He had been defeated, and the fact, however confidently looked for, comes with a bitter freshness to every man. He had lost a seat for his party—that in itself was bad. But he had proved himself incompetent3, unadaptable, a stick, a pedantic4 incapable5. A dozen stings rankled6 in his soul. Alice would be justified7 of her suspicions. Where would his place be now in that small imperious heart? His own people had forsaken8 him for a gross and unlikely substitute, and he had been wrong in his estimate alike of ally and enemy. Above all came that cruelest stab—what would Wratislaw think of it? He had disgraced himself in the eyes of his friend. He who had made a fetish of competence10 had manifestly proved wanting; he who had loved to think of himself as the bold, opportune11 man, had shown himself formal and hidebound.
As he passed Glenavelin among the trees the thought of Alice was a sharp pang12 of regret. He could never more lift his eyes in that young and radiant presence. He pictured the successful Stocks welcomed by her, and words of praise for which he would have given his immortal13 soul, meted14 out lavishly15 to that owl-like being. It was a dismal17 business, and ruefully, but half-humorously, he caught at the paradox18 of his fate.
Through the swiftly failing darkness the inn of Etterick rose before him, a place a little apart from the village street. A noise of talk floated from the kitchen and made him halt at the door and dismount. The place would be full of folk discussing the election, and he would go in among them and learn the worst opinion which men might have of him. After all, they were his own people, who had known him in his power as they now saw him in his weakness. If he had failed he was not wholly foolish; they knew his few redeeming19 virtues20, and they would be generous.
The talk stopped short as he entered, and he saw through the tobacco reek21 half a dozen lengthy22 faces wearing the air of solemnity which the hillman adopts in his pleasures. They were all his own herds23 and keepers, save two whom he knew for foresters from Glenavelin. He was recognized at once, and with a general nervous shuffling25 they began to make room for the laird at the table. He cried a hasty greeting to all, and sat down between a black-bearded giant, whose clothes smelt26 of sheep, and a red-haired man from one of the remoter glens. The notion of the thing pleased him, and he ordered drinks for each with a lavish16 carelessness. He asked for a match for his pipe, and the man who gave it wore a decent melancholy27 on his face and shook his head with unction.
“This is a bad job, Lewie,” he said, using the privileged name of the ancient servant. “Whae would have ettled sic a calaamity to happen in your ain countryside? We a’ thocht it would be a grand pioy for ye, for ye would settle down here and hae nae mair foreign stravaigins. And then this tailor body steps in and spoils a’. It’s maist vexaatious.”
“It was a good fight, and he beat me fairly; but we’ll drop the matter. I’m sick—tired of politics, Adam. If I had been a better man they might have made a herd24 of me, and I should have been happy.”
“Wheesht, Lewie,” said the man, grinning. “A herd’s job is no for the likes o’ you. But there’s better wark waiting for ye than poalitics. It’s a beggar’s trade after a’, and far better left to bagman bodies like yon Stocks. It’s a puir thing for sac proper a man as you.”
“But what can I do?” cried Lewis in despair. “I have no profession. I am useless.”
“Useless! Ye are a grand judge o’ sheep and nowt, and ye ken9 a horse better than ony couper. Ye can ride like a jockey and drive like a Jehu, and there’s no your equal in these parts with a gun or a fishing-rod. Forbye, I would rather walk ae mile on the hill wi’ ye than twae, for ye gang up a brae-face like a mawkin! God! There’s no a single man’s trade that ye’re no brawly fitted for. And then ye’ve a heap o’ book-lear that folk learned ye away about England, though I cannot speak muckle on that, no being a jidge.”
Lewis grinned at the portraiture28. “You do me proud. But let’s talk about serious things. You were on sheep when I came in. Get back to them and give me your mind on Cheviots. The lamb sales promise well.”
For twenty minutes the room hummed with technicalities. One man might support the conversation on alien matters, but on sheep the humblest found a voice: Lewis watched the ring of faces with a sharp delight. The election had made him sick of his fellows—fellows who chattered29 and wrangled30 and wallowed in the sentimental31. But now every line of these brown faces, the keen blue eyes, the tawny32, tangled33 beards, and the inimitable soft-sounding southern speech, seemed an earnest of a real and strenuous34 life. He began to find a new savour in existence. The sense of his flat incompetence35 left him, and he found himself speaking heartily36 and laughing with zest37.
“It’s as I say,” said the herd of the Redswirebead. “I’m getting an auld38 man and a verra wise ane, and the graund owercome for the world is just ‘Pay no attention.’ Ye’ll has heard how the word cam’ to be. It was Jock Linklater o’ the Caulds wha was glen notice to quit by the laird, and a’ the countryside was vexed39 to pairt wi’ Jock, for he was a popular character. But about a year after a friend meets him at Gledsmuir merkit as crouse as ever. ‘Lodsake, Jock, man, I thocht ye were awa’,’ says he. ‘No,’ says Jock, ‘no. I’m here as ye see.’ ‘But how did ye manage it?’ he asked. ‘Fine,’ says Jock. ‘They sent me a letter tellin’ me I must gang; but I just payed no attention. Syne40 they sent me a blue letter frae the lawyer’s, but I payed no attention. Syne the factor cam’ to see me.’ ‘Ay, and what did ye do then, Jock?’ says he. ‘Oh, I payed no attention. Syne the laird cam’ himsel.’ ‘Ay, that would fricht ye,’ he says. ‘No, no a grain,’ said Jock, verra calm. ‘I just payed no attention, and here I am.’”
Lewis laughed, but the rest of the audience suffered no change of feature. The gloaming had darkened, and the little small-paned window was a fretted41 sheet of dark and lucent blue. Grateful odours of food and drink and tobacco hung in the air, though tar42 and homespun and the far-carried fragrance43 of peat fought stoutly44 for the mastery.
One man fell to telling of a fox-hunt, when he lay on the hill for the night and shot five of the destroyers of his flock before the morning, it was the sign—and the hour—for stories of many kinds—tales of weather and adventure, humorous lowland escapades and dismal mountain realities. Or stranger still, there would come the odd, half-believed legends of the glen, told shamefully45 yet with the realism of men for whom each word had a power and meaning far above fiction. Lewis listened entranced, marking his interest now by an exclamation46, and again by a question.
The herd of Farawa told of the salmon47, the king of the Aller salmon, who swam to the head of Aller and then crossed the spit of land to the head of Callowa to meet the king of the Callowa fish. It was a humorous story, and was capped there and then by his cousin of the Dreichill, who told a ghastly tale of a murder in the wilds. Then a lonely man, Simon o’ the Heid o’ the Hope, glorified48 his powers on a January night when he swung himself on a flood-gate over the Aller while the thing quivered beneath him, and the water roared redly above his thighs49.
“And that yett broke when I was three pairts ower, and I went down the river with my feet tangled in the bars and nae room for sweemin’. But I gripped an oak-ritt and stelled mysel’ for an hour till the water knockit the yett to sawdust. It broke baith my ankles, and though I’m a mortal strong man in my arms, thae twisted kitts keepit me helpless. When a man’s feet are broke he has nae strength in his wrist.”
“I know,” said Lewis, with excitement. “I have found the same myself.”
“Where?” asked the man, without rudeness.
“Once on the Skifso when I was after salmon, and once in the Doorab hills above Abjela.”
“Were ye sick when they rescued ye? I was. I had twae muscles sprung on my arm, but that was naething to the retching and dizziness when they laid me on the heather. Jock Jeffrey was bending ower me, and though he wasna touching50 me I began to suffocate51, and yet I was ower weak to cry out and had to thole it.”
“I know. If you hang up in the void for a little and get the feeling of great space burned on your mind, you nearly die of choking when you are pulled up. Fancy you knowing about that.”
“Have you suffered it, Maister Lewie?” said the man.
“Once. There was a gully in the Doorabs just like the Scarts o’ the Muneraw, only twenty times deeper, and there was a bridge of tree-trunks bound with ropes across it. We all got over except one mule53 and a couple of men. They were just getting off when a trunk slipped and dangled55 down into the abyss with one end held up by the ropes. The poor animal went plumb56 to the bottom; we heard it first thud on a jag of rock and then, an age after, splash in the water. One of the men went with it, but the other got his legs caught between the ropes and the tree and managed to hang on. The poor beggar was helpless with fright; and he squealed—great heavens! how he did squeal57!”
“And what did ye dae?” asked a breathless audience.
“I went down after him. I had to, for I was his master, and besides, I was a bit of an athlete then. I cried to him to hang on and not look down. I clambered down the swaying trunk while my people held the ropes at the top, and when I got near the man I saw what had happened.
“He had twisted his ankles in the fall, and though he had got them out of the ropes, yet they hung loose and quite obviously broken. I got as near him as I could, and leaned over, and I remember seeing through below his armpits the blue of the stream six hundred feet down. It made me rather sick with my job, and when I called him to pull himself up a bit till I could grip him I thought he was helpless with the same fright. But it turned out that I had misjudged him. He had no power in his arms, simply the dead strength to hang on. I was in a nice fix, for I could lower myself no farther without slipping into space. Then I thought of a dodge58. I got a good grip of the rope and let my legs dangle54 down till they were level with his hands. I told him to try and change his grip and catch my ankles. He did it, somehow or other, and by George! the first shock of his weight nearly ended me, for he was a heavy man. However, I managed to pull myself up a yard or two and then I could reach down and catch his arms. We both got up somehow or other, but it took a devilish time, and when they laid us both on the ground and came round like fools with brandy I thought I should choke and had scarcely strength to swear at them to get out.”
The assembly had listened intently, catching59 its breath with a sharp risp as all outdoor folks will do when they hear of an escapade which strikes their fancy. One man—a stranger—hammered his empty pipe-bowl on the table in applause.
“Whae was the man, d’ye say?” he asked. “A neeger?”
Lewis laughed. “Not a nigger most certainly, though he had a brown face.”
“And ye risked your life for a black o’ some kind? Man, ye must be awfu’ fond o’ your fellow men. Wad ye dae the same for the likes o’ us?
“Surely. For one of my own folk! But it was really a very small thing.”
“Then I have just ae thing to say,” said the brown-bearded man. “I am what ye cal a Raadical, and yestreen I recorded my vote for yon man Stocks. He crackit a lot about the rights o’ man—as man, and I was wi’ him. But I tell ye that you yoursel’ have a better notion o’ human kindness than ony Stocks, and though ye’re no o’ my party, yet I herewith propose a vote o’ confidence in Maister Lewis Haystoun.”
The health was drunk solemnly yet with gusto, and under cover of it Lewis fled out of doors. His despondency had passed, and a fit of fierce exhilaration had seized him. Men still swore by his name; he was still loved by his own folk; small matter to him if a townsman had defeated him. He was no vain talker, but a doer, a sportsman, an adventurer. This was his true career. Let others have the applause of excited indoor folk or dull visionaries; for him a man’s path, a man’s work, and a man’s commendation.
The moon was up, riding high in a shoreless sea of blue, and in the still weather the streams called to each other from the mountain sides, as in some fantastic cosmic harmony. High on the ridge52 shoulder the lights of Etterick twinkled starlike amid the fretted veil of trees. A sense of extraordinary and crazy exhilaration, the recoil60 from the constraint61 of weeks, laid hold on his spirit. He hummed a dozen fragments of song, and at times would laugh with the pure pleasure of life. The quixotic, the generous, the hopeless, the successful; laughter and tears; death and birth; the warm hearth62 and the open road—all seemed blent for the moment into one great zest for living. “I’ll to Lochiel and Appin and kneel to them,” he was humming aloud, when suddenly his bridle63 was caught and a man’s hand was at his knee.
“Lewie,” cried Wratislaw, “gracious, man! have you been drinking?” And then seeing the truth, he let go the bridle, put an arm through the stirrup leathers, and walked by the horse’s side. “So that’s the way you take it, old chap? Do you know that you are a discredited64 and defeated man? and yet I find you whistling like a boy. I have hopes for you, Lewie. You have the Buoyant Heart, and with that nothing can much matter. But, confound it! you are hours late for dinner.”
点击收听单词发音
1 turmoil | |
n.骚乱,混乱,动乱 | |
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2 dwelling | |
n.住宅,住所,寓所 | |
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3 incompetent | |
adj.无能力的,不能胜任的 | |
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4 pedantic | |
adj.卖弄学问的;迂腐的 | |
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5 incapable | |
adj.无能力的,不能做某事的 | |
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6 rankled | |
v.(使)痛苦不已,(使)怨恨不已( rankle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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7 justified | |
a.正当的,有理的 | |
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8 Forsaken | |
adj. 被遗忘的, 被抛弃的 动词forsake的过去分词 | |
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9 ken | |
n.视野,知识领域 | |
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10 competence | |
n.能力,胜任,称职 | |
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11 opportune | |
adj.合适的,适当的 | |
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12 pang | |
n.剧痛,悲痛,苦闷 | |
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13 immortal | |
adj.不朽的;永生的,不死的;神的 | |
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14 meted | |
v.(对某人)施以,给予(处罚等)( mete的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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15 lavishly | |
adv.慷慨地,大方地 | |
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16 lavish | |
adj.无节制的;浪费的;vt.慷慨地给予,挥霍 | |
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17 dismal | |
adj.阴沉的,凄凉的,令人忧郁的,差劲的 | |
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18 paradox | |
n.似乎矛盾却正确的说法;自相矛盾的人(物) | |
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19 redeeming | |
补偿的,弥补的 | |
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20 virtues | |
美德( virtue的名词复数 ); 德行; 优点; 长处 | |
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21 reek | |
v.发出臭气;n.恶臭 | |
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22 lengthy | |
adj.漫长的,冗长的 | |
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23 herds | |
兽群( herd的名词复数 ); 牧群; 人群; 群众 | |
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24 herd | |
n.兽群,牧群;vt.使集中,把…赶在一起 | |
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25 shuffling | |
adj. 慢慢移动的, 滑移的 动词shuffle的现在分词形式 | |
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26 smelt | |
v.熔解,熔炼;n.银白鱼,胡瓜鱼 | |
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27 melancholy | |
n.忧郁,愁思;adj.令人感伤(沮丧)的,忧郁的 | |
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28 portraiture | |
n.肖像画法 | |
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29 chattered | |
(人)喋喋不休( chatter的过去式 ); 唠叨; (牙齿)打战; (机器)震颤 | |
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30 wrangled | |
v.争吵,争论,口角( wrangle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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31 sentimental | |
adj.多愁善感的,感伤的 | |
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32 tawny | |
adj.茶色的,黄褐色的;n.黄褐色 | |
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33 tangled | |
adj. 纠缠的,紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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34 strenuous | |
adj.奋发的,使劲的;紧张的;热烈的,狂热的 | |
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35 incompetence | |
n.不胜任,不称职 | |
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36 heartily | |
adv.衷心地,诚恳地,十分,很 | |
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37 zest | |
n.乐趣;滋味,风味;兴趣 | |
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38 auld | |
adj.老的,旧的 | |
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39 vexed | |
adj.争论不休的;(指问题等)棘手的;争论不休的问题;烦恼的v.使烦恼( vex的过去式和过去分词 );使苦恼;使生气;详细讨论 | |
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40 syne | |
adv.自彼时至此时,曾经 | |
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41 fretted | |
焦躁的,附有弦马的,腐蚀的 | |
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42 tar | |
n.柏油,焦油;vt.涂或浇柏油/焦油于 | |
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43 fragrance | |
n.芬芳,香味,香气 | |
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44 stoutly | |
adv.牢固地,粗壮的 | |
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45 shamefully | |
可耻地; 丢脸地; 不体面地; 羞耻地 | |
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46 exclamation | |
n.感叹号,惊呼,惊叹词 | |
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47 salmon | |
n.鲑,大马哈鱼,橙红色的 | |
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48 glorified | |
美其名的,变荣耀的 | |
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49 thighs | |
n.股,大腿( thigh的名词复数 );食用的鸡(等的)腿 | |
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50 touching | |
adj.动人的,使人感伤的 | |
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51 suffocate | |
vt.使窒息,使缺氧,阻碍;vi.窒息,窒息而亡,阻碍发展 | |
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52 ridge | |
n.山脊;鼻梁;分水岭 | |
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53 mule | |
n.骡子,杂种,执拗的人 | |
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54 dangle | |
v.(使)悬荡,(使)悬垂 | |
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55 dangled | |
悬吊着( dangle的过去式和过去分词 ); 摆动不定; 用某事物诱惑…; 吊胃口 | |
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56 plumb | |
adv.精确地,完全地;v.了解意义,测水深 | |
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57 squeal | |
v.发出长而尖的声音;n.长而尖的声音 | |
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58 dodge | |
v.闪开,躲开,避开;n.妙计,诡计 | |
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59 catching | |
adj.易传染的,有魅力的,迷人的,接住 | |
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60 recoil | |
vi.退却,退缩,畏缩 | |
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61 constraint | |
n.(on)约束,限制;限制(或约束)性的事物 | |
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62 hearth | |
n.壁炉炉床,壁炉地面 | |
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63 bridle | |
n.笼头,束缚;vt.抑制,约束;动怒 | |
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64 discredited | |
不足信的,不名誉的 | |
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