"There Are Heroisms All Round Us"
Mr. Hungerton, her father, really was the most tactless person upon earth,--a fluffy1, feathery, untidy cockatoo of a man, perfectly2 good-natured, but absolutely centered upon his own silly self. If anything could have driven me from Gladys, it would have been the thought of such a father-in-law. I am convinced that he really believed in his heart that I came round to the Chestnuts3 three days a week for the pleasure of his company, and very especially to hear his views upon bimetallism, a subject upon which he was by way of being an authority.
For an hour or more that evening I listened to his monotonous4 chirrup about bad money driving out good, the token value of silver, the depreciation5 of the rupee, and the true standards of exchange.
"Suppose," he cried with feeble violence, "that all the debts in the world were called up simultaneously6, and immediate7 payment insisted upon,--what under our present conditions would happen then?"
I gave the self-evident answer that I should be a ruined man, upon which he jumped from his chair, reproved me for my habitual8 levity9, which made it impossible for him to discuss any reasonable subject in my presence, and bounced off out of the room to dress for a Masonic meeting.
At last I was alone with Gladys, and the moment of Fate had come! All that evening I had felt like the soldier who awaits the signal which will send him on a forlorn hope; hope of victory and fear of repulse10 alternating in his mind.
She sat with that proud, delicate profile of hers outlined against the red curtain. How beautiful she was! And yet how aloof11! We had been friends, quite good friends; but never could I get beyond the same comradeship which I might have established with one of my fellow-reporters upon the Gazette,--perfectly frank, perfectly kindly12, and perfectly unsexual. My instincts are all against a woman being too frank and at her ease with me. It is no compliment to a man. Where the real sex feeling begins, timidity and distrust are its companions, heritage from old wicked days when love and violence went often hand in hand. The bent13 head, the averted14 eye, the faltering15 voice, the wincing16 figure-these, and not the unshrinking gaze and frank reply, are the true signals of passion. Even in my short life I had learned as much as that--or had inherited it in that race memory which we call instinct.
Gladys was full of every womanly quality. Some judged her to be cold and hard; but such a thought was treason. That delicately bronzed skin, almost oriental in its coloring, that raven17 hair, the large liquid eyes, the full but exquisite18 lips,--all the stigmata of passion were there. But I was sadly conscious that up to now I had never found the secret of drawing it forth19. However, come what might, I should have done with suspense20 and bring matters to a head to-night. She could but refuse me, and better be a repulsed21 lover than an accepted brother.
So far my thoughts had carried me, and I was about to break the long and uneasy silence, when two critical, dark eyes looked round at me, and the proud head was shaken in smiling reproof22. "I have a presentiment23 that you are going to propose, Ned. I do wish you wouldn't; for things are so much nicer as they are."
I drew my chair a little nearer. "Now, how did you know that I was going to propose?" I asked in genuine wonder.
"Don't women always know? Do you suppose any woman in the world was ever taken unawares? But--oh, Ned, our friendship has been so good and so pleasant! What a pity to spoil it! Don't you feel how splendid it is that a young man and a young woman should be able to talk face to face as we have talked?"
"I don't know, Gladys. You see, I can talk face to face with-with the station-master." I can't imagine how that official came into the matter; but in he trotted24, and set us both laughing. "That does not satisfy me in the least. I want my arms round you, and your head on my breast, and--oh, Gladys, I want----"
She had sprung from her chair, as she saw signs that I proposed to demonstrate some of my wants. "You've spoiled everything, Ned," she said. "It's all so beautiful and natural until this kind of thing comes in! It is such a pity! Why can't you control yourself?"
"I didn't invent it," I pleaded. "It's nature. It's love."
"Well, perhaps if both love, it may be different. I have never felt it."
"But you must--you, with your beauty, with your soul! Oh, Gladys, you were made for love! You must love!"
"One must wait till it comes."
"But why can't you love me, Gladys? Is it my appearance, or what?"
She did unbend a little. She put forward a hand--such a gracious, stooping attitude it was--and she pressed back my head. Then she looked into my upturned face with a very wistful smile.
"No it isn't that," she said at last. "You're not a conceited25 boy by nature, and so I can safely tell you it is not that. It's deeper."
"My character?"
"What can I do to mend it? Do sit down and talk it over. No, really, I won't if you'll only sit down!"
She looked at me with a wondering distrust which was much more to my mind than her whole-hearted confidence. How primitive27 and bestial28 it looks when you put it down in black and white!--and perhaps after all it is only a feeling peculiar29 to myself. Anyhow, she sat down.
"Now tell me what's amiss with me?"
"I'm in love with somebody else," said she.
It was my turn to jump out of my chair.
"It's nobody in particular," she explained, laughing at the expression of my face: "only an ideal. I've never met the kind of man I mean."
"Tell me about him. What does he look like?"
"Oh, he might look very much like you."
"How dear of you to say that! Well, what is it that he does that I don't do? Just say the word,--teetotal, vegetarian30, aeronaut, theosophist, superman. I'll have a try at it, Gladys, if you will only give me an idea what would please you."
She laughed at the elasticity31 of my character. "Well, in the first place, I don't think my ideal would speak like that," said she. "He would be a harder, sterner man, not so ready to adapt himself to a silly girl's whim32. But, above all, he must be a man who could do, who could act, who could look Death in the face and have no fear of him, a man of great deeds and strange experiences. It is never a man that I should love, but always the glories he had won; for they would be reflected upon me. Think of Richard Burton! When I read his wife's life of him I could so understand her love! And Lady Stanley! Did you ever read the wonderful last chapter of that book about her husband? These are the sort of men that a woman could worship with all her soul, and yet be the greater, not the less, on account of her love, honored by all the world as the inspirer of noble deeds."
She looked so beautiful in her enthusiasm that I nearly brought down the whole level of the interview. I gripped myself hard, and went on with the argument.
"We can't all be Stanleys and Burtons," said I; "besides, we don't get the chance,--at least, I never had the chance. If I did, I should try to take it."
"But chances are all around you. It is the mark of the kind of man I mean that he makes his own chances. You can't hold him back. I've never met him, and yet I seem to know him so well. There are heroisms all round us waiting to be done. It's for men to do them, and for women to reserve their love as a reward for such men. Look at that young Frenchman who went up last week in a balloon. It was blowing a gale33 of wind; but because he was announced to go he insisted on starting. The wind blew him fifteen hundred miles in twenty-four hours, and he fell in the middle of Russia. That was the kind of man I mean. Think of the woman he loved, and how other women must have envied her! That's what I should like to be,--envied for my man."
"I'd have done it to please you."
"But you shouldn't do it merely to please me. You should do it because you can't help yourself, because it's natural to you, because the man in you is crying out for heroic expression. Now, when you described the Wigan coal explosion last month, could you not have gone down and helped those people, in spite of the choke-damp?"
"I did."
"You never said so."
"There was nothing worth bucking34 about."
"I didn't know." She looked at me with rather more interest. "That was brave of you."
"I had to. If you want to write good copy, you must be where the things are."
"What a prosaic35 motive36! It seems to take all the romance out of it. But, still, whatever your motive, I am glad that you went down that mine." She gave me her hand; but with such sweetness and dignity that I could only stoop and kiss it. "I dare say I am merely a foolish woman with a young girl's fancies. And yet it is so real with me, so entirely37 part of my very self, that I cannot help acting38 upon it. If I marry, I do want to marry a famous man!"
"Why should you not?" I cried. "It is women like you who brace39 men up. Give me a chance, and see if I will dake it! Besides, as you say, men ought to MAKE their own chances, and not wait until they are given. Look at Clive--just a clerk, and he conquered India! By George! I'll do something in the world yet!"
She laughed at my sudden Irish effervescence. "Why not?" she said. "You have everything a man could have,--youth, health, strength, education, energy. I was sorry you spoke40. And now I am glad--so glad--if it wakens these thoughts in you!"
"And if I do----"
Her dear hand rested like warm velvet41 upon my lips. "Not another word, Sir! You should have been at the office for evening duty half an hour ago; only I hadn't the heart to remind you. Some day, perhaps, when you have won your place in the world, we shall talk it over again."
And so it was that I found myself that foggy November evening pursuing the Camberwell tram with my heart glowing within me, and with the eager determination that not another day should elapse before I should find some deed which was worthy42 of my lady. But who--who in all this wide world could ever have imagined the incredible shape which that deed was to take, or the strange steps by which I was led to the doing of it?
And, after all, this opening chapter will seem to the reader to have nothing to do with my narrative43; and yet there would have been no narrative without it, for it is only when a man goes out into the world with the thought that there are heroisms all round him, and with the desire all alive in his heart to follow any which may come within sight of him, that he breaks away as I did from the life he knows, and ventures forth into the wonderful mystic twilight44 land where lie the great adventures and the great rewards. Behold45 me, then, at the office of the Daily Gazette, on the staff of which I was a most insignificant46 unit, with the settled determination that very night, if possible, to find the quest which should be worthy of my Gladys! Was it hardness, was it selfishness, that she should ask me to risk my life for her own glorification47? Such thoughts may come to middle age; but never to ardent48 three-and-twenty in the fever of his first love.
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fluffy
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| adj.有绒毛的，空洞的 | |
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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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chestnuts
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| n.栗子( chestnut的名词复数 )；栗色；栗树；栗色马 | |
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monotonous
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| adj.单调的，一成不变的，使人厌倦的 | |
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depreciation
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| n.价值低落，贬值，蔑视，贬低 | |
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simultaneously
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| adv.同时发生地，同时进行地 | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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habitual
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| adj.习惯性的；通常的，惯常的 | |
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levity
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| n.轻率，轻浮，不稳定，多变 | |
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repulse
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| n.击退，拒绝；vt.逐退，击退，拒绝 | |
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aloof
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| adj.远离的；冷淡的，漠不关心的 | |
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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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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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averted
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| 防止，避免( avert的过去式和过去分词 )； 转移 | |
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faltering
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| 犹豫的，支吾的，蹒跚的 | |
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wincing
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| 赶紧避开，畏缩( wince的现在分词 ) | |
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raven
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| n.渡鸟，乌鸦；adj.乌亮的 | |
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exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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suspense
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| n.（对可能发生的事）紧张感，担心，挂虑 | |
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repulsed
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| v.击退( repulse的过去式和过去分词 )；驳斥；拒绝 | |
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reproof
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| n.斥责，责备 | |
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presentiment
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| n.预感，预觉 | |
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trotted
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| 小跑，急走( trot的过去分词 )； 匆匆忙忙地走 | |
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conceited
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| adj.自负的，骄傲自满的 | |
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severely
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| adv.严格地；严厉地；非常恶劣地 | |
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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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bestial
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| adj.残忍的；野蛮的 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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vegetarian
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| n.素食者；adj.素食的 | |
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elasticity
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| n.弹性，伸缩力 | |
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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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gale
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| n.大风，强风，一阵闹声（尤指笑声等） | |
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bucking
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| v.（马等）猛然弓背跃起( buck的现在分词 )；抵制；猛然震荡；马等尥起后蹄跳跃 | |
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prosaic
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| adj.单调的，无趣的 | |
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motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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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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acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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brace
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| n. 支柱,曲柄,大括号; v. 绷紧,顶住,(为困难或坏事)做准备 | |
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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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velvet
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| n.丝绒，天鹅绒；adj.丝绒制的，柔软的 | |
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worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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narrative
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| n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的 | |
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twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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behold
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| v.看，注视，看到 | |
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insignificant
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| adj.无关紧要的，可忽略的，无意义的 | |
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glorification
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| n.赞颂 | |
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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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