Campton was thoroughly1 ashamed of what he had said to Mr. Brant, or rather of his manner of saying it. If he could have put the same facts quietly, ironically, without forfeiting3 his dignity, and with the 253added emphasis which deliberateness and composure give, he would scarcely have regretted the opportunity. He had always secretly accused himself of a lack of courage in accepting Mr. Brant’s heavy benefactions for George when the boy was too young to know what they might pledge him to; and it had been a disappointment that George, on reaching the age of discrimination, had not appeared to find the burden heavy, or the obligations unpleasant.
Campton, having accepted Mr. Brant’s help, could hardly reproach his son for feeling grateful for it, and had therefore thought it “more decent” to postpone4 disparagement5 of their common benefactor6 till his own efforts had set them both free. Even then, it would be impossible to pay off the past—but the past might have been left to bury itself. Now his own wrath7 had dug it up, and he had paid for the brief joy of casting its bones in Mr. Brant’s face by a deep disgust at his own weakness.
All these things would have weighed on him even more if the outer weight of events had not been so much heavier. He had not returned to Mrs. Talkett’s since the banker’s visit; he did not wish to meet Jorgenstein, and his talk with the banker, and his visit to the clairvoyante, had somehow combined to send that whole factitious world tumbling about his ears. It was absurd to attach any importance to poor Olida’s vaticinations; but the vividness of her description of the baby-faced boy dying in a German hospital haunted Campton’s nights. If it were not the portrait of Benny Upsher it was at least that of hundreds and thousands of lads like him, who were thus groping and agonizing8 and stretching out vain hands, while in Mrs. Talkett’s drawing-room well-fed men and expensive women heroically “forgot the war.” Campton, seeking to expiate9 his own brief forgetfulness by a passion of renewed activity, announced to Boylston the next afternoon that he was coming back to the office.
Boylston hardly responded: he looked up from his desk with a face so strange that Campton broke off to cry out: “What’s happened?”
The young man held out a newspaper. “They’ve done it—they’ve done it!” he shouted. Across the page the name of the Lusitania blazed out like the writing on the wall.
The Berserker light on Boylston’s placid10 features transformed him into an avenging11 cherub12. “Ah, now we’re in it—we’re in it at last!” he exulted13, as if the horror of the catastrophe14 were already swallowed up in its result. The two looked at each other without further words; but the older man’s first thought had been for his son. Now, indeed, America was “in it”: the gross tangible15 proof for which her government had forced her to wait was there in all its unimagined horror. Cant16 and cowardice17 in high places had drugged and stupefied her into the strange belief that she was too 255proud to fight for others; and here she was brutally18 forced to fight for herself. Campton waited with a straining heart for his son’s first comment on the new fact that they were “in it.”
But his excitement and Boylston’s exultation19 were short-lived. Before many days it became apparent that the proud nation which had flamed up overnight at the unproved outrage20 of the Maine was lying supine under the flagrant provocation21 of the Lusitania. The days which followed were, to many Americans, the bitterest of the war: to Campton they seemed the ironic2 justification22 of the phase of indifference23 and self-absorption through which he had just passed. He could not go back to Mrs. Talkett and her group; but neither could he take up his work with even his former zeal24. The bitter taste of the national humiliation25 was perpetually on his lips: he went about like a man dishonoured26.
He wondered, as the days and the weeks passed, at having no word from George. Had he refrained from writing because he too felt the national humiliation too deeply either to speak of it or to leave it unmentioned? Or was he so sunk in security that he felt only a mean thankfulness that nothing was changed? From such thoughts Campton’s soul recoiled27; but they lay close under the surface of his tenderness, and reared their evil heads whenever they caught him alone.
As the summer dragged itself out he was more and more alone. Dastrey, cured of his rheumatism28, had 256left the Ministry29 to resume his ambulance work. Miss Anthony was submerged under the ever-mounting tide of refugees. Mrs. Brant had taken a small house at Deauville (on the pretext30 of being near her hospital), and Campton heard of the Talketts’ being with her, and others of their set. Mr. Mayhew appeared at the studio one day, in tennis flannels31 and a new straw hat, announcing that he “needed rest,” and rather sheepishly adding that Mrs. Brant had suggested his spending “a quiet fortnight” with her. “I’ve got to do it, if I’m to see this thing through,” Mr. Mayhew added in a stern voice, as if commanding himself not to waver.
A few days later, glancing over the Herald32, Campton read that Mme. de Dolmetsch, “the celebrated33 artiste,” was staying with Mr. and Mrs. Anderson Brant at Deauville, where she had gone to give recitations for the wounded in hospital. Campton smiled, and then thought with a tightening34 heart of Benny Upsher and Ladislas Isador, so incredibly unlike in their lives, so strangely one in their death. Finally, not long afterward35, he read that the celebrated financier, Sir Cyril Jorgenstein (recently knighted by the British Government) had bestowed36 a gift of a hundred thousand francs upon Mrs. Brant’s hospital. It was rumoured37, the paragraph ended, that Sir Cyril would soon receive the Legion of Honour for his magnificent liberalities to France.
And still the flood of war rolled on. Success here, 257failure there, the menace of disaster elsewhere—Russia retreating to the San, Italy declaring war on Austria and preparing to cross the Isonzo, the British advance at Anzac, and from the near East news of the new landing at Suvla. Through all this alternating of tragedy and triumph ran the million and million individual threads of hope, fear, fortitude38, resolve, with which the fortune of the war was obscurely but fatally interwoven. Campton remembered his sneer39 at Dastrey’s phrase: “One can at least contribute an attitude.” He had begun to feel the force of that, to understand the need of every human being’s “pulling his weight” in the struggle, had begun to scan every face in the street in the passionate40 effort to distinguish between the stones in the wall of resistance and the cracks through which discouragement might filter.
The shabby office of the Palais Royal again became his only haven41. His portrait of Mrs. Talkett had brought him many new orders; but he refused them all, and declined even to finish the pictures interrupted by the war. One of his abrupt42 revulsions of feeling had flung him back, heart and brain, into the horror he had tried to escape from. “If thou ascend43 up into heaven I am there; if thou make thy bed in hell, behold44 I am there,” the war said to him; and as the daily head-lines shrieked45 out the names of new battle-fields, from the Arctic shore to the Pacific, he groaned46 back like the Psalmist: “Whither shall I go from thee?”
258The people about him—Miss Anthony, Boylston, Mlle. Davril, and all their band of tired resolute47 workers—plodded ahead, their eyes on their task, seeming to find in its fulfillment a partial escape from the intolerable oppression. The women especially, with their gift of living in the particular, appeared hardly aware of the appalling48 development of the catastrophe; and Campton felt himself almost as lonely among these people who thought of nothing but the war as among those who hardly thought of it at all. It was only when he and Boylston, after a hard morning’s work, went out to lunch together, that what he called the Lusitania look, suddenly darkening the younger man’s face, moved the painter with an anguish49 like his own.
Boylston, breaking through his habitual50 shyness, had one day remonstrated51 with Campton for not going on with his painting: but the latter had merely rejoined: “We’ve each of us got to worry through this thing in our own way—” and the subject was not again raised between them.
The intervals52 between George’s letters were growing longer. Campton, who noted53 in his pocket-diary the dates of all that he received, as well as those addressed to Mrs. Brant and Miss Anthony, had not had one to record since the middle of June. And in that there was no allusion54 to the Lusitania.
“It’s queer,” he said to Boylston, one day toward 259the end of July; “I don’t know yet what George thinks about the Lusitania.”
“Oh, yes, you do, sir!” Boylston returned, laughing; “but all the mails from the war-zone,” he added, “have been very much delayed lately. When there’s a big attack on anywhere they hold up everything along the line. And besides, no end of letters are lost.”
“I suppose so,” said Campton, pocketing the diary, and trying for the millionth time to call up a vision of his boy, seated at a desk in some still unvisualized place, his rumpled55 fair head bent56 above columns of figures or files of correspondence, while day after day the roof above him shook with the roar of the attacks which held up his letters.
点击
收听单词发音
收听单词发音 |
1
thoroughly
|
|
| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
ironic
|
|
| adj.讽刺的，有讽刺意味的，出乎意料的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
forfeiting
|
|
| （因违反协议、犯规、受罚等）丧失，失去( forfeit的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
postpone
|
|
| v.延期，推迟 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
disparagement
|
|
| n.轻视，轻蔑 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
benefactor
|
|
| n. 恩人，行善的人，捐助人 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
wrath
|
|
| n.愤怒，愤慨，暴怒 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
agonizing
|
|
| adj.痛苦难忍的；使人苦恼的v.使极度痛苦；折磨(agonize的ing形式) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
expiate
|
|
| v.抵补，赎罪 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
placid
|
|
| adj.安静的，平和的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
avenging
|
|
| adj.报仇的，复仇的v.为…复仇，报…之仇( avenge的现在分词 )；为…报复 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
cherub
|
|
| n.小天使，胖娃娃 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
exulted
|
|
| 狂喜，欢跃( exult的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
catastrophe
|
|
| n.大灾难，大祸 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
tangible
|
|
| adj.有形的，可触摸的，确凿的，实际的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
cant
|
|
| n.斜穿，黑话，猛扔 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
cowardice
|
|
| n.胆小，怯懦 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
brutally
|
|
| adv.残忍地，野蛮地，冷酷无情地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
exultation
|
|
| n.狂喜，得意 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
outrage
|
|
| n.暴行，侮辱，愤怒；vt.凌辱，激怒 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
provocation
|
|
| n.激怒，刺激，挑拨，挑衅的事物，激怒的原因 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
justification
|
|
| n.正当的理由；辩解的理由 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
indifference
|
|
| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
zeal
|
|
| n.热心，热情，热忱 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
25
humiliation
|
|
| n.羞辱 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
26
dishonoured
|
|
| a.不光彩的，不名誉的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
27
recoiled
|
|
| v.畏缩( recoil的过去式和过去分词 )；退缩；报应；返回 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
28
rheumatism
|
|
| n.风湿病 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
29
ministry
|
|
| n.(政府的)部；牧师 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
30
pretext
|
|
| n.借口，托词 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
31
flannels
|
|
| 法兰绒男裤； 法兰绒( flannel的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
32
herald
|
|
| vt.预示...的来临，预告，宣布，欢迎 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
33
celebrated
|
|
| adj.有名的，声誉卓著的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
34
tightening
|
|
| 上紧，固定，紧密 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
35
afterward
|
|
| adv.后来；以后 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
36
bestowed
|
|
| 赠给，授予( bestow的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
37
rumoured
|
|
| adj.谣传的；传说的；风 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
38
fortitude
|
|
| n.坚忍不拔；刚毅 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
39
sneer
|
|
| v.轻蔑；嘲笑；n.嘲笑，讥讽的言语 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
40
passionate
|
|
| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
41
haven
|
|
| n.安全的地方，避难所，庇护所 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
42
abrupt
|
|
| adj.突然的，意外的；唐突的，鲁莽的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
43
ascend
|
|
| vi.渐渐上升，升高；vt.攀登，登上 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
44
behold
|
|
| v.看，注视，看到 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
45
shrieked
|
|
| v.尖叫( shriek的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
46
groaned
|
|
| v.呻吟( groan的过去式和过去分词 )；发牢骚；抱怨；受苦 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
47
resolute
|
|
| adj.坚决的，果敢的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
48
appalling
|
|
| adj.骇人听闻的，令人震惊的，可怕的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
49
anguish
|
|
| n.(尤指心灵上的)极度痛苦，烦恼 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
50
habitual
|
|
| adj.习惯性的；通常的，惯常的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
51
remonstrated
|
|
| v.抗议( remonstrate的过去式和过去分词 )；告诫 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
52
intervals
|
|
| 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 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
53
noted
|
|
| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
54
allusion
|
|
| n.暗示，间接提示 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
55
rumpled
|
|
| v.弄皱，使凌乱( rumple的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
56
bent
|
|
| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |