In 1930, shortly after the appearance of the Budget, the eighth wonder of the world might have been observed in the neighbourhood of Victoria Station — three English people, of wholly different type, engaged in contemplating1 simultaneously2 a London statue. They had come separately, and stood a little apart from each other in the south-west corner of the open space clear of the trees, where the drifting late afternoon light of spring was not in their eyes. One of these three was a young woman of about twenty-six, one a youngish man of perhaps thirty-four, and one a man of between fifty and sixty. The young woman, slender and far from stupid-looking, had her head tilted3 slightly upward to one side, and a faint smile on her parted lips. The younger man, who wore a blue overcoat with a belt girt tightly round his thin middle, as if he felt the spring wind chilly4, was sallow from fading sunburn; and the rather disdainful look of his mouth was being curiously6 contradicted by eyes fixed7 on the statue with real intensity8 of feeling. The elder man, very tall, in a brown suit and brown buckskin shoes, lounged, with his hands in his trouser pockets, and his long, weathered, good-looking face masked in a sort of shrewd scepticism.
In the meantime the statue, which was that of Marshal Foch on his horse, stood high up among those trees, stiller than any of them.
The youngish man spoke9 suddenly.
“He delivered us.”
The effect of this breach10 of form on the others was diverse; the elder man’s eyebrows11 went slightly up, and he moved forward as if to examine the horse’s legs. The young woman turned and looked frankly12 at the speaker, and instantly her face became surprised.
“Aren’t you Wilfrid Desert?”
The youngish man bowed.
“Then,” said the young woman, “we’ve met. At Fleur Mont’s wedding. You were best man, if you remember, the first I’d seen. I was only sixteen. You wouldn’t remember me — Dinny Cherrell, baptized Elizabeth. They ran me in for bridesmaid at the last minute.”
The youngish man’s mouth lost its disdain5.
“I remember your hair perfectly13.”
“Nobody ever remembers me by anything else.”
“Wrong! I remember thinking you’d sat to Botticelli. You’re still sitting, I see.”
Dinny was thinking: ‘His eyes were the first to flutter me. And they really are beautiful.’
The said eyes had been turned again upon the statue.
“He DID deliver us,” said Desert.
“You were there, of course.”
“Flying, and fed up to the teeth.”
“Do you like the statue?”
“The horse.”
“Yes,” murmured Dinny, “it IS a horse, not just a prancing14 barrel, with teeth, nostrils15 and an arch.”
“The whole thing’s workmanlike, like Foch himself.”
Dinny wrinkled her brow.
“I like the way it stands up quietly among those trees.”
“How is Michael? You’re a cousin of his, if I remember.”
“Michael’s all right. Still in the House; he has a seat he simply can’t lose.”
“And Fleur?”
“Flourishing. Did you know she had a daughter last year?”
“Fleur? H’m! That makes two, doesn’t it?”
“Yes; they call this one Catherine.”
“I haven’t been home since 1927. Gosh! It’s a long time since that wedding.”
“You look,” said Dinny, contemplating the sallow darkness of his face, “as if you had been in the sun.”
“When I’m not in the sun I’m not alive.”
“Michael once told me you lived in the East.”
“Well, I wander about there.” His face seemed to darken still more, and he gave a little shiver. “Beastly cold, the English spring!”
“And do you still write poetry?”
“Oh! you know of that weakness?”
“I’ve read them all. I like the last volume best.”
He grinned. “Thank you for stroking me the right way; poets, you know, like it. Who’s that tall man? I seem to know his face.”
The tall man, who had moved to the other side of the statue, was coming back.
“Somehow,” murmured Dinny, “I connect him with that wedding, too.”
The tall man came up to them.
“The hocks aren’t all that,” he said.
Dinny smiled.
“I always feel so thankful I haven’t got hocks. We were just trying to decide whether we knew you. Weren’t you at Michael Mont’s wedding some years ago?”
“I was. And who are you, young lady?”
“We all met there. I’m his first cousin on his mother’s side, Dinny Cherrell. Mr. Desert was his best man.”
The tall man nodded.
“Oh! Ah! My name’s Jack16 Muskham, I’m a first cousin of his father’s.” He turned to Desert. “You admired Foch, it seems.”
“I did.”
Dinny was surprised at the morose17 look that had come on his face.
“Well,” said Muskham, “he was a soldier all right; and there weren’t too many about. But I came here to see the horse.”
“It is, of course, the important part,” murmured Dinny.
The tall man gave her his sceptical smile.
“One thing we have to thank Foch for, he never left us in the lurch18.”
Desert suddenly faced round:
“Any particular reason for that remark?”
Muskham shrugged19 his shoulders, raised his hat to Dinny, and lounged away.
When he had gone there was a silence as over deep waters.
“Which way were you going?” said Dinny at last.
“Any way that you are.”
“I thank you kindly20, sir. Would an aunt in Mount Street serve as a direction?”
“Admirably.”
“You must remember her, Michael’s mother; she’s a darling, the world’s perfect mistress of the ellipse — talks in stepping stones, so that you have to jump to follow her.”
They crossed the road and set out up Grosvenor Place on the Buckingham Palace side.
“I suppose you find England changed every time you come home, if you’ll forgive me for making conversation?”
“Changed enough.”
“Don’t you ‘love your native land,’ as the saying is?”
“She inspires me with a sort of horror.”
“Are you by any chance one of those people who wish to be thought worse than they are?”
“Not possible. Ask Michael.”
“Michael is incapable21 of slander22.”
“Michael and all angels are outside the count of reality.”
“No,” said Dinny, “Michael is very real, and very English.”
“That is his contradictory23 trouble.”
“Why do you run England down? It’s been done before.”
“I never run her down except to English people.”
“That’s something. But why to me?”
Desert laughed.
“Because you seem to be what I should like to feel that England is.”
“Flattered and fair, but neither fat nor forty.”
“What I object to is England’s belief that she is still ‘the goods.’”
“And isn’t she, really?”
“Yes,” said Desert, surprisingly, “but she has no reason to think so.”
Dinny thought:
‘You’re perverse24, brother Wilfrid, the young woman said,
And your tongue is exceedingly wry25;
You do not look well when you stand on your head —
Why will you continually try?’
She remarked, more simply:
“If England is still ‘the goods,’ has no reason to think so and yet does, she would seem to have intuition, anyway. Was it by intuition that you disliked Mr. Muskham?” Then, looking at his face, she thought: ‘I’m dropping a brick.’
“Why should I dislike him? He’s just the usual insensitive type of hunting, racing26 man who bores me stiff.”
‘That wasn’t the reason,’ thought Dinny, still regarding him. A strange face! Unhappy from deep inward disharmony, as though a good angel and a bad were for ever seeking to fire each other out; but his eyes sent the same thrill through her as when, at sixteen, with her hair still long, she had stood near him at Fleur’s wedding.
“And do you really like wandering about in the East?”
“The curse of Esau is on me.”
‘Some day,’ she thought, ‘I’ll make him tell me why. Only probably I shall never see him again.’ And a little chill ran down her back.
“I wonder if you know my Uncle Adrian. He was in the East during the war. He presides over bones at a museum. You probably know Diana Ferse, anyway. He married her last year.”
“I know nobody to speak of.”
“Our point of contact, then, is only Michael.”
“I don’t believe in contacts through other people. Where do you live, Miss Cherrell?”
Dinny smiled.
“A short biographical note seems to be indicated. Since the umpteenth27 century, my family has been ‘seated’ at Condaford Grange in Oxfordshire. My father is a retired28 General; I am one of two daughters; and my only brother is a married soldier just coming back from the Soudan on leave.”
“Oh!” said Desert, and again his face had that morose look.
“I am twenty-six, unmarried but with no children as yet. My hobby seems to be attending to other people’s business. I don’t know why I have it. When in Town I stay at Lady Mont’s in Mount Street. With a simple upbringing I have expensive instincts and no means of gratifying them. I believe I can see a joke. Now you?”
Desert smiled and shook his head.
“Shall I?” said Dinny. “You are the second son of Lord Mullyon, you had too much war; you write poetry; you have nomadic29 instincts and are your own enemy; the last item has the only news value. Here we are in Mount Street; do come in and see Aunt Em.”
“Thank you — no. But will you lunch with me tomorrow and go to a matinée?”
“I will. Where?”
“Dumourieux’s, one-thirty.”
They exchanged hand-grips and parted, but as Dinny went into her aunt’s house she was tingling30 all over, and she stood still outside the drawing-room to smile at the sensation.
收听单词发音 |
1
contemplating
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| 深思，细想，仔细考虑( contemplate的现在分词 )； 注视，凝视； 考虑接受（发生某事的可能性）； 深思熟虑，沉思，苦思冥想 | |
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simultaneously
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| adv.同时发生地，同时进行地 | |
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tilted
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| v. 倾斜的 | |
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chilly
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| adj.凉快的，寒冷的 | |
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disdain
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| n.鄙视，轻视；v.轻视，鄙视，不屑 | |
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curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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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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intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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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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breach
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| n.违反，不履行；破裂；vt.冲破，攻破 | |
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11
eyebrows
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| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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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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prancing
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| v.（马）腾跃( prance的现在分词 ) | |
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nostrils
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| 鼻孔( nostril的名词复数 ) | |
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jack
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| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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morose
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| adj.脾气坏的，不高兴的 | |
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lurch
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| n.突然向前或旁边倒；v.蹒跚而行 | |
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shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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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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incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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slander
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| n./v.诽谤，污蔑 | |
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contradictory
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| adj.反驳的，反对的，抗辩的；n.正反对，矛盾对立 | |
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perverse
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| adj.刚愎的；坚持错误的，行为反常的 | |
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wry
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| adj.讽刺的；扭曲的 | |
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racing
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| n.竞赛，赛马；adj.竞赛用的，赛马用的 | |
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umpteenth
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| adj.第无数次（个）的 | |
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retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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nomadic
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| adj.流浪的；游牧的 | |
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tingling
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| v.有刺痛感( tingle的现在分词 ) | |
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