登陆注册
5250900000001

第1章 I. THE TALE OF THE PEACOCK TREES(1)

Squire Vane was an elderly schoolboy of English education and Irish extraction. His English education, at one of the great public schools, had preserved his intellect perfectly and permanently at the stage of boyhood. But his Irish extraction subconsciously upset in him the proper solemnity of an old boy, and sometimes gave him back the brighter outlook of a naughty boy.

He had a bodily impatience which played tricks upon him almost against his will, and had already rendered him rather too radiant a failure in civil and diplomatic service.

Thus it is true that compromise is the key of British policy, especially as effecting an impartiality among the religions of India; but Vane's attempt to meet the Moslem halfway by kicking off one boot at the gates of the mosque, was felt not so much to indicate true impartiality as something that could only be called an aggressive indifference. Again, it is true that an English aristocrat can hardly enter fully into the feelings of either party in a quarrel between a Russian Jew and an Orthodox procession carrying relics; but Vane's idea that the procession might carry the Jew as well, himself a venerable and historic relic, was misunderstood on both sides. In short, he was a man who particularly prided himself on having no nonsense about him; with the result that he was always doing nonsensical things.

He seemed to be standing on his head merely to prove that he was hard-headed.

He had just finished a hearty breakfast, in the society of his daughter, at a table under a tree in his garden by the Cornish coast. For, having a glorious circulation, he insisted on as many outdoor meals as possible, though spring had barely touched the woods and warmed the seas round that southern extremity of England. His daughter Barbara, a good-looking girl with heavy red hair and a face as grave as one of the garden statues, still sat almost motionless as a statue when her father rose.

A fine tall figure in light clothes, with his white hair and mustache flying backwards rather fiercely from a face that was good-humored enough, for he carried his very wide Panama hat in his hand, he strode across the terraced garden, down some stone steps flanked with old ornamental urns to a more woodland path fringed with little trees, and so down a zigzag road which descended the craggy Cliff to the shore, where he was to meet a guest arriving by boat. A yacht was already in the blue bay, and he could see a boat pulling toward the little paved pier.

And yet in that short walk between the green turf and the yellow sands he was destined to find. his hard-headedness provoked into a not unfamiliar phase which the world was inclined to call hot-headedness. The fact was that the Cornish peasantry, who composed his tenantry and domestic establishment, were far from being people with no nonsense about them.

There was, alas! a great deal of nonsense about them; with ghosts, witches, and traditions as old as Merlin, they seemed to surround him with a fairy ring of nonsense.

But the magic circle had one center: there was one point in which the curving conversation of the rustics always returned.

It was a point that always pricked the Squire to exasperation, and even in this short walk he seemed to strike it everywhere.

He paused before descending the steps from the lawn to speak to the gardener about potting some foreign shrubs, and the gardener seemed to be gloomily gratified, in every line of his leathery brown visage, at the chance of indicating that he had formed a low opinion of foreign shrubs.

"We wish you'd get rid of what you've got here, sir," he observed, digging doggedly. "Nothing'll grow right with them here."

"Shrubs!" said the Squire, laughing. "You don't call the peacock trees shrubs, do you? Fine tall trees--you ought to be proud of them."

"Ill weeds grow apace," observed the gardener. "Weeds can grow as houses when somebody plants them." Then he added:

"Him that sowed tares in the Bible, Squire."

"Oh, blast your--" began the Squire, and then replaced the more apt and alliterative word "Bible" by the general word "superstition."

He was himself a robust rationalist, but he went to church to set his tenants an example. Of what, it would have puzzled him to say.

A little way along the lower path by the trees he encountered a woodcutter, one Martin, who was more explicit, having more of a grievance. His daughter was at that time seriously ill with a fever recently common on that coast, and the Squire, who was a kind-hearted gentleman, would normally have made allowances for low spirits and loss of temper.

But he came near to losing his own again when the peasant persisted in connecting his tragedy with the traditional monomania about the foreign trees.

"If she were well enough I'd move her," said the woodcutter, "as we can't move them, I suppose. I'd just like to get my chopper into them and feel 'em come crashing down."

"One would think they were dragons," said Vane.

"And that's about what they look like," replied Martin. "Look at 'em!"

The woodman was naturally a rougher and even wilder figure than the gardener. His face also was brown, and looked like an antique parchment, and it was framed in an outlandish arrangement of raven beard and whiskers, which was really a fashion fifty years ago, but might have been five thousand years old or older.

Phoenicians, one felt, trading on those strange shores in the morning of the world, might have combed or curled or braided their blue-black hair into some such quaint patterns.

For this patch of population was as much a corner of Cornwall as Cornwall is a corner of England; a tragic and unique race, small and interrelated like a Celtic clan. The clan was older than the Vane family, though that was old as county families go.

For in many such parts of England it is the aristocrats who are the latest arrivals. It was the sort of racial type that is supposed to be passing, and perhaps has already passed.

同类推荐
热门推荐
  • 孙子兵法边读边悟

    孙子兵法边读边悟

    本书突出一个“悟”字,强调《孙子兵法》的现代适用性。在本书中,编者刻意地保留了《孙子兵法》的十三篇章,对孙武的兵法原文进行了注释、翻译。并且更重要的一点是,编者把《孙子兵法》中的一些比较重要的名言警句,另作主题,在有所“悟”的基础上加上一些案例、故事,最大可能地与现代社会结合了起来,凸显了古为今用的终极目的。
  • 百合心

    百合心

    致敬钱钟书、当代版《围城》。畅销书作家庹政十九年呕心沥血的诚意之作!剖析现实,全景展示政、商、学界百态世情。叩问灵魂,深度思索钱、权、情之得失价值。琴高有能力却不得重用,在朋友的劝说下,辞职到房产公司做了总经理。之后他过上了醉生梦死的生活,不仅得到了权力地位、财源广进,更追求到了漂亮的茶楼服务员七七。然而好景不长,琴高的父亲因癌症去世,七七不辞而别,朋友背弃等一连串的打击。作者以诙谐而深刻的文字叙述了一个年轻人的事业、爱情、友情,折射出具有时代特征性的事件和现象,举轻若重地创作了当下时代的浮世绘。
  • 凉拌菜谱

    凉拌菜谱

    民以食为天。我们一日三餐的饭菜不仅关系我们的生命,更关系我们的健康。因此,我们不但要吃饱吃好,还要吃出营养、吃出健康、吃出品味,吃出高水平的生活质量。随着现代生活水平的提高,我们要是一边品尝着美味佳肴,一边又享受着养生保健和预防治疗的待遇,那简直是人生的超值恩赐了。
  • 神秘的玫瑰园

    神秘的玫瑰园

    贾斯廷始终天真地未把这个地方当做惠勒放弃的私人财产或当做一个用高墙和厚篱笆围绕的宽阔院落。这个地方就位于斯凯尔德?莱瑟沃依路北较远的地方。因不能向他人述说的缘故,他用自己创造的文字从右至左悄悄记录下他在那个地方看到的令他刺激的情景。每次潜入这个地方,都使他有种比以前更兴奋、更恐怖、也更满足的感觉。多次的潜入就像连续的跋涉,他在用微积分学的方式解决他头脑中的问题。他从未想到,在这个地方,他会遇到真正令他冷汗直冒的恐怖。
  • 最强特种兵之龙魂

    最强特种兵之龙魂

    龙隐部队,强者汇聚!人们只知龙隐部队中的最强者,被称为“龙刺”;却不知,龙隐部队还有道“影子”,被称为“龙魂”,“龙魂”万中无一!如果说“狂龙”罗昊是龙隐部队的光,那么“蛰龙”叶萧就是龙隐部队的影!谁都不是天生强者,强者只是不愿轻易后退,更多的时候是无法后退!
  • 小姐请你对我负责

    小姐请你对我负责

    她可能是全世界最倒霉的女人了,交往四年的男友被妹妹挖了墙角,自己还被她下迷药稀里糊涂地跟陌生男人共度一晚。醒来的时候发现那个被她“非礼”的男人居然是那个LSA集团的总裁“欧少”。这种人可得罪不起,连滚带爬地逃到意大利避难,居然又在那里好死不死地遇到了他。“徐小姐,我可以对你负责。”“帝尔司先生,这事太小,而且对现代社会而言很正常。”“是吗,那徐小姐请对我负责,我很纯洁。”
  • 亿万宠妻:首席老公,你好坏

    亿万宠妻:首席老公,你好坏

    新书《傲娇军少,求亲亲!》超甜宠文哦~快来支持~~六年前第一次见面,他压在她身上,声音暧昧,“女人,表现得好,我不会亏待你。”六年后第二次见面,他壁咚她问道:“女人,我们是不是在哪里见过?”“哪里?”她迷茫道。“床上。”“.......”自从惹上这只腹黑高冷的大boss,凌薇的生活就乱糟糟的一片,这家伙上班要带上她,出差要带上她,回家要带上她,就连洗澡也要带上她,某天,凌薇终于忍无可忍,“boss大人,我只是你的员工啊!”某男勾唇一笑,“不满意吗?你想直接当我太太也没问题的!”(独宠1v1)
  • 大波(全集)

    大波(全集)

    李劼人著作《大波》分为两个版本,一个是1937年的老版本。一个是新中国成立后1956年作者的重写本,两个版本的内容相差很大,几本没有重复的内容。本书是作者1937年版本《大波》,作为1937年版本完整呈现,分上中下三卷。主要内容为为反对清政府出卖川汉铁路筑路权,夏之时、林绍泉等人组织了保路同志会,遭到血腥镇压。保路运动由请愿发展为武装反抗。作品事件纷繁,人物众多,反映了辛亥革命前后各阶级、各阶层、各政治派别之间错综复杂的斗争。《大波》这部小说,在其浓郁的地方色彩之中,反应了一个人心浮动的动荡时代,它描摹了一个轩然大波时代的众生面相,对于研究方言文学和记事文学都具有很高的价值。
  • 火遍娱乐圈

    火遍娱乐圈

    2018年,一个活了20多年的小宅男,眼睛一闭再睁重生了,成了2012年的一个明星。抄小说,编歌曲,写剧本,搞综艺,拍电影,做主播,玩电竞,办公司,签艺人,传绯闻,泡妹子,我是要成为海贼王的男人,不对,拿错本子了,我是要火遍全世界的男人。(企鹅群:822951012)幼苗求养,新书不易;虽已签约,仍在努力。为求上架,更新稳定;码字艰辛,说给谁听。收藏推荐,看官手里;欲求不得,无能为力。只望成绩,不求金银;之后如何,大家来评。
  • The Financier

    The Financier

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。