“We had better go down now,” he suggested in a low tone.
He extended his hand to help her up. He had the intention to smile, but abandoned it at the nearer sight of her still face, in which was depicted4 the infinite lassitude of her soul. On their way to regain5 the forest path they had to pass through the spot from which the view of the sea could be obtained. The flaming abyss of emptiness, the liquid, undulating glare, the tragic6 brutality7 of the light, made her long for the friendly night, with its stars stilled by an austere8 spell; for the velvety9 dark sky and the mysterious great shadow of the sea, conveying peace to the day-weary heart. She put her hand to her eyes. Behind her back Heyst spoke10 gently.
“Let us get on, Lena.”
She walked ahead in silence. Heyst remarked that they had never been out before during the hottest hours. It would do her no good, he feared. This solicitude11 pleased and soothed12 her. She felt more and more like herself — a poor London girl playing in an orchestra, and snatched out from the humiliations, the squalid dangers of a miserable13 existence, by a man like whom there was not, there could not be, another in this world. She felt this with elation14, with uneasiness, with an intimate pride — and with a peculiar15 sinking of the heart.
“I am not easily knocked out by any such thing as heat,” she said decisively.
“Yes, but I don’t forget that you’re not a tropical bird.”
“You weren’t born in these parts, either,” she returned.
“No, and perhaps I haven’t even your physique. I am a transplanted being. Transplanted! I ought to call myself uprooted16 — an unnatural17 state of existence; but a man is supposed to stand anything.”
She looked back at him and received a smile. He told her to keep in the shelter of the forest path, which was very still and close, full of heat if free from glare. Now and then they had glimpses of the company’s old clearing blazing with light, in which the black stumps18 of trees stood charred19, without shadows, miserable and sinister20. They crossed the open in a direct line for the bungalow21. On the veranda22 they fancied they had a glimpse of the vanishing Wang, though the girl was not at all sure that she had seen anything move. Heyst had no doubts.
“Wang has been looking out for us. We are late.”
“Was he? I thought I saw something white for a moment, and then I did not see it any more.”
“That’s it — he vanishes. It’s a very remarkable23 gift in that Chinaman.”
“Are they all like that?” she asked with naive24 curiosity and uneasiness.
“Not in such perfection,” said Heyst, amused.
He noticed with approval that she was not heated by the walk. The drops of perspiration25 on her forehead were like dew on the cool, white petal26 of a flower. He looked at her figure of grace and strength, solid and supple27, with an ever-growing appreciation28.
“Go in and rest yourself for a quarter of an hour; and then Mr. Wang will give us something to eat,” he said.
They had found the table laid. When they came together again and sat down to it, Wang materialized without a sound, unheard, uncalled, and did his office. Which being accomplished29, at a given moment he was not.
A great silence brooded over Samburan — the silence of the great heat that seems pregnant with fatal issues, like the silence of ardent30 thought. Heyst remained alone in the big room. The girl seeing him take up a book, had retreated to her chamber31. Heyst sat down under his father’s portrait; and the abominable32 calumny33 crept back into his recollection. The taste of it came on his lips, nauseating34 and corrosive35 like some kinds of poison. He was tempted36 to spit on the floor, naively37, in sheer unsophisticated disgust of the physical sensation. He shook his head, surprised at himself. He was not used to receive his intellectual impressions in that way — reflected in movements of carnal emotion. He stirred impatiently in his chair, and raised the book to his eyes with both hands. It was one of his father’s. He opened it haphazard38, and his eyes fell on the middle of the page. The elder Heyst had written of everything in many books — of space and of time, of animals and of stars; analysing ideas and actions, the laughter and the frowns of men, and the grimaces39 of their agony. The son read, shrinking into himself, composing his face as if under the author’s eye, with a vivid consciousness of the portrait on his right hand, a little above his head; a wonderful presence in its heavy frame on the flimsy wall of mats, looking exiled and at home, out of place and masterful, in the painted immobility of profile.
And Heyst, the son, read:
Of the stratagems40 of life the most cruel is the consolation41 of love — the most subtle, too; for the desire is the bed of dreams.
He turned the pages of the little volume, “Storm and Dust,” glancing here and there at the broken text of reflections, maxims42, short phrases, enigmatical sometimes and sometimes eloquent43. It seemed to him that he was hearing his father’s voice, speaking and ceasing to speak again. Startled at first, he ended by finding a charm in the illusion. He abandoned himself to the half-belief that something of his father dwelt yet on earth — a ghostly voice, audible to the ear of his own flesh and blood. With what strange serenity44, mingled45 with terrors, had that man considered the universal nothingness! He had plunged46 into it headlong, perhaps to render death, the answer that faced one at every inquiry47, more supportable.
Heyst stirred, and the ghostly voice ceased; but his eyes followed the words on the last page of the book:
Men of tormented48 conscience, or of a criminal imagination, are aware of much that minds of a peaceful, resigned cast do not even suspect. It is not poets alone who dare descend49 into the abyss of infernal regions, or even who dream of such a descent. The most inexpressive of human beings must have said to himself, at one time or another: “Anything but this!” . . .
We all have our instants of clairvoyance50. They are not very helpful. The character of the scheme does not permit that or anything else to be helpful. Properly speaking its character, judged by the standards established by its victims, is infamous51. It excuses every violence of protest and at the same time never fails to crush it, just as it crushes the blindest assent52. The so-called wickedness must be, like the so-called virtue53, its own reward — to be anything at all. . .
Clairvoyance or no clairvoyance, men love their captivity54. To the unknown force of negation55 they prefer the miserably56 tumbled bed of their servitude. Man alone can give one the disgust of pity; yet I find it easier to believe in the misfortune of mankind than in its wickedness.
These were the last words. Heyst lowered the book to his knees. Lena’s voice spoke above his drooping57 head:
“You sit there as if you were unhappy.”
“I thought you were asleep,” he said.
“I was lying down right enough, but I never closed my eyes.”
“The rest would have done you good after our walk. Didn’t you try?”
“I was lying down, I tell you, but sleep I couldn’t.”
“And you made no sound! What want of sincerity58. Or did you want to be alone for a time?”
“I— alone?” she murmured.
He noticed her eyeing the book, and got up to put it back in the bookcase. When he turned round, he saw that she had dropped into the chair — it was the one she always used — and looked as if her strength had suddenly gone from her, leaving her only her youth, which seemed very pathetic, very much at his mercy. He moved quickly towards the chair.
“Tired, are you? It’s my fault, taking you up so high and keeping you out so long. Such a windless day, too!”
She watched his concern, her pose languid, her eyes raised to him, but as unreadable as ever. He avoided looking into them for that very reason. He forgot himself in the contemplation of those passive arms, of these defenceless lips, and — yes, one had to go back to them — of these wide-open eyes. Something wild in their grey stare made him think of sea-birds in the cold murkiness59 of high latitudes60. He started when she spoke, all the charm of physical intimacy61 revealed suddenly in that voice.
“You should try to love me!” she said.
He made a movement of astonishment62.
“Try,” he muttered. “But it seems to me —” He broke off, saying to himself that if he loved her, he had never told her so in so many words. Simple words! They died on his lips. “What makes you say that?” he asked.
She lowered her eyelids63 and turned her head a little.
“I have done nothing,” she said in a low voice. “It’s you who have been good, helpful, and tender to me. Perhaps you love me for that — just for that; or perhaps you love me for company, and because — well! But sometimes it seems to me that you can never love me for myself, only for myself, as people do love each other when it is to be for ever.” Her head drooped64. “Forever,” she breathed out again; then, still more faintly, she added an entreating65: “Do try!”
These last words went straight to his heart — the sound of them more than the sense. He did not know what to say, either from want of practice in dealing66 with women or simply from his innate67 honesty of thought. All his defences were broken now. Life had him fairly by the throat. But he managed a smile, though she was not looking at him; yes, he did manage it — the well-known Heyst smile of playful courtesy, so familiar to all sorts and conditions of men in the islands.
“My dear Lena,” he said, “it looks as if you were trying to pick a very unnecessary quarrel with me — of all people!”
She made no movement. With his elbows spread out he was twisting the ends of his long moustaches, very masculine and perplexed68, enveloped69 in the atmosphere of femininity as in a cloud, suspecting pitfalls70, and as if afraid to move.
“I must admit, though,” he added, “that there is no one else; and I suppose a certain amount of quarrelling is necessary for existence in this world.”
That girl, seated in her chair in graceful71 quietude, was to him like a script in an unknown language, or even more simply mysterious, like any writing to the illiterate72. As far as women went he was altogether uninstructed and he had not the gift of intuition which is fostered in the days of youth by dreams and visions, exercises of the heart fitting it for the encounters of a world, in which love itself rests as much on antagonism73 as on attraction. His mental attitude was that of a man looking this way and that on a piece of writing which he is unable to decipher, but which may be big with some revelation. He didn’t know what to say. All he found to add was:
“I don’t even understand what I have done or left undone74 to distress75 you like this.”
He stopped, struck afresh by the physical and moral sense of the imperfections of their relations — a sense which made him desire her constant nearness, before his eyes, under his hand, and which, when she was out of his sight, made her so vague, so elusive76 and illusory, a promise that could not be embraced and held.
“No! I don’t see clearly what you mean. Is your mind turned towards the future?” he interpellated her with marked playfulness, because he was ashamed to let such a word pass his lips. But all his cherished negations were falling off him one by one.
“Because if it is so there is nothing easier than to dismiss it. In our future, as in what people call the other life, there is nothing to be frightened of.”
She raised her eyes to him; and if nature had formed them to express anything else but blank candour he would have learned how terrified she was by his talk and the fact that her sinking heart loved him more desperately77 than ever. He smiled at her.
“Dismiss all thought of it,” he insisted. “Surely you don’t suspect after what I have heard from you, that I am anxious to return to mankind. I! I! murder my poor Morrison! It’s possible that I may be really capable of that which they say I have done. The point is that I haven’t done it. But it is an unpleasant subject to me. I ought to be ashamed to confess it — but it is! Let us forget it. There’s that in you, Lena, which can console me for worse things, for uglier passages. And if we forget, there are no voices here to remind us.”
She had raised her head before he paused.
“Nothing can break in on us here,” he went on and, as if there had been an appeal or a provocation78 in her upward glance, he bent79 down and took her under the arms, raising her straight out of the chair into a sudden and close embrace. Her alacrity80 to respond, which made her seem as light as a feather, warmed his heart at that moment more than closer caresses81 had done before. He had not expected that ready impulse towards himself which had been dormant82 in her passive attitude. He had just felt the clasp of her arms round his neck, when, with a slight exclamation83 —“He’s here!”— she disengaged herself and bolted, away into her room.
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收听单词发音
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1
scrambled
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| v.快速爬行( scramble的过去式和过去分词 )；攀登；争夺；（军事飞机）紧急起飞 | |
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cork
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| n.软木，软木塞 | |
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unwilling
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| adj.不情愿的 | |
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depicted
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| 描绘，描画( depict的过去式和过去分词 )； 描述 | |
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regain
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| vt.重新获得，收复，恢复 | |
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tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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brutality
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| n.野蛮的行为，残忍，野蛮 | |
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austere
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| adj.艰苦的；朴素的，朴实无华的；严峻的 | |
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velvety
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| adj. 像天鹅绒的, 轻软光滑的, 柔软的 | |
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10
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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solicitude
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| n.焦虑 | |
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12
soothed
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| v.安慰( soothe的过去式和过去分词 )；抚慰；使舒服；减轻痛苦 | |
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13
miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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elation
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| n.兴高采烈，洋洋得意 | |
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15
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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16
uprooted
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| v.把（某物）连根拔起( uproot的过去式和过去分词 )；根除；赶走；把…赶出家园 | |
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unnatural
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| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
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18
stumps
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| （被砍下的树的）树桩( stump的名词复数 )； 残肢； （板球三柱门的）柱； 残余部分 | |
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charred
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| v.把…烧成炭( char的过去式)；烧焦 | |
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sinister
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| adj.不吉利的，凶恶的，左边的 | |
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bungalow
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| n.平房，周围有阳台的木造小平房 | |
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veranda
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| n.走廊；阳台 | |
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remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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naive
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| adj.幼稚的，轻信的；天真的 | |
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perspiration
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| n.汗水；出汗 | |
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petal
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| n.花瓣 | |
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supple
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| adj.柔软的，易弯的，逢迎的，顺从的，灵活的；vt.使柔软，使柔顺，使顺从；vi.变柔软，变柔顺 | |
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28
appreciation
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| n.评价；欣赏；感谢；领会，理解；价格上涨 | |
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accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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ardent
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，强烈的，烈性的 | |
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31
chamber
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| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
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32
abominable
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| adj.可厌的，令人憎恶的 | |
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calumny
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| n.诽谤，污蔑，中伤 | |
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nauseating
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| adj.令人恶心的，使人厌恶的v.使恶心，作呕( nauseate的现在分词 ) | |
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35
corrosive
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| adj.腐蚀性的；有害的；恶毒的 | |
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36
tempted
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| v.怂恿（某人）干不正当的事；冒…的险（tempt的过去分词） | |
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naively
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| adv. 天真地 | |
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38
haphazard
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| adj.无计划的，随意的，杂乱无章的 | |
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grimaces
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| n.（表蔑视、厌恶等）面部扭曲，鬼脸( grimace的名词复数 )v.扮鬼相，做鬼脸( grimace的第三人称单数 ) | |
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40
stratagems
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| n.诡计，计谋( stratagem的名词复数 )；花招 | |
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41
consolation
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| n.安慰，慰问 | |
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42
maxims
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| n.格言，座右铭( maxim的名词复数 ) | |
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43
eloquent
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| adj.雄辩的，口才流利的；明白显示出的 | |
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44
serenity
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| n.宁静，沉着，晴朗 | |
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45
mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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46
plunged
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| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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47
inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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48
tormented
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| 饱受折磨的 | |
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49
descend
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| vt./vi.传下来，下来，下降 | |
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50
clairvoyance
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| n.超人的洞察力 | |
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51
infamous
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| adj.声名狼藉的，臭名昭著的，邪恶的 | |
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52
assent
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| v.批准，认可；n.批准，认可 | |
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53
virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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54
captivity
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| n.囚禁；被俘；束缚 | |
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55
negation
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| n.否定；否认 | |
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56
miserably
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| adv.痛苦地；悲惨地；糟糕地；极度地 | |
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57
drooping
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| adj. 下垂的，无力的 动词droop的现在分词 | |
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58
sincerity
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| n.真诚，诚意；真实 | |
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59
murkiness
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| n.阴暗；混浊；可疑；黝暗 | |
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60
latitudes
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| 纬度 | |
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intimacy
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| n.熟悉，亲密，密切关系，亲昵的言行 | |
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62
astonishment
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| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
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63
eyelids
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| n.眼睑( eyelid的名词复数 )；眼睛也不眨一下；不露声色；面不改色 | |
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64
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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entreating
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| 恳求，乞求( entreat的现在分词 ) | |
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dealing
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| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
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67
innate
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| adj.天生的，固有的，天赋的 | |
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68
perplexed
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| adj.不知所措的 | |
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69
enveloped
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| v.包围，笼罩，包住( envelop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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70
pitfalls
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| （捕猎野兽用的）陷阱( pitfall的名词复数 )； 意想不到的困难，易犯的错误 | |
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71
graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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72
illiterate
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| adj.文盲的；无知的；n.文盲 | |
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73
antagonism
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| n.对抗，敌对，对立 | |
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74
undone
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| a.未做完的，未完成的 | |
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75
distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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76
elusive
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| adj.难以表达(捉摸)的；令人困惑的；逃避的 | |
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77
desperately
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| adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地 | |
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provocation
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| n.激怒，刺激，挑拨，挑衅的事物，激怒的原因 | |
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79
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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80
alacrity
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| n.敏捷，轻快，乐意 | |
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81
caresses
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| 爱抚，抚摸( caress的名词复数 ) | |
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82
dormant
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| adj.暂停活动的；休眠的；潜伏的 | |
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83
exclamation
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| n.感叹号，惊呼，惊叹词 | |
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