His first stroke carried him out of space and time, into a region where all that had become numbed2 and atrophied3 in him could expand and breathe. Lines, images, colours were again the sole facts: he plunged4 into their whirling circles like a stranded5 sea-creature into the sea. Once more every face was not a vague hieroglyph6, a curtain drawn7 before an invisible aggregate8 of wants and woes9, but a work of art, a flower in a pattern, to be dealt with on its own merits, like a bronze or a jewel. During the first day or two his hand halted; but the sense of insufficiency was a goad10, and he fought with his subject till he felt a strange ease in every renovated11 muscle, and his model became like a musical instrument on which he played with careless mastery.
He had transferred his easel to Mrs. Talkett’s apartment. It was an odd patchwork12 place, full of bold beginnings and doubtful pauses, rash surrenders to the newest fashions and abrupt13 insurrections against them, where Louis Philippe mahogany had entrenched14 itself against the aggression15 of art nouveau hangings, and the frail16 grace of eighteenth-century armchairs shed derision on lumpy modern furniture painted like hobby-horses at a fair. It amused Campton to do Mrs. Talkett against such a background: her thin personality needed to be filled out by the visible results of its many quests and cravings. There were people one could sit down before a blank wall, and all their world was there, in the curves of their faces and the way their hands lay in their laps; others, like Mrs. Talkett, seemed to be made out of the reflection of what surrounded them, as if they had been born of a tricky18 grouping of looking-glasses, and would vanish if it were changed.
At first Campton was steeped in the mere19 sensual joy of his art; but after a few days the play of the mirrors began to interest him. Mrs. Talkett had abandoned her hospital work, and was trying, as she said, to “recreate herself.” In this she was aided by a number of people who struck Campton as rather too young not to have found some other job, or too old to care any longer for that particular one. But all this did not trouble his newly recovered serenity20. He seemed to himself, somehow, like a drowned body—but drowned 229in a toy aquarium—still staring about with living eyes, but aware of the other people only as shapes swimming by with a flash of exotic fins21. They were enclosed together, all of them, in an unreal luminous22 sphere, mercifully screened against the reality from which a common impulse of horror had driven them; and since he was among them it was not his business to wonder at the others. So, through the cloud of his art, he looked out on them impartially23.
The high priestess of the group was Mme. de Dolmetsch, with Harvey Mayhew as her acolyte24. Mr. Mayhew was still in pursuit of Atrocities25: he was in fact almost the only member of the group who did not rather ostentatiously disavow the obligation to “carry on.” But he had discovered that to discharge this sacred task he must vary it by frequent intervals26 of relaxation27. He explained to Campton that he had found it to be “his duty to rest”; and he was indefatigable28 in the performance of duty. He had therefore, with an expenditure29 of eloquence30 which Campton thought surprisingly slight, persuaded Boylston to become his understudy, and devote several hours a day to the whirling activities of the shrimp-pink Bureau of Atrocities at the Nouveau Luxe. Campton, at first, could not understand how the astute31 Boylston had allowed himself to be drawn into the eddy32; but it turned out that Boylston’s astuteness33 had drawn him in. “You see, there’s an awful lot of money 230to be got out of it, one way and another, and I know a use for every penny—that is, Miss Anthony and I do,” the young man modestly explained; adding, in response to the painter’s puzzled stare, that Mr. Mayhew’s harrowing appeals were beginning to bring from America immense sums for the Victims, and that Mr. Mayhew, while immensely gratified by the effect of his eloquence, and the prestige it was bringing him in French social and governmental circles, had not the cloudiest notion how the funds should be used, and had begged Boylston to advise him. It was owing to this that the ex-Delegate to the Hague was able, with a light conscience, to seek the repose34 of Mrs. Talkett’s company and, with a smile of the widest initiation35, to listen to the subversive36 conversation of her familiars.
“Subversive” was the motto of the group. Every one was engaged in attacking some theory of art or life or letters which nobody in particular defended. Even Mr. Talkett—a kindly37 young man with eye-glasses and glossy38 hair, who roamed about straightening the furniture, like a gentlemanly detective watching the presents at a wedding—owned to Campton that he was subversive; and on the painter’s pressing for a definition, added: “Why, I don’t believe in anything she doesn’t believe in,” while his eye-glasses shyly followed his wife’s course among the teacups.
Mme. de Dolmetsch, though obviously anxious to retain her hold on Mr. Mayhew, did not restrict herself 231to such mild fare, but exercised her matchless eyes on a troop of followers39: the shock-haired pianist who accompanied her recitations, a straight-backed young American diplomatist whose collars seemed a part of his career, a lustrous41 South American millionaire, and a short squat42 Sicilian who designed the costumes for the pianist’s unproduced ballets.
All these people appeared to believe intensely in each other’s reality and importance; but it gradually came over Campton that all of them, excepting their host and hostess, knew that they were merely masquerading.
To Campton, used to the hard-working world of art, this playing at Bohemia seemed a nursery-game; but the scene acquired an unexpected solidity from the appearance in it, one day, of the banker Jorgenstein, who strolled in as naturally as if he had been dropping into Campton’s studio to enquire43 into the progress of his own portrait.
“I must come and look you up, Campton—get you to finish me,” he said jovially44, tapping his fat boot with a malacca stick as he looked over the painter’s head at the canvas on which Mrs. Talkett’s restless image seemed to flutter like a butterfly impaled45.
“You’ll owe it to me if he does you,” the sitter declared, smiling back at the leer which Campton divined behind his shoulder; and he felt a sudden pity for her innocence46.
232“My wife made Campton come back to his real work—doing his bit, you know,” said Mr. Talkett, straightening a curtain and disappearing again, like a diving animal; and Mrs. Talkett turned her plaintive47 eyes on Campton. “That kind of idiocy48 is all I’ve ever had,” they seemed to say; and he nearly cried back to her: “But, you poor child, it’s the only honest thing anywhere near you!”
Absorbed in his picture, he hardly stopped to wonder at Jorgenstein’s reappearance, at his air of bloated satisfaction or his easy allusions50 to Cabinet Ministers and eminent51 statesmen. The atmosphere of the Talkett house was so mirage-like that even the big red bulk of the international financier became imponderable in it.
But one day Campton, on his way home, ran across Dastrey, and remembered that they had not met for weeks. The ministerial drudge52 looked worn and preoccupied53, and Campton was abruptly54 recalled to the world he had been trying to escape from.
“You seem rather knocked-up—what’s wrong with you?”
Dastrey stared. “Wrong with me? Well—did you like the communiqué this morning?”
“You see,” the painter continued, “I’ve gone back to my job—my painting. I suddenly found I had to.”
Dastrey glanced at him with surprising kindliness56. “Ah, that’s good news, my dear fellow!”
“You think so?” Campton half-sneered.
“Of course—why not? What are you painting? May I come and see?”
“Naturally.” Campton paused. “The fact is, I was bitten the other day with a desire to depict57 that little will-o’-the-wisp of a Mrs. Talkett. Come to her house any afternoon and I’ll show you the thing.”
“To her house?” Dastrey paused with a frown. “Then the picture’s finished?”
“No—not by a long way. I’m doing it there—in her milieu58, among her crowd. It amuses me; they amuse me. When will you come?” He shot out the sentences like challenges; and his friend took them up in the same tone.
“To Mrs. Talkett’s—to meet her crowd? Thanks—I’m too much tied down by my job.”
“No; you’re not. You’re too disapproving,” said Campton quarrelsomely. “You think we’re all a lot of shirks, of drones, of international loafers—I don’t know what you call us. But I’m one of them, so whatever name you give them I must answer to. Well, I’ll tell you what they are, my dear fellow—and I’m not ashamed to be among them: they’re people who’ve resolutely59, unanimously, unshakeably decided60, for a certain number of hours each day, to forget the war, to ignore it, to live as if it were not and never had been, so that——”
“So that?”
“So that beauty shall not perish from the earth!” Campton shouted, bringing his stick down with a whack61 on the pavement.
Dastrey broke into a laugh. “Allons donc! Decided to forget the war? Why, bless your heart, they’ve never, not one of ’em, ever been able to remember it for an hour together; no, not from the first day, except as it interfered62 with their plans or cut down their amusements or increased their fortunes. You’re the only one of them, my dear chap, (since you class yourself among them) of whom what you’ve just said is true; and if you can forget the war while you’re at your work, so much the better for you and for us and for posterity63; and I hope you’ll paint all Mrs. Talkett’s crowd, one after another. Though I doubt if they’re as good subjects now as when you caught them last July with the war-funk on.” He held out his hand with a dry smile. “Goodbye. I’m off to meet my nephew, who’s here on leave.”
He hastened away, leaving Campton in a crumbled64 world. Louis Dastrey on leave? But that was because he was at the front, the real front, in the trenches65, had already had a slight wound and a fine citation40. Staff-officers, as George had wisely felt, were not asking for leave just yet....
The thoughts excited by this encounter left Campton more than ever resolved to drug himself with work and frivolity66. It was none of his business to pry67 into 235the consciences of the people about him, not even into Jorgenstein’s—into which one would presumably have had to be let down in a diver’s suit, with oxygen pumping at top pressure. If the government tolerated Jorgenstein’s presence in France, probably on the ground that he could be useful—so the banker himself let it be known—it was silly of people like Adele Anthony and Dastrey to wince68 at the mere mention of his name. There woke in Campton all the old spirit of aimless random69 defiance—revolt for revolt’s sake—which had marked the first period of his life after his separation from his wife. He had long since come to regard it as a crude and juvenile70 phase—yet here he was reliving it.
Though he knew of the intimacy71 between Mrs. Talkett and the Brants he had no fear of meeting Julia: it was impossible to picture her neat head battling with the blasts of that dishevelled drawing-room. But though she did not appear there, he heard her more and more often alluded72 to, in terms of startling familiarity, by Mrs. Talkett’s visitors. It was clear that they all saw her, chiefly in her own house, that they thought her, according to their respective vocabularies, “a perfect dear,” “une femme exquise” or “une bonne vieille” (ah, poor Julia!); and that their sudden enthusiasm for her was not uninspired by the fact that she had got her marvellous chef demobilised, and was giving little “war-dinners” followed by a quiet turn at bridge.
Campton remembered Mme. de Tranlay’s rebuke73 to Mrs. Brant on the day when he had last called in the Avenue Marigny; then he remembered also that it was on that very day that he had returned to his painting.
“After all, she held out longer than I did—poor Julia!” he mused17, annoyed at the idea of her being the complacent74 victim of all the voracities he saw about him, and yet reflecting that she was at last living her life, as they called it at Mrs. Talkett’s. After all, the fact that George was not at the front seemed to exonerate75 his parents—unless, indeed, it did just the opposite.
One day, coming earlier than usual to Mrs. Talkett’s to put in a last afternoon’s work on her portrait, Campton, to his surprise, found his wife in front of it. Equally to his surprise he noticed that she was dressed with a juvenility76 quite new to her; and for the first time he thought she looked old-fashioned and also old. She met him with her usual embarrassment77.
“I didn’t know you came as early as this. Madge told me I might just run in——” She waved her hand toward the portrait.
“I hope you like it,” he said, suddenly finding that he didn’t.
“It’s marvellous—marvellous.” She looked at him timidly. “It’s extraordinary, how you’ve caught her rhythm, her tempo,” she ventured in the jargon78 of the place. Campton, to hide a smile, turned away to get 237his brushes. “I’m so glad,” she continued hastily, “that you’ve begun to paint again. We all need to ... to....”
“Oh, not you and I, do we?” he rejoined with a scornful laugh.
She evidently caught the allusion49, for she blushed all over her uncovered neck, up through the faintly wrinkled cheeks to the roots of her newly dyed hair; then he saw her eyes fill.
“What’s she crying for? Because George is not in danger?” he wondered, busying himself with his palette.
Mrs. Talkett hurried in with surprise and apologies; and one by one the habitués followed, with cheery greetings for Mrs. Brant and a moment of constraint79 as they noted80 Campton’s presence, and the relation between the two was mutely passed about. Then the bridge-tables were brought, Mr. Talkett began to straighten the cards nervously81, and the guests broke up into groups, forgetting everything but their own affairs. As Campton turned back to his work he was aware of a last surprise in the sight of Mrs. Brant serene82 and almost sparkling, waving her adieux to the bridge-tables, and going out followed by Jorgenstein, with whom she seemed on terms of playful friendliness83. Of all strange war promiscuities, Campton thought this the strangest.
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1
bliss
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| n.狂喜，福佑，天赐的福 | |
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numbed
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| v.使麻木，使麻痹( numb的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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3
atrophied
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| adj.萎缩的，衰退的v.（使）萎缩，（使）虚脱，（使）衰退( atrophy的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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4
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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5
stranded
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| a.搁浅的，进退两难的 | |
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hieroglyph
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| n.象形文字， 图画文字 | |
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7
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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8
aggregate
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| adj.总计的，集合的；n.总数；v.合计；集合 | |
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9
woes
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| 困境( woe的名词复数 )； 悲伤； 我好苦哇； 某人就要倒霉 | |
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goad
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| n.刺棒，刺痛物；激励；vt.激励，刺激 | |
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11
renovated
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| 翻新，修复，整修( renovate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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12
patchwork
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| n.混杂物；拼缝物 | |
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13
abrupt
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| adj.突然的，意外的；唐突的，鲁莽的 | |
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14
entrenched
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| adj.确立的，不容易改的(风俗习惯) | |
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aggression
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| n.进攻，侵略，侵犯，侵害 | |
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frail
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| adj.身体虚弱的；易损坏的 | |
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mused
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| v.沉思，冥想( muse的过去式和过去分词 )；沉思自语说（某事） | |
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18
tricky
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| adj.狡猾的，奸诈的；(工作等)棘手的，微妙的 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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serenity
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| n.宁静，沉着，晴朗 | |
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21
fins
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| [医]散热片；鱼鳍；飞边；鸭掌 | |
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luminous
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| adj.发光的，发亮的；光明的；明白易懂的；有启发的 | |
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impartially
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| adv.公平地，无私地 | |
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acolyte
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| n.助手，侍僧 | |
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atrocities
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| n.邪恶，暴行( atrocity的名词复数 )；滔天大罪 | |
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intervals
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| 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 | |
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27
relaxation
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| n.松弛，放松；休息；消遣；娱乐 | |
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indefatigable
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| adj.不知疲倦的，不屈不挠的 | |
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expenditure
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| n.(时间、劳力、金钱等)支出；使用，消耗 | |
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eloquence
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| n.雄辩；口才，修辞 | |
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astute
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| adj.机敏的，精明的 | |
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32
eddy
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| n.漩涡，涡流 | |
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astuteness
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| n.敏锐；精明；机敏 | |
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repose
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| v.(使)休息；n.安息 | |
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initiation
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| n.开始 | |
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subversive
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| adj.颠覆性的，破坏性的；n.破坏份子，危险份子 | |
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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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glossy
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| adj.平滑的；有光泽的 | |
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followers
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| 追随者( follower的名词复数 )； 用户； 契据的附面； 从动件 | |
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citation
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| n.引用，引证，引用文；传票 | |
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41
lustrous
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| adj.有光泽的；光辉的 | |
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42
squat
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| v.蹲坐，蹲下；n.蹲下；adj.矮胖的，粗矮的 | |
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43
enquire
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| v.打听，询问；调查，查问 | |
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44
jovially
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| adv.愉快地，高兴地 | |
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45
impaled
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| 钉在尖桩上( impale的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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46
innocence
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| n.无罪；天真；无害 | |
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plaintive
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| adj.可怜的，伤心的 | |
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48
idiocy
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| n.愚蠢 | |
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49
allusion
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| n.暗示，间接提示 | |
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50
allusions
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| 暗指，间接提到( allusion的名词复数 ) | |
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51
eminent
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| adj.显赫的，杰出的，有名的，优良的 | |
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52
drudge
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| n.劳碌的人；v.做苦工，操劳 | |
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53
preoccupied
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| adj.全神贯注的，入神的；被抢先占有的；心事重重的v.占据（某人）思想，使对…全神贯注，使专心于( preoccupy的过去式) | |
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54
abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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55
curtly
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| adv.简短地 | |
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56
kindliness
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| n.厚道，亲切，友好的行为 | |
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57
depict
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| vt.描画，描绘；描写，描述 | |
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milieu
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| n.环境；出身背景；(个人所处的)社会环境 | |
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59
resolutely
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| adj.坚决地，果断地 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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61
whack
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| v.敲击，重打，瓜分；n.重击，重打，尝试，一份 | |
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62
interfered
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| v.干预( interfere的过去式和过去分词 )；调停；妨碍；干涉 | |
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posterity
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| n.后裔，子孙，后代 | |
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64
crumbled
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| （把…）弄碎， （使）碎成细屑( crumble的过去式和过去分词 )； 衰落； 坍塌； 损坏 | |
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65
trenches
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| 深沟，地沟( trench的名词复数 )； 战壕 | |
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66
frivolity
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| n.轻松的乐事，兴高采烈；轻浮的举止 | |
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pry
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| vi.窥(刺)探，打听；vt.撬动(开，起) | |
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68
wince
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| n.畏缩，退避，（因痛苦，苦恼等)面部肌肉抽动；v.畏缩，退缩，退避 | |
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69
random
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| adj.随机的；任意的；n.偶然的(或随便的)行动 | |
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70
juvenile
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| n.青少年，少年读物；adj.青少年的，幼稚的 | |
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71
intimacy
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| n.熟悉，亲密，密切关系，亲昵的言行 | |
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alluded
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| 提及，暗指( allude的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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rebuke
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| v.指责，非难，斥责 [反]praise | |
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complacent
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| adj.自满的；自鸣得意的 | |
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exonerate
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| v.免除责任，确定无罪 | |
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juvenility
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| n.年轻，不成熟 | |
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embarrassment
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| n.尴尬；使人为难的人(事物)；障碍；窘迫 | |
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jargon
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| n.术语，行话 | |
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constraint
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| n.(on)约束，限制；限制(或约束)性的事物 | |
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noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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nervously
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| adv.神情激动地，不安地 | |
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serene
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| adj. 安详的，宁静的，平静的 | |
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friendliness
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| n.友谊，亲切，亲密 | |
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