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The Unbearable Bassington-Part10_H.H.Munro(Saki)(1870-1916)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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and cleanliness in a world that reeked of petrol, and now she set



her mare at a smart pace through a succession of long-stretching

country lanes. She was due some time that afternoon at a garden-



party, but she rode with determination in an opposite direction.

In the first place neither Comus or Courtenay would be at the



party, which fact seemed to remove any valid reason that could be

thought of for inviting her attendance thereat; in the second place



about a hundred human beings would be gathered there, and human

gatherings were not her most crying need at the present moment.



Since her last encounter with her wooers, under the cedars in her

own garden, Elaine realised that she was either very happy or



cruelly unhappy, she could not quite determine which. She seemed

to have what she most wanted in the world lying at her feet, and



she was dreadfullyuncertain in her more reflective moments whether

she really wanted to stretch out her hand and take it. It was all



very like some situation in an Arabian Nights tale or a story of

Pagan Hellas, and consequently the more puzzling and disconcerting



to a girl brought up on the methodical lines of Victorian

Christianity. Her appeal court was in permanentsession these last



few days, but it gave no decisions, at least none that she would

listen to. And the ride on her fast light-stepping little mare,



alone and unattended, through the fresh-smelling leafy lanes into

unexplored country, seemed just what she wanted at the moment. The



mare made some small delicatepretence of being roadshy, not the

staring dolt-like kind of nervousness that shows itself in an



irritating hanging-back as each conspicuouswayside object presents

itself, but the nerve-flutter of an imaginative animal that merely



results in a quick whisk of the head and a swifter bound forward.

She might have paraphrased the mental attitude of the immortalised



Peter Bell into

A basket underneath a tree



A yellow tiger is to me,

If it is nothing more.



The more really alarming episodes of the road, the hoot and whir of

a passing motor-car or the loud vibrating hum of a wayside



threshing-machine, were treated with indifference.

On turning a corner out of a narrow coppice-bordered lane into a



wider road that sloped steadilyupward in a long stretch of hill

Elaine saw, coming toward her at no great distance, a string of



yellow-painted vans, drawn for the most part by skewbald or

speckled horses. A certain rakish air about these oncoming road-



craft proclaimed them as belonging to a travelling wild-beast show,

decked out in the rich primitivecolouring that one's taste in



childhood would have insisted on before it had been schooled in the

artistic value of dulness. It was an unlooked-for and distinctly



unwelcome encounter. The mare had already commenced a sixfold

scrutiny with nostrils, eyes and daintily-pricked ears; one ear



made hurried little backwardmovements to hear what Elaine was

saying about the eminent niceness and respectability of the



approaching caravan, but even Elaine felt that she would be unable

satisfactorily to explain the elephants and camels that would



certainly form part of the procession. To turn back would seem

rather craven, and the mare might take fright at the manoeuvre and



try to bolt; a gate standing ajar at the entrance to a farmyard

lane provided a convenient way out of the difficulty.



As Elaine pushed her way through she became aware of a man standing

just inside the lane, who made a movement forward to open the gate



for her.

"Thank you. I'm just getting out of the way of a wild-beast show,"



she explained; "my mare is tolerant of motors and traction-engines,

but I expect camels - hullo," she broke off, recognising the man as



an old acquaintance, "I heard you had taken rooms in a farmhouse

somewhere. Fancy meeting you in this way."



In the not very distant days of her little-girlhood, Tom Keriway




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