On the afternoon that Soames crossed to France a cablegram was received by Jolyon at Robin1 Hill:
“Your son down with enteric no immediate2 danger will cable again.”
It reached a household already agitated3 by the imminent4 departure of June, whose berth5 was booked for the following day. She was, indeed, in the act of confiding6 Eric Cobbley and his family to her father’s care when the message arrived.
The resolution to become a Red Cross nurse, taken under stimulus7 of Jolly’s enlistment9, had been loyally fulfilled with the irritation10 and regret which all Forsytes feel at what curtails11 their individual liberties. Enthusiastic at first about the ‘wonderfulness’ of the work, she had begun after a month to feel that she could train herself so much better than others could train her. And if Holly12 had not insisted on following her example, and being trained too, she must inevitably13 have ‘cried off.’ The departure of Jolly and Val with their troop in April had further stiffened14 her failing resolve. But now, on the point of departure, the thought of leaving Eric Cobbley, with a wife and two children, adrift in the cold waters of an unappreciative world weighed on her so that she was still in danger of backing out. The reading of that cablegram, with its disquieting16 reality, clinched17 the matter. She saw herself already nursing Jolly — for of course they would let her nurse her own brother! Jolyon — ever wide and doubtful — had no such hope. Poor June!
Could any Forsyte of her generation grasp how rude and brutal18 life was? Ever since he knew of his boy’s arrival at Cape19 Town the thought of him had been a kind of recurrent sickness in Jolyon. He could not get reconciled to the feeling that Jolly was in danger all the time. The cablegram, grave though it was, was almost a relief. He was now safe from bullets, anyway. And yet — this enteric was a virulent20 disease! The Times was full of deaths therefrom. Why could he not be lying out there in that up-country hospital, and his boy safe at home? The un-Forsytean self-sacrifice of his three children, indeed, had quite bewildered Jolyon. He would eagerly change places with Jolly, because he loved his boy; but no such personal motive21 was influencing them. He could only think that it marked the decline of the Forsyte type.
Late that afternoon Holly came out to him under the old oak-tree. She had grown up very much during these last months of hospital training away from home. And, seeing her approach, he thought: ‘She has more sense than June, child though she is; more wisdom. Thank God she isn’t going out.’ She had seated herself in the swing, very silent and still. ‘She feels this,’ thought Jolyon, ‘as much as I’ and, seeing her eyes fixed22 on him, he said: “Don’t take it to heart too much, my child. If he weren’t ill, he might be in much greater danger.”
Holly got out of the swing.
“I want to tell you something, Dad. It was through me that Jolly enlisted23 and went out.”
“How’s that?”
“When you were away in Paris, Val Dartie and I fell in love. We used to ride in Richmond Park; we got engaged. Jolly found it out, and thought he ought to stop it; so he dared Val to enlist8. It was all my fault, Dad; and I want to go out too. Because if anything happens to either of them I should feel awful. Besides, I’m just as much trained as June.”
Jolyon gazed at her in a stupefaction that was tinged24 with irony25. So this was the answer to the riddle26 he had been asking himself; and his three children were Forsytes after all. Surely Holly might have told him all this before! But he smothered27 the sarcastic28 sayings on his lips. Tenderness to the young was perhaps the most sacred article of his belief. He had got, no doubt, what he deserved. Engaged! So this was why he had so lost touch with her! And to young Val Dartie — nephew of Soames — in the other camp! It was all terribly distasteful. He closed his easel, and set his drawing against the tree.
“Have you told June?”
“Yes; she says she’ll get me into her cabin somehow. It’s a single cabin; but one of us could sleep on the floor. If you consent, she’ll go up now and get permission.”
‘Consent?’ thought Jolyon. ‘Rather late in the day to ask for that!’ But again he checked himself.
“You’re too young, my dear; they won’t let you.”
“June knows some people that she helped to go to Cape Town. If they won’t let me nurse yet, I could stay with them and go on training there. Let me go, Dad!”
Jolyon smiled because he could have cried.
“I never stop anyone from doing anything,” he said.
Holly flung her arms round his neck.
“Oh! Dad, you are the best in the world.”
‘That means the worst,’ thought Jolyon. If he had ever doubted his creed29 of tolerance30 he did so then.
“I’m not friendly with Val’s family,” he said, “and I don’t know Val, but Jolly didn’t like him.”
Holly looked at the distance and said:
“I love him.”
“That settles it,” said Jolyon dryly, then catching31 the expression on her face, he kissed her, with the thought: ‘Is anything more pathetic than the faith of the young?’ Unless he actually forbade her going it was obvious that he must make the best of it, so he went up to town with June. Whether due to her persistence32, or the fact that the official they saw was an old school friend of Jolyon’s, they obtained permission for Holly to share the single cabin. He took them to Surbiton station the following evening, and they duly slid away from him, provided with money, invalid33 foods, and those letters of credit without which Forsytes do not travel.
He drove back to Robin Hill under a brilliant sky to his late dinner, served with an added care by servants trying to show him that they sympathised, eaten with an added scrupulousness34 to show them that he appreciated their sympathy. But it was a real relief to get to his cigar on the terrace of flag-stones — cunningly chosen by young Bosinney for shape and colour — with night closing in around him, so beautiful a night, hardly whispering in the trees, and smelling so sweet that it made him ache. The grass was drenched35 with dew, and he kept to those flagstones, up and down, till presently it began to seem to him that he was one of three, not wheeling, but turning right about at each end, so that his father was always nearest to the house, and his son always nearest to the terrace edge. Each had an arm lightly within his arm; he dared not lift his hand to his cigar lest he should disturb them, and it burned away, dripping ash on him, till it dropped from his lips, at last, which were getting hot. They left him then, and his arms felt chilly36. Three Jolyons in one Jolyon they had walked.
He stood still, counting the sounds — a carriage passing on the highroad, a distant train, the dog at Gage’s farm, the whispering trees, the groom37 playing on his penny whistle. A multitude of stars up there — bright and silent, so far off! No moon as yet! Just enough light to show him the dark flags and swords of the iris38 flowers along the terrace edge — his favourite flower that had the night’s own colour on its curving crumpled39 petals40. He turned round to the house. Big, unlighted, not a soul beside himself to live in all that part of it. Stark41 loneliness! He could not go on living here alone. And yet, so long as there was beauty, why should a man feel lonely? The answer — as to some idiot’s riddle — was: Because he did. The greater the beauty, the greater the loneliness, for at the back of beauty was harmony, and at the back of harmony was — union. Beauty could not comfort if the soul were out of it. The night, maddeningly lovely, with bloom of grapes on it in starshine, and the breath of grass and honey coming from it, he could not enjoy, while she who was to him the life of beauty, its embodiment and essence, was cut off from him, utterly42 cut off now, he felt, by honourable43 decency44.
He made a poor fist of sleeping, striving too hard after that resignation which Forsytes find difficult to reach, bred to their own way and left so comfortably off by their fathers. But after dawn he dozed45 off, and soon was dreaming a strange dream.
He was on a stage with immensely high rich curtains — high as the very stars — stretching in a semi-circle from footlights to footlights. He himself was very small, a little black restless figure roaming up and down; and the odd thing was that he was not altogether himself, but Soames as well, so that he was not only experiencing but watching. This figure of himself and Soames was trying to find a way out through the curtains, which, heavy and dark, kept him in. Several times he had crossed in front of them before he saw with delight a sudden narrow rift15 — a tall chink of beauty the colour of iris flowers, like a glimpse of Paradise, remote, ineffable46. Stepping quickly forward to pass into it, he found the curtains closing before him. Bitterly disappointed he — or was it Soames?— moved on, and there was the chink again through the parted curtains, which again closed too soon. This went on and on and he never got through till he woke with the word “Irene” on his lips. The dream disturbed him badly, especially that identification of himself with Soames.
Next morning, finding it impossible to work, he spent hours riding Jolly’s horse in search of fatigue47. And on the second day he made up his mind to move to London and see if he could not get permission to follow his daughters to South Africa. He had just begun to pack the following morning when he received this letter:
“GREEN HOTEL, “June 13. “RICHMOND. “MY DEAR JOLYON,
“You will be surprised to see how near I am to you. Paris became impossible — and I have come here to be within reach of your advice. I would so love to see you again. Since you left Paris I don’t think I have met anyone I could really talk to. Is all well with you and with your boy? No one knows, I think, that I am here at present.
“Always your friend, “IRENE.”
Irene within three miles of him!— and again in flight! He stood with a very queer smile on his lips. This was more than he had bargained for!
About noon he set out on foot across Richmond Park, and as he went along, he thought: ‘Richmond Park! By Jove, it suits us Forsytes!’ Not that Forsytes lived there — nobody lived there save royalty48, rangers49, and the deer — but in Richmond Park Nature was allowed to go so far and no further, putting up a brave show of being natural, seeming to say: ‘Look at my instincts — they are almost passions, very nearly out of hand, but not quite, of course; the very hub of possession is to possess oneself.’ Yes! Richmond Park possessed50 itself, even on that bright day of June, with arrowy cuckoos shifting the tree-points of their calls, and the wood doves announcing high summer.
The Green Hotel, which Jolyon entered at one o’clock, stood nearly opposite that more famous hostelry, the Crown and Sceptre; it was modest, highly respectable, never out of cold beef, gooseberry tart51, and a dowager or two, so that a carriage and pair was almost always standing52 before the door.
In a room draped in chintz so slippery as to forbid all emotion, Irene was sitting on a piano stool covered with crewel work, playing ‘Hansel and Gretel’ out of an old score. Above her on a wall, not yet Morris-papered, was a print of the Queen on a pony53, amongst deer-hounds, Scotch54. caps, and slain55 stags; beside her in a pot on the window-sill was a white and rosy56 fuchsia. The Victorianism of the room almost talked; and in her clinging frock Irene seemed to Jolyon like Venus emerging from the shell of the past century.
“If the proprietor57 had eyes,” he said, “he would show you the door; you have broken through his decorations.” Thus lightly he smothered up an emotional moment. Having eaten cold beef, pickled walnut58, gooseberry tart, and drunk stone-bottle ginger-beer, they walked into the Park, and light talk was succeeded by the silence Jolyon had dreaded59.
“You haven’t told me about Paris,” he said at last.
“No. I’ve been shadowed for a long time; one gets used to that. But then Soames came. By the little Niobe — the same story; would I go back to him?”
“Incredible!”
She had spoken without raising her eyes, but she looked up now. Those dark eyes clinging to his said as no words could have: ‘I have come to an end; if you want me, here I am.’
For sheer emotional intensity60 had he ever — old as he was — passed through such a moment?
The words: ‘Irene, I adore you!’ almost escaped him. Then, with a clearness of which he would not have believed mental vision capable, he saw Jolly lying with a white face turned to a white wall.
“My boy is very ill out there,” he said quietly.
Irene slipped her arm through his.
“Let’s walk on; I understand.”
No miserable61 explanation to attempt! She had understood! And they walked on among the bracken, knee-high already, between the rabbit-holes and the oak-trees, talking of Jolly. He left her two hours later at the Richmond Hill Gate, and turned towards home.
‘She knows of my feeling for her, then,’ he thought. Of course! One could not keep knowledge of that from such a woman!
收听单词发音 |
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robin
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| n.知更鸟，红襟鸟 | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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agitated
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| adj.被鼓动的，不安的 | |
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imminent
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| adj.即将发生的，临近的，逼近的 | |
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berth
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| n.卧铺，停泊地，锚位；v.使停泊 | |
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confiding
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| adj.相信人的，易于相信的v.吐露（秘密，心事等）( confide的现在分词 )；（向某人）吐露（隐私、秘密等） | |
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stimulus
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| n.刺激，刺激物，促进因素，引起兴奋的事物 | |
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enlist
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| vt.谋取(支持等)，赢得；征募；vi.入伍 | |
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enlistment
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| n.应征入伍，获得，取得 | |
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irritation
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| n.激怒，恼怒，生气 | |
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curtails
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| v.截断，缩短( curtail的第三人称单数 ) | |
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holly
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| n.[植]冬青属灌木 | |
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inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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stiffened
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| 加强的 | |
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rift
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| n.裂口，隙缝，切口；v.裂开，割开，渗入 | |
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disquieting
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| adj.令人不安的，令人不平静的v.使不安，使忧虑，使烦恼( disquiet的现在分词 ) | |
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clinched
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| v.（尤指两人）互相紧紧抱[扭]住( clinch的过去式和过去分词 )；解决（争端、交易），达成（协议） | |
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brutal
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| adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的 | |
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cape
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| n.海角，岬；披肩，短披风 | |
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virulent
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| adj.有毒的，有恶意的，充满敌意的 | |
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motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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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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enlisted
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| adj.应募入伍的v.（使）入伍， （使）参军( enlist的过去式和过去分词 )；获得（帮助或支持） | |
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tinged
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| v.（使）发丁丁声( ting的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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irony
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| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
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riddle
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| n.谜，谜语，粗筛；vt.解谜，给…出谜，筛，检查，鉴定，非难，充满于；vi.出谜 | |
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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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sarcastic
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| adj.讥讽的，讽刺的，嘲弄的 | |
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creed
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| n.信条；信念，纲领 | |
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tolerance
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| n.宽容；容忍，忍受；耐药力；公差 | |
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catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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persistence
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| n.坚持，持续，存留 | |
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invalid
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| n.病人，伤残人；adj.有病的，伤残的；无效的 | |
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scrupulousness
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| n.一丝不苟；小心翼翼 | |
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drenched
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| adj.湿透的；充满的v.使湿透( drench的过去式和过去分词 )；在某人（某物）上大量使用（某液体） | |
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chilly
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| adj.凉快的，寒冷的 | |
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groom
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| vt.给（马、狗等）梳毛，照料，使...整洁 | |
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iris
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| n.虹膜，彩虹 | |
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crumpled
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| adj. 弯扭的, 变皱的 动词crumple的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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petals
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| n.花瓣( petal的名词复数 ) | |
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stark
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| adj.荒凉的；严酷的；完全的；adv.完全地 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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honourable
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| adj.可敬的；荣誉的，光荣的 | |
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decency
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| n.体面，得体，合宜，正派，庄重 | |
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dozed
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| v.打盹儿，打瞌睡( doze的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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ineffable
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| adj.无法表达的，不可言喻的 | |
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fatigue
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| n.疲劳，劳累 | |
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royalty
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| n.皇家，皇族 | |
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rangers
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| 护林者( ranger的名词复数 )； 突击队员 | |
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possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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tart
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| adj.酸的；尖酸的，刻薄的；n.果馅饼；淫妇 | |
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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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pony
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| adj.小型的；n.小马 | |
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scotch
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| n.伤口，刻痕；苏格兰威士忌酒；v.粉碎，消灭，阻止；adj.苏格兰(人)的 | |
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slain
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| 杀死，宰杀，杀戮( slay的过去分词 )； (slay的过去分词) | |
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rosy
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| adj.美好的，乐观的，玫瑰色的 | |
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proprietor
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| n.所有人；业主；经营者 | |
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walnut
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| n.胡桃，胡桃木，胡桃色，茶色 | |
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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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intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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