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The Scapegoat-Part32_Hall Caine(1853-1931)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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Then Israel glanced at the wrecks she had brought with her



of the devilishwarfare that she had witnessed and "This," said he,

lifting one of them, "is a sea-bird's feather; and this,"



lifting another, "is a sea-bird's egg; and this," lifting the third,

"is a dead sea-bird itself."



Once more Naomi knit her brows in thought, and again she closed her eyes

and touched the familiar things wherein her sight had deceived her.



"Ah yes," she said meekly, looking into her father's eve, with a smile,

"they are only that after all." And then she said very quietly,



as if speaking to herself, "What a long time it is before

you learn to see!"



It was partly due to the isolation of her upbringing in the company

of Israel that nearly every fresh wonder that encountered her eyes



took shapes of supernatural horror or splendour. One early evening,

when she had remained out of the house until the day was well-nigh done,



she came back in a wild ecstasy to tell of angels that she had just seen

in the sky. They were in robes of crimson and scarlet,



their wings blazed like fire, they swept across the clouds in multitudes,

and went down behind the world together, passing out of the earth



through the gates of heaven.

Israel listened to her and said, "That was the sunset my child.



Every morning the sun rises and every night it sets."

Then she looked full into his face and blushed. Her shame



at her sweet errors sometimes conquered her joy in the new heritage

of sight, and Israel heard her whisper to herself and say,



"After all, the eyes are deceitful." Vision was life's new language,

and she had yet to learn it.



But not for long was her delight in the beautiful things of the world

to be damped by any thought of herself. Nay, the best and rarest part



of it, the dearest and most delicious throb it brought her,

came of herself alone. On another early day Israel took her to the coast,



and pushed off with her on the waters in a boat. The air was still,

the sea was smooth, the sun was shining, and save for one white scarf



of cloud the sky was blue. They were sailing in a tiny bay

that was broken by a little island, which lay in the midst like a ruby



in a ring, covered with heather and long stalks of seeding grass.

Through whispering beds of rushes they glided on, and floated over banks



of coral where gleaming fishes were at play. Sea-fowl screamed

over their heads, as if in anger at their invasion, and under their oars



the moss lay in the shallows on the pebbles and great stones.

It was a morning of God's own making, and, for joy of its loveliness



no less than of her own bounding life, Naomi rose in the boat

and opened her lips and arms to the breeze while it played



with the rippling currents of her hair, as if she would drink

and embrace it.



At that moment a new and dearer wonder came to her, such as every maiden

knows whom God has made beautiful, yet none remembers the hour



when she knew it first. For, tracing with her eyes the shadow

of the cliff and of the continent of cloud that sailed double in two seas



of blue to where they were broken by the dazzling half-round

of the sun's reflected disc on the shadowed quarter of the boat,



she leaned over the side of it, and then saw the reflection of another

and lovelier vision.



"Father," she cried with alarm, "a face in the water! Look! look!"

"It is your own, my child," said Israel. "Mine!" she cried.



"The reflection of your face," said Israel; "the light and the water

make it."



The marvel was hard to understand. There was something ghostly

in this thing that was herself and yet not herself, this face



that looked up at her and laughed and yet made no voice. She leaned back

in the boat and asked Israel if it was still in the water.



But when at length she had grasped the mystery, the artlessness

of her joy was charming. She was like a child in her delight,



and like a woman that was still a child in her unconscious love

of her own loveliness. Whenever the boat was at rest she leaned



over its bulwark and gazed down into the blue depths.

"How beautiful!" she cried, "how beautiful!"



She clapped her hands and looked again, and there in the still water

was the wonder of her dancing eyes. "Oh! how very beautiful!"



she cried without lifting her face, and when she saw her lips move




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