章节正文
The thing, she said, had come to her as a complete surprise.
Everything had seemed so safe. Eleanor had been thoughtful, it
was true, but it had never occurred to her mother that she had
really been thinking--about such things as she had been
thinking about. She had ranged in the library, and displayed a
disposition to read the weekly papers and the monthly reviews.
But never a sign of discontent.
"But I don't understand," said the bishop. "Why is she
discontented? What is there that she wants different?"
"Exactly," said Lady Ella.
"She has got this idea that life here is secluded in some way,"
she expanded. "She used words like 'secluded' and 'artificial'
and--what was it?--'cloistered.' And she said--"
Lady Ella paused with an effect of exact retrospection.
"'Out there,' she said, 'things are alive. Real things are
happening.' It is almost as if she did not fully believe--"
Lady Ella paused again.
The bishop sat with his arm over the back of his chair, and his
face downcast.
"The ferment of youth," he said at last. "The ferment of youth.
Who has given her these ideas?"
Lady Ella did not know. She could have thought a school like
St. Aubyns would have been safe, but nowadays nothing was safe.
It was clear the girls who went there talked as girls a
generation ago did not talk. Their people at home encouraged them
to talk and profess opinions about everything. It seemed that
Phoebe Walshingham and Lady Kitty Kingdom were the leaders in
these premature mental excursions. Phoebe aired religious doubts.
"But little Phoebe!" said the bishop.
"Kitty," said Lady Ella, "has written a novel."
"Already! "
"With elopements in it--and all sorts of things. She's had it
typed. You'd think Mary Crosshampton would know better than to
let her daughter go flourishing the family imagination about in
that way."
"Eleanor told you?"
"By way of showing that they think of--things in general."
The bishop reflected. "She wants to go to College."
"They want to go in a set."
"I wonder if college can be much worse than school.... She's
eighteen--? But I will talk to her...."
(10)
All our children are changelings. They are perpetually fresh
strangers. Every day they vanish and a new person masquerades as
yesterday's child until some unexpected development betrays the
cheat.
The bishop had still to learn this perennial newness of the
young. He learnt it in half an hour at the end of a fatiguing
day.
He went into the dining-room. He went in as carelessly as
possible and smoking a cigarette. He had an honourable dread of
being portentous in his family; almost ostentatiously he laid the
bishop aside. Eleanor had finished her meal, and was sitting in
the arm-chair by the fire with one hand holding her sprained
wrist.
"Well," he said, and strolled to the hearthrug. He had had an
odd idea that he would find her still dirty, torn, and tearful,
as her mother had described her, a little girl in a scrape. But
she had changed into her best white evening frock and put up her
hair, and became in the firelight more of a lady, a very young
lady but still a lady, than she had ever been to him before. She
was dark like her mother, but not of the same willowy type; she
had more of her father's sturdy build, and she had developed her
shoulders at hockey and tennis. The firelight brought out the
gracious reposeful lines of a body that ripened in adolescence.
And though there was a vibration of resolution in her voice she
spoke like one who is under her own control.
"Mother has told you that I have disgraced myself," she began.
"No," said the bishop, weighing it. "No. But you seem to have
been indiscreet, little Norah."
"I got excited," she said. "They began turning out the other
women--roughly. I was indignant."
"You didn't go to interrupt?" he asked.
She considered. "No," she said. "But I went."
He liked her disposition to get it right. "On that side," he
assisted.
"It isn't the same thing as really meaning, Daddy," she said.
"And then things happened?"
"Yes," she said to the fire.
A pause followed. If they had been in a law-court, her
barrister would have said, "That is my case, my lord." The bishop
prepared to open the next stage in the proceedings.
"I think, Norah, you shouldn't have been there at all," he
said.
"Mother says that."
"A man in my position is apt to be judged by his family. You
commit more than yourself when you commit an indiscretion. Apart
from that, it wasn't the place for a girl to be at. You are not a
child now. We give you freedom--more freedom than most girls
get--because we think you will use it wisely. You knew--
enough to know that there was likely to be trouble."
The girl looked into the fire and spoke very carefully. "I
don't think that I oughtn't to know the things that are going
on."
The bishopstudied her face for an instant. It struck him that
they had reached something very fundamental as between parent and
child. His modernity showed itself in the temperance of his
reply.
"Don't you think, my dear, that on the whole your mother and I,
who have lived longer and know more, are more likely to know when
it is best that you should begin to know--this or that?"
The girl knitted her brows and seemed to be reading her answer
out of the depths of the coals. She was on the verge of speaking,
altered her mind and tried a different beginning.
"I think that every one must do their thinking--his thinking
--for--oneself," she said awkwardly.
"You mean you can't trust--?"
"It isn't trusting. But one knows best for oneself when one is
hungry."
"And you find yourself hungry?"
"I want to find out for myself what all this trouble about
votes and things means."
"And we starve you--intellectually?"
"You know I don't think that. But you are busy...."
"Aren't you being perhaps a little impatient, Eleanor? After
all--you are barely eighteen.... We have given you all sorts of
liberties."
Her silence admitted it. "But still," she said after a long
pause, "there are other girls, younger than I am, in these
things. They talk about--oh, all sorts of things. Freely...."
"You've been awfully good to me," she said irrelevantly. "And
of course this meeting was all pure accident."
Father and daughter remained silent for awhile, seeking a
better grip.
"What exactly do you want, Eleanor? " he asked.
She looked up at him. "Generally?" she asked.
"Your mother has the impression that you are discontented."
"Discontented is a horrid word."
"Well--unsatisfied."
She remained still for a time. She felt the moment had come to
make her demand.
"I would like to go to Newnham or Somerville--and work. I
feel--so horriblyignorant. Of all sorts of things. If I were a
son I should go--"
"Ye--es," said the bishop and reflected.
He had gone rather far in the direction of the Woman Suffrage
people; he had advocated equality of standard in all sorts of
matters, and the memory of these utterances hampered him.
"You could read here," he tried.
"If I were a son, you wouldn't say that."
His reply was vague. "But in this home," he said, "we have a
certain atmosphere. .
He left her to imply her differences in sensibility and
response from the hardier male.
Her hesitation marked the full gravity of her reply. "It's just
that," she said. "One feels--" She considered it further. "As if
we were living in a kind of magic world--not really real. Out
there--" she glanced over her shoulder at the drawn blind that
hid the night. "One meets with different sorts of minds and
different--atmospheres. All this is very beautiful. I've had
the most wonderful home. But there's a sort of feeling as though
it couldn't really go on, as though all these strikes and doubts
and questionings--"
She stopped short at questionings, for the thing was said.
The bishop took her meaning gallantly and honestly.
"The church of Christ, little Norah, is built upon a rock."
She made no answer. She moved her head very slightly so that he
could not see her face, and remained sitting rather stiffly and
awkwardly with her eyes upon the fire.
Her silence was the third and greatest blow the bishop received
that day....
It seemed very long indeed before either of them spoke. At last
he said: "We must talk about these things again, Norah, when we
are less tired and have more time.... You have been reading
books.... When Caxton set up his printing-press he thrust a new
power between church and disciple and father and child.... And I
am tired. We must talk it over a little later."
The girl stood up. She took her father's hands. "Dear, dear
Daddy," she said, "I am so sorry to be a bother. I am so sorry I
went to that meeting.... You look tired out."
"We must talk--properly," said the bishop, patting
one hand, then discovering from her wincing face that it was the
sprained one. "Your poor wrist," he said.
"It's so hard to talk, but I want to talk to you, Daddy. It
isn't that I have hidden things...."
She kissed him, and the bishop had the odd fancy that she
kissed him as though she was sorry for him....
It occurred to him that really there could be no time like the
present for discussing these "questionings" of hers, and then his
fatigue and shyness had the better of him again.
(11)
The papers got hold of Eleanor's share in the suffragette
disturbance. The White Blackbird said things about her.
It did not attack her. It did worse. It admired her
...impudently.
It spoke of her once as "Norah," and once as "the Scrope
Flapper."
Its headline proclaimed: "Plucky Flappers Hold Up L. G."
CHAPTER THE THIRD - INSOMNIA
(1)
THE night after his conversation with Eleanor was the first
night of the bishop's insomnia. It was the definitebeginning of
a new phase in his life.
Doctors explain to us that the immediate cause of insomnia is
always some poisoned or depleted state of the body, and no doubt
the fatigues and hasty meals of the day had left the bishop in a
state of unprecedentedchemicaldisorder, with his nerves
irritated by strange compounds and unsoothed by familiar
lubricants. But chemicaldisorders follow mental disturbances,
and the core and essence of his trouble was an intellectual
distress. For the first time in his life he was really in doubt,
Everything had seemed so safe. Eleanor had been thoughtful, it
was true, but it had never occurred to her mother that she had
really been thinking--about such things as she had been
thinking about. She had ranged in the library, and displayed a
disposition to read the weekly papers and the monthly reviews.
But never a sign of discontent.
"But I don't understand," said the bishop. "Why is she
discontented? What is there that she wants different?"
"Exactly," said Lady Ella.
"She has got this idea that life here is secluded in some way,"
she expanded. "She used words like 'secluded' and 'artificial'
and--what was it?--'cloistered.' And she said--"
Lady Ella paused with an effect of exact retrospection.
"'Out there,' she said, 'things are alive. Real things are
happening.' It is almost as if she did not fully believe--"
Lady Ella paused again.
The bishop sat with his arm over the back of his chair, and his
face downcast.
"The ferment of youth," he said at last. "The ferment of youth.
Who has given her these ideas?"
Lady Ella did not know. She could have thought a school like
St. Aubyns would have been safe, but nowadays nothing was safe.
It was clear the girls who went there talked as girls a
generation ago did not talk. Their people at home encouraged them
to talk and profess opinions about everything. It seemed that
Phoebe Walshingham and Lady Kitty Kingdom were the leaders in
these premature mental excursions. Phoebe aired religious doubts.
"But little Phoebe!" said the bishop.
"Kitty," said Lady Ella, "has written a novel."
"Already! "
"With elopements in it--and all sorts of things. She's had it
typed. You'd think Mary Crosshampton would know better than to
let her daughter go flourishing the family imagination about in
that way."
"Eleanor told you?"
"By way of showing that they think of--things in general."
The bishop reflected. "She wants to go to College."
"They want to go in a set."
"I wonder if college can be much worse than school.... She's
eighteen--? But I will talk to her...."
(10)
All our children are changelings. They are perpetually fresh
strangers. Every day they vanish and a new person masquerades as
yesterday's child until some unexpected development betrays the
cheat.
The bishop had still to learn this perennial newness of the
young. He learnt it in half an hour at the end of a fatiguing
day.
He went into the dining-room. He went in as carelessly as
possible and smoking a cigarette. He had an honourable dread of
being portentous in his family; almost ostentatiously he laid the
bishop aside. Eleanor had finished her meal, and was sitting in
the arm-chair by the fire with one hand holding her sprained
wrist.
"Well," he said, and strolled to the hearthrug. He had had an
odd idea that he would find her still dirty, torn, and tearful,
as her mother had described her, a little girl in a scrape. But
she had changed into her best white evening frock and put up her
hair, and became in the firelight more of a lady, a very young
lady but still a lady, than she had ever been to him before. She
was dark like her mother, but not of the same willowy type; she
had more of her father's sturdy build, and she had developed her
shoulders at hockey and tennis. The firelight brought out the
gracious reposeful lines of a body that ripened in adolescence.
And though there was a vibration of resolution in her voice she
spoke like one who is under her own control.
"Mother has told you that I have disgraced myself," she began.
"No," said the bishop, weighing it. "No. But you seem to have
been indiscreet, little Norah."
"I got excited," she said. "They began turning out the other
women--roughly. I was indignant."
"You didn't go to interrupt?" he asked.
She considered. "No," she said. "But I went."
He liked her disposition to get it right. "On that side," he
assisted.
"It isn't the same thing as really meaning, Daddy," she said.
"And then things happened?"
"Yes," she said to the fire.
A pause followed. If they had been in a law-court, her
barrister would have said, "That is my case, my lord." The bishop
prepared to open the next stage in the proceedings.
"I think, Norah, you shouldn't have been there at all," he
said.
"Mother says that."
"A man in my position is apt to be judged by his family. You
commit more than yourself when you commit an indiscretion. Apart
from that, it wasn't the place for a girl to be at. You are not a
child now. We give you freedom--more freedom than most girls
get--because we think you will use it wisely. You knew--
enough to know that there was likely to be trouble."
The girl looked into the fire and spoke very carefully. "I
don't think that I oughtn't to know the things that are going
on."
The bishopstudied her face for an instant. It struck him that
they had reached something very fundamental as between parent and
child. His modernity showed itself in the temperance of his
reply.
"Don't you think, my dear, that on the whole your mother and I,
who have lived longer and know more, are more likely to know when
it is best that you should begin to know--this or that?"
The girl knitted her brows and seemed to be reading her answer
out of the depths of the coals. She was on the verge of speaking,
altered her mind and tried a different beginning.
"I think that every one must do their thinking--his thinking
--for--oneself," she said awkwardly.
"You mean you can't trust--?"
"It isn't trusting. But one knows best for oneself when one is
hungry."
"And you find yourself hungry?"
"I want to find out for myself what all this trouble about
votes and things means."
"And we starve you--intellectually?"
"You know I don't think that. But you are busy...."
"Aren't you being perhaps a little impatient, Eleanor? After
all--you are barely eighteen.... We have given you all sorts of
liberties."
Her silence admitted it. "But still," she said after a long
pause, "there are other girls, younger than I am, in these
things. They talk about--oh, all sorts of things. Freely...."
"You've been awfully good to me," she said irrelevantly. "And
of course this meeting was all pure accident."
Father and daughter remained silent for awhile, seeking a
better grip.
"What exactly do you want, Eleanor? " he asked.
She looked up at him. "Generally?" she asked.
"Your mother has the impression that you are discontented."
"Discontented is a horrid word."
"Well--unsatisfied."
She remained still for a time. She felt the moment had come to
make her demand.
"I would like to go to Newnham or Somerville--and work. I
feel--so horriblyignorant. Of all sorts of things. If I were a
son I should go--"
"Ye--es," said the bishop and reflected.
He had gone rather far in the direction of the Woman Suffrage
people; he had advocated equality of standard in all sorts of
matters, and the memory of these utterances hampered him.
"You could read here," he tried.
"If I were a son, you wouldn't say that."
His reply was vague. "But in this home," he said, "we have a
certain atmosphere. .
He left her to imply her differences in sensibility and
response from the hardier male.
Her hesitation marked the full gravity of her reply. "It's just
that," she said. "One feels--" She considered it further. "As if
we were living in a kind of magic world--not really real. Out
there--" she glanced over her shoulder at the drawn blind that
hid the night. "One meets with different sorts of minds and
different--atmospheres. All this is very beautiful. I've had
the most wonderful home. But there's a sort of feeling as though
it couldn't really go on, as though all these strikes and doubts
and questionings--"
She stopped short at questionings, for the thing was said.
The bishop took her meaning gallantly and honestly.
"The church of Christ, little Norah, is built upon a rock."
She made no answer. She moved her head very slightly so that he
could not see her face, and remained sitting rather stiffly and
awkwardly with her eyes upon the fire.
Her silence was the third and greatest blow the bishop received
that day....
It seemed very long indeed before either of them spoke. At last
he said: "We must talk about these things again, Norah, when we
are less tired and have more time.... You have been reading
books.... When Caxton set up his printing-press he thrust a new
power between church and disciple and father and child.... And I
am tired. We must talk it over a little later."
The girl stood up. She took her father's hands. "Dear, dear
Daddy," she said, "I am so sorry to be a bother. I am so sorry I
went to that meeting.... You look tired out."
"We must talk--properly," said the bishop, patting
one hand, then discovering from her wincing face that it was the
sprained one. "Your poor wrist," he said.
"It's so hard to talk, but I want to talk to you, Daddy. It
isn't that I have hidden things...."
She kissed him, and the bishop had the odd fancy that she
kissed him as though she was sorry for him....
It occurred to him that really there could be no time like the
present for discussing these "questionings" of hers, and then his
fatigue and shyness had the better of him again.
(11)
The papers got hold of Eleanor's share in the suffragette
disturbance. The White Blackbird said things about her.
It did not attack her. It did worse. It admired her
...impudently.
It spoke of her once as "Norah," and once as "the Scrope
Flapper."
Its headline proclaimed: "Plucky Flappers Hold Up L. G."
CHAPTER THE THIRD - INSOMNIA
(1)
THE night after his conversation with Eleanor was the first
night of the bishop's insomnia. It was the definitebeginning of
a new phase in his life.
Doctors explain to us that the immediate cause of insomnia is
always some poisoned or depleted state of the body, and no doubt
the fatigues and hasty meals of the day had left the bishop in a
state of unprecedentedchemicaldisorder, with his nerves
irritated by strange compounds and unsoothed by familiar
lubricants. But chemicaldisorders follow mental disturbances,
and the core and essence of his trouble was an intellectual
distress. For the first time in his life he was really in doubt,
- weekly [´wi:kli]
a.&ad.每周一次(的) (初中英语单词) - bishop [´biʃəp] n.主教 (初中英语单词)
- mental [´mentl] a.精神的；心理的 (初中英语单词)
- imagination [i,mædʒi´neiʃən] n.想象(力) (初中英语单词)
- vanish [´væniʃ] vi.消失；消散；消灭 (初中英语单词)
- learnt [lə:nt] learn 的过去式(分词) (初中英语单词)
- honourable [´ɔnərəbəl] a.荣誉的；正直的 (初中英语单词)
- resolution [,rezə´lu:ʃən] n.决心；坚决；果断 (初中英语单词)
- disposition [,dispə´ziʃən] n.安排；性情；倾向 (初中英语单词)
- commit [kə´mit] vt.犯(罪)；把...判处 (初中英语单词)
- instant [´instənt] a.立即的 n.紧迫；瞬间 (初中英语单词)
- fundamental [,fʌndə´mentl] a.基本的 n.原理 (初中英语单词)
- reading [´ri:diŋ] n.(阅)读；朗读；读物 (初中英语单词)
- starve [stɑ:v] v.(使)饥饿 (初中英语单词)
- barely [´beəli] ad.公开地；仅仅 (初中英语单词)
- awhile [ə´wail] ad.少顷；片刻 (初中英语单词)
- impression [im´preʃən] n.印刷；印象；效果 (初中英语单词)
- ignorant [´ignərənt] a.无知的，愚昧的 (初中英语单词)
- atmosphere [´ætməsfiə] n.大气；空气；气氛 (初中英语单词)
- christ [kraist] n.基督 int.天啊! (初中英语单词)
- slightly [´slaitli] ad.轻微地；细长的 (初中英语单词)
- thrust [θrʌst] v.&n.猛推；冲；刺；挤进 (初中英语单词)
- bother [´bɔðə] v.打扰 n.麻烦(事) (初中英语单词)
- hidden [´hid(ə)n] hide 的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
- definite [´definit] a.确定的，明确的 (初中英语单词)
- beginning [bi´giniŋ] n.开始，开端；起源 (初中英语单词)
- chemical [´kemikəl] a.化学的 n.化学制品 (初中英语单词)
- thoughtful [´θɔ:tfəl] a.深思的；体贴的 (高中英语单词)
- monthly [´mʌnθli] a.每月(的) n.月刊 (高中英语单词)
- profess [prə´fes] v.声称；讲授 (高中英语单词)
- phoebe [´fi:bi] n.月亮女神 (高中英语单词)
- unexpected [ʌniks´pektid] a.突然的；意外的 (高中英语单词)
- carelessly [´kɛəlisli] ad.粗心地；疏忽地 (高中英语单词)
- sturdy [´stə:di] a.坚强的；坚定的 (高中英语单词)
- tennis [´tenis] n.网球(运动) (高中英语单词)
- wisely [´waizli] ad.明智地，聪明地 (高中英语单词)
- studied [´stʌdid] a.故意的；有计划的 (高中英语单词)
- impatient [im´peiʃənt] a.不耐烦的，急躁的 (高中英语单词)
- awfully [´ɔ:fuli] ad.令人畏惧地 (高中英语单词)
- horrid [´hɔrid] a.令人讨厌的；极糟的 (高中英语单词)
- equality [i´kwɔliti] n.同等，平等 (高中英语单词)
- hesitation [,hezi´teiʃən] n.犹豫，踌躇 (高中英语单词)
- gravity [´græviti] n.严肃；严重；重力 (高中英语单词)
- stiffly [´stifli] ad.硬；顽固地 (高中英语单词)
- disorder [dis´ɔ:də] n.杂乱 vt.扰乱 (高中英语单词)
- scrape [skreip] v.&n.刮，削，擦；搔 (英语四级单词)
- vibration [vai´breiʃən] n.颤动；振动；摇动 (英语四级单词)
- temperance [´tempərəns] n.节制；节欲；戒酒 (英语四级单词)
- disciple [di´saipəl] n.门徒，弟子 (英语四级单词)
- blackbird [´blækbə:d] n.画眉，燕八哥 (英语四级单词)
- headline [´hedlain] n.(报纸的)标题 (英语四级单词)
- essence [´esəns] n.本质；要素；精华 (英语四级单词)
- ferment [fə´ment] n.&v.发酵；激动 (英语六级单词)
- perennial [pə´reniəl] a.长期的 n.多年生植物 (英语六级单词)
- holding [´həuldiŋ] n.保持，固定，存储 (英语六级单词)
- trusting [´trʌstiŋ] a.信任的；相信的 (英语六级单词)
- horribly [´hɔrəbli] ad.恐怖地 (英语六级单词)
- unprecedented [ʌn´presidentid] a.空前的 (英语六级单词)
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