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The Merry Men-Part24_ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON(1850-1894)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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'It is for me to speak,' she said, 'and for you to listen. I know;



you can but guess. I prayed, how I prayed for you to leave this

place. I begged it of you, and I know you would have granted me



even this; or if not, O let me think so!'

'I love you,' I said.



'And yet you have lived in the world,' she said; after a pause,

'you are a man and wise; and I am but a child. Forgive me, if I



seem to teach, who am as ignorant as the trees of the mountain; but

those who learn much do but skim the face of knowledge; they seize



the laws, they conceive the dignity of the design - the horror of

the living fact fades from their memory. It is we who sit at home



with evil who remember, I think, and are warned and pity. Go,

rather, go now, and keep me in mind. So I shall have a life in the



cherished places of your memory: a life as much my own, as that

which I lead in this body.'



'I love you,' I said once more; and reaching out my weak hand, took

hers, and carried it to my lips, and kissed it. Nor did she



resist, but winced a little; and I could see her look upon me with

a frown that was not unkindly, only sad and baffled. And then it



seemed she made a call upon her resolution; plucked my hand towards

her, herself at the same time leaning somewhat forward, and laid it



on the beating of her heart. 'There,' she cried, 'you feel the

very footfall of my life. It only moves for you; it is yours. But



is it even mine? It is mine indeed to offer you, as I might take

the coin from my neck, as I might break a live branch from a tree,



and give it you. And yet not mine! I dwell, or I think I dwell

(if I exist at all), somewhere apart, an impotent prisoner, and



carried about and deafened by a mob that I disown. This capsule,

such as throbs against the sides of animals, knows you at a touch



for its master; ay, it loves you! But my soul, does my soul? I

think not; I know not, fearing to ask. Yet when you spoke to me



your words were of the soul; it is of the soul that you ask - it is

only from the soul that you would take me.'



'Olalla,' I said, 'the soul and the body are one, and mostly so in

love. What the body chooses, the soul loves; where the body



clings, the soul cleaves; body for body, soul to soul, they come

together at God's signal; and the lower part (if we can call aught



low) is only the footstool and foundation of the highest.'

'Have you,' she said, 'seen the portraits in the house of my



fathers? Have you looked at my mother or at Felipe? Have your

eyes never rested on that picture that hangs by your bed? She who



sat for it died ages ago; and she did evil in her life. But, look-

again: there is my hand to the least line, there are my eyes and my



hair. What is mine, then, and what am I? If not a curve in this

poor body of mine (which you love, and for the sake of which you



dotingly dream that you love me) not a gesture that I can frame,

not a tone of my voice, not any look from my eyes, no, not even now



when I speak to him I love, but has belonged to others? Others,

ages dead, have wooed other men with my eyes; other men have heard



the pleading of the same voice that now sounds in your ears. The

hands of the dead are in my bosom; they move me, they pluck me,



they guide me; I am a puppet at their command; and I but reinform

features and attributes that have long been laid aside from evil in



the quiet of the grave. Is it me you love, friend? or the race

that made me? The girl who does not know and cannot answer for the



least portion of herself? or the stream of which she is a

transitory eddy, the tree of which she is the passing fruit? The



race exists; it is old, it is ever young, it carries its eternal

destiny in its bosom; upon it, like waves upon the sea, individual



succeeds to individual, mocked with a semblance of self-control,

but they are nothing. We speak of the soul, but the soul is in the



race.'

'You fret against the common law,' I said. 'You rebel against the



voice of God, which he has made so winning to convince, so

imperious to command. Hear it, and how it speaks between us! Your



hand clings to mine, your heart leaps at my touch, the unknown

elements of which we are compounded awake and run together at a



look; the clay of the earth remembers its independent life and




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