一双蓝眼睛 英文版 A Pair of Blue Eyes
托马斯.哈代 Thomas Hardy
Chapter XXV
'Mine own familiar friend.'
During these days of absence Stephen lived under alternateconditions. Whenever his emotions were active, he was in agony.Whenever he was not in agony, the business in hand had driven outof his mind by sheer force all deep reflection on the subject ofElfride and love.
By the time he took his return journey at the week's end, Stephenhad very nearly worked himself up to an intention to call and seeher face to face. On this occasion also he adopted his favouriteroute--by the little summer steamer from Bristol to CastleBoterel; the time saved by speed on the railway being wasted atjunctions, and in following a devious course.
It was a bright silent evening at the beginning of September whenSmith again set foot in the little town. He felt inclined tolinger awhile upon the quay before ascending the hills, havingformed a romantic intention to go home by way of her house, yetnot wishing to wander in its neighbourhood till the evening shadesshould sufficiently screen him from observation.
And thus waiting for night's nearer approach, he watched theplacid scene, over which the pale luminosity of the west cast asorrowful monochrome, that became slowly embrowned by the dusk. Astar appeared, and another, and another. They sparkled amid theyards and rigging of the two coal brigs lying alangside, as ifthey had been tiny lamps suspended in the ropes. The masts rockedsleepily to the infinitesimal flux of the tide, which clucked andgurgled with idle regularity in nooks and holes of the harbourwall.
The twilight was now quite pronounced enough for his purpose; andas, rather sad at heart, he was about to move on, a little boatcontaining two persons glided up the middle of the harbour withthe lightness of a shadow. The boat came opposite him, passed on,and touched the landing-steps at the further end. One of itsoccupants was a man, as Stephen had known by the easy stroke ofthe oars. When the pair ascended the steps, and came into greaterprominence, he was enabled to discern that the second personagewas a woman; also that she wore a white decoration--apparently afeather--in her hat or bonnet, which spot of white was the onlydistinctly visible portion of her clothing.
Stephen remained a moment in their rear, and they passed on, whenhe pursued his way also, and soon forgot the circumstance. Havingcrossed a bridge, forsaken the high road, and entered the footpathwhich led up the vale to West Endelstow, he heard a little wicketclick softly together some yards ahead. By the time that Stephenhad reached the wicket and passed it, he heard another click ofprecisely the same nature from another gate yet further on.Clearly some person or persons were preceding him along the path,their footsteps being rendered noiseless by the soft carpet ofturf. Stephen now walked a little quicker, and perceived twoforms. One of them bore aloft the white feather he had noticed inthe woman's hat on the quay: they were the couple he had seen inthe boat. Stephen dropped a little further to the rear.
From the bottom of the valley, along which the path had hithertolain, beside the margin of the trickling streamlet, another pathnow diverged, and ascended the slope of the left-hand hill. Thisfootway led only to the residence of Mrs. Swancourt and a cottageor two in its vicinity. No grass covered this diverging path inportions of its length, and Stephen was reminded that the pair infront of him had taken this route by the occasional rattle ofloose stones under their feet. Stephen climbed in the samedirection, but for some undefined reason he trod more softly thandid those preceding him. His mind was unconsciously in exerciseupon whom the woman might be--whether a visitor to The Crags, aservant, or Elfride. He put it to himself yet more forcibly;could the lady be Elfride? A possible reason for her unaccountablefailure to keep the appointment with him returned with painfulforce.
They entered the grounds of the house by the side wicket, whencethe path, now wide and well trimmed, wound fantastically throughthe shrubbery to an octagonal pavilion called the Belvedere, byreason of the comprehensive view over the adjacent district thatits green seats afforded. The path passed this erection and wenton to the house as well as to the gardener's cottage on the otherside, straggling thence to East Endelstow; so that Stephen felt nohesitation in entering a promenade which could scarcely be calledprivate.
He fancied that he heard the gate open and swing together againbehind him. Turning, he saw nobody.
The people of the boat came to the summer-house. One of themspoke.
'I am afraid we shall get a scolding for being so late.'
Stephen instantly recognised the familiar voice, richer and fullernow than it used to be. 'Elfride!' he whispered to himself, andheld fast by a sapling, to steady himself under the agitation herpresence caused him. His heart swerved from its beat; he shunnedreceiving the meaning he sought.
'A breeze is rising again; how the ash tree rustles!' saidElfride. 'Don't you hear it? I wonder what the time is.'
Stephen relinquished the sapling.
I will get a light and tell you. Step into the summer-house; theair is quiet there.'
The cadence of that voice--its peculiarity seemed to come home tohim like that of some notes of the northern birds on his return tohis native clime, as an old natural thing renewed, yet notparticularly noticed as natural before that renewal.
They entered the Belvedere. In the lower part it was formed ofclose wood-work nailed crosswise, and had openings in the upper byway of windows.
The scratch of a striking light was heard, and a bright glowradiated from the interior of the building. The light gave birthto dancing leaf-shadows, stem-shadows, lustrous streaks, dots,sparkles, and threads of silver sheen of all imaginable varietyand transience. It awakened gnats, which flew towards it,revealed shiny gossamer threads, disturbed earthworms. Stephengave but little attention to these phenomena, and less time. Hesaw in the summer-house a strongly illuminated picture.
First, the face of his friend and preceptor Henry Knight, betweenwhom and himself an estrangement had arisen, not from any definitecauses beyond those of absence, increasing age, and divergingsympathies.
Next, his bright particular star, Elfride. The face of Elfridewas more womanly than when she had called herself his, but asclear and healthy as ever. Her plenteous twines of beautiful hairwere looking much as usual, with the exception of a slightmodification in their arrangement in deference to the changes offashion.
Their two foreheads were close together, almost touching, and bothwere looking down. Elfride was holding her watch, Knight washolding the light with one hand, his left arm being round herwaist. Part of the scene reached Stephen's eyes through thehorizontal bars of woodwork, which crossed their forms like theribs of a skeleton.
Knight's arm stole still further round the waist of Elfride.
'It is half-past eight,' she said in a low voice, which had apeculiar music in it, seemingly born of a thrill of pleasure atthe new proof that she was beloved.
The flame dwindled down, died away, and all was wrapped in adarkness to which the gloom before the illumination bore nocomparison in apparent density. Stephen, shattered in spirit andsick to his heart's centre, turned away. In turning, he saw ashadowy outline behind the summer-house on the other side. Hiseyes grew accustomed to the darkness. Was the form a human form,or was it an opaque bush of juniper?
The lovers arose, brushed against the laurestines, and pursuedtheir way to the house. The indistinct figure had moved, and nowpassed across Smith's front. So completely enveloped was theperson, that it was impossible to discern him or her any more thanas a shape. The shape glided noiselessly on.
Stephen stepped forward, fearing any mischief was intended to theother two. 'Who are you?' he said.
'Never mind who I am,' answered a weak whisper from the envelopingfolds. 'WHAT I am, may she be! Perhaps I knew well--ah, so well!--a youth whose place you took, as he there now takes yours. Willyou let her break your heart, and bring you to an untimely grave,as she did the one before you?'
'You are Mrs. Jethway, I think. What do you do here? And why doyou talk so wildly?'
'Because my heart is desolate, and nobody cares about it. Mayhers be so that brought trouble upon me!'
'Silence!' said Stephen, staunch to Elfride in spite of himself'She would harm nobody wilfully, never would she! How do you comehere?'
'I saw the two coming up the path, and wanted to learn if she werenot one of them. Can I help disliking her if I think of the past?Can I help watching her if I remember my boy? Can I help ill-wishing her if I well-wish him?'
The bowed form went on, passed through the wicket, and wasenveloped by the shadows of the field.
Stephen had heard that Mrs. Jethway, since the death of her son,had become a crazed, forlorn woman; and bestowing a pityingthought upon her, he dismissed her fancied wrongs from his mind,but not her condemnation of Elfride's faithlessness. That enteredinto and mingled with the sensations his new experience hadbegotten. The tale told by the little scene he had witnessed ranparallel with the unhappy woman's opinion, which, however baselessit might have been antecedently, had become true enough asregarded himself.
A slow weight of despair, as distinct from a violent paroxysm asstarvation from a mortal shot, filled him and wrung him body andsoul. The discovery had not been altogether unexpected, forthroughout his anxiety of the last few days since the night in thechurchyard, he had been inclined to construe the uncertaintyunfavourably for himself. His hopes for the best had been butperiodic interruptions to a chronic fear of the worst.
A strange concomitant of his misery was the singularity of itsform. That his rival should be Knight, whom once upon a time hehad adored as a man is very rarely adored by another in moderntimes, and whom he loved now, added deprecation to sorrow, andcynicism to both. Henry Knight, whose praises he had sofrequently trumpeted in her ears, of whom she had actually beenjealous, lest she herself should be lessened in Stephen's love onaccount of him, had probably won her the more easily by reason ofthose very praises which he had only ceased to utter by hercommand. She had ruled him like a queen in that matter, as in allothers. Stephen could tell by her manner, brief as had been hisobservation of it, and by her words, few as they were, that herposition was far different with Knight. That she looked up at andadored her new lover from below his pedestal, was even moreperceptible than that she had smiled down upon Stephen from aheight above him.
The suddenness of Elfride's renunciation of himself was food formore torture. To an unimpassioned outsider, it admitted of atleast two interpretations--it might either have proceeded from anendeavour to be faithful to her first choice, till the lover seenabsolutely overpowered the lover remembered, or from a wish not tolose his love till sure of the love of another. But to StephenSmith the motive involved in the latter alternative made ituntenable where Elfride was the actor.
He mused on her letters to him, in which she had never mentioned asyllable concerning Knight. It is desirable, however, to observethat only in two letters could she possibly have done so. One waswritten about a week before Knight's arrival, when, though she didnot mention his promised coming to Stephen, she had hardly adefinite reason in her mind for neglecting to do it. In the nextshe did casually allude to Knight. But Stephen had left Bombaylong before that letter arrived.
Stephen looked at the black form of the adjacent house, where itcut a dark polygonal notch out of the sky, and felt that he hatedthe spot. He did not know many facts of the case, but could nothelp instinctively associating Elfride's fickleness with themarriage of her father, and their introduction to London society.He closed the iron gate bounding the shrubbery as noiselessly ashe had opened it, and went into the grassy field. Here he couldsee the old vicarage, the house alone that was associated with thesweet pleasant time of his incipient love for Elfride. Turningsadly from the place that was no longer a nook in which histhoughts might nestle when he was far away, he wandered in thedirection of the east village, to reach his father's house beforethey retired to rest.
The nearest way to the cottage was by crossing the park. He didnot hurry. Happiness frequently has reason for haste, but it isseldom that desolation need scramble or strain. Sometimes hepaused under the low-hanging arms of the trees, looking vacantlyon the ground.
Stephen was standing thus, scarcely less crippled in thought thanhe was blank in vision, when a clear sound permeated the quiet airabout him, and spread on far beyond. The sound was the stroke ofa bell from the tower of East Endelstow Church, which stood in adell not forty yards from Lord Luxellian's mansion, and within thepark enclosure. Another stroke greeted his ear, and gavecharacter to both: then came a slow succession of them.
'Somebody is dead,' he said aloud.
The death-knell of an inhabitant of the eastern parish was beingtolled.
An unusual feature in the tolling was that it had not been begunaccording to the custom in Endelstow and other parishes in theneighbourhood. At every death the sex and age of the deceasedwere announced by a system of changes. Three times three strokessignified that the departed one was a man; three times two, awoman; twice three, a boy; twice two, a girl. The regularcontinuity of the tolling suggested that it was the resumptionrather than the beginning of a knell--the opening portion of whichStephen had not been near enough to hear.
The momentary anxiety he had felt with regard to his parentspassed away. He had left them in perfect health, and had anyserious illness seized either, a communication would have reachedhim ere this. At the same time, since his way homeward lay underthe churchyard yews, he resolved to look into the belfry inpassing by, and speak a word to Martin Cannister, who would bethere.
Stephen reached the brow of the hill, and felt inclined torenounce his idea. His mood was such that talking to any personto whom he could not unburden himself would be wearisome.However, before he could put any inclination into effect, theyoung man saw from amid the trees a bright light shining, the raysfrom which radiated like needles through the sad plumy foliage ofthe yews. Its direction was from the centre of the churchyard.
Stephen mechanically went forward. Never could there be a greatercontrast between two places of like purpose than between thisgraveyard and that of the further village. Here the grass wascarefully tended, and formed virtually a part of the manor-houselawn; flowers and shrubs being planted indiscriminately over both,whilst the few graves visible were mathematically exact in shapeand smoothness, appearing in the daytime like chins newly shaven.There was no wall, the division between God's Acre and LordLuxellian's being marked only by a few square stones set atequidistant points. Among those persons who have romanticsentiments on the subject of their last dwelling-place, probablythe greater number would have chosen such a spot as this inpreference to any other: a few would have fancied a constraint inits trim neatness, and would have preferred the wild hill-top ofthe neighbouring site, with Nature in her most negligent attire.
The light in the churchyard he next discovered to have its sourcein a point very near the ground, and Stephen imagined it mightcome from a lantern in the interior of a partly-dug grave. But anearer approach showed him that its position was immediately underthe wall of the aisle, and within the mouth of an archway. Hecould now hear voices, and the truth of the whole matter began todawn upon him. Walking on towards the opening, Smith discerned onhis left hand a heap of earth, and before him a flight of stonesteps which the removed earth had uncovered, leading down underthe edifice. It was the entrance to a large family vault,extending under the north aisle.
Stephen had never before seen it open, and descending one or twosteps stooped to look under the arch. The vault appeared to becrowded with coffins, with the exception of an open central space,which had been necessarily kept free for ingress and access to thesides, round three of which the coffins were stacked in stone binsor niches.
The place was well lighted with candles stuck in slips of woodthat were fastened to the wall. On making the descent of anotherstep the living inhabitants of the vault were recognizable. Theywere his father the master-mason, an under-mason, MartinCannister, and two or three young and old labouring-men. Crowbarsand workmen's hammers were scattered about. The whole company,sitting round on coffins which had been removed from their places,apparently for some alteration or enlargement of the vault, wereeating bread and cheese, and drinking ale from a cup with twohandles, passed round from each to each.
'Who is dead?' Stephen inquired, stepping down.