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Toys of Peace-Part27_H.H.Munro(Saki)(1870-1916)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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themselves naturally and comfortably to the conditions of country

life. Beryl, Mrs. Gaspilton, had always looked indulgently on the



country as a place where people of irreproachable income and

hospitable instincts cultivated tennis-lawns and rose-gardens and



Jacobean pleasaunces, wherein selected gatherings of interested

week-end guests might disport themselves. Mrs. Gaspilton considered



herself as distinctly an interesting personality, and from a limited

standpoint she was doubtless right. She had indolent dark eyes and



a comfortable chin, which belied the slightlyplaintive inflection

which she threw into her voice at suitable intervals. She was



tolerably well satisfied with the smaller advantages of life, but

she regretted that Fate had not seen its way to reserve for her some



of the ampler successes for which she felt herself well qualified.

She would have liked to be the centre of a literary, slightly



political salon, where discerning satellites might have recognised

the breadth of her outlook on human affairs and the undoubted



smallness of her feet. As it was, Destiny had chosen for her that

she should be the wife of a rector, and had now further decreed that



a country rectory should be the background to her existence. She

rapidly made up her mind that her surroundings did not call for



exploration; Noah had predicted the Flood, but no one expected him

to swim about in it. Digging in a wet garden or trudging through



muddy lanes were exertions which she did not propose to undertake.

As long as the garden produced asparagus and carnations at



pleasingly frequent intervals Mrs. Gaspilton was content to approve

of its expense and otherwiseignore its existence. She would fold



herself up, so to speak, in an elegant, indolent little world of her

own, enjoying the minor recreations of being gently rude to the



doctor's wife and continuing the leisurely production of her one

literary effort, The Forbidden Horsepond, a translation of Baptiste



Leopoy's L'Abreuvoir interdit. It was a labour which had already

been so long drawn-out that it seemed probable that Baptiste Lepoy



would drop out of vogue before her translation of his temporarily

famous novel was finished. However, the languidprosecution of the



work had invested Mrs. Gaspilton with a certain literary dignity,

even in Kensingate circles, and would place her on a pinnacle in St.



Chuddocks, where hardly any one read French, and assuredly no one

had heard of L'Abreuvoir interdit.



The Rector's wife might be content to turn her back complacently on

the country; it was the Rector's tragedy that the country turned its



back on him. With the best intention in the world and the immortal

example of Gilbert White before him, the Rev. Wilfrid found himself



as bored and ill at ease in his new surroundings as Charles II would

have been at a modern Wesleyan Conference. The birds that hopped



across his lawn hopped across it as though it were their lawn, and

not his, and gave him plainly to understand that in their eyes he



was infinitely less interesting than a garden worm or the rectory

cat. The hedgeside and meadow flowers were equally uninspiring; the



lesser celandine seemed particularly unworthy of the attention that

English poets had bestowed on it, and the Rector knew that he would



be utterly miserable if left alone for a quarter of an hour in its

company. With the human inhabitants of his parish he was no better



off; to know them was merely to know their ailments, and the

ailments were almost invariablyrheumatism. Some, of course, had



other bodily infirmities, but they always had rheumatism as well.

The Rector had not yet grasped the fact that in rural cottage life



not to have rheumatism is as glaring an omission as not to have been

presented at Court would be in more ambitious circles. And with all






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