“You are a really wonderful man,” said Lady Catherine, leaning towards him, and her expression was simple and sincere.
“You are a really wonderful man,” she repeated before he could reply, “and now I feel I can talk to you plainly. I have never met anyone for a long time who has impressed me as you have done. You are — an astonishing discovery.”
Mr. Sempack had half turned towards her so that they sat side by side and face to face with their glowing faces quite close together. It was extraordinary that a man who was so ungainly a week and a room’s breadth away should become quite attractive and exciting and with the nicest, warmest eyes at a distance of a few inches. But it was so. “It is rare,” he said, “that I come back so completely to the present as you have made me do.”
“Come back to the present and reality,” she urged. “For good. That is what I wanted to say to you. I have been watching you all these days and wondering about you. You are the most exciting thing here. Much the most exciting thing. You have a force and an effect. You have a tremendous effect of personality. I never met anyone with so much personality. And you go so straight for things. I know all the political people at home who matter in the least. And not one of them matters in the least. There is not one who has your quality of strength and conviction; not one. Why do you keep out of things? Instead of talking and writing of what is coming; why don’t you make it come?”
“Oh!” said Mr. Sempack and recoiled3 a little.
“You could dominate,” she said.
“I wasn’t thinking of politics or dominating just then,” he explained. “I was thinking of — you.”
“That’s thrown in. But there has to be a setting. You seem to be masterful and yet you decline to be masterful. I am excited by you and I want you masterful. I want to see you — mastering things. The world is waiting for confident and masterful men. See how Italy has snatched at Mussolini. See how everything at home waits for a decisive voice and a firm hand. It wants a man who is sure as you are sure to grip all this sedition4 and discontent and feeble mindedness. All parties the same. I’m not taking sides. Philip doesn’t seem to know his own mind for five minutes together. And he owns coal galore.”
Mr. Sempack had gradually turned from her during this speech. “Philip?” he questioned himself in a whisper. He drooped5 perceptibly.
His tone when he spoke6 was calmly elucidatory7.
“When we were talking about those things the other night,” he remarked, “I did my best to explain just why it was that one could not do anything very much of a positive sort now. Perhaps what I said wasn’t clear. The thing that has to happen before anything real can crystallise out in the way of a new state of affairs is a great change in the ideas of people at large. That is the real job in hand at present. Reconstructing people’s ideas. To the best of my ability I am making my contribution to that now. I don’t see what else can be done.”
He was looking at her no longer. He gave her his profile. The glow seemed to have gone out of him.
“But that is not living,” she said, with a faint flavour of vexation in her voice. “Meanwhile you must have a life of your own, a life that hurts and excites.”
He regarded her gravely. “That I suppose is why I kissed you.”
She met his eyes and perceived that the glow had not vanished beyond recall.
“Live now — instead of all this theorising,” she whispered. “You are so strange a person —— You could make an extraordinary figure.”
He turned from her, pulled up a great knee with his long hands, slanted9 his head on one side, considered the proposition.
“You think”; he weighed it; “I should project myself upon the world, flapping and gesticulating, making a great noise. It wouldn’t you know be a lucid8 statement, but it would no doubt have an air. A prophetic raven10. Something between Peter the Hermit11, William Jennings Bryan and the great Mr. Gladstone on campaign? Leading people stupendously into unthought-of ditches. And leaving them.” He turned an eye on her and it occurred to her to ask herself, though she could not wait for the answer, whether he was laughing either at her or at himself. He shook his head slowly from side to side. “No,” he concluded.
“We have to learn from the men of science,” he supplemented, “that the way to be effective in life is to avoid being personally great — or any such glories and excitements.”
“But how can a woman enter into the life of a man who just sits about and thinks and tries it over in talk and writes it down?”
“My dear — you are my dear, you know — she can’t. But do you dream that some day you and I perhaps might ride together into a conquered city? Beauty and the Highbrow.”
“You could do great things.”
“After the election, our carriage, horses taken out, dragged by the shouting populace to the Parliament House.”
“You caricature.”
“Not so very much. You are, my dear, the loveliest thing alive. I can’t imagine anything more sweet and strong — and translucent12. I am altogether in love with you. My blood runs through my veins13, babbling14 about you and setting every part of me afire. You stir me like great music. You fill me with inappeasable regrets. But —— Between us there is a great gulf15 fixed16. I live to create a world and you are the present triumph of created things.”
She said nothing but she willed herself to be magnetic and intoxicating17.
Mr. Sempack however was carried past her siren radiations by the current of his thoughts.
“I doubt,” he reflected, “if life has very much more use for a perfect thing, for finished grace and beauty, than an artist has for his last year’s masterpiece. Life grows the glorious fruit — and parts from it. The essential fact about life is imperfection. Life that ceases to struggle away from whatever it is towards something that it isn’t, is ceasing to be life.”
“Just as if I were inactive!” she remarked.
“You’re splendidly active,” he said with a smile like sunlight breaking over rugged18 scenery: “but it’s all in a set and defined drama. Which is nearing the end of its run.”
“You mean — I am no positive good in the world at all. A back number.”
“Good! You’re necessary. For the excitement, disappointment, and humiliation19 of the people who will attack the real creative tasks. Consider what you are doing! Out of whim20. Out of curiosity. You shine upon me, you dazzle me, you are suddenly friendly to me and tender to me. I forget my self-forgetfulness. I dare to kiss you. It seems almost incredible to me but you —— You make it seem possible that I might go far with your loveliness. You bring me near to forgetting what I am, a thing like an intellectual Megatherium, slow but sturdy, mixed up with joints21 like a rockfall and a style like St. Simeon Stylites — and infinite tedious toil22 of the spirit — and you make me dream of the pride of a lover.”
“Dream,” she whispered, and radiated a complete Aurora23 Borealis.
But the mental inertia24 of Mr. Sempack was very great. Certain things were in his mind to say and he went on saying them.
“I don’t want to be brought back to this sort of thing. After I have so painfully — got away from it. I don’t want to have my illusions restored. It unmakes one. It is necessary before one can do one solitary25 good thing in life that one should be humiliated26 and totally disillusioned27 about oneself. One isn’t born to any living reality until one has escaped from one’s prepossession with the personal life. The personal life branches off from the stem to die. The reality of life is to contribute. . . . ”
His expression ceased to be indifferent and became obstinate28. He was beginning to feel and struggle against her nearness. But he held on for a time.
“All the things in human life that are worth while have been done by clumsy and inelegant people, by people in violent conflict with themselves, by people who blundered and who remain blundering people. They hurt themselves and awake. You know nothing of the inner life of the ungracious. You know nothing of being born as a soul. The bitterness. The reluctant search for compensations. The acceptance of the fact that service must be our beauty. But now this freak of yours brings back to me the renunciations, the suppressions and stifling29 of desire, that began in my boyhood and darkened my adolescence30. I thought I had built myself up above all these things.”
“You are — majestic,” she whispered.
“Oh, nonsense!” He groaned31 it and, wavering for a moment, turned upon her hungrily and drew her to him.
No soundly beautiful woman has ever doubted that a man is better than a mirror for the realisation of her delight in herself, and it was with the profoundest gratification that Lady Catherine sensed the immense appreciations32 of his embrace. Her kiss, her rewarding and approving kiss, was no ordinary kiss, for she meant to plant an ineffaceable memory.
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1
disposition
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| n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署 | |
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2
brazen
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| adj.厚脸皮的，无耻的，坚硬的 | |
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3
recoiled
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| v.畏缩( recoil的过去式和过去分词 )；退缩；报应；返回 | |
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sedition
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| n.煽动叛乱 | |
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drooped
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| 弯曲或下垂，发蔫( droop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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6
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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7
elucidatory
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| adj.阐释的，阐明的 | |
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8
lucid
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| adj.明白易懂的，清晰的，头脑清楚的 | |
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9
slanted
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| 有偏见的； 倾斜的 | |
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10
raven
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| n.渡鸟，乌鸦；adj.乌亮的 | |
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11
hermit
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| n.隐士，修道者；隐居 | |
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12
translucent
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| adj.半透明的；透明的 | |
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13
veins
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| n.纹理；矿脉( vein的名词复数 )；静脉；叶脉；纹理 | |
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14
babbling
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| n.胡说，婴儿发出的咿哑声adj.胡说的v.喋喋不休( babble的现在分词 )；作潺潺声（如流水）；含糊不清地说话；泄漏秘密 | |
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15
gulf
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| n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂 | |
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16
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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17
intoxicating
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| a. 醉人的,使人兴奋的 | |
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18
rugged
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| adj.高低不平的，粗糙的，粗壮的，强健的 | |
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humiliation
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| n.羞辱 | |
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whim
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| n.一时的兴致，突然的念头；奇想，幻想 | |
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21
joints
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| 接头( joint的名词复数 )； 关节； 公共场所（尤指价格低廉的饮食和娱乐场所） （非正式）； 一块烤肉 （英式英语） | |
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22
toil
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| vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事 | |
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23
aurora
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| n.极光 | |
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inertia
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| adj.惰性，惯性，懒惰，迟钝 | |
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25
solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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26
humiliated
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| 感到羞愧的 | |
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27
disillusioned
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| a.不再抱幻想的，大失所望的，幻想破灭的 | |
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obstinate
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| adj.顽固的，倔强的，不易屈服的，较难治愈的 | |
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29
stifling
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| a.令人窒息的 | |
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30
adolescence
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| n.青春期，青少年 | |
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31
groaned
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| v.呻吟( groan的过去式和过去分词 )；发牢骚；抱怨；受苦 | |
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32
appreciations
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| n.欣赏( appreciation的名词复数 )；感激；评定；（尤指土地或财产的）增值 | |
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