She turned to look at the lady who was thus hastening to overtake her; lifted her eyebrows7 a little and held out her hand. The interruption was known to her as Lady Enid Wimpole, cousin of Lord Ivywood; a tall and graceful8 lady who unbalanced her own elegance9 by a fashionable costume that was at once funereal10 and fantastic; her fair hair was pale but plentiful11; her face was not only handsome and fastidious in the aquiline12 style, but when considered seriously was sensitive, modest, and even pathetic, but her wan13 blue eyes seemed slightly prominent, with that expression of cold eagerness that is seen in the eyes of ladies who ask questions at public meetings.
Joan Brett was herself, as she had said, a connection of the Ivywood family; but Lady Enid was Ivywood’s first cousin, and for all practical purposes his sister. For she kept house for him and his mother, who was now so incredibly old that she only survived to satisfy conventional opinion in the character of a speechless and useless chaperon. And Ivywood was not the sort who would be likely to call out any activity in an old lady exercising that office. Nor, for that matter, was Lady Enid Wimpole; there seemed to shine on her face the same kind of inhuman14, absent-minded common sense that shone on her cousin’s.
“Oh, I’m so glad I’ve caught you up,” she said to Joan. “Lady Ivywood wants you so much to come to us for the week-end or so, while Philip is still there. He always admired your sonnet15 on Cyprus so much, and he wants to talk to you about this policy of his in Turkey. Of course he’s awfully16 busy, but I shall be seeing him tonight after the meeting.”
“No living creature,” said Lady Joan, with a smile, “ever saw him except before or after a meeting.”
“Are you a Simple Soul?” asked Lady Enid, carelessly.
“Am I a simple soul?” asked Joan, drawing her black brows together. “Merciful Heavens, no! What can you mean?”
“Their meeting’s on tonight at the small Universal Hall, and Philip’s taking the chair,” explained the other lady. “He’s very annoyed that he has to leave early to get up to the House, but Mr. Leveson can take the chair for the last bit. They’ve got Misysra Ammon.”
“Got Mrs. Who?” asked Joan, in honest doubt.
“You make game of everything,” said Lady Enid, in cheerless amiability17. “It’s the man everyone’s talking about—you know as well as I do. It’s really his influence that has made the Simple Souls.”
“Oh!” said Lady Joan Brett.
Then after a long silence, she added: “Who are the Simple Souls? I should be interested in them, if I could meet any.” And she turned her dark, brooding face on the darkening purple sea.
“Do you mean to say, my dear,” asked Lady Enid Wimpole, “that you haven’t met any of them yet?”
“No,” said Joan, looking at the last dark line of sea. “I never met but one simple soul in my life.”
“But you must come to the meeting!” cried Lady Enid, with frosty and sparkling gaity. “You must come at once! Philip is certain to be eloquent18 on a subject like this, and of course Misysra Ammon is always so wonderful.”
Without any very distinct idea of where she was going or why she was going there, Joan allowed herself to be piloted to a low lead or tin shed, beyond the last straggling hotels, out of the echoing shell of which she could prematurely19 hear a voice that she thought she recognised. When she came in Lord Ivywood was on his feet, in exquisite20 evening dress, but with a light overcoat thrown over the seat behind him. Beside him, in less tasteful but more obvious evening dress, was the little old man she had heard on the beach.
No one else was on the platform, but just under it, rather to Joan’s surprise, sat Miss Browning, her old typewriting friend in her old black dress, industriously21 taking down Lord Ivywood’s words in shorthand. A yard or two off, even more to her surprise, sat Miss Browning’s more domestic sister, also taking down the same words in shorthand.
“That is Misysra Ammon,” whispered Lady Enid, earnestly, pointing a delicate finger at the little old man beside the chairman.
“I know him,” said Joan. “Where’s the umbrella?”
“... at least evident,” Lord Ivywood was saying, “that one of those ancestral impossibilities is no longer impossible. The East and the West are one. The East is no longer East nor the West West; for a small isthmus22 has been broken, and the Atlantic and Pacific are a single sea. No man assuredly has done more of this mighty23 work of unity24 than the brilliant and distinguished25 philosopher to whom you will have the pleasure of listening tonight; and I profoundly wish that affairs more practical, for I will not call them more important, did not prevent my remaining to enjoy his eloquence26, as I have so often enjoyed it before. Mr. Leveson has kindly27 consented to take my place, and I can do no more than express my deep sympathy with the aims and ideals which will be developed before you tonight. I have long been increasingly convinced that underneath28 a certain mask of stiffness which the Mahomedan religion has worn through certain centuries, as a somewhat similar mask has been worn by the religion of the Jews, Islam has in it the potentialities of being the most progressive of all religions; so that a century or two to come we may see the cause of peace, of science and of reform everywhere supported by Islam as it is everywhere supported by Israel. Not in vain, I think, is the symbol of that faith the Crescent, the growing thing. While other creeds30 carry emblems31 implying more or less of finality, for this great creed29 of hope its very imperfection is its pride, and men shall walk fearlessly in new and wonderful paths, following the increasing curve which contains and holds up before them the eternal promises of the orb32.”
It was characteristic of Lord Ivywood that, though he was really in a hurry, he sat down slowly and gravely amid the outburst of applause. The quiet resumption of the speaker’s seat, like the applause itself, was an artistic33 part of the peroration34. When the last clap or stamp had subsided35, he sprang up alertly, his light great-coat over his arm, shook hands with the lecturer, bowed to the audience and slid quickly out of the hall. Mr. Leveson, the swarthy young man with the drooping36 double-eyeglass rather bashfully to the front, took the empty seat on the platform, and in a few words presented the eminent37 Turkish mystic Misysra Ammon, sometimes called the Prophet of the Moon.
Lady Joan found the Prophet’s English accent somewhat improved by good society, but he still elongated38 the letter “u” in the same bleating39 manner, and his remarks had exactly the same rabidly wrong-headed ingenuity40 as his lecture upon English inns. It appeared that he was speaking on the higher Polygamy; but he began with a sort of general defence of the Moslem41 civilisation42, especially against the charge of sterility43 and worldly ineffectiveness.
“It iss joost in the practical tings,” he was saying, “it iss joost in the practical tings, if you could come to consider them in a manner quite equal, that our methods are better than your methods. My ancestors invented the curved swords, because one cuts better with a curved sword. Your ancestors possessed44 the straight swords out of some romantic fancy of being what you call straight; or, I will take a more plain example, of which I have myself experience. When I first had the honour of meeting Lord Ivywood, I was unused to your various ceremonies and had a little difficulty, joost a little difficulty, in entering Mr. Claridge’s hotel, where his lordship had invited me. A servant of the hotel was standing45 joost beside me on the doorstep. I stoo-ooped down to take off my boo-oots, and he asked me what I was dooing. I said to him: ‘My friend, I am taking off my boo-oots.’”
A smothered46 sound came from Lady Joan Brett, but the lecturer did not notice it and went on with a beautiful simplicity47.
“I told him that in my country, when showing respect for any spot, we do not take off our hats; we take off our boo-oots. And because I would keep on my hat and take off my boo-oots, he suggested to me that I had been afflicted48 by Allah, in the head. Now was not that foony?”
“Very,” said Lady Joan, inside her handkerchief, for she was choking with laughter. Something like a faint smile passed over the earnest faces of the two or three most intelligent of the Simple Souls, but for the most part the Souls seemed very simple indeed, helpless looking people with limp hair and gowns like green curtains, and their dry faces were as dry as ever.
“But I explained to him. I explained to him for a long time, for a carefully occupied time, that it was more practical, more business-like, more altogether for utility, to take off the boo-oots than to remove the hat. ‘Let us,’ I said to him ‘consider what many complaints are made against the footwear, what few complaints against the headwear. You complain if in your drawing-rooms is the marching about of muddy boo-oots. Are any of your drawing-rooms marked thus with the marching about of muddy hats? How very many of your husbands kick you with the boo-oot! Yet how few of your husbands on any occasion butt49 you with the hat?’”
He looked round with a radiant seriousness, which made Lady Joan almost as speechless for sympathy as she was for amusement. With all that was most sound in his too complicated soul she realized the presence of a man really convinced.
“The man on the doorstep, he would not listen to me,” went on Misysra Ammon, pathetically. “He said there would be a crowd if I stood on the doorstep, holding in my hand my boo-oots. Well, I do not know why, in your country you always send the young males to be the first of your crowds. They certainly were making a number of noises, the young males.”
Lady Joan Brett stood up suddenly and displayed enormous interest in the rest of the audience in the back parts of the hall. She felt that if she looked for one moment more at the serious face with the Jewish nose and the Persian beard, she would publicly disgrace herself; or, what was quite as bad (for she was the generous sort of aristocrat) publicly insult the lecturer. She had a feeling that the sight of all the Simple Souls in bulk might have a soothing50 effect. It had. It had what might have been mistaken for a depressing effect. Lady Joan resumed her seat with a controlled countenance51.
“Now, why,” asked the Eastern philosopher, “do I tell so simple a little story of your London streets—a thing happening any day? The little mistake had no preju-udicial effect. Lord Ivywood came out, at the end. He made no attempt to explain the true view of so important matters to Mr. Claridge’s servant, though Mr. Claridge’s servant remained on the doorstep. But he commanded Mr. Claridge’s servant to restore to me one of my boo-oots, which had fallen down the front steps, while I was explaining this harmlessness of the hat in the home. So all was, for me, very well. But why do I tell such little tales?”
He spread out his hands again, in his fanlike eastern style. Then he clapped them together, so suddenly that Joan jumped, and looked instinctively52 for the entrance of five hundred negro slaves, laden53 with jewels. But it was only his emphatic54 gesture of eloquence. He went on with an excited thickening of the accent.
“Because, my friends, this is the best example I could give of the wrong and slanderous55 character of the charge that we fail in our domesticities. That we fail especially in our treatment of the womenkind. I appeal to any lady, to any Christian56 lady. Is not the boo-oot more devastating57, more dreaded58 in the home than the hat? The boot jumps, he bound, he run about, he break things, he leave on the carpet the earths of the garden. The hat, he remain quiet on his hat-peg. Look at him on his hat-peg; how quiet and good he remain! Why not let him remain quiet also on his head?”
“Can you not therefore trust, dear ladies, this great religion to understand you concerning other things, as it understands you regarding boo-oots? What is the common objection our worthy60 enemies make against our polygamy? That it is disdainful of the womanhood. But how can this be so, my friends, when it allows the womanhood to be present in so large numbers? When in your House of Commons you put a hundred English members and joost one little Welsh member, you do not say ‘The Welshman is on top; he is our Sultan; may he live for ever!’ If your jury contained eleven great large ladies and one leetle man you would not say ‘this is unfair to the great large ladies.’ Why should you shrink, then, ladies, from this great polygamical experiment which Lord Ivywood himself—”
Joan’s dark eyes were still fixed61 on the wrinkled, patient face of the lecturer, but every word of the rest of the lecture was lost to her. Under her glowing Spanish tint she had turned pale with extraordinary emotions, but she did not stir a hair.
The door of the hall stood open, and occasional sounds came even from that deserted62 end of the town. Two men seemed to be passing along the distant parade; one of them was singing. It was common enough for workmen to sing going home at night, and the voice, though a loud one, would have been too far off for Joan to hear the words. Only Joan happened to know the words. She could almost see them before her, written in a round swaggering hand on the pink page of an old school-girl album at home. She knew the words and the voice.
“I come from Castlepatrick and my heart is on my sleeve,
And any sword or pistol boy can hit ut with me leave,
It shines there for an epaulette, as golden as a flame,
As naked as me ancestors, as noble as me name.
For I come from Castlepatrick and my heart is on my sleeve,
But a lady stole it from me on St. Gallowglass’s Eve.”
Startlingly and with strong pain there sprang up before Joan’s eyes a patch of broken heath with a very deep hollow of white sand, blinding in the sun. No words, no name, only the place.
“The folks that live in Liverpool, their heart is in their boots;
Where men may not be dancin’, though the wheels may dance all day;
And men may not be smokin’, but only chimneys may.
But I come from Castlepatrick and my heart is on my sleeve,
But a lady stole it from me on St. Poleyander’s Eve.
“The folks that live in black Belfast, their heart is in their mouth;
They see us making murders in the meadows of the South;
They think a plough’s a rack they do, and cattle-calls are creeds,
And they think we’re burnin’ witches when we’re only burnin’ weeds.
But I come from Castlepatrick, and me heart is on me sleeve;
But a lady stole it from me on St. Barnabas’s Eve.”
The voice had stopped suddenly, but the last lines were so much more distinct that it was certain the singer had come nearer, and was not marching away.
It was only after all this, and through a sort of cloud, that Lady Joan heard the indomitable Oriental bringing his whole eloquent address to a conclusion.
“... And if you do not refu-use the sun that returns and rises in the East with every morning, you will not refu-use either this great social experiment, this great polygamical method which also arose out of the East, and always returns. For this is that Higher Polygamy which always comes, like the sun itself, out of the orient, but is only at its noontide splendour when the sun is high in heaven.”
She was but vaguely64 conscious of Mr. Leveson, the man with the dark face and the eyeglasses, acknowledging the entrancing lecture in suitable terms, and calling on any of the Simple Souls who might have questions to ask, to ask them. It was only when the Simple Souls had displayed their simplicity with the usual parade of well-bred reluctance65 and fussy66 self-effacement, that anyone addressed the chair. And it was only after somebody had been addressing the chair for some time that Joan gradually awoke to the fact that the address was somewhat unusual.
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1
tint
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| n.淡色，浅色；染发剂；vt.着以淡淡的颜色 | |
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moodily
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| adv.喜怒无常地；情绪多变地；心情不稳地；易生气地 | |
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3
subconscious
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| n./adj.潜意识(的)，下意识(的) | |
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4
psychology
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| n.心理，心理学，心理状态 | |
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5
ebbed
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| （指潮水）退( ebb的过去式和过去分词 )； 落； 减少； 衰落 | |
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6
dignified
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| a.可敬的，高贵的 | |
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7
eyebrows
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| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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8
graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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elegance
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| n.优雅；优美，雅致；精致，巧妙 | |
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10
funereal
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| adj.悲哀的；送葬的 | |
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11
plentiful
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| adj.富裕的，丰富的 | |
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aquiline
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| adj.钩状的，鹰的 | |
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13
wan
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| (wide area network)广域网 | |
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inhuman
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| adj.残忍的，不人道的，无人性的 | |
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15
sonnet
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| n.十四行诗 | |
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16
awfully
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| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
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17
amiability
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| n.和蔼可亲的，亲切的，友善的 | |
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18
eloquent
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| adj.雄辩的，口才流利的；明白显示出的 | |
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19
prematurely
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| adv.过早地，贸然地 | |
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20
exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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21
industriously
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22
isthmus
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| n.地峡 | |
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23
mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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24
unity
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| n.团结，联合，统一；和睦，协调 | |
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25
distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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26
eloquence
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| n.雄辩；口才，修辞 | |
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27
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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28
underneath
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| adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面 | |
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29
creed
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| n.信条；信念，纲领 | |
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30
creeds
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| （尤指宗教）信条，教条( creed的名词复数 ) | |
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31
emblems
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| n.象征，标记( emblem的名词复数 ) | |
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32
orb
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| n.太阳；星球；v.弄圆；成球形 | |
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33
artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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34
peroration
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| n.（演说等之）结论 | |
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35
subsided
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| v.（土地）下陷（因在地下采矿）( subside的过去式和过去分词 )；减弱；下降至较低或正常水平；一下子坐在椅子等上 | |
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36
drooping
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| adj. 下垂的，无力的 动词droop的现在分词 | |
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37
eminent
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| adj.显赫的，杰出的，有名的，优良的 | |
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38
elongated
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| v.延长，加长( elongate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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39
bleating
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| v.（羊，小牛）叫( bleat的现在分词 )；哭诉；发出羊叫似的声音；轻声诉说 | |
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40
ingenuity
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| n.别出心裁；善于发明创造 | |
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41
Moslem
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| n.回教徒，穆罕默德信徒；adj.回教徒的，回教的 | |
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42
civilisation
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| n.文明，文化，开化，教化 | |
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43
sterility
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| n.不生育，不结果，贫瘠，消毒，无菌 | |
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44
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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45
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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46
smothered
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| （使）窒息， （使）透不过气( smother的过去式和过去分词 )； 覆盖； 忍住； 抑制 | |
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47
simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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48
afflicted
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| 使受痛苦，折磨( afflict的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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49
butt
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| n.笑柄；烟蒂；枪托；臀部；v.用头撞或顶 | |
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50
soothing
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| adj.慰藉的；使人宽心的；镇静的 | |
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51
countenance
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| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
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52
instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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53
laden
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| adj.装满了的；充满了的；负了重担的；苦恼的 | |
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54
emphatic
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| adj.强调的，着重的；无可置疑的，明显的 | |
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55
slanderous
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| adj.诽谤的，中伤的 | |
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56
Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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57
devastating
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| adj.毁灭性的，令人震惊的，强有力的 | |
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58
dreaded
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| adj.令人畏惧的；害怕的v.害怕，恐惧，担心( dread的过去式和过去分词) | |
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59
sage
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| n.圣人，哲人；adj.贤明的，明智的 | |
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60
worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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61
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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62
deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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63
hoots
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| 咄，啐 | |
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64
vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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65
reluctance
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| n.厌恶，讨厌，勉强，不情愿 | |
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66
fussy
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| adj.为琐事担忧的，过分装饰的，爱挑剔的 | |
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