一双蓝眼睛 英文版 A Pair of Blue Eyes
托马斯.哈代 Thomas Hardy
Chapter XIII
'He set in order many proverbs.'
It is London in October--two months further on in the story.
Bede's Inn has this peculiarity, that it faces, receives from, anddischarges into a bustling thoroughfare speaking only of wealthand respectability, whilst its postern abuts on as crowded andpoverty-stricken a network of alleys as are to be found anywherein the metropolis. The moral consequences are, first, that thosewho occupy chambers in the Inn may see a great deal of shirtlesshumanity's habits and enjoyments without doing more than look downfrom a back window; and second they may hear wholesome thoughunpleasant social reminders through the medium of a harsh voice,an unequal footstep, the echo of a blow or a fall, whichoriginates in the person of some drunkard or wife-beater, as hecrosses and interferes with the quiet of the square. Charactersof this kind frequently pass through the Inn from a little foxholeof an alley at the back, but they never loiter there.
It is hardly necessary to state that all the sights and movementsproper to the Inn are most orderly. On the fine October eveningon which we follow Stephen Smith to this place, a placid porter issitting on a stool under a sycamore-tree in the midst, with alittle cane in his hand. We notice the thick coat of soot uponthe branches, hanging underneath them in flakes, as in a chimney.The blackness of these boughs does not at present improve thetree--nearly forsaken by its leaves as it is--but in the springtheir green fresh beauty is made doubly beautiful by the contrast.Within the railings is a flower-garden of respectable dahlias andchrysanthemums, where a man is sweeping the leaves from the grass.
turned full upon Stephen.
Stephen selects a doorway, and ascends an old though wide woodenstaircase, with moulded balusters and handrail, which in a countrymanor-house would be considered a noteworthy specimen ofRenaissance workmanship. He reaches a door on the first floor,over which is painted, in black letters, 'Mr. Henry Knight'--'Barrister-at-law' being understood but not expressed. The wallis thick, and there is a door at its outer and inner face. Theouter one happens to be ajar: Stephen goes to the other, and taps.
'Come in!' from distant penetralia.
First was a small anteroom, divided from the inner apartment by awainscoted archway two or three yards wide. Across this archwayhung a pair of dark-green curtains, making a mystery of all withinthe arch except the spasmodic scratching of a quill pen. Here wasgrouped a chaotic assemblage of articles--mainly old framed printsand paintings--leaning edgewise against the wall, like roofingslates in a builder's yard. All the books visible here werefolios too big to be stolen--some lying on a heavy oak table inone corner, some on the floor among the pictures, the wholeintermingled with old coats, hats, umbrellas, and walking-sticks.
Stephen pushed aside the curtain, and before him sat a man writingaway as if his life depended upon it--which it did.
A man of thirty in a speckled coat, with dark brown hair, curlybeard, and crisp moustache: the latter running into the beard oneach side of the mouth, and, as usual, hiding the real expressionof that organ under a chronic aspect of impassivity.
'Ah, my dear fellow, I knew 'twas you,' said Knight, looking upwith a smile, and holding out his hand.
Knight's mouth and eyes came to view now. Both features weregood, and had the peculiarity of appearing younger and fresherthan the brow and face they belonged to, which were gettingsicklied o'er by the unmistakable pale cast. The mouth had notquite relinquished rotundity of curve for the firm angularities ofmiddle life; and the eyes, though keen, permeated rather thanpenetrated: what they had lost of their boy-time brightness by adozen years of hard reading lending a quietness to their gazewhich suited them well.
A lady would have said there was a smell of tobacco in the room: aman that there was not.
Knight did not rise. He looked at a timepiece on the mantelshelf,then turned again to his letters, pointing to a chair.
'Well, I am glad you have come. I only returned to townyesterday; now, don't speak, Stephen, for ten minutes; I have justthat time to the late post. At the eleventh minute, I'm your man.'
Cicero called the library the soul of the house; here the housewas all soul. Portions of the floor, and half the wall-space,were taken up by book-shelves ordinary and extraordinary; theremaining parts, together with brackets, side-tables, &c., beingoccupied by casts, statuettes, medallions, and plaques of variousdescriptions, picked up by the owner in his wanderings throughFrance and Italy.
One stream only of evening sunlight came into the room from awindow quite in the corner, overlooking a court. An aquariumstood in the window. It was a dull parallelopipedon enough forliving creatures at most hours of the day; but for a few minutesin the evening, as now, an errant, kindly ray lighted up andwarmed the little world therein, when the many-coloured zoophytesopened and put forth their arms, the weeds acquired a richtransparency, the shells gleamed of a more golden yellow, and thetimid community expressed gladness more plainly than in words.
Within the prescribed ten minutes Knight flung down his pen, rangfor the boy to take the letters to the post, and at the closing ofthe door exclaimed, 'There; thank God, that's done. Now, Stephen,pull your chair round, and tell me what you have been doing allthis time. Have you kept up your Greek?'
'No.'
'How's that?'
'I haven't enough spare time.'
'That's nonsense.'
'Well, I have done a great many things, if not that. And I havedone one extraordinary thing.'
Knight turned full upon Stephen. 'Ah-ha! Now, then, let me lookinto your face, put two and two together, and make a shrewdguess.'
Stephen changed to a redder colour.
'Why, Smith,' said Knight, after holding him rigidly by theshoulders, and keenly scrutinising his countenance for a minute insilence, 'you have fallen in love.'
'Well--the fact is----'
young person----'his ?
'Now, out with it.' But seeing that Stephen looked ratherdistressed, he changed to a kindly tone. 'Now Smith, my lad, youknow me well enough by this time, or you ought to; and you knowvery well that if you choose to give me a detailed account of thephenomenon within you, I shall listen; if you don't, I am the lastman in the world to care to hear it.'
'I'll tell this much: I HAVE fallen in love, and I want to beMARRIED.'
Knight looked ominous as this passed Stephen's lips.
'I don't judge. Does your mother know about it?'
'Nothing definite.'
'Father?'
'No. But I'll tell you. The young person----'
'Come, that's dreadfully ungallant. But perhaps I understand theframe of mind a little, so go on. Your sweetheart----'
'She is rather higher in the world than I am.'
Nearly ten minutes passed. Then Knight also .
'As it should be.'
'And her father won't hear of it, as I now stand.'
'Not an uncommon case.'
'And now comes what I want your advice upon. Something hashappened at her house which makes it out of the question for us toask her father again now. So we are keeping silent. In themeantime an architect in India has just written to Mr. Hewby toask whether he can find for him a young assistant willing to goover to Bombay to prepare drawings for work formerly done by theengineers. The salary he offers is 350 rupees a month, or about35 Pounds. Hewby has mentioned it to me, and I have been to Dr.Wray, who says I shall acclimatise without much illness. Now,would you go?'
'You mean to say, because it is a possible road to the younglady.'
'Yes; I was thinking I could go over and make a little money, andthen come back and ask for her. I have the option of practisingfor myself after a year.'
'Would she be staunch?'
'Oh yes! For ever--to the end of her life!'
'How do you know?'
'Why, how do people know? Of course, she will.'
Knight leant back in his chair. 'Now, though I know herthoroughly as she exists in your heart, Stephen, I don't know herin the flesh. All I want to ask is, is this idea of going toIndia based entirely upon a belief in her fidelity?'
'Yes; I should not go if it were not for her.'
'Well, Stephen, you have put me in rather an awkward position. IfI give my true sentiments, I shall hurt your feelings; if I don't,I shall hurt my own judgment. And remember, I don't know muchabout women.'
'But you have had attachments, although you tell me very littleabout them.'
'And I only hope you'll continue to prosper till I tell you more.'
Stephen winced at this rap. 'I have never formed a deepattachment,' continued Knight. 'I never have found a woman worthit. Nor have I been once engaged to be married.'
'You write as if you had been engaged a hundred times, if I may beallowed to say so,' said Stephen in an injured tone.
'Yes, that may be. But, my dear Stephen, it is only those whohalf know a thing that write about it. Those who know itthoroughly don't take the trouble. All I know about women, or meneither, is a mass of generalities. I plod along, and occasionallylift my eyes and skim the weltering surface of mankind lyingbetween me and the horizon, as a crow might; no more.'
Knight stopped as if he had fallen into a train of thought, andStephen looked with affectionate awe at a master whose mind, hebelieved, could swallow up at one meal all that his own headcontained.
There was affective sympathy, but no great intellectualfellowship, between Knight and Stephen Smith. Knight had seen hisyoung friend when the latter was a cherry-cheeked happy boy, hadbeen interested in him, had kept his eye upon him, and generouslyhelped the lad to books, till the mere connection of patronagegrew to acquaintance, and that ripened to friendship. And so,though Smith was not at all the man Knight would have deliberatelychosen as a friend--or even for one of a group of a dozen friends--he somehow was his friend. Circumstance, as usual, did it all.How many of us can say of our most intimate alter ego, leavingalone friends of the outer circle, that he is the man we shouldhave chosen, as embodying the net result after adding up all thepoints in human nature that we love, and principles we hold, andsubtracting all that we hate? The man is really somebody we got toknow by mere physical juxtaposition long maintained, and was takeninto our confidence, and even heart, as a makeshift.
'And what do you think of her?' Stephen ventured to say, after asilence.
'But she will!' cried Stephen desperately. 'She is a girl alldelicacy and honour. And no woman of that kind, who has committedherself so into a man's hands as she has into mine, could possiblymarry another.'
'How has she committed herself?' asked Knight cunously.
Stephen did not answer. Knight had looked on his love sosceptically that it would not do to say all that he had intendedto say by any means.
'Well, don't tell,' said Knight. 'But you are begging thequestion, which is, I suppose, inevitable in love.'
'And I'll tell you another thing,' the younger man pleaded. 'Youremember what you said to me once about women receiving a kiss.Don't you? Why, that instead of our being charmed by thefascination of their bearing at such a time, we should immediatelydoubt them if their confusion has any GRACE in it--that awkwardbungling was the true charm of the occasion, implying that we arethe first who has played such a part with them.'
'It is true, quite,' said Knight musingly.
It often happened that the disciple thus remembered the lessons ofthe master long after the master himself had forgotten them.
'Well, that was like her!' cried Stephen triumphantly. 'She wasin such a flurry that she didn't know what she was doing.'
'Splendid, splendid!' said Knight soothingly. 'So that all I haveto say is, that if you see a good opening in Bombay there's noreason why you should not go without troubling to draw finedistinctions as to reasons. No man fully realizes what opinionshe acts upon, or what his actions mean.'
'Sleep over it--it is the best plan--and write to-morrow.Meantime, go there to that window and sit down, and look at myHumanity Show. I am going to dine out this evening, and have todress here out of my portmanteau. I bring up my things like thisto save the trouble of going down to my place at Richmond and backagain.'
Knight then went to the middle of the room and flung open hisportmanteau, and Stephen drew near the window. The streak ofsunlight had crept upward, edged away, and vanished; the zoophytesslept: a dusky gloom pervaded the room. And now another volume oflight shone over the window.
'There!' said Knight, 'where is there in England a spectacle toequal that? I sit there and watch them every night before I gohome. Softly open the sash.'
Beneath them was an alley running up to the wall, and thenceturning sideways and passing under an arch, so that Knight's backwindow was immediately over the angle, and commanded a view of thealley lengthwise. Crowds--mostly of women--were surging,bustling, and pacing up and down. Gaslights glared from butchers'stalls, illuminating the lumps of flesh to splotches of orange andvermilion, like the wild colouring of Turner's later pictures,whilst the purl and babble of tongues of every pitch and mood wasto this human wild-wood what the ripple of a brook is to thenatural forest.
Nearly ten minutes passed. Then Knight also came to the window.
'Well, now, I call a cab and vanish down the street in thedirection of Berkeley Square,' he said, buttoning his waistcoatand kicking his morning suit into a corner. Stephen rose toleave.
'What a heap of literature!' remarked the young man, taking afinal longing survey round the room, as if to abide there for everwould be the great pleasure of his life, yet feeling that he hadalmost outstayed his welcome-while. His eyes rested upon an arm-chair piled full of newspapers, magazines, and bright new volumesin green and red.
How do you know?'letters, pointing.
'Yes,' said Knight, also looking at them and breathing a sigh ofweariness; 'something must be done with several of them soon, Isuppose. Stephen, you needn't hurry away for a few minutes, youknow, if you want to stay; I am not quite ready. Overhaul thosevolumes whilst I put on my coat, and I'll walk a little way withyou.'
Stephen sat down beside the arm-chair and began to tumble thebooks about. Among the rest he found a novelette in one volume,THE COURT OF KELLYON CASTLE. By Ernest Field.
'Are you going to review this?' inquired Stephen with apparentunconcern, and holding up Elfride's effusion.
'Which? Oh, that! I may--though I don't do much light reviewingnow. But it is reviewable.'
'How do you mean?'
Knight never liked to be asked what he meant. 'Mean! I mean thatthe majority of books published are neither good enough nor badenough to provoke criticism, and that that book does provoke it.'
'By its goodness or its badness?' Stephen said with some anxietyon poor little Elfride's score.
'Its badness. It seems to be written by some girl in her teens.'
Stephen said not another word. He did not care to speak plainlyof Elfride after that unfortunate slip his tongue had made inrespect of her having committed herself; and, apart from that,Knight's severe--almost dogged and self-willed--honesty incriticizing was unassailable by the humble wish of a youthfulfriend like Stephen.
Knight was now ready. Turning off the gas, and slamming togetherthe door, they went downstairs and into the street.