§ 1
So it was, with a shock like the shock of an unsuspected big gun fired suddenly within a hundred yards of her, that the education of Joan and her generation turned about and entered upon a new and tragic1 phase. Necessity had grown impatient with the inertia2 of the Universities and the evasions3 of politicians. Mankind must learn the duties of human brotherhood4 and respect for the human adventure, or waste and perish; so our stern teacher has decreed. If in peace time we cannot learn and choose between those alternatives, then through war we must. And if we will in no manner learn our lesson, then——. The rocks are rich with the traces of ineffective creatures that the Great Experimenter has tried and thrown aside....
All these young people who had grown up without any clear aims or any definite sense of obligations, found themselves confronted, without notice, without any preparation, by a world crisis that was also a crisis of life or death, of honour or dishonour5 for each one of them. They had most of them acquired the habit of regarding the teachers and statesmen and authorities set up over their lives as people rather on the dull side of things, as people addicted6 to muddling7 and disingenuousness8 in matters of detail; but they had never yet suspected the terrific insecurity of the whole system—until this first thunderous crash of the downfall. Even then they did not fully9 realize themselves as a generation betrayed to violence and struggle and death. All human beings, all young things, are born with a conviction that all is right with the world. There is mother to go to and father to go to, and behind them the Law; for most of the generation that came before Joan and Peter the delusion10 444of a great safety lasted on far into adult life; only slowly, with maturity11, came the knowledge of the flimsiness of all these protections and the essential dangerousness of the world. But for this particular generation the disillusionment came like an unexpected blow in the face. They were preparing themselves in a leisurely12 and critical fashion for the large, loose prospect13 of unlimited14 life, and then abruptly15 the world dropped its mask. That pampered16 and undisciplined generation was abruptly challenged to be heroic beyond all the precedents17 of mankind. Their safety, their freedom ended, their leisure ended. The first few days of August, 1914, in Europe, was a spectacle of old men planning and evading18, lying and cheating, most of them so scared by what they were doing as completely to have lost their heads, and of youth and young men everywhere being swept from a million various employments, from a million divergent interests and purposes, which they had been led to suppose were the proper interests and purposes of life, towards the great military machines that were destined19 to convert, swiftly and ruthlessly, all their fresh young life into rags and blood and rotting flesh....
But at first the young had no clear sense of the witless futility20 of the machine that was to crush their lives. They did not understand that there was as yet no conception of a world order anywhere in the world. They had taken it for granted that there was an informal, tacitly understood world order, at which these Germans—confound them!—had suddenly struck.
Peter and his friends were so accustomed to jeer21 at the dignitaries of church and state and at kings and politicians that they could not realize that such dwarfish22 and comic characters could launch disaster upon a whole world. They sat about a little table in a twilit arbour on the way down from Bel-Alp—Peter was to leave the climbers and join the Italian party at Brigue—and devoured23 omelette and veal24 and drank Yvorne, and mocked over the Swiss newspapers.
“Another ultimatum25!” said one cheerful youth. “Holland will get it next.”
“He’s squirting ultimatums26. Like a hedgehog throwing quills27.”
445“I saw him in Berlin,” said Peter. “He rushed by in an automobile28. He isn’t a human being. He’s more like Mr. Toad29 in The Wind in the Willows30....”
“All the French have gone home; all the Germans,” said Troop. “I suppose we ought to go.”
“I’ve promised to go to Italy,” said Peter.
“War is war,” said Troop, and stiffened31 Peter’s resolution.
“I’m not going to have my holidays upset by a theatrical32 ass33 in a gilt34 helmet,” said Peter.
He got down to Brigue next day, and the little town was bright with uniforms, for the Swiss were mobilizing. He saw off his mountaineering friends in the evening train for Paris. “You’d better come,” said Troop gravely, hanging out of the train.
Peter shook his head. His was none of your conscript nations. No....
He dined alone; Hetty and her two friends were coming up from Lausanne next day. In the reading-room he found the Times with the first news of the invasion of Belgium. Several of the villagers of Visé had turned out with shot guns, and the Germans had performed an exemplary massacre35 for the discouragement of franc-tireurs. Indignation had been gathering36 in Peter during the day. He swore aloud and flung down the paper. “Is there no one sane37 enough to assassinate38 a scoundrel who sets things loose like this?” he said. He prowled about the little old town in the moonlight, full of black rage against the Kaiser. He felt he must go back. But it seemed to him a terrible indignity39 that he should have to interrupt his holiday because of the ambition of a monarch40. “Why the devil can’t the Germans keep him on his chain?” he said, and then, “Shooting the poor devils—like rabbits!”
Hetty and her friends arrived in the early train next morning, all agog41 about the war. They thought it a tremendous lark42. They were not to get out at Brigue, it was arranged; Peter was to be on the platform with his rucksack and join them. He kept the appointment, but he was a very scowling43 Peter in spite of the fact that Hetty was gentle and tremulous at the sight of him in her best style. “This train is an hour late,” said Peter, sitting down beside her. “That 446accursed fool at Potsdam is putting all our Europe out of gear.”...
For three days he was dark, preoccupied44 company. “Somebody ought to assassinate him,” he said, harping45 on that idea. “Have men no self-respect at all?”
He felt he ought to go back to England, and the feeling produced a bleak46 clearness in his mind. It was soft sunshine on the lake of Orta, but east wind in Peter’s soul. He disliked Hetty’s friends extremely; he had never met them before; they were a vulgar brace47 of sinners he thought, and they reflected their quality upon her. The war they considered was no concern of theirs; they had studio minds. The man was some sort of painter, middle-aged48, contemptuous, and with far too much hair. He ought to have been past this sort of spree. The girl was a model and had never been in Italy before. She kept saying, “O, the sky!” until it jarred intolerably. The days are notoriously longer on the lake of Orta than anywhere else in the world; from ten o’clock in the morning to lunch time is about as long as a week’s imprisonment49; from two to five is twice that length; from five onward50 the course of time at Orta is more normal. Hetty was Hetty, in the tradition of Cleopatra, but could Cleopatra hold a young man whose mind was possessed51 by one unquenchable thought that he had been grossly insulted and deranged52 by an exasperating53 potentate54 at Potsdam who was making hay of his entire world, and that he had to go at once and set things right, and that it was disgraceful not to go?
He broached55 these ideas to Hetty about eleven o’clock on their first morning upon the lake. They were adrift in a big tilted57 boat in the midst of a still, glassy symmetry of mountain-backed scenery and mountain-backed reflections, and the other couple was far away, a little white dot at the head of a V of wake, rowing ambitiously to the end of the lake.
“You can’t go,” said Hetty promptly58....
“But I have come all the way to Italy for you!” cried Hetty....
This was a perplexing problem for the honour of a young man of one-and-twenty. He argued the case—weakly. He 447had an audience of one, a very compelling one. He decided59 to remain. In the night he woke up and thought of Troop. Old Troop must be in England by now. Perhaps he had already enlisted60. Ever since their school days he and Troop had had a standing62 dispute upon questions of morals and duty. There was something dull and stiff about old Troop that drove a bright antagonist63 to laxity, but after all——? Troop had cut off clean and straight to his duty.... Because Troop wasn’t entangled64. He had kept clear of all this love-making business.... There was something to be said for Troop’s point of view after all....
The second day Peter reopened the question of going as they sat on a stone seat under the big, dark trees on the Sacro Monte, and looked out under the drooping65 boughs66 upon the lake, and Hetty had far more trouble with him. He decided he could not leave her. But he spent the hours between tea and dinner in reading all the war news he could find—translating the Italian with the aid of a small conversation dictionary. Something had happened in the North Sea, he could not make out exactly what it was, but the Germans had lost a ship called the Königin Luise, and the British a battleship—was it a battleship?—the Amphion. Beastly serious that!—a battleship. There was something vague, too, about a fleet encounter, but no particulars. It was a bore getting no particulars. Here close at hand in the Mediterranean67 there had been, it was said, a naval68 battle in the Straits of Messina also; the Panther was sunk; and the Germans had had a great defeat at Liége. The British army was already landing in France....
Upon his second decision to remain Peter reflected profoundly that night.
The standing dispute between him and Troop upon the lightness or seriousness of things sexual returned to his mind. Troop, Peter held, regarded all these things with a portentous69 solemnity, a monstrous70 sentimentality. Peter, Troop maintained, regarded them with a dangerous levity71. Troop declared that love, “true love,” was, next to “honour,” the most tremendous thing in life; he was emphatic72 upon “purity.” Peter held that love was as light and pleasant and incidental a thing as sunshine. You said, “Here’s a 448jolly person!” just as you said, “Here’s a pretty flower!” There had been, he argued, a lot of barbaric “Taboos” in these matters, but the new age was dropping all that. He called Troop’s idea of purity “ceremonial obsession73.” Both talked very freely of “cleanness” and meant very different things: Troop chiefly abstinence and Peter baths. Peter had had the courage of his opinions; but once or twice he had doubted secretly whether, after all, there weren’t defilements beyond the reach of mere74 physical cleansing75. One dismissed that sort of thing as “reaction.” All these disputes were revived now in his memory in the light of this one plain, disconcerting fact: Troop had gone straight home to enlist61 and he himself was still in Italy. Weakening of moral fibre? Loss of moral fibre?
The next day, in the boat, Peter reopened the question of his departure.
“You see, Hetty,” he said, “if there was conscription in England—I shouldn’t feel so bound to go.”
“But then you would be bound to go.”
“Well, then I could be a decent deserter—for love’s sake. But when your country leaves it to you to come back or not as you think fit—then, you know, you’re bound—in honour.”
Hetty dabbled76 her hand over the side of the boat. “Oh—go!” she said.
“Yes,” said Peter over the oars77, and as if ashamed, “I must go—I must. There is a train this afternoon which catches the express at Domo d’Ossola.”
He rowed for a while. Presently he stole a glance at Hetty. She was lying quite still on her cushion under the tilt56, staring at the distant mountains, with tears running down her set face. They were real tears. “Three days,” she said choking, and at that rolled over to weep noisily upon her arms.
Peter sat over his oars and stared helplessly at her emotion.
A familiar couplet came into his head, and remained unspoken because of its striking inappropriateness:
“I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not honour more.”
449Presently Hetty lay still. Then she sat up and wiped at a tear-stained face.
“If you must go,” said Hetty, “you must go. But why you didn’t go from Brigue——!”
That problem was to exercise Peter’s mind considerably78 in the extensive reflections of the next few days and nights.
“And I have to stick in Italy with those two Bores!”...
But the easy flexibility79 of Hetty’s temperament80 was a large part of her charm.
“I suppose you ought to go, Peter,” she said, “really. I had no business to try and keep you. But I’ve had so little of you. And I love you.”
She melted. Peter melted in sympathy. But he was much relieved....
She slipped into his bedroom to help him pack his rucksack, and she went with him to the station. “I wish I was a man, too,” she said. “Then I would come with you. But wars don’t last for ever, Peter. We’ll come back here.”
She watched the train disappear along the curve above the station with something like a sense of desolation. Then being a really very stout-hearted young woman, she turned about and went down to the telegraph office to see what could be done to salvage81 her rent and shattered holiday.
And Peter, because of these things, and because of certain delays at Paris and Havre, for the train and Channel services were getting badly disorganized, got to England six whole days later than Troop.
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1
tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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inertia
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| adj.惰性，惯性，懒惰，迟钝 | |
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evasions
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| 逃避( evasion的名词复数 )； 回避； 遁辞； 借口 | |
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brotherhood
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| n.兄弟般的关系，手中情谊 | |
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dishonour
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| n./vt.拒付（支票、汇票、票据等）；vt.凌辱，使丢脸；n.不名誉，耻辱，不光彩 | |
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addicted
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| adj.沉溺于....的，对...上瘾的 | |
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muddling
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| v.弄乱，弄糟( muddle的现在分词 )；使糊涂；对付，混日子 | |
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disingenuousness
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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delusion
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| n.谬见，欺骗，幻觉，迷惑 | |
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maturity
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| n.成熟；完成；(支票、债券等)到期 | |
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leisurely
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| adj.悠闲的；从容的，慢慢的 | |
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prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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unlimited
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| adj.无限的，不受控制的，无条件的 | |
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abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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pampered
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| adj.饮食过量的，饮食奢侈的v.纵容，宠，娇养( pamper的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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precedents
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| 引用单元； 范例( precedent的名词复数 )； 先前出现的事例； 前例； 先例 | |
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evading
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| 逃避( evade的现在分词 )； 避开； 回避； 想不出 | |
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destined
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| adj.命中注定的；(for)以…为目的地的 | |
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futility
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| n.无用 | |
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jeer
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| vi.嘲弄，揶揄；vt.奚落；n.嘲笑，讥评 | |
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dwarfish
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| a.像侏儒的，矮小的 | |
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devoured
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| 吞没( devour的过去式和过去分词 )； 耗尽； 津津有味地看； 狼吞虎咽地吃光 | |
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veal
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| n.小牛肉 | |
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ultimatum
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| n.最后通牒 | |
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ultimatums
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| 最后通牒( ultimatum的名词复数 ) | |
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quills
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| n.（刺猬或豪猪的）刺( quill的名词复数 )；羽毛管；翮；纡管 | |
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automobile
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| n.汽车，机动车 | |
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toad
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| n.蟾蜍，癞蛤蟆 | |
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willows
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| n.柳树( willow的名词复数 )；柳木 | |
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stiffened
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| 加强的 | |
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theatrical
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| adj.剧场的，演戏的；做戏似的，做作的 | |
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ass
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| n.驴；傻瓜，蠢笨的人 | |
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gilt
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| adj.镀金的；n.金边证券 | |
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massacre
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| n.残杀，大屠杀；v.残杀，集体屠杀 | |
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gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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sane
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| adj.心智健全的，神志清醒的，明智的，稳健的 | |
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assassinate
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| vt.暗杀，行刺，中伤 | |
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indignity
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| n.侮辱，伤害尊严，轻蔑 | |
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monarch
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| n.帝王，君主，最高统治者 | |
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agog
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| adj.兴奋的，有强烈兴趣的； adv.渴望地 | |
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lark
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| n.云雀，百灵鸟；n.嬉戏，玩笑；vi.嬉戏 | |
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scowling
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| 怒视，生气地皱眉( scowl的现在分词 ) | |
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preoccupied
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| adj.全神贯注的，入神的；被抢先占有的；心事重重的v.占据（某人）思想，使对…全神贯注，使专心于( preoccupy的过去式) | |
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harping
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| n.反复述说 | |
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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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brace
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| n. 支柱,曲柄,大括号; v. 绷紧,顶住,(为困难或坏事)做准备 | |
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middle-aged
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| adj.中年的 | |
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imprisonment
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| n.关押，监禁，坐牢 | |
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onward
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| adj.向前的，前进的；adv.向前，前进，在先 | |
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possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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deranged
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| adj.疯狂的 | |
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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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potentate
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| n.统治者；君主 | |
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broached
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| v.谈起( broach的过去式和过去分词 )；打开并开始用；用凿子扩大（或修光）；（在桶上）钻孔取液体 | |
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tilt
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| v.(使)倾侧；(使)倾斜；n.倾侧；倾斜 | |
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tilted
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| v. 倾斜的 | |
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promptly
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| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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enlisted
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| adj.应募入伍的v.（使）入伍， （使）参军( enlist的过去式和过去分词 )；获得（帮助或支持） | |
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enlist
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| vt.谋取(支持等)，赢得；征募；vi.入伍 | |
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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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antagonist
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| n.敌人，对抗者，对手 | |
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entangled
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| adj.卷入的；陷入的；被缠住的；缠在一起的v.使某人（某物/自己）缠绕，纠缠于（某物中），使某人（自己）陷入（困难或复杂的环境中）( entangle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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drooping
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| adj. 下垂的，无力的 动词droop的现在分词 | |
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boughs
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| 大树枝( bough的名词复数 ) | |
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Mediterranean
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| adj.地中海的；地中海沿岸的 | |
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naval
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| adj.海军的，军舰的，船的 | |
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portentous
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| adj.不祥的，可怕的，装腔作势的 | |
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monstrous
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| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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levity
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| n.轻率，轻浮，不稳定，多变 | |
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emphatic
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| adj.强调的，着重的；无可置疑的，明显的 | |
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obsession
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| n.困扰，无法摆脱的思想(或情感) | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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cleansing
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| n. 净化(垃圾) adj. 清洁用的 动词cleanse的现在分词 | |
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dabbled
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| v.涉猎( dabble的过去式和过去分词 )；涉足；浅尝；少量投资 | |
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77
oars
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| n.桨，橹( oar的名词复数 )；划手v.划（行）( oar的第三人称单数 ) | |
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78
considerably
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| adv.极大地；相当大地；在很大程度上 | |
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79
flexibility
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| n.柔韧性，弹性，（光的）折射性，灵活性 | |
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80
temperament
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| n.气质，性格，性情 | |
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81
salvage
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| v.救助，营救，援救；n.救助，营救 | |
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