The house was set back off the road at a distance of several hundred yards, possibly a quarter of a mile, and one reached it by means of a road bordered by rows of tall trees which arched above the road, and which made Eugene think of home, at night when the stormy wind howled in their tossed branches. On each side of the road were the Rugby fields of two of the colleges and in the afternoon he could look out and down and see the fresh moist green of the playing fields and watch young college fellows, dressed in their shorts and jerseys3, and with their bare knees scurfed with grass and turf as they twisted, struggled, swayed, and scrambled4 for a moment in the scrimmage-circle, and then broke free, running, dodging5, passing the ball as they were tackled, filling the moist air with their sharp cries of sport. They did not have the desperate, the grimly determined6, the almost professional earnestness that the college teams at home have; their scurfed and muddy knees, their swaying scrambling7 scrimmages, the swift breaking away and running, their panting breath and crisp clear voices gave them the appearance of grown-up boys.
Once when Eugene had come up the road in the afternoon while they were playing, the ball got away from them and came bounding out into the road before him, and he ran after it to retrieve8 it, as he used to do when passing a field where boys were playing baseball. One of the players came over to the edge of the field and stood there waiting with his hands upon his hips9 while Eugene got the ball: he was panting hard, his face was flushed, and his blond hair tousled, but when Eugene threw the ball to him, he said “Thanks very much!” crisply and courteously10 — getting the same sound into the word “VERY” that they got in “AMERican,” a sound that always repelled11 Eugene a little because it seemed to have some scornful aloofness12 and patronage13 in it.
For a moment Eugene watched him as he trotted14 briskly away on to the field again: the players stood there waiting, panting, casual, their hands upon their hips; he passed the ball into the scrimmage, the pattern swayed, rocked, scrambled, and broke sharply out in open play again, and everything looked incredibly strange, near, and familiar.
Eugene felt that he had always known it, that it had always been his, and that it was as familiar to him as everything he had seen or known in his childhood. Even the texture15 of the earth looked familiar, and felt moist and firm and springy when he stepped on it, and the stormy howling of the wind in that avenue of great trees at night was wild and desolate16 and demented as it had been when he was eight years old and would lie in his bed at night and hear the great oaks howling on the hill above his father’s house.
The name of the people in the house was Coulson: he made arrangements with the woman at once to come and live there: she was a tall, weathered-looking woman of middle age, they talked together in the hall. The hall was made of marble flags and went directly out on to a gravelled walk.
The woman was crisp, cheerful, and worldly-looking. She was still quite handsome. She wore a well-cut skirt of woollen plaid and a silk blouse: when she talked she kept her arms folded because the air in the hall was chilly18, and she held a cigarette in the fingers of one hand. A shaggy brown dog came out and nosed upward toward her hand as she was talking and she put her hand upon its head and scratched it gently. When Eugene told her he wanted to move in the next day, she said briskly and cheerfully:
“Right you are! You’ll find everything ready when you get here!” Then she asked if he was at the university. He said no, and added, with a feeling of difficulty and naked desolation, that he was a “writer,” and was coming there to work. He was twenty-four years old.
“Then I am sure that what you do will be VERY, VERY good!” she said cheerfully and decisively. “We have had several Americans in the house before and all of them were very clever! All the Americans we have had here were very clever people,” said the woman. “I’m sure that you will like it.” Then she walked to the door with him to say good-bye. As they stood there, there was the sound of a small motorcar coming to a halt and in a moment a girl came swiftly across the gravel17 space outside and entered the hall. She was tall, slender, very lovely, but she had the same bright hard look in her eye that the woman had, the same faint, hard smile round the edges of her mouth.
“Edith,” the woman said in her crisp curiously19 incisive20 tone, “this young man is an American — he is coming here tomorrow.” The girl looked at Eugene for a moment with her hard bright glance, thrust out a small gloved hand, and shook hands briefly21, a swift firm greeting.
“Oh! How d’ye do?” she said. “I hope you will like it here.” Then she went on down the hall, entered a room on the left, and closed the door behind her.
Her voice had been crisp and certain like her mother’s, but it was also cool, young, and sweet, with music in it, and later as Eugene went down the road, he could still hear it.
That was a wonderful house, and the people there were wonderful people. Later, he could not forget them. He seemed to have known them all his life, and to know all about their lives. They seemed as familiar to him as his own blood and he knew them with a knowledge that went deep below the roots of thought or memory. They did not talk together often, or tell any of their lives to one another. It is very hard to tell about it — the way they felt and lived together in that house — because it was one of those simple and profound experiences of life which people seem always to have known when it happens to them, but for which there is no language.
And yet, like a child’s half-captured vision of some magic country he has known, and which haunts his days with strangeness and the sense of imminent22, glorious rediscovery, the word that would unlock it all seemed constantly to be almost on their lips, waiting, just outside the gateway23 of their memory, just a shape, a phrase, a sound away, the moment that they chose to utter it — but when they tried to say the thing, something faded within their minds like fading light, and something melted within their grasp like painted smoke, and something went for ever when they tried to touch it.
The nearest Eugene could come to it was this: In that house he sometimes felt the greatest peace and solitude24 that he had ever known. But he always knew the other people in the house were there. He could sit in his sitting-room25 at night and hear nothing but the stormy moaning of the wind outside in the great trees, the small gaseous26 flare27 and jet from time to time of the coal fire burning in the grate — and silence, strong living lonely silence that moved and waited in the house at night — and he would always know that they were there.
He did not have to hear them enter or go past his door, nor did he have to hear doors close or open in the house, or listen to their voices: if he had never seen them, heard them, spoken to them, it would have been the same — he would have known they were there.
It was something he had always known, and he had known it would happen to him, and now it was there with all the strangeness and dark mystery of an awaited thing. He knew them, felt them, lived among them with a familiarity that had no need of sight or word or speech. And the memory of that house and of his silent fellowship with all the people there was somehow mixed with an image of dark time. It was one of those sorrowful and unchanging images which, among all the blazing stream of images that passed constantly their stream of fire across his mind, was somehow fixed29, detached, and everlasting30, full of a sorrow, certitude, and mystery that he could not fathom31, but that wore for ever on it the old sad light of waning32 day — a light from which all the heat, the violence, and the substance of furious dusty day had vanished and which was itself like time, unearthly-of-the-earth, remote, detached, and everlasting.
And that fixed and changeless image of dark time was this: In an old house of time Eugene lived alone, and yet had other people all around him, and they never spoke28 to him or he to them. They came and went, like silence in the house, but he always knew that they were there. He would be sitting by a window in a room, and he would know then that they were moving in the house, and darkness, sorrow, and strong silence dwelt within them, and their eyes were quiet, full of sorrow, peace, and knowledge, and their faces dark, their tongues silent, and they never spoke. Eugene could not remember how their faces looked, but they were all familiar to him as his father’s face, and they had known one another for ever, and they lived together in the ancient house of time, dark time; and silence, sorrow, certitude, and peace were in them. Such was the image of dark time that was to haunt his life thereafter, and into which, somehow, his life among the people in that house had passed.
In the house that year there lived, besides Eugene and Morison, the Coulsons, father and mother and their daughter, and three men who had taken rooms together and who were employed in a factory where motor-cars were made, two miles from town.
Perhaps the reason that Eugene could never forget these people later and seemed to know them all so well was that there was in all of them something ruined, lost, or broken — some precious and irretrievable quality which had gone out of them and which they could never get back again. Perhaps that was the reason that he liked them all so much, because with ruined people it is either love or hate: there is no middle way. The ruined people that we like are those who desperately33 have died, and lost their lives because they loved life dearly, and had that grandeur34 that makes such people spend prodigally35 the thing they love the best, and risk and lose their lives because life is so precious to them, and die at length because the seeds of life are in them. It is only the people that love life who die in this way — and these are the ruined people that we like.
The people in the house were people who had lost their lives because they loved the earth too well, and somehow had been slain36 by their hunger. And for this reason Eugene liked them all, and could not forget them later: there seemed to have been some magic which had drawn37 them all together to that house, as if the house itself were a magnetic centre for lost people.
Certainly, the three men who worked at the motor-car factory had been drawn together for this reason. Two were still young men in their early twenties. The third man was much older. He was a man past forty, his name was Nicholl, he had served in the army during the war and had attained38 the rank of captain.
He had the spare, alert, and jaunty39 figure that one often finds in army men, an almost professional military quality that somehow seemed to set his figure upon a horse as if he had grown there, or had spent a lifetime in the cavalry40. His face, also, had the same lean, bitten, professional military quality: his speech, although good-natured and very friendly, was clipped, incisive, jerky, and sporadic41, his lean weather-beaten face was deeply, sharply scarred and sunken in the flanks, and he wore a small cropped moustache, and displayed long frontal teeth when he smiled — a spare, gaunt, toothy, yet attractive smile.
His left arm was withered42, shrunken, almost useless, part of his hand and two of the fingers had been torn away by the blast or explosion which had destroyed his arm, but it was not this mutilation of the flesh that gave one the sense of a life that had been ruined, lost, and broken irretrievably. In fact, one quickly forgot his physical injury: his figure looked so spare, lean, jaunty, well-conditioned in its energetic fitness that one never thought of him as a cripple, nor pitied him for any disability. No: the ruin that one felt in him was never of the flesh, but of the spirit. Something seemed to have been torn away from his life — it was not the nerve-centres of his arm, but of his soul, that had been destroyed. There was in the man somewhere a terrible dead vacancy43 and emptiness, and the spare, lean figure that he carried so well seemed only to surround this vacancy like a kind of shell.
He was always smartly dressed in clothes that sat well on his trim spruce figure. He was always in good spirits, immensely friendly in his clipped spare way, and he laughed frequently — a rather metallic44 cackle which came suddenly and ended as swiftly as it had begun. He seemed, somehow, to have locked the door upon dark care and worry, and to have flung the key away — to have lost, at the same time that he lost more precious things, all the fretful doubts and perturbations of conscience than most men know.
Now, in fact, he seemed to have only one serious project in his life. This was to keep himself amused, to keep himself constantly amused, to get from his life somehow the last atom of entertainment it could possibly yield, and in this project the two young men who lived with him joined in with an energy and earnestness which suggested that their employment in the motor-car factory was just a necessary evil which most be borne patiently because it yielded them the means with which to carry on a more important business, the only one in which their lives were interested — the pursuit of pleasure.
And in the way in which they conducted this pursuit there was an element of deliberate calculation, concentrated earnestness, and focal intensity45 of purpose that was astounding46, grotesque47, and unbelievable, and that left in the mind of one who saw it a formidable and disquieting48 memory because there was in it almost the madness of desperation, the deliberate intent to seek oblivion, at any cost of effort, from some hideous49 emptiness of the soul.
Captain Nicholl and his two young companions had a little motorcar so small that it scuttled50 up the road, shot around and stopped in the gravel by the door with the abruptness51 of a wound-up toy. It was astonishing that three men could wedge themselves into this midget of a car, but wedge themselves they did, and used it to the end of its capacity, scuttling52 away to work in it in the morning, and scuttling back again when work was done, and scuttling away to London every Saturday, as if they were determined to wrest53 from this small motor, too, the last ounce of pleasure to be got from it.
Finally, Captain Nicholl and his two companions had made up an orchestra among them, and this they played in every night when they got home. One of the young men, who was a tall fellow with blond hair which went back in even corrugated54 waves across his head as if it had been marcelled, played the piano; the other, who was slight and dark, and had black hair, performed upon a saxophone, and Captain Nicholl himself took turns at thrumming furiously on a banjo, or rattling55 a tattoo56 upon the complex arrangement of trap drums, bass57 drums, and clashing cymbals58 that surrounded him.
They played nothing but American jazz music or sobbing59 crooner’s rhapsodies or nigger blues60. Their performance was astonishing. Although it was contrived61 solely62 for their own amusement, they hurled63 themselves into it with all the industrious64 earnestness of professional musicians employed by a night-club or dance hall to furnish dance music for the patrons. The little dark fellow who played the saxophone would bend and weave prayerfully with his grotesque instrument, as the fat gloating notes came from its unctuous65 throat, and from time to time he would sway in a half-circle or get up and prance66 forward and back in rhythm to the music, as the saxophone players in dance orchestras sometimes do.
Meanwhile the tall blond fellow at the piano would sway and bend above the keys, glancing around from time to time with little nods and smiles as if he were encouraging an orchestra of forty pieces or beaming happily at a dance floor crowded with paying customers.
While this was going on, Captain Nicholl would be thrumming madly on the strings67 of a banjo. He kept the instrument gripped somehow below his withered arm, fingering the end strings with his two good fingers, knocking the tune68 out with his good right hand, and keeping time with a beating foot. Then with a sudden violent movement he would put the banjo down, snatch up the sticks of the trap drum, and begin to rattle69 out a furious accompaniment, beating the bass drum with his foot meanwhile, and reaching over to smash cymbals, chimes, and metal rings from time to time. He played with a kind of desperate fury, his mouth fixed in a strange set grin, his bright eyes burning with a sharp wild glint of madness.
They sang as they played, bursting suddenly into the refrain of some popular song with the same calculated spontaneity and spurious enthusiasm of the professional orchestra, mouthing the words of negro blues and jazz with an obvious satisfaction, with an accent which was remarkably70 good, and yet which had something foreign and inept71 in it that made the familiar phrases of American music sound almost as strange in their mouths as if an orchestra of skilful72 patient Japanese were singing them.
They sang:
“Yes, sir! That’s my baby
Yes, sir! Don’t mean maybe
Yes, sir! That’s my baby now!”
or:
“Oh, it ain’t gonna rain no more, no more
It ain’t gonna rain no more”
or:
“I got dose blu-u-ues”—
the young fellow at the piano rolling his eyes round in a ridiculous fashion, and mouthing out the word “blues” extravagantly73 as he sang it, the little dark fellow bending forward in an unctuous sweep as the note came gloating fatly from the horn, and Captain Nicholl swaying sideways in his chair as he strummed upon the banjo strings, and improvising74 a mournful accompaniment of his own, somewhat as follows: “I got dose blu-u-ues! Yes, suh! Oh! I got dose blues! Yes, suh! I sure have got ’em-dose blu-u-ues — blu-u-ues — blu-u-ues! —” his mouth never relaxing from its strange fixed grin, nor his eyes from their bright set stare of madness as he swayed and strummed and sang the words that came so strangely from his lips.
It was a weird75 scene, an incredible performance, and somehow it pierced the heart with a wild nameless pity, an infinite sorrow and regret.
Something precious, irrecoverable, had gone out of them, and they knew it. They fought the emptiness in them with this deliberate, formidable, and mad intensity of a calculated gaiety, a terrifying mimicry76 of mirth, and the storm-wind howled around them in dark trees, and Eugene felt that he had known them for ever, and had no words to say to them — and no door.
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1
foliage
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| n.叶子，树叶，簇叶 | |
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ivy
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| n.常青藤，常春藤 | |
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jerseys
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| n.运动衫( jersey的名词复数 ) | |
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4
scrambled
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| v.快速爬行( scramble的过去式和过去分词 )；攀登；争夺；（军事飞机）紧急起飞 | |
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5
dodging
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| n.避开，闪过，音调改变v.闪躲( dodge的现在分词 )；回避 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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scrambling
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| v.快速爬行( scramble的现在分词 )；攀登；争夺；（军事飞机）紧急起飞 | |
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8
retrieve
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| vt.重新得到，收回；挽回，补救；检索 | |
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hips
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| abbr.high impact polystyrene 高冲击强度聚苯乙烯，耐冲性聚苯乙烯n.臀部( hip的名词复数 )；[建筑学]屋脊；臀围（尺寸）；臀部…的 | |
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courteously
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| adv.有礼貌地，亲切地 | |
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repelled
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| v.击退( repel的过去式和过去分词 )；使厌恶；排斥；推开 | |
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12
aloofness
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| 超然态度 | |
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patronage
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| n.赞助，支援，援助；光顾，捧场 | |
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14
trotted
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| 小跑，急走( trot的过去分词 )； 匆匆忙忙地走 | |
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15
texture
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| n.(织物)质地；(材料)构造；结构；肌理 | |
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16
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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gravel
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| n.砂跞；砂砾层；结石 | |
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chilly
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| adj.凉快的，寒冷的 | |
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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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incisive
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| adj.敏锐的，机敏的，锋利的，切入的 | |
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briefly
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| adv.简单地，简短地 | |
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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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gateway
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| n.大门口，出入口，途径，方法 | |
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24
solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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25
sitting-room
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| n.（BrE）客厅，起居室 | |
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gaseous
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| adj.气体的，气态的 | |
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flare
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| v.闪耀，闪烁；n.潮红；突发 | |
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28
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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29
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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everlasting
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| adj.永恒的，持久的，无止境的 | |
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fathom
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| v.领悟，彻底了解 | |
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32
waning
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| adj.（月亮）渐亏的，逐渐减弱或变小的n.月亏v.衰落( wane的现在分词 )；（月）亏；变小；变暗淡 | |
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33
desperately
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| adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地 | |
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grandeur
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| n.伟大，崇高，宏伟，庄严，豪华 | |
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prodigally
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| adv.浪费地，丰饶地 | |
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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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37
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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38
attained
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| （通常经过努力）实现( attain的过去式和过去分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况） | |
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39
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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40
cavalry
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| n.骑兵；轻装甲部队 | |
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41
sporadic
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| adj.偶尔发生的 [反]regular；分散的 | |
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42
withered
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| adj. 枯萎的，干瘪的，（人身体的部分器官）因病萎缩的或未发育良好的 动词wither的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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43
vacancy
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| n.（旅馆的）空位，空房，（职务的）空缺 | |
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44
metallic
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| adj.金属的；金属制的；含金属的；产金属的；像金属的 | |
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45
intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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46
astounding
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| adj.使人震惊的vt.使震惊，使大吃一惊astound的现在分词) | |
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47
grotesque
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| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
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48
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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49
hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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50
scuttled
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| v.使船沉没( scuttle的过去式和过去分词 )；快跑，急走 | |
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51
abruptness
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| n. 突然，唐突 | |
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52
scuttling
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| n.船底穿孔，打开通海阀（沉船用）v.使船沉没( scuttle的现在分词 )；快跑，急走 | |
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53
wrest
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| n.扭，拧，猛夺；v.夺取，猛扭，歪曲 | |
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54
corrugated
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| adj.波纹的；缩成皱纹的；波纹面的；波纹状的v.（使某物）起皱褶(corrugate的过去式和过去分词) | |
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rattling
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| adj. 格格作响的, 活泼的, 很好的 adv. 极其, 很, 非常 动词rattle的现在分词 | |
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tattoo
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| n.纹身，(皮肤上的)刺花纹；vt.刺花纹于 | |
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bass
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| n.男低音(歌手)；低音乐器；低音大提琴 | |
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cymbals
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| pl.铙钹 | |
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sobbing
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| <主方>Ⅰ adj.湿透的 | |
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60
blues
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| n.抑郁，沮丧；布鲁斯音乐 | |
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contrived
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| adj.不自然的，做作的；虚构的 | |
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solely
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| adv.仅仅，唯一地 | |
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hurled
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| v.猛投，用力掷( hurl的过去式和过去分词 )；大声叫骂 | |
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industrious
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| adj.勤劳的，刻苦的，奋发的 | |
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unctuous
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| adj.油腔滑调的，大胆的 | |
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prance
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| v.（马）腾跃，(人)神气活现地走 | |
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strings
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| n.弦 | |
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68
tune
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| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
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69
rattle
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| v.飞奔，碰响；激怒；n.碰撞声；拨浪鼓 | |
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remarkably
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| ad.不同寻常地，相当地 | |
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inept
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| adj.不恰当的，荒谬的，拙劣的 | |
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skilful
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| (=skillful)adj.灵巧的，熟练的 | |
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extravagantly
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| adv.挥霍无度地 | |
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improvising
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| 即兴创作（improvise的现在分词形式） | |
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weird
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| adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的 | |
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mimicry
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| n.（生物）拟态，模仿 | |
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