米德尔马契 英文版 Middlemarch
乔治.艾略特 George Eliot
CHAPTER XLVII.
Was never true love loved in vain,For truest love is highest gain.No art can make it: it must springWhere elements are fostering.So in heaven's spot and hourSprings the little native flower,Downward root and upward eye,Shapen by the earth and sky.
It happened to be on a Saturday evening that Will Ladislaw had thatlittle discussion with Lydgate. Its effect when he went to his ownrooms was to make him sit up half the night, thinking over again,under a new irritation, all that he had before thought of his havingsettled in Middlemarch and harnessed himself with Mr. Brooke.Hesitations before he had taken the step had since turned intosusceptibility to every hint that he would have been wiser notto take it; and hence came his heat towards Lydgate--a heat whichstill kept him restless. Was he not making a fool of himself?--and at a time when he was more than ever conscious of being somethingbetter than a fool? And for what end?
Well, for no definite end. True, he had dreamy visions of possibilities:there is no human being who having both passions and thoughts doesnot think in consequence of his passions--does not find images risingin his mind which soothe the passion with hope or sting it with dread.But this, which happens to us all, happens to some with a wide difference;and Will was not one of those whose wit "keeps the roadway:"he had his bypaths where there were little joys of his own choosing,such as gentlemen cantering on the highroad might have thoughtrather idiotic. The way in which he made a sort of happiness forhimself out of his feeling for Dorothea was an example of this.It may seem strange, but it is the fact, that the ordinary vulgarvision of which Mr. Casaubon suspected him--namely, that Dorotheamight become a widow, and that the interest he had establishedin her mind might turn into acceptance of him as a husband--had no tempting, arresting power over him; he did not livein the scenery of such an event, and follow it out, as we all dowith that imagined "otherwise" which is our practical heaven.It was not only that he was unwilling to entertain thoughts whichcould be accused of baseness, and was already uneasy in the sensethat he had to justify himself from the charge of ingratitude--the latent consciousness of many other barriers between himselfand Dorothea besides the existence of her husband, had helpedto turn away his imagination from speculating on what might befallMr. Casaubon. And there were yet other reasons. Will, we know,could not bear the thought of any flaw appearing in his crystal:he was at once exasperated and delighted by the calm freedomwith which Dorothea looked at him and spoke to him, and therewas something so exquisite in thinking of her just as she was,that he could not long for a change which must somehow change her.Do we not shun the street version of a fine melody?--or shrink fromthe news that the rarity--some bit of chiselling or engraving perhaps--which we have dwelt on even with exultation in the trouble it hascost us to snatch glimpses of it, is really not an uncommon thing,and may be obtained as an every-day possession? Our good dependson the quality and breadth of our emotion; and to Will, a creaturewho cared little for what are called the solid things of life andgreatly for its subtler influences, to have within him such a feelingas he had towards Dorothea, was like the inheritance of a fortune.What others might have called the futility of his passion, made anadditional delight for his imagination: he was conscious of agenerous movement, and of verifying in his own experience that higherlove-poetry which had charmed his fancy. Dorothea, he said to himself,was forever enthroned in his soul: no other woman could sit higherthan her footstool; and if he could have written out in immortalsyllables the effect she wrought within him, he might have boastedafter the example of old Drayton, that,--
"Queens hereafter might be glad to liveUpon the alms of her superfluous praise."
But this result was questionable. And what else could he dofor Dorothea? What was his devotion worth to her? It was impossibleto tell. He would not go out of her reach. He saw no creature amongher friends to whom he could believe that she spoke with the same simpleconfidence as to him. She had once said that she would like him to stay;and stay he would, whatever fire-breathing dragons might hiss around her.
This had always been the conclusion of Will's hesitations.But he was not without contradictoriness and rebellion even towardshis own resolve. He had often got irritated, as he was on thisparticular night, by some outside demonstration that his publicexertions with Mr. Brooke as a chief could not seem as heroicas he would like them to be, and this was always associated withthe other ground of irritation--that notwithstanding his sacrificeof dignity for Dorothea's sake, he could hardly ever see her.Whereupon, not being able to contradict these unpleasant facts,he contradicted his own strongest bias and said, "I am a fool."
Nevertheless, since the inward debate necessarily turned on Dorothea,he ended, as he had done before, only by getting a livelier senseof what her presence would be to him; and suddenly reflecting thatthe morrow would be Sunday, he determined to go to Lowick Churchand see her. He slept upon that idea, but when he was dressingin the rational morning light, Objection said--
"That will be a virtual defiance of Mr. Casaubon's prohibitionto visit Lowick, and Dorothea will be displeased."
"Nonsense!" argued Inclination, "it would be too monstrousfor him to hinder me from going out to a pretty country churchon a spring morning. And Dorothea will be glad."
"It will be clear to Mr. Casaubon that you have come either to annoyhim or to see Dorothea."
"It is not true that I go to annoy him, and why should I not goto see Dorothea? Is he to have everything to himself and bealways comfortable? Let him smart a little, as other people areobliged to do. I have always liked the quaintness of the church andcongregation; besides, I know the Tuckers: I shall go into their pew."
Having silenced Objection by force of unreason, Will walked toLowick as if he had been on the way to Paradise, crossing HalsellCommon and skirting the wood, where the sunlight fell broadly underthe budding boughs, bringing out the beauties of moss and lichen,and fresh green growths piercing the brown. Everything seemed to knowthat it was Sunday, and to approve of his going to Lowick Church.Will easily felt happy when nothing crossed his humor, and by thistime the thought of vexing Mr. Casaubon had become rather amusingto him, making his face break into its merry smile, pleasant to seeas the breaking of sunshine on the water--though the occasion wasnot exemplary. But most of us are apt to settle within ourselvesthat the man who blocks our way is odious, and not to mindcausing him a little of the disgust which his personality excitesin ourselves. Will went along with a small book under his arm anda hand in each side-pocket, never reading, but chanting a little,as he made scenes of what would happen in church and coming out.He was experimenting in tunes to suit some words of his own,sometimes trying a ready-made melody, sometimes improvising.The words were not exactly a hymn, but they certainly fitted hisSunday experience:--
"O me, O me, what frugal cheerMy love doth feed upon!A touch, a ray, that is not here,A shadow that is gone:
"A dream of breath that might be near,An inly-echoed tone,The thought that one may think me dear,The place where one was known,
"The tremor of a banished fear,An ill that was not done--O me, O me, what frugal cheerMy love doth feed upon!"
Sometimes, when he took off his hat, shaking his head backward,and showing his delicate throat as he sang, he looked like an incarnationof the spring whose spirit filled the air--a bright creature,abundant in uncertain promises.
The bells were still ringing when he got to Lowick, and he went intothe curate's pew before any one else arrived there. But he was stillleft alone in it when the congregation had assembled. The curate'spew was opposite the rector's at the entrance of the small chancel,and Will had time to fear that Dorothea might not come while helooked round at the group of rural faces which made the congregationfrom year to year within the white-washed walls and dark old pews,hardly with more change than we see in the boughs of a treewhich breaks here and there with age, but yet has young shoots.Mr. Rigg's frog-face was something alien and unaccountable,but notwithstanding this shock to the order of things, there werestill the Waules and the rural stock of the Powderells in theirpews side by side; brother Samuel's cheek had the same purpleround as ever, and the three generations of decent cottagerscame as of old with a sense of duty to their betters generally--the smaller children regarding Mr. Casaubon, who wore the black gownand mounted to the highest box, as probably the chief of all betters,and the one most awful if offended. Even in 1831 Lowick wasat peace, not more agitated by Reform than by the solemn tenorof the Sunday sermon. The congregation had been used to seeingWill at church in former days, and no one took much note of himexcept the choir, who expected him to make a figure in the singing.
Dorothea did at last appear on this quaint background, walking upthe short aisle in her white beaver bonnet and gray cloak--the sameshe had worn in the Vatican. Her face being, from her entrance,towards the chancel, even her shortsighted eyes soon discerned Will,but there was no outward show of her feeling except a slightpaleness and a grave bow as she passed him. To his own surpriseWill felt suddenly uncomfortable, and dared not look at her afterthey had bowed to each other. Two minutes later, when Mr. Casauboncame out of the vestry, and, entering the pew, seated himselfin face of Dorothea, Will felt his paralysis more complete.He could look nowhere except at the choir in the little galleryover the vestry-door: Dorothea was perhaps pained, and he had madea wretched blunder. It was no longer amusing to vex Mr. Casaubon,who had the advantage probably of watching him and seeing that hedared not turn his head. Why had he not imagined this beforehand?--but he could not expect that he should sit in that squarepew alone, unrelieved by any Tuckers, who had apparently departedfrom Lowick altogether, for a new clergyman was in the desk.Still he called himself stupid now for not foreseeing that it wouldbe impossible for him to look towards Dorothea--nay, that shemight feel his coming an impertinence. There was no deliveringhimself from his cage, however; and Will found his places and lookedat his book as if he had been a school-mistress, feeling thatthe morning service had never been so immeasurably long before,that he was utterly ridiculous, out of temper, and miserable.This was what a man got by worshipping the sight of a woman!The clerk observed with surprise that Mr. Ladislaw did not join inthe tune of Hanover, and reflected that he might have a cold.
Mr. Casaubon did not preach that morning, and there was no changein Will's situation until the blessing had been pronounced andevery one rose. It was the fashion at Lowick for "the betters"to go out first. With a sudden determination to break the spellthat was upon him, Will looked straight at Mr. Casaubon. But thatgentleman's eyes were on the button of the pew-door, which he opened,allowing Dorothea to pass, and following her immediately withoutraising his eyelids. Will's glance had caught Dorothea's as sheturned out of the pew, and again she bowed, but this time with alook of agitation, as if she were repressing tears. Will walkedout after them, but they went on towards the little gate leadingout of the churchyard into the shrubbery, never looking round.
It was impossible for him to follow them, and he could only walkback sadly at mid-day along the same road which he had troddenhopefully in the morning. The lights were all changed for himboth without and within.