内河航程 英文版 An Inland Voyage
罗伯特.路易斯.史蒂文森 Robert Louis Stevenson
DOWN THE OISE: TO MOY
Carnival notoriously cheated us at first. Finding us easy in ourways, he regretted having let us off so cheaply; and taking measide, told me a cock-and-bull story with the moral of another fivefrancs for the narrator. The thing was palpably absurd; but I paidup, and at once dropped all friendliness of manner, and kept him inhis place as an inferior with freezing British dignity. He saw ina moment that he had gone too far, and killed a willing horse; hisface fell; I am sure he would have refunded if he could only havethought of a decent pretext. He wished me to drink with him, but Iwould none of his drinks. He grew pathetically tender in hisprofessions; but I walked beside him in silence or answered him instately courtesies; and when we got to the landing-place, passedthe word in English slang to the Cigarette.
In spite of the false scent we had thrown out the day before, theremust have been fifty people about the bridge. We were as pleasantas we could be with all but Carnival. We said good-bye, shakinghands with the old gentleman who knew the river and the younggentleman who had a smattering of English; but never a word forCarnival. Poor Carnival! here was a humiliation. He who had beenso much identified with the canoes, who had given orders in ourname, who had shown off the boats and even the boatmen like aprivate exhibition of his own, to be now so publicly shamed by thelions of his caravan! I never saw anybody look more crestfallenthan he. He hung in the background, coming timidly forward everand again as he thought he saw some symptom of a relenting humour,and falling hurriedly back when he encountered a cold stare. Letus hope it will be a lesson to him.
I would not have mentioned Carnival's peccadillo had not the thingbeen so uncommon in France. This, for instance, was the only caseof dishonesty or even sharp practice in our whole voyage. We talkvery much about our honesty in England. It is a good rule to be onyour guard wherever you hear great professions about a very littlepiece of virtue. If the English could only hear how they arespoken of abroad, they might confine themselves for a while toremedying the fact; and perhaps even when that was done, give usfewer of their airs.
The young ladies, the graces of Origny, were not present at ourstart, but when we got round to the second bridge, behold, it wasblack with sightseers! We were loudly cheered, and for a good waybelow, young lads and lasses ran along the bank still cheering.What with current and paddling, we were flashing along likeswallows. It was no joke to keep up with us upon the woody shore.But the girls picked up their skirts, as if they were sure they hadgood ankles, and followed until their breath was out. The last toweary were the three graces and a couple of companions; and just asthey too had had enough, the foremost of the three leaped upon atree-stump and kissed her hand to the canoeists. Not Dianaherself, although this was more of a Venus after all, could havedone a graceful thing more gracefully. 'Come back again!' shecried; and all the others echoed her; and the hills about Orignyrepeated the words, 'Come back.' But the river had us round anangle in a twinkling, and we were alone with the green trees andrunning water.
Come back? There is no coming back, young ladies, on the impetuousstream of life.
'The merchant bows unto the seaman's star,The ploughman from the sun his season takes.'
And we must all set our pocket-watches by the clock of fate. Thereis a headlong, forthright tide, that bears away man with hisfancies like a straw, and runs fast in time and space. It is fullof curves like this, your winding river of the Oise; and lingersand returns in pleasant pastorals; and yet, rightly thought upon,never returns at all. For though it should revisit the same acreof meadow in the same hour, it will have made an ample sweepbetween-whiles; many little streams will have fallen in; manyexhalations risen towards the sun; and even although it were thesame acre, it will no more be the same river of Oise. And thus, Ograces of Origny, although the wandering fortune of my life shouldcarry me back again to where you await death's whistle by theriver, that will not be the old I who walks the street; and thosewives and mothers, say, will those be you?
There was never any mistake about the Oise, as a matter of fact.In these upper reaches it was still in a prodigious hurry for thesea. It ran so fast and merrily, through all the windings of itschannel, that I strained my thumb, fighting with the rapids, andhad to paddle all the rest of the way with one hand turned up.Sometimes it had to serve mills; and being still a little river,ran very dry and shallow in the meanwhile. We had to put our legsout of the boat, and shove ourselves off the sand of the bottomwith our feet. And still it went on its way singing among thepoplars, and making a green valley in the world. After a goodwoman, and a good book, and tobacco, there is nothing so agreeableon earth as a river. I forgave it its attempt on my life; whichwas after all one part owing to the unruly winds of heaven that hadblown down the tree, one part to my own mismanagement, and only athird part to the river itself, and that not out of malice, butfrom its great preoccupation over its business of getting to thesea. A difficult business, too; for the detours it had to make arenot to be counted. The geographers seem to have given up theattempt; for I found no map represent the infinite contortion ofits course. A fact will say more than any of them. After we hadbeen some hours, three if I mistake not, flitting by the trees atthis smooth, break-neck gallop, when we came upon a hamlet andasked where we were, we had got no farther than four kilometres(say two miles and a half) from Origny. If it were not for thehonour of the thing (in the Scots saying), we might almost as wellhave been standing still.
We lunched on a meadow inside a parallelogram of poplars. Theleaves danced and prattled in the wind all round about us. Theriver hurried on meanwhile, and seemed to chide at our delay.Little we cared. The river knew where it was going; not so we:the less our hurry, where we found good quarters and a pleasanttheatre for a pipe. At that hour, stockbrokers were shouting inParis Bourse for two or three per cent.; but we minded them aslittle as the sliding stream, and sacrificed a hecatomb of minutesto the gods of tobacco and digestion. Hurry is the resource of thefaithless. Where a man can trust his own heart, and those of hisfriends, to-morrow is as good as to-day. And if he die in themeanwhile, why then, there he dies, and the question is solved.
We had to take to the canal in the course of the afternoon;because, where it crossed the river, there was, not a bridge, but asiphon. If it had not been for an excited fellow on the bank, weshould have paddled right into the siphon, and thenceforward notpaddled any more. We met a man, a gentleman, on the tow-path, whowas much interested in our cruise. And I was witness to a strangeseizure of lying suffered by the Cigarette: who, because his knifecame from Norway, narrated all sorts of adventures in that country,where he has never been. He was quite feverish at the end, andpleaded demoniacal possession.
Moy (pronounce Moy) was a pleasant little village, gathered round achateau in a moat. The air was perfumed with hemp fromneighbouring fields. At the Golden Sheep we found excellententertainment. German shells from the siege of La Fere, Nurnbergfigures, gold-fish in a bowl, and all manner of knick-knacks,embellished the public room. The landlady was a stout, plain,short-sighted, motherly body, with something not far short of agenius for cookery. She had a guess of her excellence herself.After every dish was sent in, she would come and look on at thedinner for a while, with puckered, blinking eyes. 'C'est bon,n'est-ce pas?' she would say; and when she had received a properanswer, she disappeared into the kitchen. That common French dish,partridge and cabbages, became a new thing in my eyes at the GoldenSheep; and many subsequent dinners have bitterly disappointed me inconsequence. Sweet was our rest in the Golden Sheep at Moy.