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Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow-Part14_Jerome K.Jerome(1859-1927)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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last lodger left only yesterday; and she also adds that this is their



cleaning-day--it always is. With this understanding you enter, and

both stand solemnly feasting your eyes upon the scene before you. The



rooms cannot be said to appear inviting. Even "mother's" face betrays

no admiration. Untenanted "furnished apartments" viewed in the



morning sunlight do not inspirecheery sensations. There is a

lifeless air about them. It is a very different thing when you have



settled down and are living in them. With your old familiar household

gods to greet your gaze whenever you glance up, and all your little



knick-knacks spread around you--with the photos of all the girls that

you have loved and lost ranged upon the mantel-piece, and half a dozen



disreputable-looking pipes scattered about in painfully prominent

positions--with one carpetslipper peeping from beneath the coal-box



and the other perched on the top of the piano--with the well-known

pictures to hide the dingy walls, and these dear old friends, your



books, higgledy-piggledy all over the place--with the bits of old blue

china that your mother prized, and the screen she worked in those far



by-gone days, when the sweet old face was laughing and young, and the

white soft hair tumbled in gold-brown curls from under the



coal-scuttle bonnet--

Ah, old screen, what a gorgeouspersonage you must have been in your



young days, when the tulips and roses and lilies (all growing from one

stem) were fresh in their glistening sheen! Many a summer and winter



have come and gone since then, my friend, and you have played with the

dancing firelight until you have grown sad and gray. Your brilliant



colors are fast fading now, and the envious moths have gnawed your

silken threads. You are withering away like the dead hands that wove



you. Do you ever think of those dead hands? You seem so grave and

thoughtful sometimes that I almost think you do. Come, you and I and



the deep-glowing embers, let us talk together. Tell me in your silent

language what you remember of those young days, when you lay on my



little mother's lap and her girlish fingers played with your rainbow

tresses. Was there never a lad near sometimes--never a lad who would



seize one of those little hands to smother it with kisses, and who

would persist in holding it, thereby sadly interfering with the



progress of your making? Was not your frail existence often put in

jeopardy by this same clumsy, headstrong lad, who would toss you



disrespectfully aside that he--not satisfied with one--might hold both

hands and gaze up into the loved eyes? I can see that lad now through



the haze of the flickering twilight. He is an eager bright-eyed boy,

with pinching, dandy shoes and tight-fitting smalls, snowy shirt frill



and stock, and--oh! such curly hair. A wild, light-hearted boy! Can

he be the great, grave gentleman upon whose stick I used to ride



crosslegged, the care-worn man into whose thoughtful face I used to

gaze with childishreverence and whom I used to call "father?" You



say "yes," old screen; but are you quite sure? It is a serious charge

you are bringing. Can it be possible? Did he have to kneel down in



those wonderful smalls and pick you up and rearrange you before he was

forgiven and his curly head smoothed by my mother's little hand? Ah!



old screen, and did the lads and the lassies go making love fifty

years ago just as they do now? Are men and women so unchanged? Did



little maidens' hearts beat the same under pearl-embroidered bodices

as they do under Mother Hubbard cloaks? Have steel casques and



chimney-pot hats made no difference to the brains that work beneath

them? Oh, Time! great Chronos! and is this your power? Have you



dried up seas and leveled mountains and left the tiny human

heart-strings to defy you? Ah, yes! they were spun by a Mightier than



thou, and they stretch beyond your narrow ken, for their ends are made

fast in eternity. Ay, you may mow down the leaves and the blossoms,



but the roots of life lie too deep for your sickle to sever. You

refashion Nature's garments, but you cannot vary by a jot the



throbbings of her pulse. The world rolls round obedient to your laws,

but the heart of man is not of your kingdom, for in its birthplace "a



thousand years are but as yesterday."

I am getting away, though, I fear, from my "furnished apartments," and



I hardly know how to get back. But I have some excuse for my

meanderings this time. It is a piece of old furniture that has led me



astray, and fancies gather, somehow, round old furniture, like moss

around old stones. One's chairs and tables get to be almost part of



one's life and to seem like quiet friends. What strange tales the




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