章节正文
"Six o'clock," said Amory, glancing at his wrist-watch. "I'll buy
you a grea' big dinner on the strength of the Juvenalia of your
collected editions."
LOOKING BACKWARD
July sweltered out with a last hot week, and Amory in another
surge of unrest realized that it was just five months since he
and Rosalind had met. Yet it was already hard for him to
visualize the heart-whole boy who had stepped off the transport,
passionately desiring the adventure of life. One night while the
heat, overpowering and enervating, poured into the windows of his
room he struggled for several hours in a vague effort to
immortalize the poignancy of that time.
The February streets, wind-washed by night, blow full of strange
half-intermittent damps, bearing on wasted walks in shining sight
wet snow plashed into gleams under the lamps, like golden oil
from some divine machine, in an hour of thaw and stars.
Strange damps-full of the eyes of many men, crowded with life
borne in upon a lull.... Oh, I was young, for I could turn again
to you, most finite and most beautiful, and taste the stuff of
half-remembered dreams, sweet and new on your mouth.
...There was a tanging in the midnight airsilence was dead and
sound not yet awokenLife cracked like ice!one brilliant note and
there, radiant and pale, you stood ... and spring had broken.
(The icicles were short upon the roofs and the changeling city
swooned.)
Our thoughts were frosty mist along the eaves; our two ghosts
kissed, high on the long, mazed wireseerie half-laughter echoes
here and leaves only a fatuous sigh for young desires; regret has
followed after things she loved, leaving the great husk.
ANOTHER ENDING
In mid-August came a letter from Monsignor Darcy, who had
evidently just stumbled on his address:
MY DEAR BOY:
Your last letter was quite enough to make me worry about you. It
was not a bit like yourself. Reading between the lines I should
imagine that your engagement to this girl is making you rather
unhappy, and I see you have lost all the feeling of romance that
you had before the war. You make a great mistake if you think you
can be romantic without religion. Sometimes I think that with
both of us the secret of success, when we find it, is the
mystical element in us: something flows into us that enlarges our
personalities, and when it ebbs out our personalities shrink; I
should call your last two letters rather shrivelled. Beware of
losing yourself in the personality of another being, man or
woman.
His Eminence Cardinal O'Neill and the Bishop of Boston are
staying with me at present, so it is hard for me to get a moment
to write, but I wish you would come up here later if only for a
week-end. I go to Washington this week.
What I shall do in the future is hanging in the balance.
Absolutely between ourselves I should not be surprised to see the
red hat of a cardinaldescend upon my unworthy head within the
next eight months. In any event, I should like to have a house in
New York or Washington where you could drop in for week-ends.
Amory, I'm very glad we're both alive; this war could easily have
been the end of a brilliant family. But in regard to matrimony,
you are now at the most dangerous period of your life. You might
marry in haste and repent at leisure, but I think you won't. From
what you write me about the present calamitous state of your
finances, what you want is naturally impossible. However, if I
judge you by the means I usually choose, I should say that there
will be something of an emotionalcrisis within the next year.
Do write me. I feel annoyingly out of date on you.
With greatest affection,
THAYER DARCY.
Within a week after the receipt of this letter their little
household fell precipitously to pieces. The immediate cause was
the serious and probably chronicillness of Tom's mother. So they
stored the furniture, gave instructions to sublet and shook hands
gloomily in the Pennsylvania Station. Amory and Tom seemed always
to be saying good-by.
Feeling very much alone, Amory yielded to an impulse and set off
southward, intending to join Monsignor in Washington. They missed
connections by two hours, and, deciding to spend a few days with
an ancient, remembered uncle, Amory journeyed up through the
luxuriant fields of Maryland into Ramilly County. But instead of
two days his stay lasted from mid-August nearly through
September, for in Maryland he met Eleanor.
BOOK TWO
The Education of a Personage
CHAPTER 3
Young Irony
FOR YEARS AFTERWARD when Amory thought of Eleanor he seemed still
to hear the wind sobbing around him and sending little chills
into the places beside his heart. The night when they rode up the
slope and watched the cold moon float through the clouds, he lost
a further part of him that nothing could restore; and when he
lost it he lost also the power of regretting it. Eleanor was,
say, the last time that evil crept close to Amory under the mask
of beauty, the last weird mystery that held him with wild
fascination and pounded his soul to flakes.
With her his imagination ran riot and that is why they rode to
the highest hill and watched an evil moon ride high, for they
knew then that they could see the devil in each other. But
Eleanordid Amory dream her? Afterward their ghosts played, yet
both of them hoped from their souls never to meet. Was it the
infinite sadness of her eyes that drew him or the mirror of
himself that he found in the gorgeous clarity of her mind? She
will have no other adventure like Amory, and if she reads this
she will say:
"And Amory will have no other adventure like me."
Nor will she sigh, any more than he would sigh.
Eleanor tried to put it on paper once:
"The fading things we only know
We'll have forgotten...
Put away...
Desires that melted with the snow,
And dreams begotten
This to-day:
The sudden dawns we laughed to greet,
That all could see, that none could share,
Will be but dawns ... and if we meet
We shall not care.
Dear ... not one tear will rise for this...
A little while hence
No regret
Will stir for a remembered kiss
Not even silence,
When we've met,
Will give old ghosts a waste to roam,
Or stir the surface of the sea...
If gray shapes drift beneath the foam
We shall not see."
They quarrelled dangerously because Amory maintained that sea and
see couldn't possibly be used as a rhyme. And then Eleanor had
part of another verse that she couldn't find a beginning for:
"...But wisdom passes ... still the years
Will feed us wisdom.... Age will go
Back to the old For all our tears
We shall not know."
Eleanor hated Maryland passionately. She belonged to the oldest
of the old families of Ramilly County and lived in a big, gloomy
house with her grandfather. She had been born and brought up in
France.... I see I am starting wrong. Let me begin again.
Amory was bored, as he usually was in the country. He used to go
for far walks by himselfand wander along reciting "Ulalume" to
the corn-fields, and congratulating Poe for drinking himself to
death in that atmosphere of smiling complacency. One afternoon he
had strolled for several miles along a road that was new to him,
and then through a wood on bad advice from a colored woman ...
losing himself entirely. A passing storm decided to break out,
and to his great impatience the sky grew black as pitch and the
rain began to splatter down through the trees, become suddenly
furtive and ghostly. Thunder rolled with menacing crashes up the
valley and scattered through the woods in intermittent batteries.
He stumbled blindly on, hunting for a way out, and finally,
through webs of twisted branches, caught sight of a rift in the
trees where the unbrokenlightning showed open country. He rushed
to the edge of the woods and then hesitated whether or not to
cross the fields and try to reach the shelter of the little house
marked by a light far down the valley. It was only half past
five, but he could see scarcely ten steps before him, except when
the lightning made everything vivid and grotesque for great
sweeps around.
Suddenly a strange sound fell on his ears. It was a song, in a
low, husky voice, a girl's voice, and whoever was singing was
very close to him. A year before he might have laughed, or
trembled; but in his restless mood he only stood and listened
while the words sank into his consciousness:
"Les sanglots longs
Des violons
De l'automne
Blessent mon coeur
D'une langueur
Monotone."
The lightning split the sky, but the song went on without a
quaver. The girl was evidently in the field and the voice seemed
to come vaguely from a haystack about twenty feet in front of
him.
Then it ceased: ceased and began again in a weird chant that
soared and hung and fell and blended with the rain:
"Tout suffocant
Et bljme quand
Sonne l'heure
Je me souviens
Des jours anciens
Et je pleure...."
"Who the devil is there in Ramilly County," muttered Amory aloud,
"who would deliver Verlaine in an extemporaneous tune to a
soaking haystack?"
"Somebody's there!" cried the voice unalarmed. "Who are
you?-Manfred, St. Christopher, or Queen Victoria?"
"I'm Don Juan!" Amory shouted on impulse, raising his voice above
the noise of the rain and the wind.
A delightedshriek came from the haystack.
"I know who you are-you're the blond boy that likes 'Ulalume'I
recognize your voice."
"How do I get up?" he cried from the foot of the haystack,
whither he had arrived, dripping wet. A head appeared over the
edgeit was so dark that Amory could just make out a patch of damp
hair and two eyes that gleamed like a cat's.
"Run back!" came the voice, "and jump and I'll catch your handno,
not thereon the other side."
He followed directions and as he sprawled up the side, knee-deep
in hay, a small, white hand reached out, gripped his, and helped
him onto the top.
"Here you are, Juan," cried she of the damp hair. "Do you mind if
I drop the Don?"
"You've got a thumb like mine!" he exclaimed.
"And you're holding my hand, which is dangerous without seeing my
face." He dropped it quickly.
you a grea' big dinner on the strength of the Juvenalia of your
collected editions."
LOOKING BACKWARD
July sweltered out with a last hot week, and Amory in another
surge of unrest realized that it was just five months since he
and Rosalind had met. Yet it was already hard for him to
visualize the heart-whole boy who had stepped off the transport,
passionately desiring the adventure of life. One night while the
heat, overpowering and enervating, poured into the windows of his
room he struggled for several hours in a vague effort to
immortalize the poignancy of that time.
The February streets, wind-washed by night, blow full of strange
half-intermittent damps, bearing on wasted walks in shining sight
wet snow plashed into gleams under the lamps, like golden oil
from some divine machine, in an hour of thaw and stars.
Strange damps-full of the eyes of many men, crowded with life
borne in upon a lull.... Oh, I was young, for I could turn again
to you, most finite and most beautiful, and taste the stuff of
half-remembered dreams, sweet and new on your mouth.
...There was a tanging in the midnight airsilence was dead and
sound not yet awokenLife cracked like ice!one brilliant note and
there, radiant and pale, you stood ... and spring had broken.
(The icicles were short upon the roofs and the changeling city
swooned.)
Our thoughts were frosty mist along the eaves; our two ghosts
kissed, high on the long, mazed wireseerie half-laughter echoes
here and leaves only a fatuous sigh for young desires; regret has
followed after things she loved, leaving the great husk.
ANOTHER ENDING
In mid-August came a letter from Monsignor Darcy, who had
evidently just stumbled on his address:
MY DEAR BOY:
Your last letter was quite enough to make me worry about you. It
was not a bit like yourself. Reading between the lines I should
imagine that your engagement to this girl is making you rather
unhappy, and I see you have lost all the feeling of romance that
you had before the war. You make a great mistake if you think you
can be romantic without religion. Sometimes I think that with
both of us the secret of success, when we find it, is the
mystical element in us: something flows into us that enlarges our
personalities, and when it ebbs out our personalities shrink; I
should call your last two letters rather shrivelled. Beware of
losing yourself in the personality of another being, man or
woman.
His Eminence Cardinal O'Neill and the Bishop of Boston are
staying with me at present, so it is hard for me to get a moment
to write, but I wish you would come up here later if only for a
week-end. I go to Washington this week.
What I shall do in the future is hanging in the balance.
Absolutely between ourselves I should not be surprised to see the
red hat of a cardinaldescend upon my unworthy head within the
next eight months. In any event, I should like to have a house in
New York or Washington where you could drop in for week-ends.
Amory, I'm very glad we're both alive; this war could easily have
been the end of a brilliant family. But in regard to matrimony,
you are now at the most dangerous period of your life. You might
marry in haste and repent at leisure, but I think you won't. From
what you write me about the present calamitous state of your
finances, what you want is naturally impossible. However, if I
judge you by the means I usually choose, I should say that there
will be something of an emotionalcrisis within the next year.
Do write me. I feel annoyingly out of date on you.
With greatest affection,
THAYER DARCY.
Within a week after the receipt of this letter their little
household fell precipitously to pieces. The immediate cause was
the serious and probably chronicillness of Tom's mother. So they
stored the furniture, gave instructions to sublet and shook hands
gloomily in the Pennsylvania Station. Amory and Tom seemed always
to be saying good-by.
Feeling very much alone, Amory yielded to an impulse and set off
southward, intending to join Monsignor in Washington. They missed
connections by two hours, and, deciding to spend a few days with
an ancient, remembered uncle, Amory journeyed up through the
luxuriant fields of Maryland into Ramilly County. But instead of
two days his stay lasted from mid-August nearly through
September, for in Maryland he met Eleanor.
BOOK TWO
The Education of a Personage
CHAPTER 3
Young Irony
FOR YEARS AFTERWARD when Amory thought of Eleanor he seemed still
to hear the wind sobbing around him and sending little chills
into the places beside his heart. The night when they rode up the
slope and watched the cold moon float through the clouds, he lost
a further part of him that nothing could restore; and when he
lost it he lost also the power of regretting it. Eleanor was,
say, the last time that evil crept close to Amory under the mask
of beauty, the last weird mystery that held him with wild
fascination and pounded his soul to flakes.
With her his imagination ran riot and that is why they rode to
the highest hill and watched an evil moon ride high, for they
knew then that they could see the devil in each other. But
Eleanordid Amory dream her? Afterward their ghosts played, yet
both of them hoped from their souls never to meet. Was it the
infinite sadness of her eyes that drew him or the mirror of
himself that he found in the gorgeous clarity of her mind? She
will have no other adventure like Amory, and if she reads this
she will say:
"And Amory will have no other adventure like me."
Nor will she sigh, any more than he would sigh.
Eleanor tried to put it on paper once:
"The fading things we only know
We'll have forgotten...
Put away...
Desires that melted with the snow,
And dreams begotten
This to-day:
The sudden dawns we laughed to greet,
That all could see, that none could share,
Will be but dawns ... and if we meet
We shall not care.
Dear ... not one tear will rise for this...
A little while hence
No regret
Will stir for a remembered kiss
Not even silence,
When we've met,
Will give old ghosts a waste to roam,
Or stir the surface of the sea...
If gray shapes drift beneath the foam
We shall not see."
They quarrelled dangerously because Amory maintained that sea and
see couldn't possibly be used as a rhyme. And then Eleanor had
part of another verse that she couldn't find a beginning for:
"...But wisdom passes ... still the years
Will feed us wisdom.... Age will go
Back to the old For all our tears
We shall not know."
Eleanor hated Maryland passionately. She belonged to the oldest
of the old families of Ramilly County and lived in a big, gloomy
house with her grandfather. She had been born and brought up in
France.... I see I am starting wrong. Let me begin again.
Amory was bored, as he usually was in the country. He used to go
for far walks by himselfand wander along reciting "Ulalume" to
the corn-fields, and congratulating Poe for drinking himself to
death in that atmosphere of smiling complacency. One afternoon he
had strolled for several miles along a road that was new to him,
and then through a wood on bad advice from a colored woman ...
losing himself entirely. A passing storm decided to break out,
and to his great impatience the sky grew black as pitch and the
rain began to splatter down through the trees, become suddenly
furtive and ghostly. Thunder rolled with menacing crashes up the
valley and scattered through the woods in intermittent batteries.
He stumbled blindly on, hunting for a way out, and finally,
through webs of twisted branches, caught sight of a rift in the
trees where the unbrokenlightning showed open country. He rushed
to the edge of the woods and then hesitated whether or not to
cross the fields and try to reach the shelter of the little house
marked by a light far down the valley. It was only half past
five, but he could see scarcely ten steps before him, except when
the lightning made everything vivid and grotesque for great
sweeps around.
Suddenly a strange sound fell on his ears. It was a song, in a
low, husky voice, a girl's voice, and whoever was singing was
very close to him. A year before he might have laughed, or
trembled; but in his restless mood he only stood and listened
while the words sank into his consciousness:
"Les sanglots longs
Des violons
De l'automne
Blessent mon coeur
D'une langueur
Monotone."
The lightning split the sky, but the song went on without a
quaver. The girl was evidently in the field and the voice seemed
to come vaguely from a haystack about twenty feet in front of
him.
Then it ceased: ceased and began again in a weird chant that
soared and hung and fell and blended with the rain:
"Tout suffocant
Et bljme quand
Sonne l'heure
Je me souviens
Des jours anciens
Et je pleure...."
"Who the devil is there in Ramilly County," muttered Amory aloud,
"who would deliver Verlaine in an extemporaneous tune to a
soaking haystack?"
"Somebody's there!" cried the voice unalarmed. "Who are
you?-Manfred, St. Christopher, or Queen Victoria?"
"I'm Don Juan!" Amory shouted on impulse, raising his voice above
the noise of the rain and the wind.
A delightedshriek came from the haystack.
"I know who you are-you're the blond boy that likes 'Ulalume'I
recognize your voice."
"How do I get up?" he cried from the foot of the haystack,
whither he had arrived, dripping wet. A head appeared over the
edgeit was so dark that Amory could just make out a patch of damp
hair and two eyes that gleamed like a cat's.
"Run back!" came the voice, "and jump and I'll catch your handno,
not thereon the other side."
He followed directions and as he sprawled up the side, knee-deep
in hay, a small, white hand reached out, gripped his, and helped
him onto the top.
"Here you are, Juan," cried she of the damp hair. "Do you mind if
I drop the Don?"
"You've got a thumb like mine!" he exclaimed.
"And you're holding my hand, which is dangerous without seeing my
face." He dropped it quickly.
- divine [di´vain]
a.神圣的 v.预言 (初中英语单词) - midnight [´midnait] n.午夜；漆黑 (初中英语单词)
- brilliant [´briliənt] a.灿烂的；杰出的 (初中英语单词)
- reading [´ri:diŋ] n.(阅)读；朗读；读物 (初中英语单词)
- engagement [in´geidʒmənt] n.婚约；雇用；受聘 (初中英语单词)
- romance [rəu´mæns] n.中世纪骑士小说 (初中英语单词)
- romantic [rəu´mæntik] a.传奇(式)的；浪漫的 (初中英语单词)
- personality [,pə:sə´næliti] n.人；个性；人品；人物 (初中英语单词)
- bishop [´biʃəp] n.主教 (初中英语单词)
- descend [di´send] v.下来，下降 (初中英语单词)
- emotional [i´məuʃənəl] a.易动感情的；情感的 (初中英语单词)
- receipt [ri´si:t] n.收到；收据 (初中英语单词)
- illness [´ilnis] n.生病，不健康，疾病 (初中英语单词)
- impulse [´impʌls] n.推动(力)；冲动；刺激 (初中英语单词)
- restore [ri´stɔ:] vt.(使)恢复；修复 (初中英语单词)
- mystery [´mistəri] n.神秘；秘密；故弄玄虚 (初中英语单词)
- imagination [i,mædʒi´neiʃən] n.想象(力) (初中英语单词)
- beginning [bi´giniŋ] n.开始，开端；起源 (初中英语单词)
- wisdom [´wizdəm] n.智慧，聪明，才智 (初中英语单词)
- grandfather [´grænd,fɑ:ðə] n.(外)祖父；祖先 (初中英语单词)
- wander [´wɔndə, ´wɑ:n:dər] v.徘徊；流浪 (初中英语单词)
- atmosphere [´ætməsfiə] n.大气；空气；气氛 (初中英语单词)
- thunder [´θʌndə] n.雷 vi.打雷 vt.吼出 (初中英语单词)
- lightning [´laitniŋ] n.闪电 a.突然的 (初中英语单词)
- valley [´væli] n.谷；河谷；流域 (初中英语单词)
- restless [´restləs] a.没有休息的 (初中英语单词)
- evidently [´evidəntli] ad.明显地 (初中英语单词)
- shriek [ʃri:k] v.&n.尖叫(声) (初中英语单词)
- bearing [´beəriŋ] n.举止；忍耐；关系 (高中英语单词)
- crowded [´kraudid] a.充(拥)满了的 (高中英语单词)
- radiant [´reidiənt] a.发光的 n.光源(体) (高中英语单词)
- shrink [ʃriŋk] v.收缩；退缩；畏缩 (高中英语单词)
- beware [bi´weə] v.(用于祈使句)谨防 (高中英语单词)
- cardinal [´kɑ:dinəl] a.主要的 n.深红色 (高中英语单词)
- hanging [´hæŋiŋ] n.绞刑 a.悬挂着的 (高中英语单词)
- repent [ri´pent] v.后悔；悔改；悔悟 (高中英语单词)
- leisure [´leʒə] n.空闲；悠闲；安定 (高中英语单词)
- crisis [´kraisis] n.转折点；危机 (高中英语单词)
- saying [´seiŋ, ´sei-iŋ] n.言语；言论；格言 (高中英语单词)
- maryland [´mɛərilænd] n.马里兰(州) (高中英语单词)
- sadness [´sædnis] n.悲哀；悲痛；凄惨 (高中英语单词)
- gorgeous [´gɔ:dʒəs] a.华丽的；宜人的 (高中英语单词)
- decided [di´saidid] a.明显的；决定的 (高中英语单词)
- whoever [hu:´evə] pron.任何人，无论谁 (高中英语单词)
- seeing [si:iŋ] see的现在分词 n.视觉 (高中英语单词)
- unrest [ʌn´rest] n.不安；不稳；动乱 (英语四级单词)
- frosty [´frɔsti] a.霜冻的；冷淡的 (英语四级单词)
- unworthy [ʌn´wə:ði] a.不值得的；不足道的 (英语四级单词)
- passionately [´pæʃənitli] ad.多情地；热烈地 (英语四级单词)
- impatience [im´peiʃəns] n.不耐烦，急躁 (英语四级单词)
- blindly [blaindli] ad.盲目地；没头脑地 (英语四级单词)
- unbroken [ʌn´brəukən] a.未破的；不间断的 (英语四级单词)
- grotesque [grəu´tesk] a.奇异的，想象中的 (英语四级单词)
- vaguely [´veigli] ad.含糊地，暖昧地 (英语四级单词)
- delighted [di´laitid] a.高兴的；喜欢的 (英语四级单词)
- cracked [krækt] a.有裂缝的；碎的；粗哑 (英语六级单词)
- eminence [´eminəns] n.杰出；重要人物；高处 (英语六级单词)
- chronic [´krɔnik] a.慢性的；剧烈的 (英语六级单词)
- dangerously [´deindʒrəsli] ad.危险 (英语六级单词)
- ghostly [´gəustli] a.鬼的；朦胧的 (英语六级单词)
- hunting [´hʌntiŋ] n.打猎 (英语六级单词)
- holding [´həuldiŋ] n.保持，固定，存储 (英语六级单词)
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