Reginald Blake was not enjoying himself very much in Town owing to his disturbed state of mind. For years he had pictured to himself the marvellous city and his life therein; how he would one day find himself a denizen4 of the great metropolis5, eager to win fame and fortune by the magic of his voice, how he would delight in leading the ambitious, half Bohemian, wholly delightful6 existence of a singer, and how he would be able to wander about the streets and see the brilliant life of the mighty7 city with its restless activity and ardent8 strivings after wealth, fame and novelty. Grey Westminster Abbey, noble St. Paul's, the enormous pile of the Parliament House, the golden-topped column of the Monument, he would see all these, with their wealth of historical, religious and artistic9 associations. He would tread the very streets over whose stones wandered proud poverty-stricken Chatterton, courtly Addison and ponderous10 Dr. Johnson; he would find the picturesque11 alleys12, houses and roads described in the fascinating pages of Dickens, and he would stray about the sacred purlieus of Drury Lane, haunted by the stately shades of Wilkes, of Siddons, of Bracegirdle, and David Garrick. Good heavens, what innumerable fantastic castles did he not build in Cloud Cuckoo Land about the unseen glories of London, where every street and stone was redolent of the glorious history of England from Plantagenet to Guelph.
Oh, beautiful castles of Cloudland, how rapidly did their gorgeousness disappear from his fancy before the disenchanting touch of chilling reality. He was indeed in London, but alas13 it was not the magic London of his dreams, this enormous assemblage of houses through which flowed a melancholy14 grey river and over which hung a dismal15 dark cloud of smoke and fog. The London of romance and the London of reality were two very different things, yet the disenchantment of this dreaming youth was not wholly due to the prosaic16 appearance of the city itself but rather to the gloom and depression of his spirits.
The recollection of how his wealth had come to him weighed heavily on his mind, causing him to view all things in a most dismal manner, and tortured his sensitive disposition17 with irritating thoughts and maddening delusions18. In vain he tried hard to shake off this gloomy feeling and enjoy the many-coloured life of the great city; in vain he told himself that the accident of his birth was no fault of his own and in vain he strove to take pleasure in the society of the men and women to whom he had been introduced by Basil Beaumont. It was all useless, for a dark cloud of bitterness and distrust seemed to settle upon the joyousness19 of his life which led him to view everything with jaundiced eyes. He felt that he had lost the adolescent zest20 for life as Donatello must have done after he had stained his hands with blood, and although he had youth, talent, good looks, and wealth, yet all these delightful gifts of the fairies were neutralized21 by the fatal gift of dishonour22 bestowed23 upon him by the malignant24 beldame who had proved herself the evil genius of his life.
As soon as the business connected with the Garsworth estate was properly completed and he had been fully25 recognized as the heir of the old Squire26, Bolby considering that he had done his duty, left the young man and his friend Dick pretty well to their own devices. Dick enjoyed everything with the inexhaustible appetite of youth, but Reginald took his pleasures, such as they were, in a listless manner, which showed how completely he had lost all capabilities28 of enjoyment29.
Mr. Pemberton had been rather irritated by the prosaic life they led when in the leading strings30 of Mr. Bolby, whose ideas of amusement were of the most primitive31 nature, rarely extending beyond an afternoon at the Zoo or a night at Madame Tussaud's or the Egyptian Hall. The only thing Dick saw in Mr. Bolby's ideas of life, which he considered at all meritorious32 were the excellent dinners which the little lawyer gave them, but Dick in his flying visits to Town had tasted of the Tree of Knowledge beneath whose shade were the music halls and the burlesque33 theatres, so he was anxious to go to such like places for his amusement.
When they left Mr. Bolby, therefore, and were comfortably established in a quiet hotel in Jermyn Street, Dick, seeing that Reginald was absolutely indifferent as to where he went, or what he did, took the whole arrangement of their London life into his own hands and succeeded in going to a good many places which would have terribly shocked the vicar had he known. Not that such forbidden pleasures did them much harm, for both lads were extremely sensible for their age, still Dick finding himself able, through Reginald's generosity34, to spend a good deal of money, took his friend and himself to sundry35 shady places of which they might just as well have been ignorant. But Nemesis36 soon came down upon the unhappy Richard, and just as he was developing into a fair specimen37 of a man about Town his bachelor uncle at Folkestone wrote him a letter asking him to come down on a visit and as Dick was supposed to be his bachelor uncle's heir, he had to leave Town, much to his own disgust and to the regret of Reginald, who missed his lively friend every hour of the day.
He still stayed in Town, however, but as he knew no one, his existence was to say the least extremely dull. Reginald was essentially38 of a social nature and wanted someone to whom he could talk, therefore he was not sorry when one day Basil Beaumont, who had been waiting for the departure of Dick, called upon him and henceforth constituted himself his bear leader. As they had seen nothing of the artist since their arrival in Town, Dick had never thought of telling Reginald his mistrust of the fascinating Beaumont, so the young man, remembering the artist's kindness about his probable career as a singer, felt very friendly towards him and was quite prepared to accept his offer of companionship as the outcome of a kindly39 disposition and not the result of a carefully calculated scheme.
A more dangerous companion for a young man in a depressed40 state of mind than Beaumont could hardly be imagined, for he led Reginald to plunge41 into riotous42 pleasures for the sake of distraction43, from which he would have otherwise recoiled44. Having an eminently45 refined mind, and a delight in cultured company, had he been thoroughly46 healthy he would never have been drawn47 by this modern Mephistopheles into the vortex of frenzied48 pleasure in which his days and nights were now engulfed49. But, being in a morbid50 state of mind, he brooded eternally over the presumed stigma51 attached to his name until it became a perfect nightmare to him. He thought that everyone knew his miserable52 story and despised him for the anomalous53 position he now occupied, so, in a mad spirit of bravado54, he became quite reckless, and determined55 to defy the world which his sensitive spirit imagined to be sneering56 at him as a bastard57. Terrible to relate, in spite of the relationship existing between them, Beaumont, who should have prevented the young man from falling into such an unhealthy state of mind, rather encouraged his gloomy fits than otherwise, as he thought it would give him a greater hold than ever over his son, so deliberately58 led the unhappy young man on to ruin--ruin, not of his fortune or position, but of his physical and moral nature.
In his best days, the circle of Beaumont's acquaintances had not been a very large or reputable one, but now it was smaller and worse than ever; nevertheless, he introduced the young master of Garsworth Grange to his friends, whose manners, generally speaking, were as polished as their morals were bad. Broken down professional men, played-out lords, ruined gentlemen of fortune, shady hangers-on of society; these were the daily associates of Reginald Blake, until his mind, eminently calculated to receive impressions, began to grow corrupted59. The society of hawks60 is rather a dangerous thing for doves, and this poor unsophisticated dove was of far too guileless a nature to mistrust the birds of prey61 by which he found himself surrounded, though, to be sure, his natural instincts of right and wrong saved him from many a pitfall62.
Not that the hawks around him did any harm to his pecuniary63 position, for Beaumont was too selfish to allow anyone to have the plucking of this well-feathered pigeon save himself, and there being an unwritten code of honour even among hawks, the young man was left entirely64 to the tender mercies of his evil-minded Mentor65. Nevertheless, the long nights of play, the wiles66 of women whose beauty did not redeem67 their frailty68, and the constant life of excitement passed under the feverish glare of the gaslight, soon destroyed the fresh healthy feeling of youth Reginald Blake had possessed69 during the quiet years of his country life.
When at times his better feelings prevailed, and he would have fled this unhealthy life of bitter-tasting pleasures, Beaumont was always at his elbow with some new device wherewith to beguile70 him to destruction. Blake was not a weak-minded man by any means, still he was young and impressionable, and the sudden change from the poverty and quiet living of Garsworth, to the opulent, brilliant life of London, threw him off his moral balance.
No doubt he should have bravely resisted the allurements71 of sin, and the shallow frivolities to which he yielded with the apathy72 of despair, but, in the Armida-like gardens of London, the keenest eyes are blinded, the acutest senses are bewildered and dazed by the hubbub73 and brilliance74 around him, the victim falls only too easily into the snares75 hidden below the splendid pageant76.
One thing, however, Reginald stoutly77 resisted, and that was the temptation to drink--he played nap and baccarat, losing comparatively large sums thereat, mixed in the society of women who lured78 him onward79 to destruction with siren voices, but in spite of Beaumont's insidious80 enticements he never took more wine than was good for him, and this temperance was in a certain measure a guard against the fatal influence of his otherwise foolish life. However, Beaumont was not impatient, as he knew from experience the effect of time in wearing away good resolutions, and waited calmly until some lucky chance should enable him to put a finishing stroke to the ruin of his unhappy son. It seems almost incredible that such a man as Basil Beaumont, from whom not even his own flesh and blood was safe, could exist; but, unhappily, he is only one of the many men in whom all natural love and affection is entirely destroyed by the vicious, feverish life which they lead.
Behold81, therefore, this unhappy country moth2 lured to destruction by the garish82 glitter of the lights of London beneath which sat the fatal Circe of pleasure, with rose-crowned hair and wine-filled cup. Around her moved the splendid throng83 of pleasure seekers, dancing, singing, eating and drinking, taking no heed84 of the morrow in the evil joy of the present; but, below this glittering maelstrom85 of vice27 and rascality86, were the rose-hidden pitfalls87 into which every moment sank some gay reveller88, his dying cry of despair drowned in the riotous crowd dancing gaily89 over his unseen grave.
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1
moths
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| n.蛾( moth的名词复数 ) | |
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moth
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| n.蛾，蛀虫 | |
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feverish
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| adj.发烧的，狂热的，兴奋的 | |
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denizen
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| n.居民，外籍居民 | |
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metropolis
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| n.首府；大城市 | |
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delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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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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artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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ponderous
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| adj.沉重的，笨重的，(文章)冗长的 | |
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picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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alleys
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| 胡同，小巷( alley的名词复数 )； 小径 | |
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alas
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| int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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dismal
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| adj.阴沉的，凄凉的，令人忧郁的，差劲的 | |
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prosaic
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| adj.单调的，无趣的 | |
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disposition
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| n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署 | |
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delusions
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| n.欺骗( delusion的名词复数 )；谬见；错觉；妄想 | |
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joyousness
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| 快乐，使人喜悦 | |
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zest
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| n.乐趣；滋味，风味；兴趣 | |
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neutralized
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| v.使失效( neutralize的过去式和过去分词 )；抵消；中和；使（一个国家）中立化 | |
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dishonour
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| n./vt.拒付（支票、汇票、票据等）；vt.凌辱，使丢脸；n.不名誉，耻辱，不光彩 | |
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23
bestowed
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| 赠给，授予( bestow的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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malignant
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| adj.恶性的，致命的；恶意的，恶毒的 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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squire
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| n.护卫, 侍从, 乡绅 | |
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vice
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| n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的 | |
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capabilities
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| n.能力( capability的名词复数 )；可能；容量；[复数]潜在能力 | |
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enjoyment
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| n.乐趣；享有；享用 | |
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strings
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| n.弦 | |
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primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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meritorious
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| adj.值得赞赏的 | |
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burlesque
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| v.嘲弄，戏仿；n.嘲弄，取笑，滑稽模仿 | |
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generosity
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| n.大度，慷慨，慷慨的行为 | |
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sundry
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| adj.各式各样的，种种的 | |
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nemesis
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| n.给以报应者，复仇者，难以对付的敌手 | |
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specimen
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| n.样本，标本 | |
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essentially
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| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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depressed
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| adj.沮丧的，抑郁的，不景气的，萧条的 | |
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41
plunge
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| v.跳入，(使)投入，(使)陷入；猛冲 | |
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42
riotous
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| adj.骚乱的；狂欢的 | |
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distraction
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| n.精神涣散，精神不集中，消遣，娱乐 | |
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44
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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eminently
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| adv.突出地；显著地；不寻常地 | |
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thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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47
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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48
frenzied
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| a.激怒的；疯狂的 | |
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49
engulfed
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| v.吞没，包住( engulf的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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morbid
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| adj.病的；致病的；病态的；可怕的 | |
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stigma
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| n.耻辱，污名；(花的)柱头 | |
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52
miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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53
anomalous
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| adj.反常的；不规则的 | |
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54
bravado
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| n.虚张声势，故作勇敢，逞能 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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56
sneering
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| 嘲笑的，轻蔑的 | |
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bastard
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| n.坏蛋，混蛋；私生子 | |
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deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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corrupted
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| （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 | |
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hawks
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| 鹰( hawk的名词复数 )； 鹰派人物，主战派人物 | |
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prey
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| n.被掠食者，牺牲者，掠食；v.捕食，掠夺，折磨 | |
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pitfall
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| n.隐患，易犯的错误；陷阱，圈套 | |
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pecuniary
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| adj.金钱的；金钱上的 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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mentor
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| n.指导者，良师益友；v.指导 | |
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wiles
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| n.（旨在欺骗或吸引人的）诡计，花招；欺骗，欺诈( wile的名词复数 ) | |
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redeem
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| v.买回，赎回，挽回，恢复，履行（诺言等） | |
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frailty
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| n.脆弱；意志薄弱 | |
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possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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beguile
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| vt.欺骗，消遣 | |
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allurements
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| n.诱惑( allurement的名词复数 )；吸引；诱惑物；有诱惑力的事物 | |
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apathy
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| n.漠不关心，无动于衷；冷淡 | |
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hubbub
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| n.嘈杂；骚乱 | |
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brilliance
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| n.光辉，辉煌，壮丽，（卓越的）才华，才智 | |
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snares
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| n.陷阱( snare的名词复数 )；圈套；诱人遭受失败（丢脸、损失等）的东西；诱惑物v.用罗网捕捉，诱陷，陷害( snare的第三人称单数 ) | |
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pageant
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| n.壮观的游行；露天历史剧 | |
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stoutly
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| adv.牢固地，粗壮的 | |
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lured
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| 吸引，引诱（lure的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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onward
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| adj.向前的，前进的；adv.向前，前进，在先 | |
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insidious
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| adj.阴险的，隐匿的，暗中为害的，（疾病）不知不觉之间加剧 | |
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behold
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| v.看，注视，看到 | |
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garish
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| adj.华丽而俗气的，华而不实的 | |
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throng
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| n.人群，群众；v.拥挤，群集 | |
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heed
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| v.注意，留意；n.注意，留心 | |
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85
maelstrom
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| n.大乱动；大漩涡 | |
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rascality
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| 流氓性，流氓集团 | |
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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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reveller
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| n.摆设酒宴者，饮酒狂欢者 | |
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gaily
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| adv.欢乐地，高兴地 | |
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