“So ends the Empire of Notting Hill. As it began in blood, so it ended in blood, and all things are always the same.”
And there was silence again, and then again there was a voice, but it had not the same tone; it seemed that it was not the same voice.
“If all things are always the same, it is because they are always heroic. If all things are always the same, it is because they are always new. To each man one soul only is given; to each soul only is given a little power — the power at some moments to outgrow2 and swallow up the stars. If age after age that power comes upon men, whatever gives it to them is great. Whatever makes men feel old is mean — an empire or a skin-flint shop. Whatever makes men feel young is great — a great war or a love-story. And in the darkest of the books of God there is written a truth that is also a riddle3. It is of the new things that men tire — of fashions and proposals and improvements and change. It is the old things that startle and intoxicate4. It is the old things that are young. There is no sceptic who does not feel that many have doubted before. There is no rich and fickle5 man who does not feel that all his novelties are ancient. There is no worshipper of change who does not feel upon his neck the vast weight of the weariness of the universe. But we who do the old things are fed by nature with a perpetual infancy6. No man who is in love thinks that any one has been in love before. No woman who has a child thinks that there have been such things as children. No people that fight for their own city are haunted with the burden of the broken empires. Yes, O dark voice, the world is always the same, for it is always unexpected.”
A little gust7 of wind blew through the night, and then the first voice answered —
“But in this world there are some, be they wise or foolish, whom nothing intoxicates8. There are some who see all your disturbances9 like a cloud of flies. They know that while men will laugh at your Notting Hill, and will study and rehearse and sing of Athens and Jerusalem, Athens and Jerusalem were silly suburbs like your Notting Hill. They know that the earth itself is a suburb, and can feel only drearily10 and respectably amused as they move upon it.”
“They are philosophers or they are fools,” said the other voice. “They are not men. Men live, as I say, rejoicing from age to age in something fresher than progress — in the fact that with every baby a new sun and a new moon are made. If our ancient humanity were a single man, it might perhaps be that he would break down under the memory of so many loyalties11, under the burden of so many diverse heroisms, under the load and terror of all the goodness of men. But it has pleased God so to isolate12 the individual soul that it can only learn of all other souls by hearsay13, and to each one goodness and happiness come with the youth and violence of lightning, as momentary14 and as pure. And the doom15 of failure that lies on all human systems does not in real fact affect them any more than the worms of the inevitable16 grave affect a children’s game in a meadow. Notting Hill has fallen; Notting Hill has died. But that is not the tremendous issue. Notting Hill has lived.”
“But if,” answered the other voice, “if what is achieved by all these efforts be only the common contentment of humanity, why do men so extravagantly17 toil18 and die in them? Has nothing been done by Notting Hill than any chance clump19 of farmers or clan20 of savages21 would not have done without it? What might have been done to Notting Hill if the world had been different may be a deep question; but there is a deeper. What could have happened to the world if Notting Hill had never been?”
The other voice replied —
“The same that would have happened to the world and all the starry22 systems if an apple-tree grew six apples instead of seven; something would have been eternally lost. There has never been anything in the world absolutely like Notting Hill. There will never be anything quite like it to the crack of doom. I cannot believe anything but that God loved it as He must surely love anything that is itself and unreplaceable. But even for that I do not care. If God, with all His thunders, hated it, I loved it.”
And with the voice a tall, strange figure lifted itself out of the débris in the half-darkness.
The other voice came after a long pause, and as it were hoarsely23.
“But suppose the whole matter were really a hocus-pocus. Suppose that whatever meaning you may choose in your fancy to give to it, the real meaning of the whole was mockery. Suppose it was all folly24. Suppose —”
“I have been in it,” answered the voice from the tall and strange figure, “and I know it was not.”
A smaller figure seemed half to rise in the dark.
“Suppose I am God,” said the voice, “and suppose I made the world in idleness. Suppose the stars, that you think eternal, are only the idiot fireworks of an everlasting25 schoolboy. Suppose the sun and the moon, to which you sing alternately, are only the two eyes of one vast and sneering26 giant, opened alternately in a never-ending wink27. Suppose the trees, in my eyes, are as foolish as enormous toad-stools. Suppose Socrates and Charlemagne are to me only beasts, made funnier by walking on their hind28 legs. Suppose I am God, and having made things, laugh at them.”
“And suppose I am man,” answered the other. “And suppose that I give the answer that shatters even a laugh. Suppose I do not laugh back at you, do not blaspheme you, do not curse you. But suppose, standing29 up straight under the sky, with every power of my being, I thank you for the fools’ paradise you have made. Suppose I praise you, with a literal pain of ecstasy30, for the jest that has brought me so terrible a joy. If we have taken the child’s games, and given them the seriousness of a Crusade, if we have drenched31 your grotesque32 Dutch garden with the blood of martyrs33, we have turned a nursery into a temple. I ask you, in the name of Heaven, who wins?”
The sky close about the crests34 of the hills and trees was beginning to turn from black to grey, with a random35 suggestion of the morning. The slight figure seemed to crawl towards the larger one, and the voice was more human.
“But suppose, friend,” it said, “suppose that, in a bitterer and more real sense, it was all a mockery. Suppose that there had been, from the beginning of these great wars, one who watched them with a sense that is beyond expression, a sense of detachment, of responsibility, of irony36, of agony. Suppose that there were one who knew it was all a joke.”
The tall figure answered —
“He could not know it. For it was not all a joke.”
And a gust of wind blew away some clouds that sealed the sky-line, and showed a strip of silver behind his great dark legs. Then the other voice came, having crept nearer still.
WAYNE, IT WAS ALL A JOKE. "Wayne, it was all a joke."
“Adam Wayne,” it said, “there are men who confess only in articulo mortis; there are people who blame themselves only when they can no longer help others. I am one of them. Here, upon the field of the bloody37 end of it all, I come to tell you plainly what you would never understand before. Do you know who I am?”
“I know you, Auberon Quin,” answered the tall figure, “and I shall be glad to unburden your spirit of anything that lies upon it.”
“Adam Wayne,” said the other voice, “of what I have to say you cannot in common reason be glad to unburden me. Wayne, it was all a joke. When I made these cities, I cared no more for them than I care for a centaur38, or a merman, or a fish with legs, or a pig with feathers, or any other absurdity39. When I spoke to you solemnly and encouragingly about the flag of your freedom and the peace of your city, I was playing a vulgar practical joke on an honest gentleman, a vulgar practical joke that has lasted for twenty years. Though no one could believe it of me, perhaps, it is the truth that I am a man both timid and tender-hearted. I never dared in the early days of your hope, or the central days of your supremacy40, to tell you this; I never dared to break the colossal41 calm of your face. God knows why I should do it now, when my farce42 has ended in tragedy and the ruin of all your people! But I say it now. Wayne, it was done as a joke.”
There was silence, and the freshening breeze blew the sky clearer and clearer, leaving great spaces of the white dawn.
At last Wayne said, very slowly —
“You did it all only as a joke?”
“Yes,” said Quin, briefly43.
“When you conceived the idea,” went on Wayne, dreamily, “of an army for Bayswater and a flag for Notting Hill, there was no gleam, no suggestion in your mind that such things might be real and passionate44?”
“No,” answered Auberon, turning his round white face to the morning with a dull and splendid sincerity45; “I had none at all.”
Wayne sprang down from the height above him and held out his hand.
“I will not stop to thank you,” he said, with a curious joy in his voice, “for the great good for the world you have actually wrought46. All that I think of that I have said to you a moment ago, even when I thought that your voice was the voice of a derisive47 omnipotence48, its laughter older than the winds of heaven. But let me say what is immediate49 and true. You and I, Auberon Quin, have both of us throughout our lives been again and again called mad. And we are mad. We are mad, because we are not two men, but one man. We are mad, because we are two lobes50 of the same brain, and that brain has been cloven in two. And if you ask for the proof of it, it is not hard to find. It is not merely that you, the humorist, have been in these dark days stripped of the joy of gravity. It is not merely that I, the fanatic52, have had to grope without humour. It is that, though we seem to be opposite in everything, we have been opposite like man and woman, aiming at the same moment at the same practical thing. We are the father and the mother of the Charter of the Cities.”
Quin looked down at the débris of leaves and timber, the relics53 of the battle and stampede, now glistening54 in the growing daylight, and finally said —
“Yet nothing can alter the antagonism55 — the fact that I laughed at these things and you adored them.”
Wayne’s wild face flamed with something god-like, as he turned it to be struck by the sunrise.
“I know of something that will alter that antagonism, something that is outside us, something that you and I have all our lives perhaps taken too little account of. The equal and eternal human being will alter that antagonism, for the human being sees no real antagonism between laughter and respect, the human being, the common man, whom mere51 geniuses like you and me can only worship like a god. When dark and dreary56 days come, you and I are necessary, the pure fanatic, the pure satirist57. We have between us remedied a great wrong. We have lifted the modern cities into that poetry which every one who knows mankind knows to be immeasurably more common than the commonplace. But in healthy people there is no war between us. We are but the two lobes of the brain of a ploughman. Laughter and love are everywhere. The cathedrals, built in the ages that loved God, are full of blasphemous58 grotesques59. The mother laughs continually at the child, the lover laughs continually at the lover, the wife at the husband, the friend at the friend. Auberon Quin, we have been too long separated; let us go out together. You have a halberd and I a sword, let us start our wanderings over the world. For we are its two essentials. Come, it is already day.”
In the blank white light Auberon hesitated a moment. Then he made the formal salute60 with his halberd, and they went away together into the unknown world.
The End
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1
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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2
outgrow
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| vt.长大得使…不再适用；成长得不再要 | |
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3
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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4
intoxicate
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| vt.使喝醉，使陶醉，使欣喜若狂 | |
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5
fickle
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| adj.(爱情或友谊上)易变的，不坚定的 | |
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infancy
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| n.婴儿期；幼年期；初期 | |
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gust
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| n.阵风，突然一阵（雨、烟等），（感情的）迸发 | |
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intoxicates
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| 使喝醉（intoxicate的第三人称单数形式） | |
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9
disturbances
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| n.骚乱( disturbance的名词复数 )；打扰；困扰；障碍 | |
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10
drearily
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| 沉寂地，厌倦地，可怕地 | |
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11
loyalties
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| n.忠诚( loyalty的名词复数 )；忠心；忠于…感情；要忠于…的强烈感情 | |
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12
isolate
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| vt.使孤立，隔离 | |
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13
hearsay
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| n.谣传，风闻 | |
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14
momentary
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| adj.片刻的，瞬息的；短暂的 | |
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15
doom
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| n.厄运，劫数；v.注定，命定 | |
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16
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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extravagantly
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| adv.挥霍无度地 | |
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18
toil
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| vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事 | |
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19
clump
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| n.树丛，草丛；vi.用沉重的脚步行走 | |
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20
clan
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| n.氏族，部落，宗族，家族，宗派 | |
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21
savages
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| 未开化的人，野蛮人( savage的名词复数 ) | |
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22
starry
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| adj.星光照耀的, 闪亮的 | |
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23
hoarsely
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| adv.嘶哑地 | |
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24
folly
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| n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话 | |
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25
everlasting
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| adj.永恒的，持久的，无止境的 | |
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26
sneering
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| 嘲笑的，轻蔑的 | |
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27
wink
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| n.眨眼，使眼色，瞬间；v.眨眼，使眼色，闪烁 | |
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28
hind
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| adj.后面的，后部的 | |
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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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30
ecstasy
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| n.狂喜，心醉神怡，入迷 | |
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31
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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32
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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33
martyrs
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| n.martyr的复数形式；烈士( martyr的名词复数 )；殉道者；殉教者；乞怜者（向人诉苦以博取同情） | |
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34
crests
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| v.到达山顶（或浪峰）( crest的第三人称单数 )；到达洪峰，达到顶点 | |
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35
random
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| adj.随机的；任意的；n.偶然的(或随便的)行动 | |
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36
irony
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| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
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37
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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38
centaur
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| n.人首马身的怪物 | |
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39
absurdity
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| n.荒谬，愚蠢；谬论 | |
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40
supremacy
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| n.至上；至高权力 | |
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41
colossal
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| adj.异常的，庞大的 | |
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42
farce
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| n.闹剧，笑剧，滑稽戏；胡闹 | |
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43
briefly
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| adv.简单地，简短地 | |
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44
passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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45
sincerity
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| n.真诚，诚意；真实 | |
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46
wrought
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| v.引起；以…原料制作；运转；adj.制造的 | |
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47
derisive
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| adj.嘲弄的 | |
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48
omnipotence
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| n.全能，万能，无限威力 | |
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49
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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50
lobes
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| n.耳垂( lobe的名词复数 )；（器官的）叶；肺叶；脑叶 | |
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51
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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52
fanatic
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| n.狂热者，入迷者；adj.狂热入迷的 | |
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53
relics
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| [pl.］n.遗物，遗迹，遗产；遗体，尸骸 | |
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54
glistening
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| adj.闪耀的，反光的v.湿物闪耀，闪亮( glisten的现在分词 ) | |
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55
antagonism
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| n.对抗，敌对，对立 | |
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56
dreary
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| adj.令人沮丧的，沉闷的，单调乏味的 | |
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57
satirist
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| n.讽刺诗作者，讽刺家，爱挖苦别人的人 | |
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58
blasphemous
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| adj.亵渎神明的，不敬神的 | |
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59
grotesques
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| n.衣着、打扮、五官等古怪，不协调的样子( grotesque的名词复数 ) | |
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60
salute
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| vi.行礼，致意，问候，放礼炮；vt.向…致意，迎接，赞扬；n.招呼，敬礼，礼炮 | |
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