Thinker, stylist, and man of the world in his time, the elder Heyst had begun by coveting3 all the joys, those of the great and those of the humble4, those of the fools and those of the sages5. For more than sixty years he had dragged on this painful earth of ours the most weary, the most uneasy soul that civilization had ever fashioned to its ends of disillusion6 and regret. One could not refuse him a measure of greatness, for he was unhappy in a way unknown to mediocre7 souls. His mother Heyst had never known, but he kept his father’s pale, distinguished8 face in affectionate memory. He remembered him mainly in an ample blue dressing-gown in a large house of a quiet London suburb. For three years, after leaving school at the age of eighteen, he had lived with the elder Heyst, who was then writing his last book. In this work, at the end of his life, he claimed for mankind that right to absolute moral and intellectual liberty of which he no longer believed them worthy9.
Three years of such companionship at that plastic and impressionable age were bound to leave in the boy a profound mistrust of life. The young man learned to reflect, which is a destructive process, a reckoning of the cost. It is not the clear-sighted who lead the world. Great achievements are accomplished10 in a blessed, warm mental fog, which the pitiless cold blasts of the father’s analysis had blown away from the son.
“I’ll drift,” Heyst had said to himself deliberately11.
He did not mean intellectually or sentimentally12 or morally. He meant to drift altogether and literally13, body and soul, like a detached leaf drifting in the wind-currents under the immovable trees of a forest glade14; to drift without ever catching15 on to anything.
“This shall be my defence against life,” he had said to himself with a sort of inward consciousness that for the son of his father there was no other worthy alternative.
He became a waif and stray, austerely16, from conviction, as others do through drink, from vice17, from some weakness of character — with deliberation, as others do in despair. This, stripped of its facts, had been Heyst’s life up to that disturbing night. Next day, when he saw the girl called Alma, she managed to give him a glance of frank tenderness, quick as lightning and leaving a profound impression, a secret touch on the heart. It was in the grounds of the hotel, about tiffin time, while the Ladies of the orchestra were strolling back to their pavilion after rehearsal18, or practice, or whatever they called their morning musical exercises in the hall. Heyst, returning from the town, where he had discovered that there would be difficulties in the way of getting away at once, was crossing the compound, disappointed and worried. He had walked almost unwittingly into the straggling group of Zangiacomo’s performers. It was a shock to him, on coming out of his brown study, to find the girl so near to him, as if one waking suddenly should see the figure of his dream turned into flesh and blood. She did not raise her shapely head, but her glance was no dream thing. It was real, the most real impression of his detached existence — so far.
Heyst had not acknowledged it in any way, though it seemed to him impossible that its effect on him should not be visible to anyone who happened to be looking on. And there were several men on the veranda19, steady customers of Schomberg’s table d’hote, gazing in his direction — at the ladies of the orchestra, in fact. Heyst’s dread20 arose, not out of shame or timidity, but from his fastidiousness. On getting amongst them, however, he noticed no signs of interest or astonishment21 in their faces, any more than if they had been blind men. Even Schomberg himself, who had to make way for him at the top of the stairs, was completely unperturbed, and continued the conversation he was carrying on with a client.
Schomberg, indeed, had observed “that Swede” talking with the girl in the intervals22. A crony of his had nudged him; and he had thought that it was so much the better; the silly fellow would keep everybody else off. He was rather pleased than otherwise and watched them out of the corner of his eye with a malicious23 enjoyment24 of the situation — a sort of Satanic glee. For he had little doubt of his personal fascination25, and still less of his power to get hold of the girl, who seemed too ignorant to know how to help herself, and who was worse than friendless, since she had for some reason incurred26 the animosity of Mrs. Zangiacomo, a woman with no conscience. The aversion she showed him as far as she dared (for it is not always safe for the helpless to display the delicacy27 of their sentiments), Schomberg pardoned on the score of feminine conventional silliness. He had told Alma, as an argument, that she was a clever enough girl to see that she could do no better than to put her trust in a man of substance, in the prime of life, who knew his way about. But for the excited trembling of his voice, and the extraordinary way in which his eyes seemed to be starting out of his crimson28, hirsute29 countenance30, such speeches had every character of calm, unselfish advice — which, after the manner of lovers, passed easily into sanguine32 plans for the future.
“We’ll soon get rid of the old woman,” he whispered to her hurriedly, with panting ferocity. “Hang her! I’ve never cared for her. The climate don’t suit her; I shall tell her to go to her people in Europe. She will have to go, too! I will see to it. Eins, zwei, march! And then we shall sell this hotel and start another somewhere else.”
He assured her that he didn’t care what he did for her sake; and it was true. Forty-five is the age of recklessness for many men, as if in defiance33 of the decay and death waiting with open arms in the sinister34 valley at the bottom of the inevitable35 hill. Her shrinking form, her downcast eyes, when she had to listen to him, cornered at the end of an empty corridor, he regarded as signs of submission36 to the overpowering force of his will, the recognition of his personal fascinations37. For every age is fed on illusions, lest men should renounce38 life early and the human race come to an end.
It’s easy to imagine Schomberg’s humiliation39, his shocked fury, when he discovered that the girl who had for weeks resisted his attacks, his prayers, and his fiercest protestations, had been snatched from under his nose by “that Swede,” apparently40 without any trouble worth speaking of. He refused to believe the fact. He would have it, at first, that the Zangiacomos, for some unfathomable reason, had played him a scurvy41 trick, but when no further doubt was possible, he changed his view of Heyst. The despised Swede became for Schomberg the deepest, the most dangerous, the most hateful of scoundrels. He could not believe that the creature he had coveted42 with so much force and with so little effect, was in reality tender, docile43 to her impulse, and had almost offered herself to Heyst without a sense of guilt44, in a desire of safety, and from a profound need of placing her trust where her woman’s instinct guided her ignorance. Nothing would serve Schomberg but that she must have been circumvented45 by some occult exercise of force or craft, by the laying of some subtle trap. His wounded vanity wondered ceaselessly at the means “that Swede” had employed to seduce46 her away from a man like him — Schomberg — as though those means were bound to have been extraordinary, unheard of, inconceivable. He slapped his forehead openly before his customers; he would sit brooding in silence or else would burst out unexpectedly declaiming against Heyst without measure, discretion47, or prudence48, with swollen49 features and an affectation of outraged50 virtue51 which could not have deceived the most childlike of moralists for a moment — and greatly amused his audience.
It became a recognized entertainment to go and hear his abuse of Heyst, while sipping52 iced drinks on the veranda of the hotel. It was, in a manner, a more successful draw than the Zangiacomo concerts had ever been — intervals and all. There was never any difficulty in starting the performer off. Anybody could do it, by almost any distant allusion53. As likely as not he would start his endless denunciations in the very billiard-room where Mrs. Schomberg sat enthroned as usual, swallowing her sobs54, concealing55 her tortures of abject56 humiliation and terror under her stupid, set, everlasting57 grin, which, having been provided for her by nature, was an excellent mask, in as much as nothing — not even death itself, perhaps — could tear it away.
But nothing lasts in this world, at least without changing its physiognomy. So, after a few weeks, Schomberg regained58 his outward calm, as if his indignation had dried up within him. And it was time. He was becoming a bore with his inability to talk of anything else but Heyst’s unfitness to be at large, Heyst’s wickedness, his wiles59, his astuteness60, and his criminality. Schomberg no longer pretended to despise him. He could not have done it. After what had happened he could not pretend, even to himself. But his bottled-up indignation was fermenting61 venomously. At the time of his immoderate loquacity62 one of his customers, an elderly man, had remarked one evening:
“If that ass31 keeps on like this, he will end by going crazy.”
And this belief was less than half wrong. Schomberg had Heyst on the brain. Even the unsatisfactory state of his affairs, which had never been so unpromising since he came out East directly after the Franco-Prussian War, he referred to some subtly noxious63 influence of Heyst. It seemed to him that he could never be himself again till he had got even with that artful Swede. He was ready to swear that Heyst had ruined his life. The girl so unfairly, craftily64, basely decoyed away would have inspired him to success in a new start. Obviously Mrs. Schomberg, whom he terrified by savagely65 silent moods combined with underhand, poisoned glances, could give him no inspiration. He had grown generally neglectful, but with a partiality for reckless expedients66, as if he did not care when and how his career as a hotel-keeper was to be brought to an end. This demoralized state accounted for what Davidson had observed on his last visit to the Schomberg establishment, some two months after Heyst’s secret departure with the girl to the solitude67 of Samburan.
The Schomberg of a few years ago — the Schomberg of the Bangkok days, for instance, when he started the first of his famed table d’hote dinners — would never have risked anything of the sort. His genius ran to catering68, “white man for white men” and to the inventing, elaborating, and retailing69 of scandalous gossip with asinine70 unction and impudent71 delight. But now his mind was perverted72 by the pangs73 of wounded vanity and of thwarted74 passion. In this state of moral weakness Schomberg allowed himself to be corrupted75.
点击
收听单词发音
收听单词发音 |
1
courteous
|
|
| adj.彬彬有礼的，客气的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
instinctively
|
|
| adv.本能地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
coveting
|
|
| v.贪求，觊觎( covet的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
humble
|
|
| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
sages
|
|
| n.圣人( sage的名词复数 )；智者；哲人；鼠尾草（可用作调料） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
disillusion
|
|
| vt.使不再抱幻想，使理想破灭 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
mediocre
|
|
| adj.平常的，普通的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
distinguished
|
|
| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
worthy
|
|
| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
accomplished
|
|
| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
deliberately
|
|
| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
sentimentally
|
|
| adv.富情感地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
literally
|
|
| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
glade
|
|
| n.林间空地，一片表面有草的沼泽低地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
catching
|
|
| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
austerely
|
|
| adv.严格地，朴质地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
vice
|
|
| n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
rehearsal
|
|
| n.排练，排演；练习 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
veranda
|
|
| n.走廊；阳台 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
dread
|
|
| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
astonishment
|
|
| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
intervals
|
|
| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
malicious
|
|
| adj.有恶意的，心怀恶意的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
enjoyment
|
|
| n.乐趣；享有；享用 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
25
fascination
|
|
| n.令人着迷的事物，魅力，迷恋 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
26
incurred
|
|
| [医]招致的，遭受的； incur的过去式 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
27
delicacy
|
|
| n.精致，细微，微妙，精良；美味，佳肴 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
28
crimson
|
|
| n./adj.深(绯)红色(的)；vi.脸变绯红色 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
29
hirsute
|
|
| adj.多毛的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
30
countenance
|
|
| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
31
ass
|
|
| n.驴；傻瓜，蠢笨的人 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
32
sanguine
|
|
| adj.充满希望的，乐观的，血红色的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
33
defiance
|
|
| n.挑战，挑衅，蔑视，违抗 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
34
sinister
|
|
| adj.不吉利的，凶恶的，左边的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
35
inevitable
|
|
| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
36
submission
|
|
| n.服从，投降；温顺，谦虚；提出 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
37
fascinations
|
|
| n.魅力( fascination的名词复数 )；有魅力的东西；迷恋；陶醉 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
38
renounce
|
|
| v.放弃；拒绝承认，宣布与…断绝关系 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
39
humiliation
|
|
| n.羞辱 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
40
apparently
|
|
| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
41
scurvy
|
|
| adj.下流的，卑鄙的，无礼的；n.坏血病 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
42
coveted
|
|
| adj.令人垂涎的；垂涎的，梦寐以求的v.贪求，觊觎(covet的过去分词)；垂涎；贪图 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
43
docile
|
|
| adj.驯服的，易控制的，容易教的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
44
guilt
|
|
| n.犯罪；内疚；过失，罪责 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
45
circumvented
|
|
| v.设法克服或避免（某事物），回避( circumvent的过去式和过去分词 )；绕过，绕行，绕道旅行 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
46
seduce
|
|
| vt.勾引，诱奸，诱惑，引诱 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
47
discretion
|
|
| n.谨慎；随意处理 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
48
prudence
|
|
| n.谨慎，精明，节俭 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
49
swollen
|
|
| adj.肿大的，水涨的；v.使变大，肿胀 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
50
outraged
|
|
| a.震惊的，义愤填膺的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
51
virtue
|
|
| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
52
sipping
|
|
| v.小口喝，呷，抿( sip的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
53
allusion
|
|
| n.暗示，间接提示 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
54
sobs
|
|
| 啜泣（声），呜咽（声）( sob的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
55
concealing
|
|
| v.隐藏，隐瞒，遮住( conceal的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
56
abject
|
|
| adj.极可怜的，卑屈的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
57
everlasting
|
|
| adj.永恒的，持久的，无止境的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
58
regained
|
|
| 复得( regain的过去式和过去分词 )； 赢回； 重回； 复至某地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
59
wiles
|
|
| n.（旨在欺骗或吸引人的）诡计，花招；欺骗，欺诈( wile的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
60
astuteness
|
|
| n.敏锐；精明；机敏 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
61
fermenting
|
|
| v.（使）发酵( ferment的现在分词 )；（使）激动；骚动；骚扰 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
62
loquacity
|
|
| n.多话，饶舌 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
63
noxious
|
|
| adj.有害的，有毒的；使道德败坏的，讨厌的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
64
craftily
|
|
| 狡猾地，狡诈地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
65
savagely
|
|
| adv. 野蛮地，残酷地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
66
expedients
|
|
| n.应急有效的，权宜之计的( expedient的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
67
solitude
|
|
| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
68
catering
|
|
| n. 给养 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
69
retailing
|
|
| n.零售业v.零售(retail的现在分词) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
70
asinine
|
|
| adj.愚蠢的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
71
impudent
|
|
| adj.鲁莽的，卑鄙的，厚颜无耻的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
72
perverted
|
|
| adj.不正当的v.滥用( pervert的过去式和过去分词 )；腐蚀；败坏；使堕落 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
73
pangs
|
|
| 突然的剧痛( pang的名词复数 )； 悲痛 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
74
thwarted
|
|
| 阻挠( thwart的过去式和过去分词 )； 使受挫折； 挫败； 横过 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
75
corrupted
|
|
| （使）败坏( corrupt的过去式和过去分词 )； （使）腐化； 引起（计算机文件等的）错误； 破坏 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |