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The Golden Age-Part17_Kenneth Grahame(1859-1932)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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course; he had been there himself, once, in the dim and misty



past. But an unfortunateconviction, that Nature had intended

him for a humourist, tainted all his evidence, besides making it



wearisome to hear. Again, of such among our contemporaries as we

had approached, the trumpets gave forth an uncertain sound.



According to some, it meant larks, revels, emancipation, and a

foretaste of the bliss of manhood. According to others,--the



majority, alas!--it was a private and peculiar Hades, that

could give the original institution points and a beating. When



Edward was observed to be swaggering round with a jaunty air and

his chest stuck out, I knew that he was contemplating his future



from the one point of view. When, on the contrary, he was

subdued and unaggressive, and sought the society of his sisters,



I recognised that the other aspect was in the ascendant. "You

can always run away, you know," I used to remark consolingly on



these latter occasions; and Edward would brighten up wonderfully

at the suggestion, while Charlotte melted into tears before her



vision of a brother with blistered feet and an empty belly,

passing nights of frost 'neath the lee of windy haystacks.



It was to Edward, of course, that the situation was chiefly

productive of anxiety; and yet the ensuing change in my own



circumstances and position furnished me also with food for grave

reflexion. Hitherto I had acted mostly to orders. Even when I



had devised and counselled any particular devilry, it had been

carried out on Edward's approbation, and--as eldest--at his



special risk. Henceforward I began to be anxious of the

bugbear Responsibility, and to realise what a soul-throttling



thing it is. True, my new position would have its compensations.

Edward had been masterful exceedingly, imperious, perhaps a



little narrow; impassioned for hard facts, and with scant

sympathy for make-believe. I should now be free and



untrammelled; in the conception and carrying out of a scheme, I

could accept and reject to better artistic purpose.



It would, moreover, be needless to be a Radical any more.

Radical I never was, really, by nature or by sympathy. The part



had been thrust on me one day, when Edward proposed to foist the

House of Lords on our small Republic. The principles of the



thing he set forth learnedly and well, and it all sounded

promising enough, till he went on to explain that, for the



present at least, he proposed to be the House of Lords himself.

We others were to be the Commons. There would be promotions, of



course, he added, dependent on service and on fitness, and open

to both sexes; and to me in especial he held out hopes of speedy



advancement. But in its initial stages the thing wouldn't work

properly unless he were first and only Lord. Then I put my foot



down promptly, and said it was all rot, and I didn't see the

good of any House of Lords at all. "Then you must be a low



Radical! said Edward, with fine contempt. The inference seemed

hardly necessary, but what could I do? I accepted the situation,



and said firmly, Yes, I was a low Radical. In this monstrous

character I had been obliged to masquerade ever since; but now I



could throw it off, and look the world in the face again.

And yet, did this and other gains really out-balance my losses?



Henceforth I should, it was true, be leader and chief; but I

should also be the buffer between the Olympians and my little



clan. To Edward this had been nothing; he had withstood the

impact of Olympus without flinching, like Teneriffe or Atlas



unremoved. But was I equal to the task? And was there not

rather a danger that for the sake of peace and quietness I might



be tempted to compromise, compound, and make terms? sinking thus,

by successive lapses, into the Blameless Prig? I don't mean, of






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