一双蓝眼睛 英文版 A Pair of Blue Eyes
托马斯.哈代 Thomas Hardy
Chapter XVII
'Her welcome, spoke in faltering phrase.'
'There is Henry Knight, I declare!' said Mrs. Swancourt one day.
They were gazing from the jutting angle of a wild enclosure notfar from The Crags, which almost overhung the valley alreadydescribed as leading up from the sea and little port of CastleBoterel. The stony escarpment upon which they stood had thecontour of a man's face, and it was covered with furze as with abeard. People in the field above were preserved from anaccidental roll down these prominences and hollows by a hedge onthe very crest, which was doing that kindly service for Elfrideand her mother now.
Scrambling higher into the hedge and stretching her neck furtherover the furze, Elfride beheld the individual signified. He waswalking leisurely along the little green path at the bottom,beside the stream, a satchel slung upon his left hip, a stoutwalking-stick in his hand, and a brown-holland sun-hat upon hishead. The satchel was worn and old, and the outer polishedsurface of the leather was cracked and peeling off.
Knight having arrived over the hills to Castle Boterel upon thetop of a crazy omnibus, preferred to walk the remaining two milesup the valley, leaving his luggage to be brought on.
Behind him wandered, helter-skelter, a boy of whom Knight hadbriefly inquired the way to Endelstow; and by that natural law ofphysics which causes lesser bodies to gravitate towards thegreater, this boy had kept near to Knight, and trotted like alittle dog close at his heels, whistling as he went, with his eyesfixed upon Knight's boots as they rose and fell.
When they had reached a point precisely opposite that in whichMrs. and Miss Swancourt lay in ambush, Knight stopped and turnedround.
'Look here, my boy,' he said.
The boy parted his lips, opened his eyes, and answered nothing.
'Here's sixpence for you, on condition that you don't again comewithin twenty yards of my heels, all the way up the valley.'
The boy, who apparently had not known he had been looking atKnight's heels at all, took the sixpence mechanically, and Knightwent on again, wrapt in meditation.
'A nice voice,' Elfride thought; 'but what a singular temper!'
'Now we must get indoors before he ascends the slope,' said Mrs.Swancourt softly. And they went across by a short cut over astile, entering the lawn by a side door, and so on to the house.
Mr. Swancourt had gone into the village with the curate, andElfride felt too nervous to await their visitor's arrival in thedrawing-room with Mrs. Swancourt. So that when the elder ladyentered, Elfride made some pretence of perceiving a new variety ofcrimson geranium, and lingered behind among the flower beds.
There was nothing gained by this, after all, she thought; and afew minutes after boldly came into the house by the glass side-door. She walked along the corridor, and entered the drawing-room. Nobody was there.
A window at the angle of the room opened directly into anoctagonal conservatory, enclosing the corner of the building.From the conservatory came voices in conversation--Mrs.Swancourt's and the stranger's.
She had expected him to talk brilliantly. To her surprise he wasasking questions in quite a learner's manner, on subjectsconnected with the flowers and shrubs that she had known foryears. When after the lapse of a few minutes he spoke at somelength, she considered there was a hard square decisiveness in theshape of his sentences, as if, unlike her own and Stephen's, theywere not there and then newly constructed, but were drawn forthfrom a large store ready-made. They were now approaching thewindow to come in again.
'That is a flesh-coloured variety,' said Mrs. Swancourt. 'Butoleanders, though they are such bulky shrubs, are so very easilywounded as to be unprunable--giants with the sensitiveness ofyoung ladies. Oh, here is Elfride!'
Elfride looked as guilty and crestfallen as Lady Teazle at thedropping of the screen. Mrs. Swancourt presented him halfcomically, and Knight in a minute or two placed himself beside theyoung lady.
A complexity of instincts checked Elfride's conventional smiles ofcomplaisance and hospitality; and, to make her still lesscomfortable, Mrs. Swancourt immediately afterwards left themtogether to seek her husband. Mr. Knight, however, did not seemat all incommoded by his feelings, and he said with lighteasefulness:
'So, Miss Swancourt, I have met you at last. You escaped me by afew minutes only when we were in London.'
'Yes. I found that you had seen Mrs. Swancourt.'
'And now reviewer and reviewed are face to face,' he addedunconcernedly.
'Yes: though the fact of your being a relation of Mrs. Swancourt'stakes off the edge of it. It was strange that you should be oneof her family all the time.' Elfride began to recover herself now,and to look into Knight's face. 'I was merely anxious to let youknow my REAL meaning in writing the book--extremely anxious.'
'I can quite understand the wish; and I was gratified that myremarks should have reached home. They very seldom do, I amafraid.'
Elfride drew herself in. Here he was, sticking to his opinions asfirmly as if friendship and politeness did not in the leastrequire an immediate renunciation of them.
'You made me very uneasy and sorry by writing such things!' shemurmured, suddenly dropping the mere cacueterie of a fashionablefirst introduction, and speaking with some of the dudgeon of achild towards a severe schoolmaster.
'That is rather the object of honest critics in such a case. Notto cause unnecessary sorrow, but: "To make you sorry after aproper manner, that ye may receive damage by us in nothing," as apowerful pen once wrote to the Gentiles. Are you going to writeanother romance?'
'Write another?' she said. 'That somebody may pen a condemnationand "nail't wi' Scripture" again, as you do now, Mr. Knight?'
'You may do better next time,' he said placidly: 'I think youwill. But I would advise you to confine yourself to domesticscenes.'
'Thank you. But never again!'
'Well, you may be right. That a young woman has taken to writingis not by any means the best thing to hear about her.'
'What is the best?'
'I prefer not to say.'
'Do you know? Then, do tell me, please.'
'Well'--(Knight was evidently changing his meaning)--'I suppose tohear that she has married.'
Elfride hesitated. 'And what when she has been married?' she saidat last, partly in order to withdraw her own person from theargument.
'Then to hear no more about her. It is as Smeaton said of hislighthouse: her greatest real praise, when the novelty of herinauguration has worn off, is that nothing happens to keep thetalk of her alive.'
'Yes, I see,' said Elfride softly and thoughtfully. 'But ofcourse it is different quite with men. Why don't you writenovels, Mr. Knight?'
'Because I couldn't write one that would interest anybody.'
'Why?'
'For several reasons. It requires a judicious omission of yourreal thoughts to make a novel popular, for one thing.'
free to fixitself on the work.
'Is that really necessary? Well, I am sure you could learn to dothat with practice,' said Elfride with an ex-cathedra air, asbecame a person who spoke from experience in the art. 'You wouldmake a great name for certain,' she continued.
'So many people make a name nowadays, that it is moredistinguished to remain in obscurity.'
schoolmaster.corridor, and entered .
'Tell me seriously--apart from the subject--why don't you write avolume instead of loose articles?' she insisted.
'Since you are pleased to make me talk of myself, I will tell youseriously,' said Knight, not less amused at this catechism by hisyoung friend than he was interested in her appearance. 'As I haveimplied, I have not the wish. And if I had the wish, I could notnow concentrate sufficiently. We all have only our one cruse ofenergy given us to make the best of. And where that energy hasbeen leaked away week by week, quarter by quarter, as mine has forthe last nine or ten years, there is not enough dammed back behindthe mill at any given period to supply the force a complete bookon any subject requires. Then there is the self-confidence andwaiting power. Where quick results have grown customary, they arefatal to a lively faith in the future.'
'Yes, I comprehend; and so you choose to write in fragments?'
'No, I don't choose to do it in the sense you mean; choosing froma whole world of professions, all possible. It was by theconstraint of accident merely. Not that I object to theaccident.'
'Why don't you object--I mean, why do you feel so quiet aboutthings?' Elfride was half afraid to question him so, but herintense curiosity to see what the inside of literary Mr. Knightwas like, kept her going on.
Knight certainly did not mind being frank with her. Instances ofthis trait in men who are not without feeling, but are reticentfrom habit, may be recalled by all of us. When they find alistener who can by no possibility make use of them, rival them,or condemn them, reserved and even suspicious men of the worldbecome frank, keenly enjoying the inner side of their frankness.
'Why I don't mind the accidental constraint,' he replied, 'isbecause, in making beginnings, a chance limitation of direction isoften better than absolute freedom.'
'Why, this: That an arbitrary foundation for one's work, which nolength of thought can alter, leaves the attention free to fixitself on the work itself, and make the best of it.'
'Lateral compression forcing altitude, as would be said in thattongue,' she said mischievously. 'And I suppose where no limitexists, as in the case of a rich man with a wide taste who wantsto do something, it will be better to choose a limit capriciouslythan to have none.'
'Yes,' he said meditatively. 'I can go as far as that.'
'Well,' resumed Elfride, 'I think it better for a man's nature ifhe does nothing in particular.'
'There is such a case as being obliged to.'
'Yes, yes; I was speaking of when you are not obliged for anyother reason than delight in the prospect of fame. I have thoughtmany times lately that a thin widespread happiness, commencingnow, and of a piece with the days of your life, is preferable toan anticipated heap far away in the future, and none now.'
'Why, that's the very thing I said just now as being the principleof all ephemeral doers like myself.'
'Oh, I am sorry to have parodied you,' she said with someconfusion. 'Yes, of course. That is what you meant about nottrying to be famous.' And she added, with the quickness ofconviction characteristic of her mind: 'There is much littlenessin trying to be great. A man must think a good deal of himself,and be conceited enough to believe in himself, before he tries atall.'
'But it is soon enough to say there is harm in a man's thinking agood deal of himself when it is proved he has been thinking wrong,and too soon then sometimes. Besides, we should not conclude thata man who strives earnestly for success does so with a strongsense of his own merit. He may see how little success has to dowith merit, and his motive may be his very humility.'
This manner of treating her rather provoked Elfride. No soonerdid she agree with him than he ceased to seem to wish it, and tookthe other side. 'Ah,' she thought inwardly, 'I shall have nothingto do with a man of this kind, though he is our visitor.'
'I think you will find,' resumed Knight, pursuing the conversationmore for the sake of finishing off his thoughts on the subjectthan for engaging her attention, 'that in actual life it is merelya matter of instinct with men--this trying to push on. They awaketo a recognition that they have, without premeditation, begun totry a little, and they say to themselves, "Since I have tried thusmuch, I will try a little more." They go on because they havebegun.'
Elfride, in her turn, was not particularly attending to his wordsat this moment. She had, unconsciously to herself, a way ofseizing any point in the remarks of an interlocutor whichinterested her, and dwelling upon it, and thinking thoughts of herown thereupon, totally oblivious of all that he might say incontinuation. On such occasions she artlessly surveyed the personspeaking; and then there was a time for a painter. Her eyesseemed to look at you, and past you, as you were then, into yourfuture; and past your future into your eternity--not reading it,but gazing in an unused, unconscious way--her mind still clingingto its original thought.
This is how she was looking at Knight.
Suddenly Elfride became conscious of what she was doing, and waspainfully confused.
'What were you so intent upon in me?' he inquired.
'As far as I was thinking of you at all, I was thinking how cleveryou are,' she said, with a want of premeditation that wasstartling in its honesty and simplicity.
Feeling restless now that she had so unwittingly spoken, she aroseand stepped to the window, having heard the voices of her fatherand Mrs. Swancourt coming up below the terrace. 'Here they are,'she said, going out. Knight walked out upon the lawn behind her.She stood upon the edge of the terrace, close to the stonebalustrade, and looked towards the sun, hanging over a glade justnow fair as Tempe's vale, up which her father was walking.
Knight could not help looking at her. The sun was within tendegrees of the horizon, and its warm light flooded her face andheightened the bright rose colour of her cheeks to a vermilionred, their moderate pink hue being only seen in its natural tonewhere the cheek curved round into shadow. The ends of her hanginghair softly dragged themselves backwards and forwards upon hershoulder as each faint breeze thrust against or relinquished it.Fringes and ribbons of her dress, moved by the same breeze, lickedlike tongues upon the parts around them, and fluttering forwardfrom shady folds caught likewise their share of the lustrousorange glow.
write in fragments?'foundation.
Mr. Swancourt shouted out a welcome to Knight from a distance ofabout thirty yards, and after a few preliminary words proceeded toa conversation of deep earnestness on Knight's fine old familyname, and theories as to lineage and intermarriage connectedtherewith. Knight's portmanteau having in the meantime arrived,they soon retired to prepare for dinner, which had been postponedtwo hours later than the usual time of that meal.
An arrival was an event in the life of Elfride, now that they wereagain in the country, and that of Knight necessarily an engrossingone. And that evening she went to bed for the first time withoutthinking of Stephen at all.