He had been, he said, a lieutenant1 in the flying corps2, and had just the month before resigned his commission. And he said he had resigned his commission because he had received an appointment from the government in the African colonial service, and had been sent up to the university to take a special six months’ course in Colonial Administration, after which he would be “sent out” to assume his new duties in the Colonies. Finally, he was, he said, by birth, an Edinburgh Scotsman, although his family were by blood more English than Scotch3, and he had lived most of his life in England. His references to his family were casual, easy, and indefinite, but carried with them, somehow, the connotations of aristocratic distinction.
He referred to his father often, but always in this casual and easy manner, as “the governor,” and to his mother as “the mater,” flinging in parenthetically with his easy nonchalance5 such a statement as “of course, my whole crowd came from Devonshire”— a statement which was unadorned and meaningless enough but that somehow — God knows how — carried with it a wonderful evocation6 of an ancestral seat, an ancient and distinguished7 name, the quiet but impregnable position of one of the “old county families.”
And yet, God knows how he did it: the man said nothing about his people that might not be said of any modest little family, and probably everything he said was true. He made no open pretences8 to great name or wealth or ancient lineage, but in these swift, casual, half-blurted9-out references to “the governor,” “the mater,” and so on, he projected perfectly10 a legend of prestige and family that was most engaging in its sense of style and dash and recklessness.
The design of this legend was perfectly familiar to everyone: Eugene had read it a thousand times in the pages of books, but he had never known anyone who could evoke11 it so perfectly, so tellingly, and with such a non-committal economy of means, as Morison. In this casual, charming, almost nakedly simple picture of his life which he could suggest in a blurted-out phrase without giving a shred12 of real information about himself, or making a single admission of fact, the characters were few in number, their lineaments broadly and forcibly outlined, and their setting a familiar one.
In this setting Morison himself played the part of the dashing young aristocrat4, wild, reckless, and impetuous, always ready for fun, fight, or frolic, a bottle of Scotch, or a pretty woman, a roaring drunk, or a hot seduction — a mad hare-brained sort of fellow who plunged13 impetuously forward into everything, but who was somehow always saved from the odium that attaches itself to a baser sort of drunkard, brawler14, or seducer15, because he had in him those mysterious qualities of blood and character that made of him “a gentleman,” and therefore gave his acts a faultless style, a whole immunity16.
And the figure that he stroked in of his father was also a pleasant one. For “the governor,” although he existed chiefly for the purpose of admonishment17 and reproof18, as a curb19 upon the wild spirits of his son, was neither a sour Puritan nor a grim-visaged household tyrant20, but really a very good and understanding sort of fellow, and, within reasonable limits, as tolerant as anyone could ask. The old boy, in fact, had been “a bit of a buck22 himself” in his younger days, and had seen his share of the flesh and the devil, and was quite willing to make allowances for the wilder escapades of youth, so long as a reasonable decorum and moderation were observed.
But there, alas23! was the rub — as Morison himself would ruefully admit. He was himself such a mad, scapegrace sort of fellow that his acts sometimes passed all the bounds of decorum and propriety24, and for that reason “the governor” was always “having him in upon the carpet.”
There, in fact, was the whole setting. The governor existed for the sole purpose of “having him in upon the carpet”— one never saw them in any other way, but when Morison spoke25 about it one saw them in THIS way with blazing vividness. And this picture — the picture of Morison going in “upon the carpet”— was a very splendid one.
First, one saw Morison pacing nervously26 up and down in a noble and ancient hall, puffing27 distractedly on a cigarette and pausing from time to time in an apprehensive29 manner before the grim, closed barrier of an enormous seventeenth-century door which was tall and wide enough for a knight30 in armour31 to ride through without difficulty, and before whose gloomy and overwhelming front Morison looked very small and full of guilt32. Then, one saw him take a last puff28 at his cigarette, brace33 his shoulders in a determined34 manner, knock on the panels of the mighty35 door, and in answer to a low growl36 within, open the door and advance desperately37 into the shadowed depths of a room so immense and magnificent that Morison looked like a single little sinner walking forlornly down the nave38 of a cathedral.
At the end of this terrific room, across an enormous space of carpet, sat “the governor.” He was sitting behind a magnificent flat desk of ancient carved mahogany, in the vast shadowed depths behind him storeyed rows of old bound volumes climbed dizzily up into the upper darkness and were lost. And men in armour were standing21 grimly all around, and the portraits of the ancestors shone faintly in the gloom, and the old worn mellow39 colours of the tempered light came softly through the coloured glass of narrow Gothic windows which were set far away in recessed40 depths of the impregnable mortared walls.
Meanwhile “the governor” was waiting in grim silence as Morison advanced across the carpet. The governor was a man with beetling41 bushy eyebrows42, silver hair, the lean, bitten and incisive43 face, the cropped moustache of a man who has seen service in old wars and commanded garrisons44 in India, and after clearing his throat with a low menacing growl, he would peer fiercely out at Morison beneath his bushy brows, and say: “Well, young man?”— to which Morison would be able to make no answer, but would just stand there in a state of guilty dejection.
And the talk that then passed between the outraged45 father and the prodigal46 son was, from Morison’s own account, astonishing. It was a talk that was no talk, a talk that was almost incoherent but that each understood perfectly, another language, not merely an economy of words so spare that one word was made to do the work of a hundred, but a series of grunts47, blurts48, oaths and ejaculations, in which almost nothing was said that was recognizable as ordered thought, but in which the meaning of everything was perfectly conveyed.
The last outrageous49 episode that had brought Morison in to his present position of guilt “upon the carpet” was rarely named by name or given a description. Rather, as if affronted50 decency51 and aristocratic delicacy52 could not endure discussion of an unmentionable offence, his fault was indicated briefly53 as “that sort of thing” (or simply “sort of thing,” spoken fast and slurringly)— and all the other passions and emotions of anger, contrition55, stern condemnation56 and reproof, and, at length, of exhausted57 relief and escape, were conveyed in a series of broken and jerky exclamations58, such as: “After ALL!” “It’s not as if it were the first time you had played the bloody59 fool!” “What I mean to say is!” “Damn it all, it’s not that I mind the wine-woman-song sort of thing — young myself once — no plaster saint — never pretended that I was — man’s own business if he keeps it to himself — never interfered60 — only when you do a thing like this and make a bloody show of yourself — you idiot! — sort of thing men can understand but women! — it’s your mother I’m thinking of!” and so on.
Morison’s own speech, in fact, was largely composed of phrases such as these: he blurted them out so rapidly, scarcely moving his lips and slurring54 his words over in such a broken and explosive way that when one first met him it was hard to understand what he was saying:— his speech seemed to be largely a series of blurted-out phrases, such as “sort of thing,” “after ALL!” “what I mean to say is!” and so on. And yet this incoherent and exclamatory style was curiously61 effective, for it seemed to take the listener into its confidence in rather an engaging manner which said: “Of course, there’s no need to go into detail about all this, because I can see you are a man of the world and the same kind of fellow as I am. I know we understand each other perfectly, and the truth of what I am saying must be so self-evident that there’s no point in discussing it.”
In stature62, he was a little below the middle height, and rather fleshy. In fact, although his jaunty63 and impetuous manners gave him an air of boyishness, he was already getting fat around the waist, and his neck was fat and there was a fold of flesh beneath his chin. His face was very ruddy, smooth, a little alcoholic64, and he had a small blond moustache with waxed ends. Finally, his hair was thick, sleek65, of a dark taffy-coloured blond which shaded off into roots of fine silken blondish white at the edges of his temples.
He could almost have passed for the average Oxford66 youth if it had not been for the roll of fat beneath his chin and the blurred67, veinous, and yellowed look of his eyes, and he could almost have passed for the dashing gentleman whose lineaments he could so deftly68 and cleverly sketch70 in a few boldly casual strokes had it not been that there was something spurious in his character that gave him away in everything he did or said.
And yet Eugene never knew just what this spurious quality was. He felt at once that the man was fraudulent and unfortunate, and that all he told about himself was fraudulent, and yet everything he told was not only natural and credible71 enough but even plausible72. All he said was that he had been a lieutenant in the flying corps, and had recently resigned, and had been given an appointment in the Colonies and been sent to Oxford for a course in Colonial Administration, and that later he would be sent to Africa.
Later on, Eugene understood that all of this was probably true, but at the time it sounded like a lie. Or, if it was not a lie, he thought that there was something discreditable and shameful73 behind it. He thought that if Morison had been in the army flying service, as he said, he had resigned not from choice but because he had to — because he had been caught cheating at cards, or had not paid his debts, or had been mixed up in some unwholesome mess with a woman. And he thought that if Morison were now going out to Africa it was not so much from choice as by compulsion — because he had to go. In the years that followed Eugene saw that these suspicions were probably unfounded and unjust, but that was the way Morison made him feel.
There was about him, somehow, the look of the ruined adventurer — shabby and run-down — the face of the actor shining through its mask of deft69 gentility, the face of the charlatan74 looking through its visage of sincerity75, and the old veined yellow eyes of ruin, hopelessness, and loss looking through all his attitudes of youth, infectious spontaneity, and grace. And for this reason, somehow, the man seemed pitiably gallant76, and Eugene liked him.
He and Morison would go to different pubs and drink until the closing time. Morison was using him vilely77, and Eugene knew it and did not care. Not only was he paying for three drinks of every four they drank, but he knew that Morison also sought his companionship because he thought it gave him some immunity from the college proctors when they made their visits to a pub. And this, in fact, he admitted very frankly78 and with a disarming79 gleefulness.
“You see,” he said, “if I came in here by myself I’d get progged, but as long as I’m with you I’m probably all right.”
“Why?”
“Oh,” he said, with an exultant80 little chuckle81, “because they don’t know what to make of it! They’ve got their eye on ME, all right,” he laughed. “They’ve been giving me some very fishy82 looks — but when they see YOU here, they can’t be sure — they don’t know what to make of it!”
“Why don’t they?”
“Oh,” he said, “they’re puzzled about me, but they KNOW about you — they don’t dare to bother you because they know you’re not in the university.”
“How do they know it?” he said resentfully. “I look as much like a student as these Rhodes scholars that you see — yes, and a damned sight more than most of them!”
“Yes, I know,” he said tolerantly. “Still, they know you’re not. They’ve got a way of telling.”
“A way of telling! Good God, Morison, how have they got a way of telling? Do you mean to say they memorize the names and faces of all the students here, the day the term commences?”
“No, it isn’t that. You see, old boy, you don’t BELONG to them — I don’t know what it is, but they have a way of their own of knowing.”
“Do you mean that there’s some damned mystery about it? — that they’ve got some supernatural gift of intuition that tells them when you’re a student and when you’re not?”
“Quite!” he said. “That’s just it. That’s just the way they do it!” And he looked at Eugene for a moment with his blurred, veinous eyes, and laughed softly, good-naturedly, a little mockingly. “Curious, isn’t it?”
“It’s more than curious. It’s a miracle!”
But it seemed that he was right. For sometimes the proctors would come into a pub where they were drinking, speak amicably83 to everyone, and in a moment more go out again, but Morison would grow very quiet while they were there, and lean upon the bar, and look down at his drink until they left. And as they left they would look curiously at both men again, and their eye would pass Eugene swiftly and indifferently, and for a moment fix on Morison with a fishy and suspicious look. When they were gone he would look up again at the grinning bar-tender and, his ruddy face suffused84 with laughter, say exultantly85:
“Oh, PRICELESS! Did you see him when he looked at me?”
“I did,” the man behind the counter said. “He didn’t half know what to make of it, did he? The other gentleman is not a student, IS he?”
“No!” Morison fairly shouted, his face crimson86, as he pounded on the bar. “That’s just the point! And they don’t know what to make of it when they see me with him! They can’t be sure!” he choked. “They can’t be sure!”
And it was Morison who found the house out on the Ventnor road, took lodgings87 there himself, and gave Eugene the address.
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收听单词发音
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1
lieutenant
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| n.陆军中尉，海军上尉；代理官员，副职官员 | |
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corps
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| n.(通信等兵种的)部队；(同类作的)一组 | |
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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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aristocrat
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| n.贵族，有贵族气派的人，上层人物 | |
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nonchalance
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| n.冷淡，漠不关心 | |
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evocation
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| n. 引起，唤起 n. <古> 召唤，招魂 | |
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7
distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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pretences
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| n.假装( pretence的名词复数 )；作假；自命；自称 | |
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blurted
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| v.突然说出，脱口而出( blurt的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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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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evoke
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| vt.唤起，引起，使人想起 | |
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shred
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| v.撕成碎片，变成碎片；n.碎布条，细片，些少 | |
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plunged
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| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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brawler
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| 争吵者，打架者 | |
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seducer
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| n.诱惑者,骗子,玩弄女性的人 | |
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immunity
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| n.优惠；免除；豁免，豁免权 | |
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admonishment
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| n.警告 | |
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reproof
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| n.斥责，责备 | |
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curb
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| n.场外证券市场，场外交易；vt.制止，抑制 | |
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tyrant
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| n.暴君，专制的君主，残暴的人 | |
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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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buck
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| n.雄鹿，雄兔；v.马离地跳跃 | |
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alas
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| int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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propriety
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| n.正当行为；正当；适当 | |
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25
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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nervously
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| adv.神情激动地，不安地 | |
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27
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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puff
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| n.一口(气)；一阵(风)；v.喷气，喘气 | |
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apprehensive
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| adj.担心的，恐惧的，善于领会的 | |
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knight
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| n.骑士，武士；爵士 | |
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armour
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| （=armor）n.盔甲；装甲部队 | |
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guilt
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| n.犯罪；内疚；过失，罪责 | |
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brace
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| n. 支柱,曲柄,大括号; v. 绷紧,顶住,(为困难或坏事)做准备 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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growl
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| v.（狗等）嗥叫，（炮等）轰鸣；n.嗥叫，轰鸣 | |
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desperately
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| adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地 | |
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nave
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| n.教堂的中部；本堂 | |
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mellow
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| adj.柔和的；熟透的；v.变柔和；(使)成熟 | |
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recessed
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| v.把某物放在墙壁的凹处( recess的过去式和过去分词 )；将（墙）做成凹形，在（墙）上做壁龛；休息，休会，休庭 | |
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41
beetling
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| adj.突出的，悬垂的v.快速移动( beetle的现在分词 ) | |
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42
eyebrows
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| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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43
incisive
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| adj.敏锐的，机敏的，锋利的，切入的 | |
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garrisons
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| 守备部队，卫戍部队( garrison的名词复数 ) | |
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outraged
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| a.震惊的，义愤填膺的 | |
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prodigal
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| adj.浪费的，挥霍的，放荡的 | |
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47
grunts
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| （猪等）作呼噜声( grunt的第三人称单数 )； （指人）发出类似的哼声； 咕哝着说； 石鲈 | |
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blurts
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| v.突然说出，脱口而出( blurt的第三人称单数 ) | |
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49
outrageous
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| adj.无理的，令人不能容忍的 | |
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50
affronted
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| adj.被侮辱的，被冒犯的v.勇敢地面对( affront的过去式和过去分词 )；相遇 | |
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51
decency
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| n.体面，得体，合宜，正派，庄重 | |
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52
delicacy
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| n.精致，细微，微妙，精良；美味，佳肴 | |
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briefly
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| adv.简单地，简短地 | |
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54
slurring
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| 含糊地说出( slur的现在分词 )； 含糊地发…的声； 侮辱； 连唱 | |
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55
contrition
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| n.悔罪，痛悔 | |
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56
condemnation
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| n.谴责; 定罪 | |
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57
exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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exclamations
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| n.呼喊( exclamation的名词复数 )；感叹；感叹语；感叹词 | |
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59
bloody
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| adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染 | |
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interfered
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| v.干预( interfere的过去式和过去分词 )；调停；妨碍；干涉 | |
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61
curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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stature
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| n.（高度）水平，（高度）境界，身高，身材 | |
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63
jaunty
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| adj．愉快的，满足的；adv.心满意足地，洋洋得意地；n.心满意足；洋洋得意 | |
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alcoholic
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| adj.（含）酒精的，由酒精引起的；n.酗酒者 | |
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sleek
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| adj.光滑的，井然有序的；v.使光滑，梳拢 | |
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66
Oxford
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| n.牛津（英国城市） | |
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67
blurred
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| v.（使）变模糊( blur的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）难以区分；模模糊糊；迷离 | |
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68
deftly
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| adv.灵巧地，熟练地，敏捷地 | |
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deft
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| adj.灵巧的，熟练的（a deft hand 能手） | |
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70
sketch
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| n.草图；梗概；素描；v.素描；概述 | |
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credible
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| adj.可信任的，可靠的 | |
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plausible
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| adj.似真实的，似乎有理的，似乎可信的 | |
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shameful
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| adj.可耻的，不道德的 | |
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charlatan
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| n.骗子；江湖医生；假内行 | |
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sincerity
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| n.真诚，诚意；真实 | |
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gallant
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| adj.英勇的，豪侠的；(向女人)献殷勤的 | |
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vilely
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| adv.讨厌地，卑劣地 | |
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frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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disarming
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| adj.消除敌意的，使人消气的v.裁军( disarm的现在分词 )；使息怒 | |
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exultant
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| adj.欢腾的，狂欢的，大喜的 | |
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81
chuckle
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| vi.／n.轻声笑，咯咯笑 | |
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fishy
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| adj. 值得怀疑的 | |
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amicably
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| adv.友善地 | |
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84
suffused
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| v.（指颜色、水气等）弥漫于，布满( suffuse的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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85
exultantly
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| adv.狂欢地，欢欣鼓舞地 | |
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crimson
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| n./adj.深(绯)红色(的)；vi.脸变绯红色 | |
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lodgings
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| n. 出租的房舍, 寄宿舍 | |
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