The sails flapped over their heads. The water chuckled1 and slapped thesides of the boat, which drowsed motionless in the sun. Now and thenthe sails rippled3 with a little breeze in them, but the ripple2 ran over themand ceased. The boat made no motion at all. Mr Ramsay sat in themiddle of the boat. He would be impatient in a moment, James thought,and Cam thought, looking at her father, who sat in the middle of theboat between them (James steered4; Cam sat alone in the bow) with hislegs tightly curled. He hated hanging about. Sure enough, after fidgetinga second or two, he said something sharp to Macalister's boy, who gotout his oars5 and began to row. But their father, they knew, would neverbe content until they were flying along. He would keep looking for abreeze, fidgeting, saying things under his breath, which Macalister andand Macalister's boy would overhear, and they would both be made horriblyuncomfortable. He had made them come. He had forced them tocome. In their anger they hoped that the breeze would never rise, that hemight be thwarted6 in every possible way, since he had forced them tocome against their wills.
All the way down to the beach they had lagged behind together,though he bade them "Walk up, walk up," without speaking. Their headswere bent7 down, their heads were pressed down by some remorselessgale. Speak to him they could not. They must come; they must follow.
They must walk behind him carrying brown paper parcels. But theyvowed, in silence, as they walked, to stand by each other and carry outthe great compact—to resist tyranny to the death. So there they wouldsit, one at one end of the boat, one at the other, in silence. They wouldsay nothing, only look at him now and then where he sat with his legstwisted, frowning and fidgeting, and pishing and pshawing and mutteringthings to himself, and waiting impatiently for a breeze. And theyhoped it would be calm. They hoped he would be thwarted. They hopedthe whole expedition would fail, and they would have to put back, withtheir parcels, to the beach.
But now, when Macalister's boy had rowed a little way out, the sailsslowly swung round, the boat quickened itself, flattened8 itself, and shotoff. Instantly, as if some great strain had been relieved, Mr Ramsay uncurledhis legs, took out his tobacco pouch9, handed it with a little gruntto Macalister, and felt, they knew, for all they suffered, perfectly10 content.
Now they would sail on for hours like this, and Mr Ramsay would askold Macalister a question—about the great storm last winter probably—and old Macalister would answer it, and they would puff11 theirpipes together, and Macalister would take a tarry rope in his fingers, tyingor untying12 some knot, and the boy would fish, and never say a wordto any one. James would be forced to keep his eye all the time on the sail.
For if he forgot, then the sail puckered13 and shivered, and the boatslackened, and Mr Ramsay would say sharply, "Look out! Look out!" andold Macalister would turn slowly on his seat. So they heard Mr Ramsayasking some question about the great storm at Christmas. "She comesdriving round the point," old Macalister said, describing the great stormlast Christmas, when ten ships had been driven into the bay for shelter,and he had seen "one there, one there, one there" (he pointed14 slowlyround the bay. Mr Ramsay followed him, turning his head). He had seenfour men clinging to the mast. Then she was gone. "And at last weshoved her off," he went on (but in their anger and their silence they onlycaught a word here and there, sitting at opposite ends of the boat, unitedby their compact to fight tyranny to the death). At last they had shovedher off, they had launched the lifeboat, and they had got her out past thepoint—Macalister told the story; and though they only caught a wordhere and there, they were conscious all the time of their father—how heleant forward, how he brought his voice into tune15 with Macalister'svoice; how, puffing16 at his pipe, and looking there and there where Macalisterpointed, he relished17 the thought of the storm and the dark nightand the fishermen striving there. He liked that men should labour andsweat on the windy beach at night; pitting muscle and brain against thewaves and the wind; he liked men to work like that, and women to keephouse, and sit beside sleeping children indoors, while men weredrowned, out there in a storm. So James could tell, so Cam could tell(they looked at him, they looked at each other), from his toss and his vigilanceand the ring in his voice, and the little tinge18 of Scottish accentwhich came into his voice, making him seem like a peasant himself, as hequestioned Macalister about the eleven ships that had been driven intothe bay in a storm. Three had sunk.
He looked proudly where Macalister pointed; and Cam thought, feelingproud of him without knowing quite why, had he been there hewould have launched the lifeboat, he would have reached the wreck,Cam thought. He was so brave, he was so adventurous19, Cam thought.
But she remembered. There was the compact; to resist tyranny to thedeath. Their grievance20 weighed them down. They had been forced; theyhad been bidden. He had borne them down once more with his gloomand his authority, making them do his bidding, on this fine morning,come, because he wished it, carrying these parcels, to the Lighthouse;take part in these rites21 he went through for his own pleasure in memoryof dead people, which they hated, so that they lagged after him, all thepleasure of the day was spoilt.
Yes, the breeze was freshening. The boat was leaning, the water wassliced sharply and fell away in green cascades22, in bubbles, in cataracts23.
Cam looked down into the foam24, into the sea with all its treasure in it,and its speed hypnotised her, and the tie between her and James saggeda little. It slackened a little. She began to think, How fast it goes. Whereare we going? and the movement hypnotised her, while James, with hiseye fixed25 on the sail and on the horizon, steered grimly. But he began tothink as he steered that he might escape; he might be quit of it all. Theymight land somewhere; and be free then. Both of them, looking at eachother for a moment, had a sense of escape and exaltation, what with thespeed and the change. But the breeze bred in Mr Ramsay too the sameexcitement, and, as old Macalister turned to fling his line overboard, hecried out aloud,"We perished," and then again, "each alone." And then with his usualspasm of repentance26 or shyness, pulled himself up, and waved his handtowards the shore.
"See the little house," he said pointing, wishing Cam to look. Sheraised herself reluctantly and looked. But which was it? She could nolonger make out, there on the hillside, which was their house. All lookeddistant and peaceful and strange. The shore seemed refined, far away,unreal. Already the little distance they had sailed had put them far fromit and given it the changed look, the composed look, of something recedingin which one has no longer any part. Which was their house? Shecould not see it.
"But I beneath a rougher sea," Mr Ramsay murmured. He had foundthe house and so seeing it, he had also seen himself there; he had seenhimself walking on the terrace, alone. He was walking up and down between the urns27; and he seemed to himself very old and bowed. Sittingin the boat, he bowed, he crouched28 himself, acting29 instantly his part—the part of a desolate30 man, widowed, bereft31; and so called up before himin hosts people sympathising with him; staged for himself as he sat inthe boat, a little drama; which required of him decrepitude32 and exhaustionand sorrow (he raised his hands and looked at the thinness of them,to confirm his dream) and then there was given him in abundancewomen's sympathy, and he imagined how they would soothe33 him andsympathise with him, and so getting in his dream some reflection of theexquisite pleasure women's sympathy was to him, he sighed and saidgently and mournfully:
But I beneath a rougher seaWas whelmed in deeper gulfs than he,so that the mournful words were heard quite clearly by them all. Camhalf started on her seat. It shocked her—it outraged34 her. The movementroused her father; and he shuddered35, and broke off, exclaiming: "Look!
Look!" so urgently that James also turned his head to look over hisshoulder at the island. They all looked. They looked at the island.
But Cam could see nothing. She was thinking how all those paths andthe lawn, thick and knotted with the lives they had lived there, weregone: were rubbed out; were past; were unreal, and now this was real;the boat and the sail with its patch; Macalister with his earrings36; thenoise of the waves—all this was real. Thinking this, she was murmuringto herself, "We perished, each alone," for her father's words broke andbroke again in her mind, when her father, seeing her gazing so vaguely,began to tease her. Didn't she know the points of the compass? he asked.
Didn't she know the North from the South? Did she really think theylived right out there? And he pointed again, and showed her where theirhouse was, there, by those trees. He wished she would try to be more accurate,he said: "Tell me—which is East, which is West?" he said, halflaughing at her, half scolding her, for he could not understand the stateof mind of any one, not absolutely imbecile, who did not know thepoints of the compass. Yet she did not know. And seeing her gazing,with her vague, now rather frightened, eyes fixed where no house wasMr Ramsay forgot his dream; how he walked up and down between theurns on the terrace; how the arms were stretched out to him. He thought,women are always like that; the vagueness of their minds is hopeless; itwas a thing he had never been able to understand; but so it was. It hadbeen so with her—his wife. They could not keep anything clearly fixed in their minds. But he had been wrong to be angry with her; moreover, didhe not rather like this vagueness in women? It was part of their extraordinarycharm. I will make her smile at me, he thought. She looksfrightened. She was so silent. He clutched his fingers, and determinedthat his voice and his face and all the quick expressive37 gestures whichhad been at his command making people pity him and praise him allthese years should subdue38 themselves. He would make her smile at him.
He would find some simple easy thing to say to her. But what? For,wrapped up in his work as he was, he forgot the sort of thing one said.
There was a puppy. They had a puppy. Who was looking after thepuppy today? he asked. Yes, thought James pitilessly, seeing his sister'shead against the sail, now she will give way. I shall be left to fight thetyrant alone. The compact would be left to him to carry out. Cam wouldnever resist tyranny to the death, he thought grimly, watching her face,sad, sulky, yielding. And as sometimes happens when a cloud falls on agreen hillside and gravity descends39 and there among all the surroundinghills is gloom and sorrow, and it seems as if the hills themselves mustponder the fate of the clouded, the darkened, either in pity, or maliciouslyrejoicing in her dismay: so Cam now felt herself overcast40, as shesat there among calm, resolute41 people and wondered how to answer herfather about the puppy; how to resist his entreaty—forgive me, care forme; while James the lawgiver, with the tablets of eternal wisdom laidopen on his knee (his hand on the tiller had become symbolical42 to her),said, Resist him. Fight him. He said so rightly; justly. For they must fighttyranny to the death, she thought. Of all human qualities she reverencedjustice most. Her brother was most god-like, her father most suppliant43.
And to which did she yield, she thought, sitting between them, gazing atthe shore whose points were all unknown to her, and thinking how thelawn and the terrace and the house were smoothed away now and peacedwelt there.
"Jasper," she said sullenly44. He'd look after the puppy.
And what was she going to call him? her father persisted. He had hada dog when he was a little boy, called Frisk. She'll give way, Jamesthought, as he watched a look come upon her face, a look he remembered.
They look down he thought, at their knitting or something.
Then suddenly they look up. There was a flash of blue, he remembered,and then somebody sitting with him laughed, surrendered, and he wasvery angry. It must have been his mother, he thought, sitting on a lowchair, with his father standing45 over her. He began to search among theinfinite series of impressions which time had laid down, leaf upon leaf, fold upon fold softly, incessantly46 upon his brain; among scents47, sounds;voices, harsh, hollow, sweet; and lights passing, and brooms tapping;and the wash and hush48 of the sea, how a man had marched up anddown and stopped dead, upright, over them. Meanwhile, he noticed,Cam dabbled49 her fingers in the water, and stared at the shore and saidnothing. No, she won't give way, he thought; she's different, he thought.
Well, if Cam would not answer him, he would not bother her Mr Ram-say decided50, feeling in his pocket for a book. But she would answer him;she wished, passionately51, to move some obstacle that lay upon hertongue and to say, Oh, yes, Frisk. I'll call him Frisk. She wanted even tosay, Was that the dog that found its way over the moor52 alone? But try asshe might, she could think of nothing to say like that, fierce and loyal tothe compact, yet passing on to her father, unsuspected by James, aprivate token of the love she felt for him. For she thought, dabbling53 herhand (and now Macalister's boy had caught a mackerel, and it lay kickingon the floor, with blood on its gills) for she thought, looking at Jameswho kept his eyes dispassionately on the sail, or glanced now and thenfor a second at the horizon, you're not exposed to it, to this pressure anddivision of feeling, this extraordinary temptation. Her father was feelingin his pockets; in another second, he would have found his book. For noone attracted her more; his hands were beautiful, and his feet, and hisvoice, and his words, and his haste, and his temper, and his oddity, andhis passion, and his saying straight out before every one, we perish, eachalone, and his remoteness. (He had opened his book.) But what remainedintolerable, she thought, sitting upright, and watching Macalister's boytug the hook out of the gills of another fish, was that crass54 blindness andtyranny of his which had poisoned her childhood and raised bitterstorms, so that even now she woke in the night trembling with rage andremembered some command of his; some insolence55: "Do this," "Do that,"his dominance: his "Submit to me."So she said nothing, but looked doggedly56 and sadly at the shore,wrapped in its mantle57 of peace; as if the people there had fallen asleep,she thought; were free like smoke, were free to come and go like ghosts.
They have no suffering there, she thought.
收听单词发音 |
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chuckled
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| 轻声地笑( chuckle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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ripple
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| n.涟波，涟漪，波纹，粗钢梳；vt.使...起涟漪，使起波纹； vi.呈波浪状，起伏前进 | |
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rippled
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| 使泛起涟漪（ripple的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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steered
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| v.驾驶( steer的过去式和过去分词 )；操纵；控制；引导 | |
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oars
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| n.桨，橹( oar的名词复数 )；划手v.划（行）( oar的第三人称单数 ) | |
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thwarted
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| 阻挠( thwart的过去式和过去分词 )； 使受挫折； 挫败； 横过 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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flattened
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| [医]（水）平扁的，弄平的 | |
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pouch
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| n.小袋，小包，囊状袋；vt.装...入袋中，用袋运输；vi.用袋送信件 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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puff
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| n.一口(气)；一阵(风)；v.喷气，喘气 | |
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untying
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| untie的现在分词 | |
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puckered
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| v.（使某物）起褶子或皱纹( pucker的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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tune
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| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
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puffing
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| v.使喷出( puff的现在分词 )；喷着汽（或烟）移动；吹嘘；吹捧 | |
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relished
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| v.欣赏( relish的过去式和过去分词 )；从…获得乐趣；渴望 | |
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tinge
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| vt.(较淡)着色于，染色；使带有…气息；n.淡淡色彩，些微的气息 | |
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adventurous
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| adj.爱冒险的；惊心动魄的，惊险的，刺激的 | |
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grievance
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| n.怨愤，气恼，委屈 | |
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rites
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| 仪式，典礼( rite的名词复数 ) | |
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cascades
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| 倾泻( cascade的名词复数 )； 小瀑布（尤指一连串瀑布中的一支）； 瀑布状物； 倾泻（或涌出）的东西 | |
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cataracts
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| n.大瀑布( cataract的名词复数 )；白内障 | |
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foam
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| v./n.泡沫，起泡沫 | |
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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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repentance
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| n.懊悔 | |
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urns
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| n.壶( urn的名词复数 )；瓮；缸；骨灰瓮 | |
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crouched
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| v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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desolate
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| adj.荒凉的，荒芜的；孤独的，凄凉的；v.使荒芜，使孤寂 | |
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bereft
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| adj.被剥夺的 | |
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decrepitude
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| n.衰老；破旧 | |
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soothe
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| v.安慰；使平静；使减轻；缓和；奉承 | |
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outraged
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| a.震惊的，义愤填膺的 | |
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shuddered
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| v.战栗( shudder的过去式和过去分词 )；发抖；（机器、车辆等）突然震动；颤动 | |
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earrings
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| n.耳环( earring的名词复数 )；耳坠子 | |
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expressive
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| adj.表现的，表达…的，富于表情的 | |
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subdue
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| vt.制服，使顺从，征服；抑制，克制 | |
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descends
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| v.下来( descend的第三人称单数 )；下去；下降；下斜 | |
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overcast
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| adj.阴天的，阴暗的，愁闷的；v.遮盖，（使）变暗，包边缝；n.覆盖，阴天 | |
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resolute
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| adj.坚决的，果敢的 | |
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symbolical
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| a.象征性的 | |
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suppliant
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| adj.哀恳的；n.恳求者，哀求者 | |
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sullenly
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| 不高兴地，绷着脸，忧郁地 | |
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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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incessantly
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| ad.不停地 | |
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scents
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| n.香水( scent的名词复数 )；气味；（动物的）臭迹；（尤指狗的）嗅觉 | |
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hush
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| int.嘘，别出声；n.沉默，静寂；v.使安静 | |
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49
dabbled
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| v.涉猎( dabble的过去式和过去分词 )；涉足；浅尝；少量投资 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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passionately
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| ad.热烈地，激烈地 | |
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moor
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| n.荒野，沼泽；vt.(使)停泊；vi.停泊 | |
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dabbling
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| v.涉猎( dabble的现在分词 )；涉足；浅尝；少量投资 | |
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crass
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| adj.愚钝的，粗糙的；彻底的 | |
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insolence
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| n.傲慢；无礼；厚颜；傲慢的态度 | |
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doggedly
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| adv.顽强地，固执地 | |
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mantle
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| n.斗篷，覆罩之物，罩子；v.罩住，覆盖，脸红 | |
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