一双蓝眼睛 英文版 A Pair of Blue Eyes
托马斯.哈代 Thomas Hardy
Chapter XXII
'A woman's way.'
He still clutched the face of the escarpment--not with thefrenzied hold of despair, but with a dogged determination to makethe most of his every jot of endurance, and so give the longestpossible scope to Elfride's intentions, whatever they might be.
He reclined hand in hand with the world in its infancy. Not ablade, not an insect, which spoke of the present, was between himand the past. The inveterate antagonism of these black precipicesto all strugglers for life is in no way more forcibly suggestedthan by the paucity of tufts of grass, lichens, or confervae ontheir outermost ledges.
Knight pondered on the meaning of Elfride's hasty disappearance,but could not avoid an instinctive conclusion that there existedbut a doubtful hope for him. As far as he could judge, his solechance of deliverance lay in the possibility of a rope or polebeing brought; and this possibility was remote indeed. The soilupon these high downs was left so untended that they wereunenclosed for miles, except by a casual bank or dry wall, andwere rarely visited but for the purpose of collecting or countingthe flock which found a scanty means of subsistence thereon.
At first, when death appeared improbable, because it had nevervisited him before, Knight could think of no future, nor ofanything connected with his past. He could only look sternly atNature's treacherous attempt to put an end to him, and strive tothwart her.
From the fact that the cliff formed the inner face of the segmentof a huge cylinder, having the sky for a top and the sea for abottom, which enclosed the cove to the extent of more than asemicircle, he could see the vertical face curving round on eachside of him. He looked far down the facade, and realized morethoroughly how it threatened him. Grimness was in every feature,and to its very bowels the inimical shape was desolation.
By one of those familiar conjunctions of things wherewith theinanimate world baits the mind of man when he pauses in moments ofsuspense, opposite Knight's eyes was an imbedded fossil, standingforth in low relief from the rock. It was a creature with eyes.The eyes, dead and turned to stone, were even now regarding him.It was one of the early crustaceans called Trilobites. Separatedby millions of years in their lives, Knight and this underlingseemed to have met in their death. It was the single instancewithin reach of his vision of anything that had ever been aliveand had had a body to save, as he himself had now.
The creature represented but a low type of animal existence, fornever in their vernal years had the plains indicated by thosenumberless slaty layers been traversed by an intelligence worthyof the name. Zoophytes, mollusca, shell-fish, were the highestdevelopments of those ancient dates. The immense lapses of timeeach formation represented had known nothing of the dignity ofman. They were grand times, but they were mean times too, andmean were their relics. He was to be with the small in his death.
Knight was a geologist; and such is the supremacy of habit overoccasion, as a pioneer of the thoughts of men, that at thisdreadful juncture his mind found time to take in, by a momentarysweep, the varied scenes that had had their day between thiscreature's epoch and his own. There is no place like a cleftlandscape for bringing home such imaginings as these.
Time closed up like a fan before him. He saw himself at oneextremity of the years, face to face with the beginning and allthe intermediate centuries simultaneously. Fierce men, clothed inthe hides of beasts, and carrying, for defence and attack, hugeclubs and pointed spears, rose from the rock, like the phantomsbefore the doomed Macbeth. They lived in hollows, woods, and mudhuts--perhaps in caves of the neighbouring rocks. Behind themstood an earlier band. No man was there. Huge elephantine forms,the mastodon, the hippopotamus, the tapir, antelopes of monstroussize, the megatherium, and the myledon--all, for the moment, injuxtaposition. Further back, and overlapped by these, wereperched huge-billed birds and swinish creatures as large ashorses. Still more shadowy were the sinister crocodilianoutlines--alligators and other uncouth shapes, culminating in thecolossal lizard, the iguanodon. Folded behind were dragon formsand clouds of flying reptiles: still underneath were fishy beingsof lower development; and so on, till the lifetime scenes of thefossil confronting him were a present and modern condition ofthings. These images passed before Knight's inner eye in lessthan half a minute, and he was again considering the actualpresent. Was he to die? The mental picture of Elfride in theworld, without himself to cherish her, smote his heart like awhip. He had hoped for deliverance, but what could a girl do? Hedared not move an inch. Was Death really stretching out his hand?The previous sensation, that it was improbable he would die, wasfainter now.
in the extreme to see Henry Knight, to whomElfride.
However, Knight still clung to the cliff.
To those musing weather-beaten West-country folk who pass thegreater part of their days and nights out of doors, Nature seemsto have moods in other than a poetical sense: predilections forcertain deeds at certain times, without any apparent law to governor season to account for them. She is read as a person with acurious temper; as one who does not scatter kindnesses andcruelties alternately, impartially, and in order, but heartlessseverities or overwhelming generosities in lawless caprice. Man'scase is always that of the prodigal's favourite or the miser'spensioner. In her unfriendly moments there seems a feline fun inher tricks, begotten by a foretaste of her pleasure in swallowingthe victim.
Such a way of thinking had been absurd to Knight, but he began toadopt it now. He was first spitted on to a rock. New torturesfollowed. The rain increased, and persecuted him with anexceptional persistency which he was moved to believe owed itscause to the fact that he was in such a wretched state already.An entirely new order of things could be observed in thisintroduction of rain upon the scene. It rained upwards instead ofdown. The strong ascending air carried the rain-drops with it inits race up the escarpment, coming to him with such velocity thatthey stuck into his flesh like cold needles. Each drop wasvirtually a shaft, and it pierced him to his skin. The water-shafts seemed to lift him on their points: no downward rain everhad such a torturing effect. In a brief space he was drenched,except in two places. These were on the top of his shoulders andon the crown of his hat.
The wind, though not intense in other situations was strong here.It tugged at his coat and lifted it. We are mostly accustomed tolook upon all opposition which is not animate, as that of thestolid, inexorable hand of indifference, which wears out thepatience more than the strength. Here, at any rate, hostility didnot assume that slow and sickening form. It was a cosmic agency,active, lashing, eager for conquest: determination; not aninsensate standing in the way.
Knight had over-estimated the strength of his hands. They weregetting weak already. 'She will never come again; she has beengone ten minutes,' he said to himself.
This mistake arose from the unusual compression of his experiencesjust now: she had really been gone but three.
'As many more minutes will be my end,' he thought.
Next came another instance of the incapacity of the mind to makecomparisons at such times.
'This is a summer afternoon,' he said, 'and there can never havebeen such a heavy and cold rain on a summer day in my lifebefore.'
He was again mistaken. The rain was quite ordinary in quantity;the air in temperature. It was, as is usual, the menacingattitude in which they approached him that magnified their powers.
He again looked straight downwards, the wind and the water-dasheslifting his moustache, scudding up his cheeks, under his eyelids,and into his eyes. This is what he saw down there: the surface ofthe sea--visually just past his toes, and under his feet; actuallyone-eighth of a mile, or more than two hundred yards, below them.We colour according to our moods the objects we survey. The seawould have been a deep neutral blue, had happier auspices attendedthe gazer it was now no otherwise than distinctly black to hisvision. That narrow white border was foam, he knew well; but itsboisterous tosses were so distant as to appear a pulsation only,and its plashing was barely audible. A white border to a blacksea--his funeral pall and its edging.
The world was to some extent turned upside down for him. Raindescended from below. Beneath his feet was aerial space and theunknown; above him was the firm, familiar ground, and upon it allthat he loved best.
Pitiless nature had then two voices, and two only. The nearer wasthe voice of the wind in his ears rising and falling as it mauledand thrust him hard or softly. The second and distant one was themoan of that unplummetted ocean below and afar--rubbing itsrestless flank against the Cliff without a Name.
Knight perseveringly held fast. Had he any faith in Elfride?Perhaps. Love is faith, and faith, like a gathered flower, willrootlessly live on.
Nobody would have expected the sun to shine on such an evening asthis. Yet it appeared, low down upon the sea. Not with itsnatural golden fringe, sweeping the furthest ends of thelandscape, not with the strange glare of whiteness which itsometimes puts on as an alternative to colour, but as a splotch ofvermilion red upon a leaden ground--a red face looking on with adrunken leer.
Most men who have brains know it, and few are so foolish as todisguise this fact from themselves or others, even though anostentatious display may be called self-conceit. Knight, withoutshowing it much, knew that his intellect was above the average.And he thought--he could not help thinking--that his death wouldbe a deliberate loss to earth of good material; that such anexperiment in killing might have been practised upon some lessdeveloped life.
A fancy some people hold, when in a bitter mood, is thatinexorable circumstance only tries to prevent what intelligenceattempts. Renounce a desire for a long-contested position, and goon another tack, and after a while the prize is thrown at you,seemingly in disappointment that no more tantalizing is possible.
Knight gave up thoughts of life utterly and entirely, and turnedto contemplate the Dark Valley and the unknown future beyond.Into the shadowy depths of these speculations we will not followhim. Let it suffice to state what ensued.
At that moment of taking no more thought for this life, somethingdisturbed the outline of the bank above him. A spot appeared. Itwas the head of Elfride.
Knight immediately prepared to welcome life again.
The expression of a face consigned to utter loneliness, when afriend first looks in upon it, is moving in the extreme. Inrowing seaward to a light-ship or sea-girt lighthouse, where,without any immediate terror of death, the inmates experience thegloom of monotonous seclusion, the grateful eloquence of theircountenances at the greeting, expressive of thankfulness for thevisit, is enough to stir the emotions of the most carelessobserver.
Knight's upward look at Elfride was of a nature with, but fartranscending, such an instance as this. The lines of his face haddeepened to furrows, and every one of them thanked her visibly.His lips moved to the word 'Elfride,' though the emotion evolvedno sound. His eyes passed all description in their combination ofthe whole diapason of eloquence, from lover's deep love to fellow-man's gratitude for a token of remembrance from one of his kind.
Elfride had come back. What she had come to do he did not know.She could only look on at his death, perhaps. Still, she had comeback, and not deserted him utterly, and it was much.
let it down,' said Knight, already resuming hisposition of ruling power!
It was a novelty in the extreme to see Henry Knight, to whomElfride was but a child, who had swayed her as a tree sways abird's nest, who mastered her and made her weep most bitterly ather own insignificance, thus thankful for a sight of her face.She looked down upon him, her face glistening with rain and tears.He smiled faintly.
'How calm he is!' she thought. 'How great and noble he is to beso calm!' She would have died ten times for him then.
The gliding form of the steamboat caught her eye: she heeded it nolonger.
'Four minutes,' said Knight in a weaker voice than her own.
'But with a good hope of being saved?'
'Seven or eight.'
He now noticed that in her arms she bore a bundle of white linen,and that her form was singularly attenuated. So preternaturallythin and flexible was Elfride at this moment, that she appeared tobend under the light blows of the rain-shafts, as they struck intoher sides and bosom, and splintered into spray on her face. Thereis nothing like a thorough drenching for reducing theprotuberances of clothes, but Elfride's seemed to cling to herlike a glove.
Without heeding the attack of the clouds further than by raisingher hand and wiping away the spirts of rain when they went moreparticularly into her eyes, she sat down and hurriedly beganrending the linen into strips. These she knotted end to end, andafterwards twisted them like the strands of a cord. In a shortspace of time she had formed a perfect rope by this means, six orseven yards long.
'Can you wait while I bind it?' she said, anxiously extending hergaze down to him.
'Yes, if not very long. Hope has given me a wonderful instalmentof strength.'
Elfride dropped her eyes again, tore the remaining material intonarrow tape-like ligaments, knotted each to each as before, but ona smaller scale, and wound the lengthy string she had thus formedround and round the linen rope, which, without this binding, had atendency to spread abroad.
'Now,' said Knight, who, watching the proceedings intently, had bythis time not only grasped her scheme, but reasoned further on, 'Ican hold three minutes longer yet. And do you use the time intesting the strength of the knots, one by one.'
She at once obeyed, tested each singly by putting her foot on therope between each knot, and pulling with her hands. One of theknots slipped.
'Oh, think! It would have broken but for your forethought,'Elfride exclaimed apprehensively.
She retied the two ends. The rope was now firm in every part.
'When you have let it down,' said Knight, already resuming hisposition of ruling power, 'go back from the edge of the slope, andover the bank as far as the rope will allow you. Then lean down,and hold the end with both hands.'
He had first thought of a safer plan for his own deliverance, butit involved the disadvantage of possibly endangering her life.
'I have tied it round my waist,' she cried, 'and I will leandirectly upon the bank, holding with my hands as well.'
It was the arrangement he had thought of, but would not suggest.
'I will raise and drop it three times when I am behind the bank,'she continued, 'to signify that I am ready. Take care, oh, takethe greatest care, I beg you!'
She dropped the rope over him, to learn how much of its length itwould be necessary to expend on that side of the bank, went back,and disappeared as she had done before.
The rope was trailing by Knight's shoulders. In a few moments ittwitched three times.
He waited yet a second or two, then laid hold.
The incline of this upper portion of the precipice, to the lengthonly of a few feet, useless to a climber empty-handed, wasinvaluable now. Not more than half his weight depended entirelyon the linen rope. Half a dozen extensions of the arms,alternating with half a dozen seizures of the rope with his feet,brought him up to the level of the soil.
He was saved, and by Elfride.
He extended his cramped limbs like an awakened sleeper, and sprangover the bank.
At sight of him she leapt to her feet with almost a shriek of joy.Knight's eyes met hers, and with supreme eloquence the glance ofeach told a long-concealed tale of emotion in that short half-moment. Moved by an impulse neither could resist, they rantogether and into each other's arms.
At the moment of embracing, Elfride's eyes involuntarily flashedtowards the Puffin steamboat. It had doubled the point, and wasno longer to be seen.
An overwhelming rush of exultation at having delivered the man sherevered from one of the most terrible forms of death, shook thegentle girl to the centre of her soul. It merged in a defiance ofduty to Stephen, and a total recklessness as to plighted faith.Every nerve of her will was now in entire subjection to herfeeling--volition as a guiding power had forsaken her. To remainpassive, as she remained now, encircled by his arms, was asufficiently complete result--a glorious crown to all the years ofher life. Perhaps he was only grateful, and did not love her. Nomatter: it was infinitely more to be even the slave of the greaterthan the queen of the less. Some such sensation as this, thoughit was not recognized as a finished thought, raced along theimpressionable soul of Elfride.
Regarding their attitude, it was impossible for two persons to gonearer to a kiss than went Knight and Elfride during those minutesof impulsive embrace in the pelting rain. Yet they did not kiss.Knight's peculiarity of nature was such that it would not allowhim to take advantage of the unguarded and passionate avowal shehad tacitly made.
Elfride recovered herself, and gently struggled to be free.
He reluctantly relinquished her, and then surveyed her from crownto toe. She seemed as small as an infant. He perceived whenceshe had obtained the rope.
'Elfride, my Elfride!' he exclaimed in gratified amazement.
'I must leave you now,' she said, her face doubling its red, withan expression between gladness and shame 'You follow me, but atsome distance.'
'The rain and wind pierce you through; the chill will kill you.God bless you for such devotion! Take my coat and put it on.'
'No; I shall get warm running.'
Elfride had absolutely nothing between her and the weather but herexterior robe or 'costume.' The door had been made upon a woman'swit, and it had found its way out. Behind the bank, whilst Knightreclined upon the dizzy slope waiting for death, she had taken offher whole clothing, and replaced only her outer bodice and skirt.Every thread of the remainder lay upon the ground in the form of awoollen and cotton rope.
'I am used to being wet through,' she added. 'I have beendrenched on Pansy dozens of times. Good-bye till we meet, clothedand in our right minds, by the fireside at home!'
She then ran off from him through the pelting rain like a hare; ormore like a pheasant when, scampering away with a lowered tail, ithas a mind to fly, but does not. Elfride was soon out of sight.
Knight felt uncomfortably wet and chilled, but glowing withfervour nevertheless. He fully appreciated Elfride's girlishdelicacy in refusing his escort in the meagre habiliments shewore, yet felt that necessary abstraction of herself for a shorthalf-hour as a most grievous loss to him.
He gathered up her knotted and twisted plumage of linen, lace, andembroidery work, and laid it across his arm. He noticed on theground an envelope, limp and wet. In endeavouring to restore thisto its proper shape, he loosened from the envelope a piece ofpaper it had contained, which was seized by the wind in fallingfrom Knight's hand. It was blown to the right, blown to the left--it floated to the edge of the cliff and over the sea, where itwas hurled aloft. It twirled in the air, and then flew back overhis head.
Knight followed the paper, and secured it. Having done so, helooked to discover if it had been worth securing.
The troublesome sheet was a banker's receipt for two hundredpounds, placed to the credit of Miss Swancourt, which theimpractical girl had totally forgotten she carried with her.
Knight folded it as carefully as its moist condition would allow,put it in his pocket, and followed Elfride.