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Jerry of the Islands-Part29_JACK LONDON(1876-1916)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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sensitive, sympathetic self. The song of the sea from the lips of



the shell--Pshaw! The song oneself makes of the sea and puts into

the shell."



"Just the same--"

"Always the same," he gallantly cut her off. "Always right,



especially when most wrong. Not in navigation, of course, nor in

affairs such as the multiplication table, where the brass tacks of



reality stud the way of one's ship among the rocks and shoals of the

sea; but right, truth beyond truth to truth higher than truth,



namely, intuitional truth."

"Now you are laughing at me with your superior man-wisdom," she



retorted. "But I know--" she paused for the strength of words she

needed, and words forsook her, so that her quick sweepinggesture of



hand-touch to heart named authority that overrode all speech.

"We agree--I salute," he laughed gaily. "It was just precisely what



I was saying. Our hearts can talk our heads down almost any time,

and, best all, our hearts are always right despite the statistic



that they are mostly wrong."

Harley Kennan did not believe, and never did believe, his wife's



report of the tales Jerry told. And through all his days to the

last one of them, he considered the whole matter a pleasant fancy,



all poesy of sentiment, on Villa's part.

But Jerry, four-legged, smooth-coated, Irish terrier that he was,



had the gift of tongues. If he could not teach languages, at least

he could learn languages. Without effort, and quickly, practically



with no teaching, he began picking up the language of the Ariel.

Unfortunately, it was not a whiff-whuff, dog-possible language such



as Nalasu had invented. While Jerry came to understand much that

was spoken on the Ariel, he could speak none of it. Three names, at



least, he had for the lady-god: "Villa," "Wife-Woman," "Missis

Kennan," for so he heard her variously called. But he could not so



call her. This was god-language entire, which only gods could talk.

It was unlike the language of Nalasu's devising, which had been a



compromise between god-talk and dog-talk, so that a god and a dog

could talk in the common medium.



In the same way he learned many names for the one-man god: "Mister

Kennan," "Harley," "Captain Kennan," and "Skipper." Only in the



intimacy of the three of them alone did Jerry hear him called:

"Husband-Man," "My Man," "Patient One," "Dear Man," "Lover," and



"This Woman's Delight." But in no way could Jerry utter these names

in address of the one-man nor the many names in address of the one-



woman. Yet on a quiet night with no wind among the trees, often and

often had he whispered to Nalasu, by whiff-whuff of name, from a



hundred feet away.

One day, bending over him, her hair (drying from a salt-water swim)



flying about him, the one-woman, her two hands holding his head and

jowls so that his ribbon of kissing tongue just missed her nose in



the empty air, sang to him: "'Don't know what to call him, but he's

mighty lak' a rose!'"



On another day she repeated this, at the same time singing most of

the song to him softly in his ear. In the midst of it Jerry



surprised her. Equally true might be the statement that he

surprised himself. Never, had he consciously done such a thing



before. And he did it without volition. He never intended to do

it. For that matter, the very thing he did was what mastered him



into doing it. No more than could he refrain from shaking the water

from his back after a swim, or from kicking in his sleep when his



feet were tickled, could he have avoided doing this imperative

thing.



As her voice, in the song, made soft vibrations in his ears, it

seemed to him that she grew dim and vague before him, and that



somehow, under the soft searching prod of her song, he was

otherwhere. So much was he otherwhere that he did the surprising



thing. He sat down abruptly, almost cataleptically, drew his head

away from the clutch of her hands and out of the entanglement of her



hair, and, his nose thrustupward at an angle of forty-five degrees,

he began to quiver and to breathe audibly in rhythm to the rhythm of



her singing. With a quick jerk, cataleptically, his nose pointed to

the zenith, his mouth opened, and a flood of sound poured forth,



running swiftlyupward in crescendo and slowly falling as it died

away.






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