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The Unbearable Bassington-Part22_H.H.Munro(Saki)(1870-1916)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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name of a shop, of a street, the address of a restaurant, came to



him as a bitter reminder of the world he had lost, a world that ate

and drank and flirted, gambled and made merry, a world that debated



and intrigued and wire-pulled, fought or compromised political

battles - and recked nothing of its outcasts wandering through



forest paths and steamy swamps or lying in the grip of fever.

Comus read and re-read those few lines of advertisement, just as he



treasured a much-crumpled programme of a first-night performance at

the Straw Exchange Theatre; they seemed to make a little more real



the past that was already so shadowy and so utterly remote. For a

moment he could almost capture the sensation of being once again in



those haunts that he loved; then he looked round and pushed the

book wearily from him. The steaming heat, the forest, the rushing



river hemmed him in on all sides.

The two boys who had been splitting wood ceased from their labours



and straightened their backs; suddenly the smaller of the two gave

the other a resounding whack with a split lath that he still held



in his hand, and flew up the hillside with a scream of laughter and

simulated terror, the bigger lad following in hot pursuit. Up and



down the steep bush-grown slope they raced and twisted and dodged,

coming sometimes to close quarters in a hurricane of squeals and



smacks, rolling over and over like fighting kittens, and breaking

away again to start fresh provocation and fresh pursuit. Now and



again they would lie for a time panting in what seemed the last

stage of exhaustion, and then they would be off in another wild



scamper, their dusky bodies flitting through the bushes,

disappearing and reappearing with equal suddenness. Presently two



girls of their own age, who had returned from the water-fetching,

sprang out on them from ambush, and the four joined in one joyous



gambol that lit up the hillside with shrill echoes and glimpses of

flying limbs. Comus sat and watched, at first with an amused



interest, then with a returning flood of depression and heart-ache.

Those wild young human kittens represented the joy of life, he was



the outsider, the lonely alien, watching something in which he

could not join, a happiness in which he had no part or lot. He



would pass presently out of the village and his bearers' feet would

leave their indentations in the dust; that would be his most



permanent memorial in this little oasis of teeming life. And that

other life, in which he once moved with such confident sense of his



own necessary participation in it, how completely he had passed out

of it. Amid all its laughing throngs, its card parties and race-



meetings and country-house gatherings, he was just a mere name,

remembered or forgotten, Comus Bassington, the boy who went away.



He had loved himself very well and never troubled greatly whether

anyone else really loved him, and now he realised what he had made



of his life. And at the same time he knew that if his chance were

to come again he would throw it away just as surely, just as



perversely. Fate played with him with loaded dice; he would lose

always.



One person in the whole world had cared for him, for longer than he

could remember, cared for him perhaps more than he knew, cared for



him perhaps now. But a wall of ice had mounted up between him and

her, and across it there blew that cold-breath that chills or kills



affection.

The words of a well-known old song, the wistful cry of a lost



cause, rang with insistentmockery through his brain:

"Better loved you canna be,



Will ye ne'er come back again?"

If it was love that was to bring him back he must be an exile for



ever. His epitaph in the mouths of those that remembered him would

be, Comus Bassington, the boy who never came back.



And in his unutterable loneliness he bowed his head on his arms,

that he might not see the joyous scrambling frolic on yonder



hillside.

CHAPTER XVII



THE bleak rawness of a grey December day held sway over St. James's

Park, that sanctuary of lawn and tree and pool, into which the



bourgeois innovator has rushed ambitiously time and again, to find




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