜器，铜管乐器 | |
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55
smoothly
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| adv.平滑地，顺利地，流利地，流畅地 | |
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56
cork
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| n.软木，软木塞 | |
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57
crimson
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| n./adj.深(绯)红色(的)；vi.脸变绯红色 | |
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58
destined
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| adj.命中注定的；(for)以…为目的地的 | |
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59
bead
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| n.念珠；(pl.)珠子项链；水珠 | |
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60
remarkably
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| ad.不同寻常地，相当地 | |
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61
impartial
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| adj.(in,to)公正的，无偏见的 | |
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62
meditating
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| a.沉思的，冥想的 | |
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63
justifiable
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| adj.有理由的，无可非议的 | |
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64
controversy
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| n.争论，辩论，争吵 | |
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65
missionary
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| adj.教会的，传教(士)的；n.传教士 | |
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66
muddle
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| n.困惑，混浊状态；vt.使混乱，使糊涂，使惊呆；vi.胡乱应付，混乱 | |
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67
scraps
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| 油渣 | |
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68
monotonous
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| adj.单调的，一成不变的，使人厌倦的 | |
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69
temperament
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| n.气质，性格，性情 | |
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70
abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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71
promptly
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| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
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72
salute
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| vi.行礼，致意，问候，放礼炮；vt.向…致意，迎接，赞扬；n.招呼，敬礼，礼炮 | |
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73
vow
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| n.誓(言)，誓约；v.起誓，立誓 | |
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74
secondly
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| adv.第二，其次 | |
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75
renounce
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| v.放弃；拒绝承认，宣布与…断绝关系 | |
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76
derisive
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| adj.嘲弄的 | |
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77
rambled
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| （无目的地）漫游( ramble的过去式和过去分词 )； （喻）漫谈； 扯淡； 长篇大论 | |
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78
disposition
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| n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署 | |
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79
corruptions
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| n.堕落( corruption的名词复数 )；腐化；腐败；贿赂 | |
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80
resentment
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| n.怨愤，忿恨 | |
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81
jade
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| n.玉石；碧玉；翡翠 | |
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82
warily
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| adv.留心地 | |
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84
distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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85
reassured
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| adj.使消除疑虑的；使放心的v.再保证，恢复信心( reassure的过去式和过去分词) | |
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86
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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87
extravagant
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| adj.奢侈的；过分的；(言行等)放肆的 | |
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88
conversational
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| adj.对话的，会话的 | |
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89
nervously
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| adv.神情激动地，不安地 | |
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90
austere
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| adj.艰苦的；朴素的，朴实无华的；严峻的 | |
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91
rattling
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| adj. 格格作响的, 活泼的, 很好的 adv. 极其, 很, 非常 动词rattle的现在分词 | |
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92
clatter
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| v./n.(使)发出连续而清脆的撞击声 | |
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93
rattle
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| v.飞奔，碰响；激怒；n.碰撞声；拨浪鼓 | |
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94
mischief
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| n.损害，伤害，危害；恶作剧，捣蛋，胡闹 | |
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95
patriotic
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| adj.爱国的，有爱国心的 | |
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96
trumpets
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| 喇叭( trumpet的名词复数 )； 小号； 喇叭形物； （尤指）绽开的水仙花 | |
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97
accustom
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| vt.使适应，使习惯 | |
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98
winced
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| 赶紧避开，畏缩( wince的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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99
nude
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| adj.裸体的；n.裸体者，裸体艺术品 | |
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100
retrieve
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| vt.重新得到，收回；挽回，补救；检索 | |
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101
puckered
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| v.（使某物）起褶子或皱纹( pucker的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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102
ridges
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| n.脊( ridge的名词复数 )；山脊；脊状突起；大气层的)高压脊 | |
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103
puckers
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| v.（使某物）起褶子或皱纹( pucker的第三人称单数 ) | |
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104
hovering
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| 鸟( hover的现在分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫 | |
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105
alacrity
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| n.敏捷，轻快，乐意 | |
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106
receding
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| v.逐渐远离( recede的现在分词 )；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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107
bawl
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| v.大喊大叫，大声地喊，咆哮 | |
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108
dangling
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| 悬吊着( dangle的现在分词 )； 摆动不定； 用某事物诱惑…； 吊胃口 | |
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109
illustrate
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| v.举例说明，阐明；图解，加插图 | |
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110
heresies
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| n.异端邪说，异教( heresy的名词复数 ) | |
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111
distressed
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| 痛苦的 | |
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112
dexterity
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| n.(手的)灵巧，灵活 | |
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113
domesticated
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| adj.喜欢家庭生活的；（指动物）被驯养了的v.驯化( domesticate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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114
civilized
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| a.有教养的，文雅的 | |
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115
hyenas
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| n.鬣狗( hyena的名词复数 ) | |
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116
cub
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| n.幼兽，年轻无经验的人 | |
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117
gracefully
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| ad.大大方方地；优美地 | |
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118
adversary
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| adj.敌手，对手 | |
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119
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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authoritative
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| adj.有权威的，可相信的；命令式的；官方的 | |
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undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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paradox
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| n.似乎矛盾却正确的说法；自相矛盾的人(物) | |
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123
fanatic
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| n.狂热者，入迷者；adj.狂热入迷的 | |
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124
millennium
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| n.一千年，千禧年；太平盛世 | |
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125
ultimatum
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| n.最后通牒 | |
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126
revival
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| n.复兴，复苏，（精力、活力等的）重振 | |
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127
clenching
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| v.紧握，抓紧，咬紧( clench的现在分词 ) | |
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obliterated
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| v.除去( obliterate的过去式和过去分词 )；涂去；擦掉；彻底破坏或毁灭 | |
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129
discoursing
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| 演说（discourse的现在分词形式） | |
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130
tandem
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| n.同时发生；配合；adv.一个跟着一个地；纵排地；adj.（两匹马）前后纵列的 | |
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131
primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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132
gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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133
steered
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| v.驾驶( steer的过去式和过去分词 )；操纵；控制；引导 | |
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134
crumpled
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| adj. 弯扭的, 变皱的 动词crumple的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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135
sprained
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| v.&n. 扭伤 | |
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136
essentially
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| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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137
moss
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| n.苔，藓，地衣 | |
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138
glaciers
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| 冰河，冰川( glacier的名词复数 ) | |
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139
vessel
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| n.船舶；容器，器皿；管，导管，血管 | |
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140
stuffily
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141
inhuman
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| adj.残忍的，不人道的，无人性的 | |
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142
flicker
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| vi./n.闪烁，摇曳，闪现 | |
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143
extinction
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| n.熄灭，消亡，消灭，灭绝，绝种 | |
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parody
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| 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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145
smelt
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| v.熔解，熔炼；n.银白鱼，胡瓜鱼 | |
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146
guardian
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| n.监护人；守卫者，保护者 | |
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147
adorned
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| [计]被修饰的 | |
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148
temperately
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| adv.节制地，适度地 | |
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tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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