酷兔英语
    当前位置:
  1. 首页
  2. 文章
  3. 娱乐英语
  4. 原版小说
  5. 正文

The Arrow of Gold-Part12_JOSEPH CONRAD (1857-1924)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

0 收藏 0 分享 0 赞

章节正文
文章总共2页
much like an expensive wig could not be considered a serious



protection. But it couldn't have been that. The transaction,

whatever it was, had been much too quiet. I must say that none of



us had looked out of the window and that I didn't know when the man

did go or if he was gone at all. As a matter of fact he was



already far away; and I may just as well say here that I never saw

him again in my life. His passage across my field of vision was



like that of other figures of that time: not to be forgotten, a

little fantastic, infinitely enlightening for my contempt,



darkening for my memory which struggles still with the clear lights

and the ugly shadows of those unforgotten days.



CHAPTER IV

It was past four o'clock before I left the house, together with



Mills. Mr. Blunt, still in his riding costume, escorted us to the

very door. He asked us to send him the first fiacre we met on our



way to town. "It's impossible to walk in this get-up through the

streets," he remarked, with his brilliant smile.



At this point I propose to transcribe some notes I made at the time

in little black books which I have hunted up in the litter of the



past; very cheap, common little note-books that by the lapse of

years have acquired a touching dimness of aspect, the frayed, worn-



out dignity of documents.

Expression on paper has never been my forte. My life had been a



thing of outward manifestations. I never had been secret or even

systematically taciturn about my simple occupations which might



have been foolish but had never required either caution or mystery.

But in those four hours since midday a complete change had come



over me. For good or evil I left that house committed to an

enterprise that could not be talked about; which would have



appeared to many senseless and perhaps ridiculous, but was

certainly full of risks, and, apart from that, commanded discretion



on the ground of simple loyalty. It would not only close my lips

but it would to a certain extent cut me off from my usual haunts



and from the society of my friends; especially of the light-

hearted, young, harum-scarum kind. This was unavoidable. It was



because I felt myself thrown back upon my own thoughts and

forbidden to seek reliefamongst other lives - it was perhaps only



for that reason at first I started an irregular, fragmentary record

of my days.



I made these notes not so much to preserve the memory (one cared

not for any to-morrow then) but to help me to keep a better hold of



the actuality. I scribbled them on shore and I scribbled them on

the sea; and in both cases they are concerned not only with the



nature of the facts but with the intensity of my sensations. It

may be, too, that I learned to love the sea for itself only at that



time. Woman and the sea revealed themselves to me together, as it

were: two mistresses of life's values. The illimitable greatness



of the one, the unfathomable seduction of the other working their

immemorial spells from generation to generation fell upon my heart



at last: a common fortune, an unforgettable memory of the sea's

formless might and of the sovereign charm in that woman's form



wherein there seemed to beat the pulse of divinity rather than

blood.



I begin here with the notes written at the end of that very day.

- Parted with Mills on the quay. We had walked side by side in



absolute silence. The fact is he is too old for me to talk to him

freely. For all his sympathy and seriousness I don't know what



note to strike and I am not at all certain what he thinks of all

this. As we shook hands at parting, I asked him how much longer he



expected to stay. And he answered me that it depended on R. She

was making arrangements for him to cross the frontier. He wanted



to see the very ground on which the Principle of Legitimacy was

actually asserting itself arms in hand. It sounded to my positive



mind the most fantastic thing in the world, this elimination of

personalities from what seemed but the merest political, dynastic



adventure. So it wasn't Dona Rita, it wasn't Blunt, it wasn't the




文章总共2页
文章标签:名著  

章节正文
Copyright © 2023 Qeto All rights reserved.
商务合作 | 联系我们 | 关于我们 | 版权声明 | 隐私条款 | 如果智培

京ICP备05059198号-1 京公网安备 11011202003401号