That night about seven Ethel came into their room with a waste-paper basket she had bought for him, and found him sitting at the little toilet table at which he was to "write." The outlook was, for a London outlook, spacious1, down a long slope of roofs towards the Junction2, a huge sky of blue passing upward to the darkling zenith and downward into a hazy3 bristling4 mystery of roofs and chimneys, from which emerged signal lights and steam puffs5, gliding6 chains of lit window carriages and the vague vistas7 of streets. She showed him the basket and put it beside him, and then her eye caught the yellow document in his hand. "What is that you have there?"
He held it out to her. "I found it--lining my yellow box. I had it at Whortley."
She took it and perceived a chronological8 scheme. It was headed "SCHEMA," there were memoranda9 in the margin10, and all the dates had been altered by a hasty hand.
"Hasn't it got yellow?" she said.
That seemed to him the wrong thing for her to say. He stared at the document with a sudden accession of sympathy. There was an interval11. He became aware of her hand upon his shoulder, that she was bending over him. "Dear," she whispered, with a strange change in the quality of her voice. He knew she was seeking to say something that was difficult to say.
"Yes?" he said presently.
"You are not grieving?"
"What about?"
"_This_."
"No!"
"You are not--you are not even sorry?" she said.
"No--not even sorry."
"I can't understand that. It's so much--"
"I'm glad," he proclaimed. "_Glad."_
"But--the trouble--the expense--everything--and your work?"
"Yes," he said, "that's just it."
She looked at him doubtfully. He glanced up at her, and she questioned his eyes. He put his arm about her, and presently and almost absent-mindedly she obeyed his pressure and bent12 down and kissed him.
"It settles things," he said, holding her. "It joins us. Don't you see? Before ... But now it's different. It's something we have between us. It's something that ... It's the link we needed. It will hold us together, cement us together. It will be our life. This will be my work now. The other ..."
He faced a truth. "It was just ... vanity!"
There was still a shade of doubt in her face, a wistfulness.
"Dear," she said.
"Yes?"
She knitted her brows. "No!" she said. "I can't say it."
In the interval she came into a sitting position on his knees.
He kissed her hand, but her face remained grave, and she looked out upon the twilight14. "I know I'm stupid," she said. "The things I say ... aren't the things I feel."
He waited for her to say more.
"It's no good," she said.
He felt the onus15 of expression lay on him. He too found it a little difficult to put into words. "I think I understand," he said, and wrestled16 with the impalpable. The pause seemed long and yet not altogether vacant. She lapsed17 abruptly18 into the prosaic19. She started from him.
"If I don't go down, Mother will get supper ..."
At the door she stopped and turned a twilight face to him. For a moment they scrutinised one another. To her he was no more than a dim outline. Impulsively20 he held out his arms....
Then at the sound of a movement downstairs she freed herself and hurried out. He heard her call "Mother! You're not to lay supper. You're to rest."
He listened to her footsteps until the kitchen had swallowed them up. Then he turned his eyes to the Schema again and for a moment it seemed but a little thing.
He picked it up in both hands and looked at it as if it was the writing of another man, and indeed it was the writing of another man. "Pamphlets in the Liberal Interest," he read, and smiled.
Presently a train of thought carried him off. His attitude relaxed a little, the Schema became for a time a mere21 symbol, a point of departure, and he stared out of the window at the darkling night. For a long time he sat pursuing thoughts that were half emotions, emotions that took upon themselves the shape and substance of ideas. The deepening current stirred at last among the roots of speech.
"Yes, it was vanity," he said. "A boy's vanity. For me--anyhow. I'm too two-sided.... Two-sided?... Commonplace!
"Dreams like mine--abilities like mine. Yes--any man! And yet ...--The things I meant to do!"
His thoughts went to his Socialism, to his red-hot ambition of world mending. He marvelled22 at the vistas he had discovered since those days.
"Not for us--Not for us.
"We must perish in the wilderness23.--Some day. Somewhen. But not for us....
"Come to think, it is all the Child. The future is the Child. The Future. What are we--any of us--but servants or traitors24 to that?...
* * * * *
"Natural Selection--it follows ... this way is happiness ... must be. There can be no other."
He sighed. "To last a lifetime, that is.
"And yet--it is almost as if Life had played me a trick--promised so much--given so little!...
"No! One must not look at it in that way! That will not do! That will _not_ do.
"Career! In itself it is a career--the most important career in the world. Father! Why should I want more?
"And ... Ethel! No wonder she seemed shallow ... She has been shallow. No wonder she was restless. Unfulfilled ... What had she to do? She was drudge25, she was toy ...
"Yes. This is life. This alone is life! For this we were made and born. All these other things--all other things--they are only a sort of play....
"Play!"
His eyes came back to the Schema. His hands shifted to the opposite corner and he hesitated. The vision of that arranged Career, that ordered sequence of work and successes, distinctions and yet further distinctions, rose brightly from the symbol. Then he compressed his lips and tore the yellow sheet in half, tearing very deliberately26. He doubled the halves and tore again, doubled again very carefully and neatly27 until the Schema was torn into numberless little pieces. With it he seemed to be tearing his past self.
"Play," he whispered after a long silence.
"It is the end of adolescence," he said; "the end of empty dreams...."
He became very still, his hands resting on the table, his eyes staring out of the blue oblong of the window. The dwindling28 light gathered itself together and became a star.
He found he was still holding the torn fragments. He stretched out his hand and dropped them into that new waste-paper basket Ethel had bought for him.
Two pieces fell outside the basket. He stooped, picked them up, and put them carefully with their fellows.
The End
1 spacious | |
adj.广阔的,宽敞的 | |
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2 junction | |
n.连接,接合;交叉点,接合处,枢纽站 | |
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3 hazy | |
adj.有薄雾的,朦胧的;不肯定的,模糊的 | |
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4 bristling | |
a.竖立的 | |
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5 puffs | |
n.吸( puff的名词复数 );(烟斗或香烟的)一吸;一缕(烟、蒸汽等);(呼吸或风的)呼v.使喷出( puff的第三人称单数 );喷着汽(或烟)移动;吹嘘;吹捧 | |
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6 gliding | |
v. 滑翔 adj. 滑动的 | |
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7 vistas | |
长条形景色( vista的名词复数 ); 回顾; 展望; (未来可能发生的)一系列情景 | |
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8 chronological | |
adj.按年月顺序排列的,年代学的 | |
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9 memoranda | |
n. 备忘录, 便条 名词memorandum的复数形式 | |
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10 margin | |
n.页边空白;差额;余地,余裕;边,边缘 | |
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11 interval | |
n.间隔,间距;幕间休息,中场休息 | |
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12 bent | |
n.爱好,癖好;adj.弯的;决心的,一心的 | |
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13 spoke | |
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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14 twilight | |
n.暮光,黄昏;暮年,晚期,衰落时期 | |
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15 onus | |
n.负担;责任 | |
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16 wrestled | |
v.(与某人)搏斗( wrestle的过去式和过去分词 );扭成一团;扭打;(与…)摔跤 | |
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17 lapsed | |
adj.流失的,堕落的v.退步( lapse的过去式和过去分词 );陷入;倒退;丧失 | |
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18 abruptly | |
adv.突然地,出其不意地 | |
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19 prosaic | |
adj.单调的,无趣的 | |
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20 impulsively | |
adv.冲动地 | |
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21 mere | |
adj.纯粹的;仅仅,只不过 | |
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22 marvelled | |
v.惊奇,对…感到惊奇( marvel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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23 wilderness | |
n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等,荒漠 | |
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24 traitors | |
卖国贼( traitor的名词复数 ); 叛徒; 背叛者; 背信弃义的人 | |
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25 drudge | |
n.劳碌的人;v.做苦工,操劳 | |
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26 deliberately | |
adv.审慎地;蓄意地;故意地 | |
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27 neatly | |
adv.整洁地,干净地,灵巧地,熟练地 | |
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28 dwindling | |
adj.逐渐减少的v.逐渐变少或变小( dwindle的现在分词 ) | |
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