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1、【英文读物】Crome Yellow克罗姆耶娄CHAPTER I. Along this particular stretch of line no express had ever passed. All the trainsthe few that there werestopped at all the stations. Denis knew the names of those stations by heart. Bole, Tritton, Spavin Delawarr, Knipswich for Timpany, West Bowlby, and, finally, Cam
2、let-on-the-Water. Camlet was where he always got out, leaving the train to creep indolently onward, goodness only knew whither, into the green heart of England.They were snorting out of West Bowlby now. It was the next station, thank Heaven. Denis took his chattels off the rack and piled them neatly
3、 in the corner opposite his own. A futile proceeding. But one must have something to do. When he had finished, he sank back into his seat and closed his eyes. It was extremely hot.Oh, this journey! It was two hours cut clean out of his life; two hours in which he might have done so much, so muchwrit
4、ten the perfect poem, for example, or read the one illuminating book. Instead of whichhis gorge rose at the smell of the dusty cushions against which he was leaning.Two hours. One hundred and twenty minutes. Anything might be done in that time. Anything. Nothing. Oh, he had had hundreds of hours, an
5、d what had he done with them? Wasted them, spilt the precious minutes as though his reservoir were inexhaustible. Denis groaned in the spirit, condemned himself utterly with all his works. What right had he to sit in the sunshine, to occupy corner seats in third-class carriages, to be alive? None, n
6、one, none.Misery and a nameless nostalgic distress possessed him. He was twenty-three, and oh! so agonizingly conscious of the fact.The train came bumpingly to a halt. Here was Camlet at last. Denis jumped up, crammed his hat over his eyes, deranged his pile of baggage, leaned out of the window and
7、shouted for a porter, seized a bag in either hand, and had to put them down again in order to open the door. When at last he had safely bundled himself and his baggage on to the platform, he ran up the train towards the van.“A bicycle, a bicycle!” he said breathlessly to the guard. He felt himself a
8、 man of action. The guard paid no attention, but continued methodically to hand out, one by one, the packages labelled to Camlet. “A bicycle!” Denis repeated. “A green machine, cross-framed, name of Stone. S-T-O-N-E.”“All in good time, sir,” said the guard soothingly. He was a large, stately man wit
9、h a naval beard. One pictured him at home, drinking tea, surrounded by a numerous family. It was in that tone that he must have spoken to his children when they were tiresome. “All in good time, sir.” Deniss man of action collapsed, punctured.He left his luggage to be called for later, and pushed of
10、f on his bicycle. He always took his bicycle when he went into the country. It was part of the theory of exercise. One day one would get up at six oclock and pedal away to Kenilworth, or Stratford-on-Avonanywhere. And within a radius of twenty miles there were always Norman churches and Tudor mansio
11、ns to be seen in the course of an afternoons excursion. Somehow they never did get seen, but all the same it was nice to feel that the bicycle was there, and that one fine morning one really might get up at six.Once at the top of the long hill which led up from Camlet station, he felt his spirits mo
12、unting. The world, he found, was good. The far-away blue hills, the harvests whitening on the slopes of the ridge along which his road led him, the treeless sky-lines that changed as he movedyes, they were all good. He was overcome by the beauty of those deeply embayed combes, scooped in the flanks
13、of the ridge beneath him. Curves, curves: he repeated the word slowly, trying as he did so to find some term in which to give expression to his appreciation. Curvesno, that was inadequate. He made a gesture with his hand, as though to scoop the achieved expression out of the air, and almost fell off
14、 his bicycle. What was the word to describe the curves of those little valleys? They were as fine as the lines of a human body, they were informed with the subtlety of art.Galbe. That was a good word; but it was French. Le galbe evase de ses hanches: had one ever read a French novel in which that ph
15、rase didnt occur? Some day he would compile a dictionary for the use of novelists. Galbe, gonfle, goulu: parfum, peau, pervers, potele, pudeur: vertu, volupte.But he really must find that word. Curves curves.Those little valleys had the lines of a cup moulded round a womans breast; they seemed the d
16、inted imprints of some huge divine body that had rested on these hills. Cumbrous locutions, these; but through them he seemed to be getting nearer to what he wanted. Dinted, dimpled, wimpledhis mind wandered down echoing corridors of assonance and alliteration ever further and further from the point
17、. He was enamoured with the beauty of words.Becoming once more aware of the outer world, he found himself on the crest of a descent. The road plunged down, steep and straight, into a considerable valley. There, on the opposite slope, a little higher up the valley, stood Crome, his destination. He pu
18、t on his brakes; this view of Crome was pleasant to linger over. The facade with its three projecting towers rose precipitously from among the dark trees of the garden. The house basked in full sunlight; the old brick rosily glowed. How ripe and rich it was, how superbly mellow! And at the same time
19、, how austere! The hill was becoming steeper and steeper; he was gaining speed in spite of his brakes. He loosed his grip of the levers, and in a moment was rushing headlong down. Five minutes later he was passing through the gate of the great courtyard. The front door stood hospitably open. He left
20、 his bicycle leaning against the wall and walked in. He would take them by surprise.CHAPTER II. He took nobody by surprise; there was nobody to take. All was quiet; Denis wandered from room to empty room, looking with pleasure at the familiar pictures and furniture, at all the little untidy signs of
21、 life that lay scattered here and there. He was rather glad that they were all out; it was amusing to wander through the house as though one were exploring a dead, deserted Pompeii. What sort of life would the excavator reconstruct from these remains; how would he people these empty chambers? There
22、was the long gallery, with its rows of respectable and (though, of course, one couldnt publicly admit it) rather boring Italian primitives, its Chinese sculptures, its unobtrusive, dateless furniture. There was the panelled drawing-room, where the huge chintz-covered arm-chairs stood, oases of comfo
23、rt among the austere flesh-mortifying antiques. There was the morning-room, with its pale lemon walls, its painted Venetian chairs and rococo tables, its mirrors, its modern pictures. There was the library, cool, spacious, and dark, book-lined from floor to ceiling, rich in portentous folios. There
24、was the dining-room, solidly, portwinily English, with its great mahogany table, its eighteenth-century chairs and sideboard, its eighteenth-century picturesfamily portraits, meticulous animal paintings. What could one reconstruct from such data? There was much of Henry Wimbush in the long gallery a
25、nd the library, something of Anne, perhaps, in the morning-room. That was all. Among the accumulations of ten generations the living had left but few traces.Lying on the table in the morning-room he saw his own book of poems. What tact! He picked it up and opened it. It was what the reviewers call “
26、a slim volume.” He read at hazard: “.But silence and the topless darkVault in the lights of Luna Park;And Blackpool from the nightly gloomHollows a bright tumultuous tomb.” He put it down again, shook his head, and sighed. “What genius I had then!” he reflected, echoing the aged Swift. It was nearly
27、 six months since the book had been published; he was glad to think he would never write anything of the same sort again. Who could have been reading it, he wondered? Anne, perhaps; he liked to think so. Perhaps, too, she had at last recognised herself in the Hamadryad of the poplar sapling; the sli
28、m Hamadryad whose movements were like the swaying of a young tree in the wind. “The Woman who was a Tree” was what he had called the poem. He had given her the book when it came out, hoping that the poem would tell her what he hadnt dared to say. She had never referred to it.He shut his eyes and saw
29、 a vision of her in a red velvet cloak, swaying into the little restaurant where they sometimes dined together in Londonthree quarters of an hour late, and he at his table, haggard with anxiety, irritation, hunger. Oh, she was damnable!It occurred to him that perhaps his hostess might be in her boud
30、oir. It was a possibility; he would go and see. Mrs. Wimbushs boudoir was in the central tower on the garden front. A little staircase cork-screwed up to it from the hall. Denis mounted, tapped at the door. “Come in.” Ah, she was there; he had rather hoped she wouldnt be. He opened the door.Priscill
31、a Wimbush was lying on the sofa. A blotting-pad rested on her knees and she was thoughtfully sucking the end of a silver pencil.“Hullo,” she said, looking up. “Id forgotten you were coming.”“Well, here I am, Im afraid,” said Denis deprecatingly. “Im awfully sorry.”Mrs. Wimbush laughed. Her voice, he
32、r laughter, were deep and masculine. Everything about her was manly. She had a large, square, middle-aged face, with a massive projecting nose and little greenish eyes, the whole surmounted by a lofty and elaborate coiffure of a curiously improbable shade of orange. Looking at her, Denis always thou
33、ght of Wilkie Bard as the cantatrice. “Thats why Im going toSing in opra, sing in opra,Sing in op-pop-pop-pop-pop-popera.” Today she was wearing a purple silk dress with a high collar and a row of pearls. The costume, so richly dowagerish, so suggestive of the Royal Family, made her look more than e
34、ver like something on the Halls.“What have you been doing all this time?” she asked.“Well,” said Denis, and he hesitated, almost voluptuously. He had a tremendously amusing account of London and its doings all ripe and ready in his mind. It would be a pleasure to give it utterance. “To begin with,”
35、he said.But he was too late. Mrs. Wimbushs question had been what the grammarians call rhetorical; it asked for no answer. It was a little conversational flourish, a gambit in the polite game.“You find me busy at my horoscopes,” she said, without even being aware that she had interrupted him.A littl
36、e pained, Denis decided to reserve his story for more receptive ears. He contented himself, by way of revenge, with saying “Oh?” rather icily.“Did I tell you how I won four hundred on the Grand National this year?”“Yes,” he replied, still frigid and mono-syllabic. She must have told him at least six
37、 times.“Wonderful, isnt it? Everything is in the Stars. In the Old Days, before I had the Stars to help me, I used to lose thousands. Now”she paused an instant“well, look at that four hundred on the Grand National. Thats the Stars.”Denis would have liked to hear more about the Old Days. But he was t
38、oo discreet and, still more, too shy to ask. There had been something of a bust up; that was all he knew. Old Priscillanot so old then, of course, and sprightlierhad lost a great deal of money, dropped it in handfuls and hatfuls on every race-course in the country. She had gambled too. The number of
39、 thousands varied in the different legends, but all put it high. Henry Wimbush was forced to sell some of his Primitivesa Taddeo da Poggibonsi, an Amico di Taddeo, and four or five nameless Sieneseto the Americans. There was a crisis. For the first time in his life Henry asserted himself, and with g
40、ood effect, it seemed.Priscillas gay and gadding existence had come to an abrupt end. Nowadays she spent almost all her time at Crome, cultivating a rather ill-defined malady. For consolation she dallied with New Thought and the Occult. Her passion for racing still possessed her, and Henry, who was
41、a kind-hearted fellow at bottom, allowed her forty pounds a month betting money. Most of Priscillas days were spent in casting the horoscopes of horses, and she invested her money scientifically, as the stars dictated. She betted on football too, and had a large notebook in which she registered the
42、horoscopes of all the players in all the teams of the League. The process of balancing the horoscopes of two elevens one against the other was a very delicate and difficult one. A match between the Spurs and the Villa entailed a conflict in the heavens so vast and so complicated that it was not to b
43、e wondered at if she sometimes made a mistake about the outcome.“Such a pity you dont believe in these things, Denis, such a pity,” said Mrs. Wimbush in her deep, distinct voice.“I cant say I feel it so.”“Ah, thats because you dont know what its like to have faith. Youve no idea how amusing and exci
44、ting life becomes when you do believe. All that happens means something; nothing you do is ever insignificant. It makes life so jolly, you know. Here am I at Crome. Dull as ditchwater, youd think; but no, I dont find it so. I dont regret the Old Days a bit. I have the Stars.” She picked up the sheet
45、 of paper that was lying on the blotting-pad. “Inmans horoscope,” she explained. “(I thought Id like to have a little fling on the billiards championship this autumn.) I have the Infinite to keep in tune with,” she waved her hand. “And then theres the next world and all the spirits, and ones Aura, a
46、nd Mrs. Eddy and saying youre not ill, and the Christian Mysteries and Mrs. Besant. Its all splendid. Ones never dull for a moment. I cant think how I used to get on beforein the Old Days. Pleasurerunning about, thats all it was; just running about. Lunch, tea, dinner, theatre, supper every day. It
47、was fun, of course, while it lasted. But there wasnt much left of it afterwards. Theres rather a good thing about that in Barbecue-Smiths new book. Where is it?”She sat up and reached for a book that was lying on the little table by the head of the sofa.“Do you know him, by the way?” she asked.“Who?
48、”“Mr. Barbecue-Smith.”Denis knew of him vaguely. Barbecue-Smith was a name in the Sunday papers. He wrote about the Conduct of Life. He might even be the author of “What a Young Girl Ought to Know”.“No, not personally,” he said.“Ive invited him for next week-end.” She turned over the pages of the bo
49、ok. “Heres the passage I was thinking of. I marked it. I always mark the things I like.”Holding the book almost at arms length, for she was somewhat long-sighted, and making suitable gestures with her free hand, she began to read, slowly, dramatically.“What are thousand pound fur coats, what are quarter million incomes?” She looked up from the page with a histrionic movement of the head; her orange