内河航程 英文版 An Inland Voyage
罗伯特.路易斯.史蒂文森 Robert Louis Stevenson
ANTWERP TO BOOM
We made a great stir in Antwerp Docks. A stevedore and a lot ofdock porters took up the two canoes, and ran with them for theslip. A crowd of children followed cheering. The Cigarette wentoff in a splash and a bubble of small breaking water. Next momentthe Arethusa was after her. A steamer was coming down, men on thepaddle-box shouted hoarse warnings, the stevedore and his porterswere bawling from the quay. But in a stroke or two the canoes wereaway out in the middle of the Scheldt, and all steamers, andstevedores, and other 'long-shore vanities were left behind.
The sun shone brightly; the tide was making--four jolly miles anhour; the wind blew steadily, with occasional squalls. For mypart, I had never been in a canoe under sail in my life; and myfirst experiment out in the middle of this big river was not madewithout some trepidation. What would happen when the wind firstcaught my little canvas? I suppose it was almost as trying aventure into the regions of the unknown as to publish a first book,or to marry. But my doubts were not of long duration; and in fiveminutes you will not be surprised to learn that I had tied mysheet.
I own I was a little struck by this circumstance myself; of course,in company with the rest of my fellow-men, I had always tied thesheet in a sailing-boat; but in so little and crank a concern as acanoe, and with these charging squalls, I was not prepared to findmyself follow the same principle; and it inspired me with somecontemptuous views of our regard for life. It is certainly easierto smoke with the sheet fastened; but I had never before weighed acomfortable pipe of tobacco against an obvious risk, and gravelyelected for the comfortable pipe. It is a commonplace, that wecannot answer for ourselves before we have been tried. But it isnot so common a reflection, and surely more consoling, that weusually find ourselves a great deal braver and better than wethought. I believe this is every one's experience: but anapprehension that they may belie themselves in the future preventsmankind from trumpeting this cheerful sentiment abroad. I wishsincerely, for it would have saved me much trouble, there had beensome one to put me in a good heart about life when I was younger;to tell me how dangers are most portentous on a distant sight; andhow the good in a man's spirit will not suffer itself to beoverlaid, and rarely or never deserts him in the hour of need. Butwe are all for tootling on the sentimental flute in literature; andnot a man among us will go to the head of the march to sound theheady drums.
It was agreeable upon the river. A barge or two went past ladenwith hay. Reeds and willows bordered the stream; and cattle andgrey venerable horses came and hung their mild heads over theembankment. Here and there was a pleasant village among trees,with a noisy shipping-yard; here and there a villa in a lawn. Thewind served us well up the Scheldt and thereafter up the Rupel; andwe were running pretty free when we began to sight the brickyardsof Boom, lying for a long way on the right bank of the river. Theleft bank was still green and pastoral, with alleys of trees alongthe embankment, and here and there a flight of steps to serve aferry, where perhaps there sat a woman with her elbows on herknees, or an old gentleman with a staff and silver spectacles. ButBoom and its brickyards grew smokier and shabbier with everyminute; until a great church with a clock, and a wooden bridge overthe river, indicated the central quarters of the town.
Boom is not a nice place, and is only remarkable for one thing:that the majority of the inhabitants have a private opinion thatthey can speak English, which is not justified by fact. This gavea kind of haziness to our intercourse. As for the Hotel de laNavigation, I think it is the worst feature of the place. Itboasts of a sanded parlour, with a bar at one end, looking on thestreet; and another sanded parlour, darker and colder, with anempty bird-cage and a tricolour subscription box by way of soleadornment, where we made shift to dine in the company of threeuncommunicative engineer apprentices and a silent bagman. Thefood, as usual in Belgium, was of a nondescript occasionalcharacter; indeed I have never been able to detect anything in thenature of a meal among this pleasing people; they seem to peck andtrifle with viands all day long in an amateur spirit: tentativelyFrench, truly German, and somehow falling between the two.
The empty bird-cage, swept and garnished, and with no trace of theold piping favourite, save where two wires had been pushed apart tohold its lump of sugar, carried with it a sort of graveyard cheer.The engineer apprentices would have nothing to say to us, norindeed to the bagman; but talked low and sparingly to one another,or raked us in the gaslight with a gleam of spectacles. For thoughhandsome lads, they were all (in the Scots phrase) barnacled.
There was an English maid in the hotel, who had been long enoughout of England to pick up all sorts of funny foreign idioms, andall sorts of curious foreign ways, which need not here bespecified. She spoke to us very fluently in her jargon, asked usinformation as to the manners of the present day in England, andobligingly corrected us when we attempted to answer. But as wewere dealing with a woman, perhaps our information was not so muchthrown away as it appeared. The sex likes to pick up knowledge andyet preserve its superiority. It is good policy, and almostnecessary in the circumstances. If a man finds a woman admire him,were it only for his acquaintance with geography, he will begin atonce to build upon the admiration. It is only by unintermittentsnubbing that the pretty ones can keep us in our place. Men, asMiss Howe or Miss Harlowe would have said, 'are such ENCROACHERS.'For my part, I am body and soul with the women; and after a well-married couple, there is nothing so beautiful in the world as themyth of the divine huntress. It is no use for a man to take to thewoods; we know him; St. Anthony tried the same thing long ago, andhad a pitiful time of it by all accounts. But there is this aboutsome women, which overtops the best gymnosophist among men, thatthey suffice to themselves, and can walk in a high and cold zonewithout the countenance of any trousered being. I declare,although the reverse of a professed ascetic, I am more obliged towomen for this ideal than I should be to the majority of them, orindeed to any but one, for a spontaneous kiss. There is nothing soencouraging as the spectacle of self-sufficiency. And when I thinkof the slim and lovely maidens, running the woods all night to thenote of Diana's horn; moving among the old oaks, as fancy-free asthey; things of the forest and the starlight, not touched by thecommotion of man's hot and turbid life--although there are plentyother ideals that I should prefer--I find my heart beat at thethought of this one. 'Tis to fail in life, but to fail with what agrace! That is not lost which is not regretted. And where--hereslips out the male--where would be much of the glory of inspiringlove, if there were no contempt to overcome?