【英文文学】Limitations.docx

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1、【英文文学】LimitationsCHAPTER I.Tom Carlingford was sitting at his piano, in his rooms at Kings College, Cambridge, playing the overture to Lohengrin with the most indifferent success. It was a hot night in the middle of August, and he was dressed suitably, if not elegantly, in a canvas shirt, a pair of

2、flannel trousers, and socks. He had no tie on, and he was smoking a meerschaum bowl of peculiarly spotted appearance, through a long cherry-wood stem. The remains of a nondescript meal laid coldly on the table, and a cricket-bag on the hearth-rug, seemed to indicate that he had been away playing cri

3、cket, and had got back too late for hall. The piano was almost as disreputable in appearance as its master, for it stood in a thorough draught, between the windows opening on to the front lawn and the door opening into the smaller sitting-room, and the guttering candle was making a fine stalactite f

4、ormation of wax on D in alt. Several good pictures and college photographs hung on the walls, and between the windows stood a small bookcase,2 suspiciously tidy. Tom played with the loud pedal down, and treated his hands in the way in which we are told we should bestow our alms. D in alt had stuck f

5、ast to C sharp and C, and the effect, when either of these three notes was played, was extremely curious. However, he finished the overture after a fashion, and got up.“This is a red-letter day for Wagner,” he remarked. “What do you do with pipes when they get leprous, Teddy?” he asked, looking dubi

6、ously at the meerschaum bowl.“I sit down and do Herodotus,” remarked a slightly irritated voice from the window-seat, behind the lamp.“I dont think thats any use,” said Tom.“Perhaps youve never tried it. I wish to goodness youd sit quiet for ten minutes, and let me work!”Tom walked up to the lamp, a

7、nd examined the pipe more closely.“It is as spotted and ringstraked as Jacobs oxen,” he remarked. “Teddy, do stop working! Its after eleven, and you said youd stop at eleven.”“And if you inquire what the reason for” murmured Teddy.“I never inquired the reason,” interrupted Tom. “I dont want to know.

8、 Do stop! Youre awfully unsociable!”“Five minutes more,” said Ted inexorably.Tom took a turn up and down the room, and whistled a few bars of a popular tune. Then he took up a book, yawned prodigiously, and read for the3 space of a minute and a quarter, lying back in a long basket-chair.“What the us

9、e of my learning classics is, I dont know,” he remarked. “Im not going to be a schoolmaster or a frowsy don.”“No, we cant all be schoolmasters or frowsy dons, any more than we can all be sculptors,” said the voice from the window-seat vindictively.Tom laughed.“Dear old boy, I mean no reflection on y

10、ou. Youll be a capital don, if you succeed in getting a fellowship, and it will always be a consolation to you to know that you probably wont be as frowsy as some of your colleagues. I cant think how you can possibly contemplate teaching Latin prose to a lot of silly oafs like me for the remainder o

11、f your mortal life.”“You must remember that all undergraduates arent such fools as you.”“Thats quite true; but some are much more unpleasant. They are, really; its no use denying it.”Ted shut his books, and looked meditatively out on to the court through the intervening flower-box, filling his pipe

12、the while, and Tom, finding he got no answer, continued“And I suppose, in course of time, theyll make you a dean. Thats a jolly occupation! Eight a.m. on a winters morning. And the warming apparatus of the chapel is defective. Furthermore, you must remember that those are the dizzy heights to which

13、you will rise, if you are successful; if not, you will have spent the six best years of your life in writing4 about the deliberative subjunctive, and, at the end, have the consolation of being told that the electors considered your dissertation very promising, but unfortunately there was no vacancy

14、for you. They will also recommend you to publish it, and it will be cut up in the Classical Review, by a Dead Sea ape with bleary eyes and a bald head, who will say you are an ignoramus, and had better read his grammar before you write one of your own. Oh, its a sweet prospect! It is grammar you do,

15、 isnt it?”“No; but it doesnt matter,” said Ted. “Go on.”“How a sensible man can contemplate spending his life in a place like this, I cannot conceive,” said Tom. “Its the duty of every man to knock about a bit, and learn that the outer darkness does not begin at Cambridge Station. There is a place c

16、alled London, and there are other places called Europe, Asia, Africa, and America.”“And Australia. Do you propose to go to them all?” asked Ted. “Its a new idea, isnt it? Yesterday you said that, as soon as you went down, you were going to bury yourself at home for five years, and work. Why is Apple

17、thorpe so much better than Cambridge?”“Why?” said Tom. “The difference lies in me. I shall continue to be aware of the existence of other countries, and other interests. Great heavens! I asked Marshall to-day, in an unreflective moment, if he knew Thomas Hardy, and he said, No; when did he come up?

18、And Marshall is a successful,5 valuable man, according to their lights here. Hes a tutor, and he collects postmarks. Thats what you may become some day. My hat, what a brute you will be!”Ted Markham left the window-seat, and came and stood on the hearth-rug.“You dont understand,” he said. “Its not n

19、ecessary to vegetate because you live here, and its not necessary to be unaware of the existence of Hardy because you know Thucydides. I dont want fame in the way you want it in the least. I havent the least desire to make a splash, as you call it. It seems to me that one can become educated, in you

20、r sense of the word, simply by living and seeing people. It doesnt really help you to live in a big town, and have five hundred acquaintances instead of fifty.”“No, I know,” said Tom, “but as a matter of experience, of men who settle down here, a larger proportion are vegetables than should be. They

21、 want to be the authorities on gerunds, or Thucydides, or supines in -um, or binomial theorems, or acid radicals, and they get to care for nothing else. If there were only a dozen fellowships reserved for men who didnt mean to work at anything, it would be all right, but when every one cares for his

22、 own line more than anything else, you get a want of proportion. Collectively they care for nothing but lines, individually each for his own line. And, after all, lines are a very small part of life. What difference would it make to any one if there was no such thing as the deliberative subjunctive?

23、6”Markham did not reply for a moment.“No one supposes it would,” he said, after a pause, “but you must remember that grammar is not necessarily uninteresting because it doesnt interest you. In any case lets walk down to the bridge.”“All right. Where are my shoes, and my coat? Ah, Im sitting on it!”T

24、oms rooms were on the ground floor on the side of the court facing the chapel. The moon had risen in a soft blue sky, and as they stepped into the open air they paused a moment.The side of the chapel opposite them was bathed in whitest light, cast obliquely on to it, and buttresses and pinnacles wer

25、e outlined with shadows. The great shield-bearing dragons perched high above the little side-chapels stood out clear-lined and fantastic from their backgrounds, and the great crowned roses and portcullis beneath them looked as if they were cut in ivory and ebony. The moon caught a hundred uneven poi

26、nts in the windows, giving almost the impression that the chapel was lighted inside. To the east and west rose the four pinnacles dreamlike into the vault of the sky. In front of them stretched the level close-cut lawn looking black beneath the moonlight, and from the centre came the gentle metallic

27、 drip of the fountain into its stone basin. Towards the town the gas-lit streets shot a reddish glare through the white light, and now and then a late cab rattled across the stone-lined rails of the tramway. From the left there came from the rooms of some musically minded undergraduate the sound of

28、a rich, fruity voice, singing,7 “I want no star in heaven to guide me,” followed by “a confused noise within,” exactly as if some one had sat down on the piano.Tom murmured, “I want no songs by Mr. Tosti,” drew his hand through Markhams arm, and they strolled down together towards the river.“Of cour

29、se I dont mean that youll become like Marshall,” he said, “but it does make me wild to think of the lives some of these people lead. They dont care for anything they should care about, and even if they do care about it, they never let you know it, or talk of it. Oh, Teddy, dont become a vegetable!”“

30、And yet when I came up,” said Markham, “my father used to write me letters, asking me about my new impressions, and this fresh world that was opening round me, and there really wasnt any fresh world opening round me, and I didnt have any new impressions of any sort. It seemed to me like any other pl

31、aceand I was expected to feel the bustle and the stir, and the active thought, and temptations, and I dont know what beside.”“O Lord!” sighed Tom. “I know just the sort of thing. I dont know if there is any bustle and stir, and active thought, but I certainly never came across them. Doesnt the Cambr

32、idge Review call itself the Journal of University Life and Thought? Meditate on that a moment. As for temptations, the only temptations I know of are not to be dressed by eight, not to go to Sunday morning chapel, and not to work from nine till two. But Ive been acquainted with all those temptations

33、 all my life, except that8 one had to be up by 7.30 at Eton. The temptations, in fact, are less severe here.”“I dont know how it is,” said Ted, “but whenever people write books about Cambridge, they make the bad undergraduates go to gambling hells on the Chesterton Road, and the good ones be filled

34、with ennobling thoughts when they contemplate their stately chapel. Did you ever go to a gambling hell on the Chesterton Road, Tom?”“No; do you ever have ennobling thoughts when you look at the stately chapel? Of course you dont. You think its deuced pretty, and so do I, and we both play whist with

35、threepenny points; and as a matter of fact we dont fall in love with each others cousins at the May races, nor do we sport deans into their rooms, nor do deans marry bedmakers. Oh, we are very ordinary!”“I feel a temptation to walk across the grass,” said Ted.“Yes, youre the wicked B.A. who leads th

36、e fresh, bright undergraduatethats meinto all sorts of snares. What fools people are!”Tom sat on the balustrade of the bridge and lit a pipe. The match burned steadily in the still night air.“Now, Teddy, listen,” he said, and he dropped it over into the black water. There was a moments silence as it

37、 fell through the air; then a sudden subdued hiss as the red-hot dottel was quenched.“I wonder if you know how nice that is,” said Tom. “I dont believe you enjoy that sort of thing a bit.9”“Dropping matches into the river?” asked Markham. “No, I dont know that I care for it very much.”“Oh, its awful

38、ly nice,” said Tom. “Here goes another. Therethat little hiss after the silence. Fusees would be even better. No; you havent got an artistic soul. Never mind; it would be dreadfully in your way up here. Teddy, stop up here till the end of the month, and then come and stay with us a bit. You neednt s

39、hoot unless you like.”“Yes, I shall stop up till the end, but I dont know whether I can come home with you. I ought to work.”“What rot it is!” said Tom angrily. “Youve been working for six months quite continuously, and you think you cant spare a week to be sociable in. What on earth does your wretc

40、hed work matter, if you do nothing else? What is the good of a man who only works?”“More good than a man who never works. But I agree with you, really.”“Well, but you behave as if you didnt think so,” said Tom. “The other day you said you sympathized with that wretched grammarian in Browning, who sp

41、ent his whole life in settling the question of the Enclitic ?ν, or some folly of that sort, and caught a cold on his chest in consequence, and had integral calculus and tussis, and a hundred other things. Very right and proper. Have you got any syphons? I wish for whisky. Well, will you come home

42、 with me or not? Im not going to press you.”“No, I dont want pressing. Yes, Ill come. I10 should like to very much. You leave one alone, which is the first quality of a host.”They strolled up again, as the clock began to strike twelve.“Im sure Ive done you much more good than youd have got in an hou

43、r out of your Herodotus,” said Tom. “There is one really good point about you, and that is that if you are told something you think about it. I shouldnt wonder if I found you dropping matches into the Cam some night soon.”“Its quite possible. Lets see, what is the point of it?the sudden splash at th

44、e end of the silence, isnt it?”“Yes, it is like so many things. Its like a mole burrowing silently in the earth, and then suddenly coming out at a different place. You neednt examine that analogy. Its like what I am going to do. Im going to work very hard and quite silently for several years, and th

45、en suddenly Im going to make a splash.”“But are you going out immediately afterwardslike the match?”“I dont know; perhaps I shallwho knows?”“Tom, are you aware that we are talking exactly like the people in books about Cambridgethe two friends, you know, who walk about on moonlight nights, and medit

46、ate on life and being?”“God forbid!” said Tom piously. “But wed better go indoors, just to be safe. Those people are so ridiculous only because they are always the same. Of course we all do meditate a little on life and being, but we do other things besides. But they come out11 in the evening like r

47、abbits out of their burrow, and disappear again till the next evening. Im going to play cricket to-morrow. They never do that.”“And drink whisky now. They never do that.”“No. To drink whisky is next door to going to the gambling hell on the Chesterton Road. Dont go to bed yet. Come to my room.”“I th

48、ought you wanted a syphon.”“Yes; go and get one, will you, and bring it round.”“Any more orders?” asked Markham.“Oh yes,” said Tom“some tobacco. Ive run out.”The Long Vacation Term was, so Tom thought, a really admirable institution, and it might have been invented exclusively for him. None of the colleges are more than half full, there are no lectures, and no need of wearing caps and gowns. The usual things go on as usual, but in a less emphatic manner. Those who wish to work do so, but not with any sense o