After dinner there was a luminous2 peacefulness in the world outside and an unusual warmth, the rising moon had pervaded3 heaven with an intense blue and long slanting4 bars of dreamy light lifted themselves from the horizontal towards the vertical5, slowly and indolently amidst the terraces and trees and bushes. At two or three in the morning when everyone was asleep they would stand erect6 like sentinel spears.
“I think I could walk a little,” said Mrs. Rylands and they went outside upon the terrace and down the steps to the path that led through the close garden with the tombstone of Amoena Lucina to the broad way that ended at last in a tall jungle of subtly scented7 nocturnal white flowers. They were tall responsible looking flowers. The moonlight among their petals8 armed them with little scimitars and bucklers of silver. Among these flowers were moths9, great white moths, so that it seemed as if ever and again a couple of blossoms became detached and pirouetted together. Hostess and guest — for Miss Fenimore, with her instinctive10 tact11, did not join them — promenaded12 this broad dim path, to and fro, and Mr. Plantagenet-Buchan spread his Epicurean philosophy unchallenged before Mrs. Rylands’ enquiring13 intelligence.
He had been much struck by his own impromptu14 antithesis15 of Loveliness to Loneliness and this he now developed as a choice between the sense of beauty and the sense of self. He began apropos16 of Lady Catherine and her excited interest in present things. “How strange it is that she should incessantly17 want to do, when all that need be asked of her more than of anyone else is surely that she should simply be.”
He passed easily into personal exposition.
“I treat myself,” he said, “as a piece of bric-à-brac in this wonderful collection, the universe, a piece that differs from the other odd, quaint18 and amusing pieces, simply because my eye happens to be set in it. Here in this lovely garden, which is so irrelevant19 to all the needless haste and turmoil20 of life, I can be perfectly21 happy. I am perfectly happy — to-night. My chief complaint against existence is that it happens too much and keeps on hurrying by. Before you can appreciate it in the least. I seem always to be trying to pick up exquisite22 things it drops, with all the crowding next things jostling and thrusting my poor stooping back. Get out of the way there! Eager to trample23 my treasure before I can even make it a treasure. Like trying to pick up a lost pearl in the middle of the Place de la Concorde. If I could plan my own fate, I would like to live five hundred years in a world in which nothing of any importance ever happened at all. A world like a Chinese plate. I should have a little sinecure24 perhaps or I should perform some graceful25 functions in the ceremonies of a religion that had completely lost whatever reality it ever had.”
Mrs. Rylands was not unmindful of her duty to the little green leather book that waited in her sitting-room26.
“You do not believe in God?” she asked, to be perfectly clear.
“In loveliness, I believe. And I delight in gods. But in God —— How it would spoil this perfect night, this crystal sky, this silver peace, if one thought it was not precisely27 the pure loveliness it is! Without an arrière pensée. If one had to turn it all into allegory and guess what it meant! If one even began to suspect that it was just a way of signalling something to us, on the part of a Supreme28 Personage!”
“But if one took it simply as a present from him?”
“That would be better. Then the only duty in life would be to accept and enjoy. And God would sit over us like some great golden Buddha29, smiling, blessing30 and not minding in the least. Not signifying in the least.”
“That is all very well for happy and pampered31 people like ourselves, living in houses and gardens like this one.”
“One can start in search of beauty from any starting point and one is still a pilgrim even if one dies by the way.”
“But most human beings start from such frightful32 starting points. They hardly get a glimpse of beauty.”
“Not sunlight? Not the evening compositions of clouds and sun? The sunsets in Mr. Bennett’s Five Towns are the loveliest in the world. I assure you. The beauty of London Docks again? Or it may be music heard by chance from an open window in the street? Or flowers?”
He shook his head gravely, almost regretfully. “Everyone can find beauty. Think of the beauty of sunlight at the end of a tunnel.”
“I am afraid the world is full of crippled and driven lives. They’re hungry and afraid. What chance of seeing beauty have most poor people — anywhere? Even when it is under their noses. You can’t see beauty with miserable33 eyes. Beauty does not make happiness; it only comes to the happy. Latterly that has begun to haunt me dreadfully.”
“No,” said Mr. Plantagenet-Buchan. “That is wrong. Don’t spoil to-night.”
“But they pay for this! Haven’t we a duty to them?”
“Surely as much duty to this night, to leave it serene34.”
“I can’t feel like that. I can’t forget this dismal35 coal strike, the trouble of it, the people out of work, the anxiety, the need in millions of poor worried brains.”
“My dear lady! they chose it. They need not have been born.”
Came a pause as the great modern topic of restriction36 was faced.
“But it is rather difficult for a child, which doesn’t exist, and isn’t perhaps going to exist for some time, to weigh all the pros37 and cons38 and decide ——”
“Its parents and guardians39, its godfathers and godmothers wherein it was made, could act for it. It isn’t consulted as a whole so to speak, its constituents40 are consulted — tacitly. And it has at any rate its own blind Will to Live. Most parentage is inadvertent. What a precious relief is the thought of birth control! The time is coming when it will be practically impossible to tempt41 anyone to get born except under the most hopeful and favourable42 circumstances.”
“But meanwhile?”
“I am like the great Mr. Sempack; I refuse to be eaten up by meanwhile.”
“Meanwhile one must live.”
“As calmly as possible. As inactively appreciative43 as possible. It is just because one must live that one tries to give oneself wholly to a night like this. How rarely do even such favoured ones as we are get an hour so smooth and crystalline as this! The stillness! The chief fault I have with living is the way life rushes us about. Rushes everyone about. What a hurry, what a scurry44 is history! Think of all the hosts and armies and individuals that have thrust and shoved and whacked45 their mules46 and horses along this very Via Aurelia in your garden. Which to-night is just a deep black pit smothered47 in ivy48. Grave of innumerable memories. If we went down there to-night to that old paved track I wonder if we should see their ghosts! Romans and Carthaginians, Milanese and Burgundians, French and Italians, kings and bishops49 and conquerors50 and fugitives51. It would be a fit punishment for all their hurry and violence to find them there. It would serve them right for all their wicked inattention to loveliness, to put them back again upon their paces and make them repeat them over and over, over and over, night after night, century after century. . . . ”
Mr. Plantagenet-Buchan was smitten52 by a bright idea. “Perhaps someday some later Einstein will take out patents and contrive53 a way of slowing down time. Without affecting our perceptions. Then we shall not be everlastingly54 hurried on by strikes and wars and passions and meal-times and bed-times. With the newspapers rustling55 and flying through the air like witches in a storm.
“But I chatter56 on and on, my dear Mrs. Rylands. You set me talking. And I am trying to forget the Social Revolution now in progress and how we are all to be swept away. Or else saved by Captain Fearon-Owen, was it? and Lady Catherine. Whichever is the worse.
“Before we go in, may we just walk up that path above the house to the little bridge over the gorge57 beyond the herbarium and the laboratory? Do you know it? By night? There the hillside goes up very steeply and everything, the trees and even the rocks, seems to be drawn58 up too in a kind of magical unanimity59. You must see it by moonlight. An immense flamboyance60 of black and white. Stupendous shadows. I discovered it last night as I prowled about the garden before turning it. It streams up and up and up, and over it brood the wet black precipices61 of the mountains, endlessly vertical, with little threads of silver. The eye follows it up. It is like all the Gothic in the world multiplied by ten. It is like listening to some tremendous crescendo62. Farther than this he cannot go, you say, and he goes farther. At the top the precipices fairly overhang. One stands on the bridge at the foot of it, minute, insignificant63, overawed. . . .
“By daylight it is nothing very wonderful. Hardly anything at all.”
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1
devious
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| adj.不坦率的，狡猾的；迂回的，曲折的 | |
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luminous
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| adj.发光的，发亮的；光明的；明白易懂的；有启发的 | |
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pervaded
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| v.遍及，弥漫( pervade的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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slanting
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| 倾斜的，歪斜的 | |
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vertical
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| adj.垂直的，顶点的，纵向的；n.垂直物，垂直的位置 | |
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6
erect
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| n./v.树立，建立，使竖立；adj.直立的，垂直的 | |
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7
scented
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| adj.有香味的；洒香水的；有气味的v.嗅到(scent的过去分词) | |
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petals
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| n.花瓣( petal的名词复数 ) | |
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moths
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| n.蛾( moth的名词复数 ) | |
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10
instinctive
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| adj.(出于)本能的；直觉的；(出于)天性的 | |
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tact
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| n.机敏，圆滑，得体 | |
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promenaded
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| v.兜风( promenade的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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enquiring
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| a.爱打听的，显得好奇的 | |
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14
impromptu
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| adj.即席的，即兴的；adv.即兴的(地)，无准备的(地) | |
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15
antithesis
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| n.对立；相对 | |
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16
apropos
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| adv.恰好地；adj.恰当的；关于 | |
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17
incessantly
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| ad.不停地 | |
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18
quaint
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| adj.古雅的，离奇有趣的，奇怪的 | |
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19
irrelevant
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| adj.不恰当的，无关系的，不相干的 | |
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20
turmoil
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| n.骚乱，混乱，动乱 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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22
exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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23
trample
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| vt.踩，践踏；无视，伤害，侵犯 | |
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24
sinecure
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| n.闲差事，挂名职务 | |
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graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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sitting-room
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| n.（BrE）客厅，起居室 | |
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precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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29
Buddha
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| n.佛；佛像；佛陀 | |
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30
blessing
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| n.祈神赐福；祷告；祝福，祝愿 | |
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31
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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32
frightful
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| adj.可怕的；讨厌的 | |
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33
miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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34
serene
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| adj. 安详的，宁静的，平静的 | |
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35
dismal
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| adj.阴沉的，凄凉的，令人忧郁的，差劲的 | |
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36
restriction
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| n.限制，约束 | |
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37
pros
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| abbr.prosecuting 起诉；prosecutor 起诉人；professionals 自由职业者；proscenium （舞台）前部n.赞成的意见( pro的名词复数 )；赞成的理由；抵偿物；交换物 | |
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38
cons
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| n.欺骗，骗局( con的名词复数 )v.诈骗，哄骗( con的第三人称单数 ) | |
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39
guardians
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| 监护人( guardian的名词复数 )； 保护者，维护者 | |
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40
constituents
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| n.选民( constituent的名词复数 )；成分；构成部分；要素 | |
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41
tempt
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| vt.引诱，勾引，吸引，引起…的兴趣 | |
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42
favourable
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| adj.赞成的，称赞的，有利的，良好的，顺利的 | |
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43
appreciative
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| adj.有鉴赏力的，有眼力的；感激的 | |
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44
scurry
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| vi.急匆匆地走；使急赶；催促；n.快步急跑，疾走；仓皇奔跑声；骤雨，骤雪；短距离赛马 | |
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45
whacked
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| a.精疲力尽的 | |
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46
mules
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| 骡( mule的名词复数 )； 拖鞋； 顽固的人； 越境运毒者 | |
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47
smothered
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| （使）窒息， （使）透不过气( smother的过去式和过去分词 )； 覆盖； 忍住； 抑制 | |
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48
ivy
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| n.常青藤，常春藤 | |
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49
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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50
conquerors
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| 征服者，占领者( conqueror的名词复数 ) | |
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51
fugitives
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| n.亡命者，逃命者( fugitive的名词复数 ) | |
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52
smitten
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| 猛打，重击，打击( smite的过去分词 ) | |
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53
contrive
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| vt.谋划，策划；设法做到；设计，想出 | |
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54
everlastingly
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| 永久地，持久地 | |
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55
rustling
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| n. 瑟瑟声，沙沙声 adj. 发沙沙声的 | |
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56
chatter
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| vi.／n.喋喋不休；短促尖叫；(牙齿)打战 | |
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57
gorge
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| n.咽喉，胃，暴食，山峡；v.塞饱，狼吞虎咽地吃 | |
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58
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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59
unanimity
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| n.全体一致，一致同意 | |
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60
flamboyance
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| n.火红；艳丽；炫耀 | |
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61
precipices
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| n.悬崖，峭壁( precipice的名词复数 ) | |
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62
crescendo
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| n.(音乐)渐强，高潮 | |
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63
insignificant
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| adj.无关紧要的，可忽略的，无意义的 | |
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