There were many rooms in the villa1, but one room which possesseda character of its own because the door was always shut, and nosound of music or laughter issued from it. Every one in the housewas vaguely3 conscious that something went on behind that door,and without in the least knowing what it was, were influenced intheir own thoughts by the knowledge that if the passed it the doorwould be shut, and if they made a noise Mr. Ambrose inside wouldbe disturbed. Certain acts therefore possessed2 merit, and otherswere bad, so that life became more harmonious4 and less disconnectedthan it would have been had Mr. Ambrose given up editing _Pindar_,and taken to a nomad5 existence, in and out of every room in the house.
As it was, every one was conscious that by observing certain rules,such as punctuality and quiet, by cooking well, and performing othersmall duties, one ode after another was satisfactorily restoredto the world, and they shared the continuity of the scholar's life.
Unfortunately, as age puts one barrier between human beings,and learning another, and sex a third, Mr. Ambrose in his studywas some thousand miles distant from the nearest human being,who in this household was inevitably6 a woman. He sat hour after houramong white-leaved books, alone like an idol7 in an empty church,still except for the passage of his hand from one side of the sheetto another, silent save for an occasional choke, which drove himto extend his pipe a moment in the air. As he worked his wayfurther and further into the heart of the poet, his chair becamemore and more deeply encircled by books, which lay open on the floor,and could only be crossed by a careful process of stepping,so delicate that his visitors generally stopped and addressed himfrom the outskirts8.
On the morning after the dance, however, Rachel came into heruncle's room and hailed him twice, "Uncle Ridley," before hepaid her any attention.
At length he looked over his spectacles.
"Well?" he asked.
"I want a book," she replied. "Gibbon's _History_ _of_ _the__Roman_ _Empire_. May I have it?"She watched the lines on her uncle's face gradually rearrange themselvesat her question. It had been smooth as a mask before she spoke9.
"Please say that again," said her uncle, either because he hadnot heard or because he had not understood.
She repeated the same words and reddened slightly as she did so.
"Gibbon! What on earth d'you want him for?" he enquired10.
"Somebody advised me to read it," Rachel stammered11.
"But I don't travel about with a miscellaneous collectionof eighteenth-century historians!" her uncle exclaimed.
"Gibbon! Ten big volumes at least."Rachel said that she was sorry to interrupt, and was turning to go.
"Stop!" cried her uncle. He put down his pipe, placed his book on one side,and rose and led her slowly round the room, holding her by the arm.
"Plato," he said, laying one finger on the first of a row of smalldark books, "and Jorrocks next door, which is wrong. Sophocles, Swift.
You don't care for German commentators12, I presume. French, then.
You read French? You should read Balzac. Then we come to Wordsworthand Coleridge, Pope, Johnson, Addison, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats.
One thing leads to another. Why is Marlowe here? Mrs. Chailey,I presume. But what's the use of reading if you don't read Greek?
After all, if you read Greek, you need never read anything else,pure waste of time--pure waste of time," thus speaking half to himself,with quick movements of his hands; they had come round againto the circle of books on the floor, and their progress was stopped.
"Well," he demanded, "which shall it be?""Balzac," said Rachel, "or have you the _Speech_ _on_ _the__American_ _Revolution_, Uncle Ridley?""_The_ _Speech_ _on_ _the_ _American_ _Revolution_?" he asked.
He looked at her very keenly again. "Another young man at the dance?""No. That was Mr. Dalloway," she confessed.
"Good Lord!" he flung back his head in recollection of Mr. Dalloway.
She chose for herself a volume at random13, submitted it toher uncle, who, seeing that it was _La_ _Cousine_ _bette_,bade her throw it away if she found it too horrible, and wasabout to leave him when he demanded whether she had enjoyed her dance?
He then wanted to know what people did at dances, seeing that he hadonly been to one thirty-five years ago, when nothing had seemed to himmore meaningless and idiotic14. Did they enjoy turning round and roundto the screech15 of a fiddle16? Did they talk, and say pretty things,and if so, why didn't they do it, under reasonable conditions?
As for himself--he sighed and pointed17 at the signs of industrylying all about him, which, in spite of his sigh, filled his facewith such satisfaction that his niece thought good to leave.
On bestowing18 a kiss she was allowed to go, but not until she hadbound herself to learn at any rate the Greek alphabet, and to returnher French novel when done with, upon which something more suitablewould be found for her.
As the rooms in which people live are apt to give off somethingof the same shock as their faces when seen for the first time,Rachel walked very slowly downstairs, lost in wonder at her uncle,and his books, and his neglect of dances, and his queer,utterly inexplicable19, but apparently20 satisfactory view of life,when her eye was caught by a note with her name on it lying in the hall.
The address was written in a small strong hand unknown to her,and the note, which had no beginning, ran:--I send the first volume of Gibbon as I promised. Personally I findlittle to be said for the moderns, but I'm going to send you Wedekindwhen I've done him. Donne? Have you read Webster and all that set?
I envy you reading them for the first time. Completely exhaustedafter last night. And you?
The flourish of initials which she took to be St. J. A. H., woundup the letter. She was very much flattered that Mr. Hirst shouldhave remembered her, and fulfilled his promise so quickly.
There was still an hour to luncheon21, and with Gibbon in one hand,and Balzac in the other she strolled out of the gate and downthe little path of beaten mud between the olive trees on the slopeof the hill. It was too hot for climbing hills, but along the valleythere were trees and a grass path running by the river bed.
In this land where the population was centred in the towns itwas possible to lose sight of civilisation22 in a very short time,passing only an occasional farmhouse23, where the women were handlingred roots in the courtyard; or a little boy lying on his elbows onthe hillside surrounded by a flock of black strong-smelling goats.
Save for a thread of water at the bottom, the river was merelya deep channel of dry yellow stones. On the bank grew those treeswhich Helen had said it was worth the voyage out merely to see.
April had burst their buds, and they bore large blossoms amongtheir glossy24 green leaves with petals25 of a thick wax-like substancecoloured an exquisite26 cream or pink or deep crimson27. But filled withone of those unreasonable28 exultations which start generally from anunknown cause, and sweep whole countries and skies into their embrace,she walked without seeing. The night was encroaching upon the day.
Her ears hummed with the tunes29 she had played the night before;she sang, and the singing made her walk faster and faster.
She did not see distinctly where she was going, the trees andthe landscape appearing only as masses of green and blue, with anoccasional space of differently coloured sky. Faces of peopleshe had seen last night came before her; she heard their voices;she stopped singing, and began saying things over again or sayingthings differently, or inventing things that might have been said.
The constraint30 of being among strangers in a long silk dress made itunusually exciting to stride thus alone. Hewet, Hirst, Mr. Venning,Miss Allan, the music, the light, the dark trees in the garden,the dawn,--as she walked they went surging round in her head,a tumultuous background from which the present moment, with itsopportunity of doing exactly as she liked, sprung more wonderfullyvivid even than the night before.
So she might have walked until she had lost all knowledge of her way,had it not been for the interruption of a tree, which, although itdid not grow across her path, stopped her as effectively as ifthe branches had struck her in the face. It was an ordinary tree,but to her it appeared so strange that it might have been the only treein the world. Dark was the trunk in the middle, and the branchessprang here and there, leaving jagged intervals31 of light between themas distinctly as if it had but that second risen from the ground.
Having seen a sight that would last her for a lifetime, and fora lifetime would preserve that second, the tree once more sankinto the ordinary ranks of trees, and she was able to seat herselfin its shade and to pick the red flowers with the thin greenleaves which were growing beneath it. She laid them side by side,flower to flower and stalk to stalk, caressing32 them for walking alone.
Flowers and even pebbles33 in the earth had their own life and disposition,and brought back the feelings of a child to whom they were companions.
Looking up, her eye was caught by the line of the mountains flyingout energetically across the sky like the lash34 of a curling whip.
She looked at the pale distant sky, and the high bare places onthe mountain-tops lying exposed to the sun. When she sat down shehad dropped her books on to the earth at her feet, and now shelooked down on them lying there, so square in the grass, a tallstem bending over and tickling35 the smooth brown cover of Gibbon,while the mottled blue Balzac lay naked in the sun. With a feelingthat to open and read would certainly be a surprising experience,she turned the historian's page and read that--His generals, in the early part of his reign36, attempted the reductionof Aethiopia and Arabia Felix. They marched near a thousandmiles to the south of the tropic; but the heat of the climatesoon repelled37 the invaders38 and protected the unwarlike nativesof those sequestered39 regions. . . . The northern countriesof Europe scarcely deserved the expense and labour of conquest.
The forests and morasses40 of Germany were filled with a hardy41 raceof barbarians42, who despised life when it was separated from freedom.
Never had any words been so vivid and so beautiful--Arabia Felix--Aethiopia. But those were not more noble than the others,hardy barbarians, forests, and morasses. They seemed to driveroads back to the very beginning of the world, on either sideof which the populations of all times and countries stoodin avenues, and by passing down them all knowledge would be hers,and the book of the world turned back to the very first page.
Such was her excitement at the possibilities of knowledge now openingbefore her that she ceased to read, and a breeze turning the page,the covers of Gibbon gently ruffled43 and closed together. She thenrose again and walked on. Slowly her mind became less confused andsought the origins of her exaltation, which were twofold and couldbe limited by an effort to the persons of Mr. Hirst and Mr. Hewet.
Any clear analysis of them was impossible owing to the haze44 of wonderin which they were enveloped45. She could not reason about themas about people whose feelings went by the same rule as her own did,and her mind dwelt on them with a kind of physical pleasure such asis caused by the contemplation of bright things hanging in the sun.
From them all life seemed to radiate; the very words of bookswere steeped in radiance. She then became haunted by a suspicionwhich she was so reluctant to face that she welcomed a trip andstumble over the grass because thus her attention was dispersed,but in a second it had collected itself again. Unconsciously she hadbeen walking faster and faster, her body trying to outrun her mind;but she was now on the summit of a little hillock of earth which roseabove the river and displayed the valley. She was no longer ableto juggle46 with several ideas, but must deal with the most persistent,and a kind of melancholy47 replaced her excitement. She sank downon to the earth clasping her knees together, and looking blanklyin front of her. For some time she observed a great yellow butterfly,which was opening and closing its wings very slowly on a little flat stone.
"What is it to be in love?" she demanded, after a long silence;each word as it came into being seemed to shove itself out intoan unknown sea. Hypnotised by the wings of the butterfly,and awed48 by the discovery of a terrible possibility in life,she sat for some time longer. When the butterfly flew away,she rose, and with her two books beneath her arm returned home again,much as a soldier prepared for battle.
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1
villa
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| n.别墅，城郊小屋 | |
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possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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harmonious
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| adj.和睦的，调和的，和谐的，协调的 | |
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nomad
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| n.游牧部落的人，流浪者，游牧民 | |
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inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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idol
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| n.偶像，红人，宠儿 | |
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outskirts
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| n.郊外，郊区 | |
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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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enquired
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| 打听( enquire的过去式和过去分词 )； 询问； 问问题； 查问 | |
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stammered
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| v.结巴地说出( stammer的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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commentators
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| n.评论员( commentator的名词复数 )；时事评论员；注释者；实况广播员 | |
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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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idiotic
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| adj.白痴的 | |
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screech
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| n./v.尖叫；(发出)刺耳的声音 | |
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fiddle
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| n.小提琴；vi.拉提琴；不停拨弄，乱动 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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bestowing
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| 砖窑中砖堆上层已烧透的砖 | |
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inexplicable
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| adj.无法解释的，难理解的 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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luncheon
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| n.午宴，午餐，便宴 | |
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civilisation
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| n.文明，文化，开化，教化 | |
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farmhouse
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| n.农场住宅（尤指主要住房） | |
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glossy
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| adj.平滑的；有光泽的 | |
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petals
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| n.花瓣( petal的名词复数 ) | |
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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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crimson
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| n./adj.深(绯)红色(的)；vi.脸变绯红色 | |
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unreasonable
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| adj.不讲道理的，不合情理的，过度的 | |
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tunes
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| n.曲调，曲子( tune的名词复数 )v.调音( tune的第三人称单数 )；调整；（给收音机、电视等）调谐；使协调 | |
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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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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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caressing
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| 爱抚的，表现爱情的，亲切的 | |
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pebbles
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| [复数]鹅卵石； 沙砾； 卵石，小圆石( pebble的名词复数 ) | |
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lash
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| v.系牢；鞭打；猛烈抨击；n.鞭打；眼睫毛 | |
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tickling
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| 反馈，回授，自旋挠痒法 | |
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reign
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| n.统治时期，统治，支配，盛行；v.占优势 | |
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repelled
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| v.击退( repel的过去式和过去分词 )；使厌恶；排斥；推开 | |
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invaders
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| 入侵者，侵略者，侵入物( invader的名词复数 ) | |
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sequestered
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| adj.扣押的；隐退的；幽静的；偏僻的v.使隔绝，使隔离( sequester的过去式和过去分词 )；扣押 | |
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morasses
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| n.缠作一团( morass的名词复数 )；困境；沼泽；陷阱 | |
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hardy
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| adj.勇敢的，果断的，吃苦的；耐寒的 | |
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barbarians
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| n.野蛮人( barbarian的名词复数 )；外国人；粗野的人；无教养的人 | |
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ruffled
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| adj. 有褶饰边的, 起皱的 动词ruffle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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haze
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| n.霾，烟雾；懵懂，迷糊；vi.(over)变模糊 | |
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enveloped
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| v.包围，笼罩，包住( envelop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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juggle
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| v.变戏法，纂改，欺骗，同时做；n.玩杂耍，纂改，花招 | |
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melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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awed
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| adj.充满敬畏的，表示敬畏的v.使敬畏，使惊惧( awe的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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