Your mother and I wore black only at his funeral and came back colored again into your colored world, and in a very little while your interest in this event that had taken us away for a time turned to other, more assimilable things. But there happened a little incident that laid hold upon me; you forgot it, perhaps, in a week or less, but I shall never forget it; and this incident it was that gathered up the fruits of those moments beside my father's body and set me to write this book. It had the effect of a little bright light held up against the vague dark immensities of thought and feeling that filled my mind because of my father's death.
Now that I come to set it down I see that it is altogether trivial, and I cannot explain how it is that it is to me so piercingly significant. I had to whip you. Your respect for the admirable and patient Mademoiselle Potin, the protectress and companion of your public expeditions, did in some slight crisis suddenly fail you. In the extreme publicity3 of Kensington Gardens, in the presence of your two little sisters, before a startled world, you expressed an opinion of her, in two languages and a loud voice, that was not only very unjust, but extremely offensive and improper4. It reflected upon her intelligence and goodness; it impeached5 her personal appearance; it was the kind of outcry no little gentleman should ever permit himself, however deeply he may be aggrieved6. You then, so far as I was able to disentangle the evidence, assaulted her violently, hurled7 a stone at her, and fled her company. You came home alone by a route chosen by yourself, flushed and wrathful, braving the dangers of Kensington High Street. This, after my stern and deliberate edict that, upon pain of corporal punishment, respect and obedience9 must be paid to Mademoiselle Potin. The logic10 of the position was relentless11.
But where your behavior was remarkable12, where the affair begins to touch my imagination, was that you yourself presently put the whole business before me. Alone in the schoolroom, you seem to have come to some realization13 of the extraordinary dreadfulness of your behavior. Such moments happen in the lives of all small boys; they happened to me times enough, to my dead father, to that grandfather of the portrait which is now in my study, to his father and his, and so on through long series of Strattons, back to inarticulate, shock-haired little sinners slinking fearfully away from the awful wrath8, the bellowings and limitless violence of the hairy Old Man of the herd15. The bottom goes out of your heart then, you are full of a conviction of sin. So far you did but carry on the experience of the race. But to ask audience of me, to come and look me in the eye, to say you wanted my advice on a pressing matter, that I think marks almost a new phase in the long developing history of father and son. And your account of the fracas16 struck me as quite reasonably frank and honest. "I didn't seem able," you observed, "not to go on being badder and badder."
We discussed the difficulties of our situation, and you passed sentence upon yourself. I saw to it that the outraged17 dignity of Mademoiselle Potin was mocked by no mere18 formality of infliction19. You did your best to be stoical, I remember, but at last you yelped20 and wept. Then, justice being done, you rearranged your costume. The situation was a little difficult until you, still sobbing21 and buttoning—you are really a shocking bad hand at buttons—and looking a very small, tender, ruffled22, rueful thing indeed, strolled towards my study window. "The pear tree is out next door," you remarked, without a trace of animosity, and sobbing as one might hiccough.
I suppose there are moments in the lives of all grown men when they come near to weeping aloud. In some secret place within myself I must have been a wild river of tears. I answered, however, with the same admirable detachment from the smarting past that you had achieved, that my study window was particularly adapted to the appreciation23 of our neighbor's pear tree, because of its height from the ground. We fell into a conversation about blossom and the setting of fruit, kneeling together upon my window-seat and looking up into the pear tree against the sky, and then down through its black branches into the gardens all quickening with spring. We were on so friendly a footing when presently Mademoiselle Potin returned and placed her dignity or her resignation in my hands, that I doubt if she believed a word of all my assurances until the unmistakable confirmation24 of your evening bath. Then, as I understood it, she was extremely remorseful25 to you and indignant against my violence....
But when I knelt with you, little urchin26, upon my window-seat, it came to me as a thing almost intolerably desirable that some day you should become my real and understanding friend. I loved you profoundly. I wanted to stretch forward into time and speak to you, man myself to the man you are yet to be. It seemed to me that between us there must needs be peculiar27 subtleties28 of sympathy. And I remembered that by the time you were a man fully14 grown and emerging from the passionately29 tumultuous openings of manhood, capable of forgiving me all my blundering parentage, capable of perceiving all the justifying30 fine intention of my ill-conceived disciplines and misdirections, I might be either an old man, shriveling again to an inexplicable31 egotism, or dead. I saw myself as I had seen my father—first enfeebled and then inaccessibly32 tranquil33. When presently you had gone from my study, I went to my writing-desk and drew a paper pad towards me, and sat thinking and making idle marks upon it with my pen. I wanted to exceed the limits of those frozen silences that must come at last between us, write a book that should lie in your world like a seed, and at last, as your own being ripened34, flower into living understanding by your side.
This book, which before had been only an idea for a book, competing against many other ideas and the demands of that toilsome work for peace and understanding to which I have devoted35 the daily energies of my life, had become, I felt, an imperative36 necessity between us.
点击收听单词发音
1 intensities | |
n.强烈( intensity的名词复数 );(感情的)强烈程度;强度;烈度 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
2 toiling | |
长时间或辛苦地工作( toil的现在分词 ); 艰难缓慢地移动,跋涉 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
3 publicity | |
n.众所周知,闻名;宣传,广告 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
4 improper | |
adj.不适当的,不合适的,不正确的,不合礼仪的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
5 impeached | |
v.控告(某人)犯罪( impeach的过去式和过去分词 );弹劾;对(某事物)怀疑;提出异议 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
6 aggrieved | |
adj.愤愤不平的,受委屈的;悲痛的;(在合法权利方面)受侵害的v.令委屈,令苦恼,侵害( aggrieve的过去式);令委屈,令苦恼,侵害( aggrieve的过去式和过去分词) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
7 hurled | |
v.猛投,用力掷( hurl的过去式和过去分词 );大声叫骂 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
8 wrath | |
n.愤怒,愤慨,暴怒 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
9 obedience | |
n.服从,顺从 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
10 logic | |
n.逻辑(学);逻辑性 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
11 relentless | |
adj.残酷的,不留情的,无怜悯心的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
12 remarkable | |
adj.显著的,异常的,非凡的,值得注意的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
13 realization | |
n.实现;认识到,深刻了解 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
14 fully | |
adv.完全地,全部地,彻底地;充分地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
15 herd | |
n.兽群,牧群;vt.使集中,把…赶在一起 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
16 fracas | |
n.打架;吵闹 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
17 outraged | |
a.震惊的,义愤填膺的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
18 mere | |
adj.纯粹的;仅仅,只不过 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
19 infliction | |
n.(强加于人身的)痛苦,刑罚 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
20 yelped | |
v.发出短而尖的叫声( yelp的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
21 sobbing | |
<主方>Ⅰ adj.湿透的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
22 ruffled | |
adj. 有褶饰边的, 起皱的 动词ruffle的过去式和过去分词 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
23 appreciation | |
n.评价;欣赏;感谢;领会,理解;价格上涨 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
24 confirmation | |
n.证实,确认,批准 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
25 remorseful | |
adj.悔恨的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
26 urchin | |
n.顽童;海胆 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
27 peculiar | |
adj.古怪的,异常的;特殊的,特有的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
28 subtleties | |
细微( subtlety的名词复数 ); 精细; 巧妙; 细微的差别等 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
29 passionately | |
ad.热烈地,激烈地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
30 justifying | |
证明…有理( justify的现在分词 ); 为…辩护; 对…作出解释; 为…辩解(或辩护) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
31 inexplicable | |
adj.无法解释的,难理解的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
32 inaccessibly | |
Inaccessibly | |
参考例句: |
|
|
33 tranquil | |
adj. 安静的, 宁静的, 稳定的, 不变的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
34 ripened | |
v.成熟,使熟( ripen的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
35 devoted | |
adj.忠诚的,忠实的,热心的,献身于...的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
36 imperative | |
n.命令,需要;规则;祈使语气;adj.强制的;紧急的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
欢迎访问英文小说网 |