For he who has faith, death, so far as it is his own death, ceases to possess any quality of terror. The experiment will be over, the rinsed1 beaker returned to its shelf, the crystals gone dissolving down the waste-pipe; the duster sweeps the bench. But the deaths of those we love are harder to understand or bear.
It happens that of those very intimate with me I have lost only one, and that came slowly and elaborately, a long gradual separation wrought2 by the accumulation of years and mental decay, but many close friends and many whom I have counted upon for sympathy and fellowship have passed out of my world. I miss such a one as Bob Stevenson, that luminous3, extravagant4 talker, that eager fantastic mind. I miss him whenever I write. It is less pleasure now to write a story since he will never read it, much less give me a word of praise for it. And I miss York Powell’s friendly laughter and Henley’s exuberant5 welcome. They made a warmth that has gone, those men. I can understand why I, with my fumbling6 lucidities and explanations, have to finish up presently and go, expressing as I do the mood of a type and of a time; but not those radiant presences.
And the gap these men have left, these men with whom after all I only sat now and again, or wrote to in a cheerful mood or got a letter from at odd times, gives me some measure of the thing that happens, that may happen, when the mind that is always near one’s thoughts, the person who moves to one’s movement and lights nearly all the common flow of events about one with the reminder7 of fellowship and meaning — ceases.
Faith which feeds on personal love must at last prevail over it. If Faith has any virtue8 it must have it here when we find ourselves bereft9 and isolated10, facing a world from which the light has fled leaving it bleak11 and strange. We live for experience and the race; these individual interludes are just helps to that; the warm inn in which we lovers met and refreshed was but a halt on a journey. When we have loved to the intensest point we have done our best with each other. To keep to that image of the inn, we must not sit overlong at our wine beside the fire. We must go on to new experiences and new adventures. Death comes to part us and turn us out and set us on the road again.
But the dead stay where we leave them.
I suppose that is the real good in death, that they do stay; that it makes them immortal12 for us. Living they were mortal. But now they can never spoil themselves or be spoilt by change again. They have finished — for us indeed just as much as themselves. There they sit for ever, rounded off and bright and done. Beside these clear and certain memories I have of my dead, my impressions of the living are vague provisional things.
And since they are gone out of the world and become immortal memories in me, I feel no need to think of them as in some disembodied and incomprehensible elsewhere, changed and yet not done. I want actual immortality13 for those I love as little as I desire it for myself.
Indeed I dislike the idea that those I have loved are immortal in any real sense; it conjures14 up dim uncomfortable drifting phantoms15, that have no kindred with the flesh and blood I knew. I would as soon think of them trailing after the tides up and down the Channel outside my window. Bob Stevenson for me is a presence utterly16 concrete, slouching, eager, quick-eyed, intimate and profound, carelessly dressed (at Sandgate he commonly wore a little felt hat that belonged to his son) and himself, himself, indissoluble matter and spirit, down to the heels of his boots. I cannot conceive of his as any but a concrete immortality. If he lives, he lives as I knew him and clothed as I knew him and with his unalterable voice, in a heaven of daedal flowers or a hell of ineffectual flame; he lives, dreaming and talking and explaining, explaining it all very earnestly and preposterously17, so I picture him, into the ear of the amused, incredulous, principal person in the place.
I have a real hatred18 for those dreary19 fools and knaves20 who would have me suppose that Henley, that crippled Titan, may conceivably be tapping at the underside of a mahogany table or scratching stifled21 incoherence into a locked slate22! Henley tapping!— for the professional purposes of Sludge! If he found himself among the circumstances of a spiritualist seance he would, I know, instantly smash the table with that big fist of his. And as the splinters flew, surely York Powell, out of the dead past from which he shines on me, would laugh that hearty23 laugh of his back into the world again.
Henley is nowhere now except that, red-faced and jolly like an October sunset, he leans over a gate at Worthing after a long day of picnicking at Chanctonbury Ring, or sits at his Woking table praising and quoting “The Admiral Bashville,” or blue-shirted and wearing that hat that Nicholson has painted, is thrust and lugged24, laughing and talking aside in his bath-chair, along the Worthing esplanade . . .
And Bob Stevenson walks for ever about a garden in Chiswick, talking in the dusk.
收听单词发音 |
1
rinsed
|
|
| v.漂洗( rinse的过去式和过去分词 )；冲洗；用清水漂洗掉（肥皂泡等）；（用清水）冲掉 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
wrought
|
|
| v.引起；以…原料制作；运转；adj.制造的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
luminous
|
|
| adj.发光的，发亮的；光明的；明白易懂的；有启发的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
extravagant
|
|
| adj.奢侈的；过分的；(言行等)放肆的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
exuberant
|
|
| adj.充满活力的；（植物）繁茂的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
fumbling
|
|
| n. 摸索,漏接 v. 摸索,摸弄,笨拙的处理 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
reminder
|
|
| n.提醒物，纪念品；暗示，提示 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
virtue
|
|
| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
bereft
|
|
| adj.被剥夺的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
isolated
|
|
| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
bleak
|
|
| adj.(天气)阴冷的；凄凉的；暗淡的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
immortal
|
|
| adj.不朽的；永生的，不死的；神的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
immortality
|
|
| n.不死，不朽 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
conjures
|
|
| 用魔术变出( conjure的第三人称单数 )； 祈求，恳求； 变戏法； （变魔术般地） 使…出现 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
phantoms
|
|
| n.鬼怪，幽灵( phantom的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
utterly
|
|
| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
preposterously
|
|
| adv.反常地；荒谬地；荒谬可笑地；不合理地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
hatred
|
|
| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
dreary
|
|
| adj.令人沮丧的，沉闷的，单调乏味的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
knaves
|
|
| n.恶棍，无赖( knave的名词复数 )；（纸牌中的）杰克 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
stifled
|
|
| （使）窒息， （使）窒闷( stifle的过去式和过去分词 )； 镇压，遏制； 堵 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
slate
|
|
| n.板岩，石板，石片，石板色，候选人名单；adj.暗蓝灰色的，含板岩的；vt.用石板覆盖，痛打，提名，预订 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
hearty
|
|
| adj.热情友好的；衷心的；尽情的，纵情的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
lugged
|
|
| vt.用力拖拉（lug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |