Now here was I altogether at a loss and quite bewildered. The children broke into the conversation of the two ladies and cut it all short, just as the midnight lights from the church came on the field, and when the little girls and boys went back again to the sands whooping1, the tide of talk had turned, and Mrs. Harland and Mrs. Williams were quite safe and at home with Janey’s measles2, and a wonderful treatment for infantile earache3, as exemplified in the case of Trevor. There was no more to be got out of them, evidently, so I left the beach, crossed the harbour causeway, and drank beer at the “Fishermen’s Rest” till it was time to climb up two miles of deep lane and catch the train for Penvro, where I was staying. And I went up the lane, as I say, in a kind of amazement4; and not so much, I think, because of evidences and hints of things strange to the senses, such as the savour of incense5 where no incense had smoked for three hundred and fifty years and more, or the story of bright light shining from the dark, closed church at dead of night, as because of that sentence of thanksgiving “for paradise in meat and in drink.”
For the sun went down and the evening fell as I climbed the long hill through the deep woods and the high meadows, and the scent6 of all the green things rose from the earth and from the heart of the wood, and at a turn of the lane far below was the misty7 glimmer8 of the still sea, and from far below its deep murmur9 sounded as it washed on the little hidden, enclosed bay where Llantrisant stands. And I thought, if there be paradise in meat and in drink, so much the more is there paradise in the scent of the green leaves at evening and in the appearance of the sea and in the redness of the sky; and there came to me a certain vision of a real world about us all the while, of a language that was only secret because we would not take the trouble to listen to it and discern it.
It was almost dark when I got to the station, and here were the few feeble oil lamps lit, glimmering10 in that lonely land, where the way is long from farm to farm. The train came on its way, and I got into it; and just as we moved from the station I noticed a group under one of those dim lamps. A woman and her child had got out, and they were being welcomed by a man who had been waiting for them. I had not noticed his face as I stood on the platform, but now I saw it as he pointed11 down the hill towards Llantrisant, and I think I was almost frightened.
He was a young man, a farmer’s son, I would say, dressed in rough brown clothes, and as different from old Mr. Evans, the rector, as one man might be from another. But on his face, as I saw it in the lamplight, there was the like brightening that I had seen on the face of the rector. It was an illuminated12 face, glowing with an ineffable13 joy, and I thought it rather gave light to the platform lamp than received light from it. The woman and her child, I inferred, were strangers to the place, and had come to pay a visit to the young man’s family. They had looked about them in bewilderment, half alarmed, before they saw him; and then his face was radiant in their sight, and it was easy to see that all their troubles were ended and over. A wayside station and a darkening country, and it was as if they were welcomed by shining, immortal14 gladness — even into paradise.
But though there seemed in a sense light all about my ways, I was myself still quite bewildered. I could see, indeed, that something strange had happened or was happening in the little town hidden under the hill, but there was so far no clue to the mystery, or rather, the clue had been offered to me, and I had not taken it, I had not even known that it was there; since we do not so much as see what we have determined15, without judging, to be incredible, even though it be held up before our eyes. The dialogue that the Welsh Mrs. Williams had reported to her English friend might have set me on the right way; but the right way was outside all my limits of possibility, outside the circle of my thought. The pal16?ontologist might see monstrous17, significant marks in the slime of a river bank, but he would never draw the conclusions that his own peculiar18 science would seem to suggest to him; he would choose any explanation rather than the obvious, since the obvious would also be the outrageous19 — according to our established habit of thought, which we deem final.
The next day I took all these strange things with me for consideration to a certain place that I knew of not far from Penvro. I was now in the early stages of the jig-saw process, or rather I had only a few pieces before me, and — to continue the figure my difficulty was this: that though the markings on each piece seemed to have design and significance, yet I could not make the wildest guess as to the nature of the whole picture, of which these were the parts. I had clearly seen that there was a great secret; I had seen that on the face of the young farmer on the platform of Llantrisant station; and in my mind there was all the while the picture of him going down the dark, steep, winding20 lane that led to the town and the sea, going down through the heart of the wood, with light about him.
But there was bewilderment in the thought of this, and in the endeavour to match it with the perfumed church and the scraps21 of talk that I had heard and the rumour22 of midnight brightness; and though Penvro is by no means populous23, I thought I would go to a certain solitary24 place called the Old Camp Head, which looks towards Cornwall and to the great deeps that roll beyond Cornwall to the far ends of the world; a place where fragments of dreams — they seemed such then — might, perhaps, be gathered into the clearness of vision.
It was some years since I had been to the Head, and I had gone on that last time and on a former visit by the cliffs, a rough and difficult path. Now I chose a landward way, which the county map seemed to justify25, though doubtfully, as regarded the last part of the journey. So I went inland and climbed the hot summer by-roads, till I came at last to a lane which gradually turned turfy and grass-grown, and then on high ground, ceased to be. It left me at a gate in a hedge of old thorns; and across the field beyond there seemed to be some faint indications of a track. One would judge that sometimes men did pass by that way, but not often.
It was high ground but not within sight of the sea. But the breath of the sea blew about the hedge of thorns, and came with a keen savour to the nostrils26. The ground sloped gently from the gate and then rose again to a ridge27, where a white farmhouse28 stood all alone. I passed by this farmhouse, threading an uncertain way, followed a hedgerow doubtfully; and saw suddenly before me the Old Camp, and beyond it the sapphire29 plain of waters and the mist where sea and sky met. Steep from my feet the hill fell away, a land of gorse-blossom, red-gold and mellow30, of glorious purple heather. It fell into a hollow that went down, shining with rich green bracken, to the glimmering sea; and before me and beyond the hollow rose a height of turf, bastioned at the summit with the awful, age-old walls of the Old Camp; green, rounded circumvallations, wall within wall, tremendous, with their myriad31 years upon them.
Within these smoothed, green mounds32, looking across the shining and changing of the waters in the happy sunlight, I took out the bread and cheese and beer that I had carried in a bag, and ate and drank, and lit my pipe, and set myself to think over the enigmas33 of Llantrisant. And I had scarcely done so when, a good deal to my annoyance34, a man came climbing up over the green ridges35, and took up his stand close by, and stared out to sea. He nodded to me, and began with “Fine weather for the harvest” in the approved manner, and so sat down and engaged me in a net of talk. He was of Wales, it seemed, but from a different part of the country, and was staying for a few days with relations — at the white farmhouse which I had passed on my way. His tale of nothing flowed on to his pleasure and my pain, till he fell suddenly on Llantrisant and its doings. I listened then with wonder, and here is his tale condensed. Though it must be clearly understood that the man’s evidence was only second-hand36; he had heard it from his cousin, the farmer.
So, to be brief, it appeared that there had been a long feud37 at Llantrisant between a local solicitor38, Lewis Prothero (we will say), and a farmer named James. There had been a quarrel about some trifle, which had grown more and more bitter as the two parties forgot the merits of the original dispute, and by some means or other, which I could not well understand, the lawyer had got the small freeholder “under his thumb.” James, I think, had given a bill of sale in a bad season, and Prothero had bought it up; and the end was that the farmer was turned out of the old house, and was lodging39 in a cottage. People said he would have to take a place on his own farm as a labourer; he went about in dreadful misery40, piteous to see. It was thought by some that he might very well murder the lawyer, if he met him.
They did meet, in the middle of the market-place at Llantrisant one Saturday in June. The farmer was a little black man, and he gave a shout of rage, and the people were rushing at him to keep him off Prothero.
“And then,” said my informant, “I will tell you what happened. This lawyer, as they tell me, he is a great big brawny41 fellow, with a big jaw42 and a wide mouth, and a red face and red whiskers. And there he was in his black coat and his high hard hat, and all his money at his back, as you may say. And, indeed, he did fall down on his knees in the dust there in the street in front of Philip James, and every one could see that terror was upon him. And he did beg Philip James’s pardon, and beg of him to have mercy, and he did implore43 him by God and man and the saints of paradise. And my cousin, John Jenkins, Penmawr, he do tell me that the tears were falling from Lewis Prothero’s eyes like the rain. And he put his hand into his pocket and drew out the deed of Pantyreos, Philip James’s old farm that was, and did give him the farm back and a hundred pounds for the stock that was on it, and two hundred pounds, all in notes of the bank, for amendment44 and consolation45.
“And then, from what they do tell me, all the people did go mad, crying and weeping and calling out all manner of things at the top of their voices. And at last nothing would do but they must all go up to the churchyard, and there Philip James and Lewis Prothero they swear friendship to one another for a long age before the old cross, and everyone sings praises. And my cousin he do declare to me that there were men standing46 in that crowd that he did never see before in Llantrisant in all his life, and his heart was shaken within him as if it had been in a whirl-wind.”
I had listened to all this in silence. I said then:
“What does your cousin mean by that? Men that he had never seen in Llantrisant? What men?”
“The people,” he said very slowly, “call them the Fishermen.”
And suddenly there came into my mind the “Rich Fisherman” who in the old legend guards the holy mystery of the Graal.
收听单词发音 |
1
whooping
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| 发嗬嗬声的，发咳声的 | |
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measles
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| n.麻疹，风疹，包虫病，痧子 | |
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earache
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| n.耳朵痛 | |
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amazement
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| n.惊奇，惊讶 | |
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incense
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| v.激怒；n.香，焚香时的烟，香气 | |
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scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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misty
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| adj.雾蒙蒙的，有雾的 | |
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glimmer
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| v.发出闪烁的微光；n.微光，微弱的闪光 | |
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murmur
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| n.低语，低声的怨言；v.低语，低声而言 | |
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glimmering
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| n.微光，隐约的一瞥adj.薄弱地发光的v.发闪光，发微光( glimmer的现在分词 ) | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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illuminated
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| adj.被照明的；受启迪的 | |
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ineffable
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| adj.无法表达的，不可言喻的 | |
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immortal
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| adj.不朽的；永生的，不死的；神的 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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pal
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| n.朋友，伙伴，同志；vi.结为友 | |
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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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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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outrageous
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| adj.无理的，令人不能容忍的 | |
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winding
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| n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈 | |
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scraps
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| 油渣 | |
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rumour
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| n.谣言，谣传，传闻 | |
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populous
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| adj.人口稠密的，人口众多的 | |
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solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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justify
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| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
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nostrils
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| 鼻孔( nostril的名词复数 ) | |
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ridge
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| n.山脊；鼻梁；分水岭 | |
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farmhouse
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| n.农场住宅（尤指主要住房） | |
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sapphire
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| n.青玉，蓝宝石；adj.天蓝色的 | |
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mellow
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| adj.柔和的；熟透的；v.变柔和；(使)成熟 | |
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myriad
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| adj.无数的；n.无数，极大数量 | |
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mounds
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| 土堆，土丘( mound的名词复数 )； 一大堆 | |
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enigmas
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| n.难于理解的问题、人、物、情况等，奥秘( enigma的名词复数 ) | |
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annoyance
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| n.恼怒，生气，烦恼 | |
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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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second-hand
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| adj.用过的，旧的，二手的 | |
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feud
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| n.长期不和；世仇；v.长期争斗；世代结仇 | |
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solicitor
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| n.初级律师，事务律师 | |
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lodging
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| n.寄宿，住所；(大学生的)校外宿舍 | |
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misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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brawny
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| adj.强壮的 | |
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jaw
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| n.颚，颌，说教，流言蜚语；v.喋喋不休，教训 | |
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43
implore
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| vt.乞求，恳求，哀求 | |
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amendment
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| n.改正，修正，改善，修正案 | |
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consolation
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| n.安慰，慰问 | |
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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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