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Tales of Unrest-Part18_JOSEPH CONRAD (1857-1924)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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This fit of hot anger was succeeded by a sudden sadness, by the

darkening passage of a thought that ran over the scorched surface of



his heart, like upon a barren plain, and after a fiercer assault of

sunrays, the melancholy and cooling shadow of a cloud. He realized



that he had had a shock--not a violent or rending blow, that can be

seen, resisted, returned, forgotten, but a thrust, insidious and



penetrating, that had stirred all those feelings, concealed and cruel,

which the arts of the devil, the fears of mankind--God's infinite



compassion, perhaps--keep chained deep down in the inscrutable

twilight of our breasts. A dark curtain seemed to rise before him, and



for less than a second he looked upon the mysteriousuniverse of moral

suffering. As a landscape is seen complete, and vast, and vivid, under



a flash of lightning, so he could see disclosed in a moment all the

immensity of pain that can be contained in one short moment of human



thought. Then the curtain fell again, but his rapid vision left in

Alvan Hervey's mind a trail of invincible sadness, a sense of loss and



bitter solitude, as though he had been robbed and exiled. For a moment

he ceased to be a member of society with a position, a career, and a



name attached to all this, like a descriptive label of some

complicated compound. He was a simple human being removed from the



delightful world of crescents and squares. He stood alone, naked and

afraid, like the first man on the first day of evil. There are in life



events, contacts, glimpses, that seem brutally to bring all the past

to a close. There is a shock and a crash, as of a gate flung to behind



one by the perfidious hand of fate. Go and seek another paradise, fool

or sage. There is a moment of dumb dismay, and the wanderings must



begin again; the painful explaining away of facts, the feverish raking

up of illusions, the cultivation of a fresh crop of lies in the sweat



of one's brow, to sustain life, to make it supportable, to make it

fair, so as to hand intact to another generation of blind wanderers



the charming legend of a heartless country, of a promised land, all

flowers and blessings . . .



He came to himself with a slight start, and became aware of an

oppressive, crushing desolation. It was only a feeling, it is true,



but it produced on him a physical effect, as though his chest had been

squeezed in a vice. He perceived himself so extremelyforlorn and



lamentable, and was moved so deeply by the oppressive sorrow, that

another turn of the screw, he felt, would bring tears out of his eyes.



He was deteriorating. Five years of life in common had appeased his

longing. Yes, long-time ago. The first five months did that--but . . .



There was the habit--the habit of her person, of her smile, of her

gestures, of her voice, of her silence. She had a pure brow and good



hair. How utterly wretched all this was. Good hair and fine

eyes--remarkably fine. He was surprised by the number of details that



intruded upon his unwilling memory. He could not help remembering her

footsteps, the rustle of her dress, her way of holding her head, her



decisive manner of saying "Alvan," the quiver of her nostrils when she

was annoyed. All that had been so much his property, so intimately and



specially his! He raged in a mournful, silent way, as he took stock of

his losses. He was like a man counting the cost of an unlucky



speculation--irritated, depressed--exasperated with himself and with

others, with the fortunate, with the indifferent, with the callous;



yet the wrong done him appeared so cruel that he would perhaps have

dropped a tear over that spoliation if it had not been for his



conviction that men do not weep. Foreigners do; they also kill




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