Vendredi 06 mai 2011

It was quite by chance

Mrs. Kent-Cumberland was an active woman. It was less than ten days after the MacDougals’ visit that she returned triumphantly from a day in London. After dinner, when she sat alone with Tom in the small drawing-room, she said: “You’ll be very much surprised to hear who I saw to day. Gladys.” “Gladys?” “Gladys Cruttwell.” “Good heavens. Where on earth did you meet her?” “It was quite by chance,” said his mother vaguely. “She is working there now.” “How was she?” “Very pretty. Prettier, if anything.” There was a pause. Mrs. Kent-Cumberland stitched away at a gros-point chair seat. “You know, dear boy, that I never interfere, but I have often wondered whether you treated Gladys very kindly. I know I was partly to blame, myself. But you were both very young and your prospects so uncertain. I thought a year or two of separation would be a good test of whether you really loved one another.” “Oh, I am sure she has forgotten about me long ago.” “Indeed, she has not, Tom. I thought she seemed a very unhappy girl.” “But how can you know, Mother, just seeing her casually like that?” “We had luncheon together,” said Mrs. Kent-Cumberland. “In an A.B.C. shop.” Another pause. “But, look here, I’ve forgotten all about her. I only care about Bessie now.” “You know, dearest boy, I never interfere. I think Bessie is a delightful girl. But are you free? Are you free in your own conscience? You know, and I do not know, on what terms you parted from Gladys.” And there returned, after a long absence, the scene which for the first few months of his Australian venture had been constantly in Tom’s memory, of a tearful parting and many intemperate promises. He said nothing. “I did not tell Gladys of your engagement. I thought you had the right to do that—as best you can, in your own way. But I did tell her you were back in England and that you wished to see her. She is coming here tomorrow for a night or two. She looked in need of a holiday, poor child.” When Tom went to meet Gladys at the station they stood for some minutes on the platform not certain of the other’s identity. Then their tentative signs of recognition corresponded. Gladys had been engaged twice in the past two years, and was now walking out with a motor salesman. It had been a great surprise when Mrs. Kent-Cumberland sought her out and explained that Tom had returned to England. She had not forgotten him, for she was a loyal and good-hearted girl, but she was embarrassed and touched to learn that his devotion was unshaken. They were married two weeks later and Mrs. Kent-Cumberland undertook the delicate mission of “explaining everything” to the MacDougals. They went to Australia, where Mr. MacDougal very magnanimously gave them a post managing one of his more remote estates. He was satisfied with Tom’s work. Gladys has a large sunny bungalow and a landscape of grazing land and wire fences. She does not see very much company nor does she particularly like what she does see. The neighbouring ranchers find her very English and aloof. Bessie and Gervase were married after six weeks’ engagement. They live at Tomb. Bessie has two children and Gervase has six racehorses. Mrs. Kent-Cumberland lives in the house with them. She and Bessie rarely disagree, and, when they do, it is Mrs. Kent-Cumberland who gets her way. The dower house is let on a long lease to a sporting manufacturer. Gervase has taken over the Hounds and spends money profusely; everyone in the neighbourhood is content.

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Your brother is coming back.” “Oh, good! When?” “He is bringing a farmer’s daughter to whom he is engaged—and the farmer. They want to come here.” “I say, that’s rather a bore. Let’s tell them we’re having the boilers cleaned.” “You don’t seem to realize that this is a serious matter, Gervase.” “Oh, well, you fix things up. I dare say it would be all right if they came next month. We’ve got to have the Anchorages some time. We might get both over together.” In the end it was decided that Gervase should meet the immigrants in London, vet them and report to his mother whether or no they were suitable fellow guests for the Anchorages. A week later, on his return to Tomb, his mother greeted him anxiously. “Well? You never wrote?” “Wrote, why should I? I never do. I say, I haven’t forgotten a birthday or anything, have I?” “Don’t be absurd, Gervase. I mean, about your brother Tom’s unfortunate entanglement. Did you see the girl?” “Oh, that. Yes, I went and had dinner with them. Tom’s done himself quite well. Fair, rather fat, saucer-eyed, good-tempered I should say by her looks.” “Does she—does she speak with an Australian accent?” “Didn’t notice it.” “And the father?” “Pompous old boy.” “Would he be all right with the Anchorages?” “I should think he’d go down like a dinner. But they can’t come. They are staying with the Chasms.” “Indeed! What an extraordinary thing. But, of course, Archie Chasm was Governor-General once. Still, it shows they must be fairly respectable. Where are they staying?” “Claridges.” “Then they must be quite rich, too. How very interesting. I will write this evening.” XI Three weeks later they arrived. Mr. MacDougal, the father, was a tall, lean man, with pince-nez and an interest in statistics. He was a territorial magnate to whom the Tomb estates appeared a cosy small-holding. He did not emphasize this in any boastful fashion, but in his statistical zeal gave Mrs. Kent-Cumberland some staggering figures. “Is Bessie your only child?” asked Mrs. Kent-Cumberland. “My only child and heir,” he replied, coming down to brass tacks at once. “I dare say you have been wondering what sort of settlement I shall be able to make on her. Now that, I regret to say, is a question I cannot answer accurately. We have good years, Mrs. Kent-Cumberland, and we have bad years. It all depends.” “But I dare say that even in bad years the income is quite considerable?” “In a bad year,” said Mr. MacDougal, “in a very bad year such as the present, the net profits, after all deductions have been made for running expenses, insurance, taxation, and deterioration, amount to something between”—Mrs. Kent-Cumberland listened breathlessly—“fifty and fifty-two thousand pounds. I know that is a very vague statement, but it is impossible to be more accurate until the last returns are in.” Bessie was bland and creamy. She admired everything. “It’s so antique,” she would remark with relish, whether the object of her attention was the Norman Church of Tomb, the Victorian panelling in the billiard room, or the central-heating system which Gervase had recently installed. Mrs. Kent-Cumberland took a great liking to the girl. “Thoroughly Teachable,” she pronounced. “But I wonder whether she is really suited to Tom ... I wonder ...” The MacDougals stayed for four days and, when they left, Mrs. Kent-Cumberland pressed them to return for a longer visit. Bessie had been enchanted with everything she saw. “I wish we could live here,” she had said to Tom on her first evening, “in this dear, quaint old house.” “Yes, darling, so do I. Of course it all belongs to Gervase, but I always look on it as my home.” “Just as we Australians look on England.” “Exactly.” She had insisted on seeing everything; the old gabled manor, once the home of the family, relegated now to the function of dower house since the present mansion was built in the eighteenth century—the house of mean proportions and inconvenient offices where Mrs. Kent-Cumberland, in her moments of depression, pictured her own, declining years; the mill and the quarries; the farm, which to the MacDougals seemed minute and formal as a Noah’s Ark. On these expeditions it was Gervase who acted as guide. “He, of course, knows so much more about it than Tom,” Mrs. Kent-Cumberland explained. Tom, in fact, found himself very rarely alone with his fiancée. Once, when they were all together after dinner, the question of his marriage was mentioned. He asked Bessie whether, now that she had seen Tomb, she would sooner be married there, at the village church, than in London. “Oh there is no need to decide anything hastily,” Mrs. Kent-Cumberland had said. “Let Bessie look about a little first.” When the MacDougals left, it was to go to Scotland to see the castle of their ancestors. Mr. MacDougal had traced relationship with various branches of his family, had corresponded with them intermittently, and now wished to make their acquaintance. Bessie wrote to them all at Tomb; she wrote daily to Tom, but in her thoughts, as she lay sleepless in the appalling bed provided for her by her distant kinsmen, she was conscious for the first time of a slight feeling of disappointment and uncertainty. In Australia Tom had seemed so different from everyone else, so gentle and dignified and cultured. Here in England he seemed to recede into obscurity. Everyone in England seemed to be like Tom. And then there was the house. It was exactly the kind of house which she had always imagined English people to live in, with the dear little park—less than a thousand acres—and the soft grass and the old stone. Tom had fitted into the house. He had fitted too well; had disappeared entirely in it and become part of the background. The central place belonged to Gervase—so like Tom but more handsome; with all Tom’s charm but with more personality. Beset with these thoughts, she rolled on the hard and irregular bed until dawn began to show through the lancet window of the Victorian-baronial turret. She loved that turret for all its discomfort. It was so antique.
Par lucyshanxu - 0 commentaire(s)le 06 mai 2011

cheaper public schools

Gervase went to Eton in the year of his father’s death. Tom would normally have followed him two years later, but in her new mood of economy, Mrs. Kent-Cumberland cancelled his entry and began canvassing her friends’ opinions about the less famous, cheaper public schools. “The education is just as good,” she said, “and far more suitable for a boy who has his own way to make in the world.” Tom was happy enough at the school to which he was sent. It was very bleak and very new, salubrious, progressive, prosperous in the boom that secondary education enjoyed in the years immediately following the war, and, when all was said and done, “thoroughly suitable for a boy with his own way to make in the world.” He had several friends whom he was not allowed to invite to his home during the holidays. He got his House colours for swimming and fives, played once or twice in the second eleven for cricket, and was a platoon-commander in the O.T.C.; he was in the sixth form and passed the Higher Certificate in his last year, became a prefect and enjoyed the confidence of his house master, who spoke of him as “a very decent stamp of boy.” He left school at the age of eighteen without the smallest desire to revisit it or see any of its members again. Gervase was then at Christ Church. Tom went up to visit him, but the magnificent Etonians who romped in and out of his brother’s rooms scared and depressed him. Gervase was in the Bullingdon, spending money freely and enjoying himself. He gave a dinner party in his rooms, but Tom sat in silence, drinking heavily to hide his embarrassment, and was later sombrely sick in a corner of Peckwater quad. He returned to Tomb next day in the lowest spirits. “It is not as though Tom were a scholarly boy,” said Mrs. Kent-Cumberland to her friends. “I am glad he is not, of course. But if he had been, it might have been right to make the sacrifice and send him to the University. As it is, the sooner he Gets Started the better.”

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The two brothers developed into sturdy, unremarkable little boys; there was little to choose between them except their two years’ difference in age. They were both sandy-haired, courageous, and well-mannered on occasions. Neither was sensitive, artistic, highly strung, or conscious of being misunderstood. Both accepted the fact of Gervase’s importance just as they accepted his superiority of knowledge and physique. Mrs. Kent-Cumberland was a fair-minded woman, and in the event of the two being involved in mischief, it was Gervase, as the elder, who was the more severely punished. Tom found that his obscurity was on the whole advantageous, for it excused him from the countless minor performances of ceremony which fell on Gervase. III At the age of seven Tom was consumed with desire for a model motor-car, an expensive toy of a size to sit in and pedal about the garden. He prayed for it steadfastly every evening and most mornings for several weeks. Christmas was approaching. Gervase had a smart pony and was often taken hunting. Tom was alone most of the day and the motor-car occupied a great part of his thoughts. Finally he confided his ambition to an uncle. This uncle was not addicted to expensive present giving, least of all to children (for he was a man of limited means and self-indulgent habits) but something in his nephew’s intensity of feeling impressed him. “Poor little beggar,” he reflected, “his brother seems to get all the fun,” and when he returned to London he ordered the motor-car for Tom. It arrived some days before Christmas and was put away upstairs with other presents. On Christmas Eve Mrs. Kent-Cumberland came to inspect them. “How very kind,” she said, looking at each label in turn, “how very kind.” The motor-car was by far the largest exhibit. It was pillar-box red, complete with electric lights, a hooter and a spare wheel. “Really,” she said. “How very kind of Ted.” Then she looked at the label more closely. “But how foolish of him. He’s put Tom’s name on it.” “There was this book for Master Gervase,” said the nurse, producing a volume labelled “Gervase with best wishes from Uncle Ted.” “Of course the parcels have been confused at the shop,” said Mrs. Kent-Cumberland. “This can’t have been meant for Tom. Why, it must have cost six or seven pounds.” She changed the labels and went downstairs to supervise the decoration of the Christmas tree, glad to have rectified an obvious error of justice. Next morning the presents were revealed. “Oh, Ger. You are lucky,” said Tom, inspecting the motor-car. “May I ride in it?” “Yes, only be careful. Nanny says it was awfully expensive.” Tom rode it twice round the room. “May I take it in the garden sometimes?” “Yes. You can have it when I’m hunting.” Later in the week they wrote to thank their uncle for his presents. Gervase wrote: “Dear Uncle Ted, Thank you for the lovely present. It’s lovely. The pony is very well. I am going to hunt again before I go back to school. Love from Gervase.” “Dear Uncle Ted,” wrote Tom, “Thank you ever so much for the lovely present. It is just what I wanted. Again thanking you very much. With love from Tom.” “So that’s all the thanks I get. Ungrateful little beggar,” said Uncle Ted, resolving to be more economical in future. But when Gervase went back to school, he said, “You can have the motor-car, Tom, to keep.” “What, for my own?” “Yes. It’s a kid’s toy, anyway.” And by this act of generosity he increased Tom’s respect and love for him a hundredfold. IV The War came and profoundly changed the lives of the two boys. It engendered none of the neuroses threatened by pacifists. Air raids remained among Tom’s happiest memories, when the school used to be awakened in the middle of the night and hustled downstairs to the basements where, wrapped in eiderdowns, they were regaled with cocoa and cake by the matron, who looked supremely ridiculous in a flannel nightgown. Once a Zeppelin was hit in sight of the school; they all crowded to the dormitory windows to see it sinking slowly in a globe of pink flame. A very young master whose health rendered him unfit for military service danced on the headmaster’s tennis court crying, “There go the baby killers.” Tom made a collection of “War Relics,” including a captured German helmet, shell-splinters, The Times for August 4th, 1914, buttons, cartridge cases, and cap badges, that was voted the best in the school. The event which radically changed the relationship of the brothers was the death, early in 1915, of their father. Neither knew him well nor particularly liked him. He had represented the division in the House of Commons and spent much of his time in London while the children were at Tomb. They only saw him on three occasions after he joined the army. Gervase and Tom were called out of the classroom and told of his death by the headmaster’s wife. They cried, since it was expected of them, and for some days were treated with marked deference by the masters and the rest of the school. It was in the subsequent holidays that the importance of the change became apparent. Mrs. Kent-Cumberland had suddenly become more emotional and more parsimonious. She was liable to unprecedented outbursts of tears, when she would crush Gervase to her and say, “My poor fatherless boy.” At other times she spoke gloomily of death duties. V For some years in fact “Death Duties” became the refrain of the household. When Mrs. Kent-Cumberland let the house in London and closed down a wing at Tomb, when she reduced the servants to four and the gardeners to two, when she “let the flower gardens go,” when she stopped asking her brother Ted to stay, when she emptied the stables, and became almost fanatical in her reluctance to use the car, when the bathwater was cold and there were no new tennis balls, when the chimneys were dirty and the lawns covered with sheep, when Gervase’s cast-off clothes ceased to fit Tom, when she refused him the “extra” expense at school of carpentry lessons and mid-morning milk—“Death Duties” were responsible. “It is all for Gervase,” Mrs. Kent-Cumberland used to explain. “When he inherits, he must take over free of debt, as his father did.”
Par lucyshanxu - 1 commentaire(s)le 06 mai 2011

So I did

Well, you have come at an exceedingly inconvenient time. I am very busy. Have you typed out that letter to the Pope yet, Loveday?” “No, my lord. If you remember, you asked me to look up the figures about the Newfoundland fisheries first?” “So I did. Well, it is fortunate, as I think the whole letter will have to be redrafted. A great deal of new information has come to light since luncheon. A great deal ... You see, my dear, I am fully occupied.” He turned his restless, quizzical eyes upon Angela. “I suppose you have come about the Danube. Well, you must come again later. Tell them it will be all right, quite all right, but I have not had time to give my full attention to it. Tell them that.” “Very well, Papa.” “Anyway,” said Lord Moping rather petulantly, “it is a matter of secondary importance. There is the Elbe and the Amazon and the Tigris to be dealt with first, eh, Loveday? ... Danube indeed. Nasty little river. I’d only call it a stream myself. Well, can’t stop, nice of you to come. I would do more for you if I could, but you see how I’m fixed. Write to me about it. That’s it. Put it in black and white.” And with that he left the room. “You see,” said the doctor, “he is in excellent condition. He is putting on weight, eating and sleeping excellently. In fact, the whole tone of his system is above reproach.” The door opened again and Loveday returned. “Forgive my coming back, sir, but I was afraid that the young lady might be upset at his Lordship’s not knowing her. You mustn’t mind him, miss. Next time he’ll be very pleased to see you. It’s only today he’s put out on account of being behindhand with his work. You see, sir, all this week I’ve been helping in the library and I haven’t been able to get all his Lordship’s reports typed out. And he’s got muddled with his card index. That’s all it is. He doesn’t mean any harm.” “What a nice man,” said Angela, when Loveday had gone back to his charge. “Yes. I don’t know what we should do without old Loveday. Everybody loves him, staff and patients alike.” “I remember him well. It’s a great comfort to know that you are able to get such good warders,” said Lady Moping; “people who don’t know, say such foolish things about asylums.” “Oh, but Loveday isn’t a warder,” said the doctor. “You don’t mean he’s cuckoo, too?” said Angela. The doctor corrected her. “He is an inmate. It is rather an interesting case. He has been here for thirty-five years.” “But I’ve never seen anyone saner,” said Angela. “He certainly has that air,” said the doctor, “and in the last twenty years we have treated him as such. He is the life and soul of the place. Of course he is not one of the private patients, but we allow him to mix freely with them. He plays billiards excellently, does conjuring tricks at the concert, mends their gramophones, valets them, helps them in their crossword puzzles and various—er—hobbies. We allow them to give him small tips for services rendered, and he must by now have amassed quite a little fortune. He has a way with even the most troublesome of them. An invaluable man about the place.” “Yes, but why is he here?” “Well, it is rather sad. When he was a very young man he killed somebody—a young woman quite unknown to him, whom he knocked off her bicycle and then throttled. He gave himself up immediately afterwards and has been here ever since.” “But surely he is perfectly safe now. Why is he not let out?” “Well, I suppose if it was to anyone’s interest, he would be. He has no relatives except a step-sister who lives in Plymouth. She used to visit him at one time, but she hasn’t been for years now. He’s perfectly happy here and I can assure you we aren’t going to take the first steps in turning him out. He’s far too useful to us.” “But it doesn’t seem fair,” said Angela. “Look at your father,” said the doctor. “He’d be quite lost without Loveday to act as his secretary.” “It doesn’t seem fair.” II Angela left the asylum, oppressed by a sense of injustice. Her mother was unsympathetic. “Think of being locked up in a looney bin all one’s life.” “He attempted to hang himself in the orangery,” replied Lady Moping, “in front of the Chester-Martins.” “I don’t mean Papa. I mean Mr. Loveday.” “I don’t think I know him.” “Yes, the looney they have put to look after Papa.”

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There was an exciting Aubusson carpet in the dining room to which Hector was able to do irreparable damage; Sir Alexander seemed not to notice. Hector found a carrion in the park and conscientiously rolled in it—although such a thing was obnoxious to his nature—and, returning, fouled every chair in the drawing room; Sir Alexander himself helped Millicent wash him and brought some bath salts from his own bathroom for the operation. Hector howled all night; he hid and had half the household searching for him with lanterns; he killed some young pheasants and made a sporting attempt on a peacock. All to no purpose. He staved off an actual proposal, it is true—once in the Dutch garden, once on the way to the stables and once while he was being bathed—but when Monday morning arrived and he heard Sir Alexander say, “I hope Hector enjoyed his visit a little. I hope I shall see him here very, very often,” he knew that he was defeated. It was now only a matter of waiting. The evenings in London were a time when it was impossible for him to keep Millicent under observation. One of these days he would wake up to hear Millicent telephoning to her girlfriends, breaking the good news of her engagement. Thus it was that after a long conflict of loyalties he came to a desperate resolve. He had grown fond of his young mistress; often and often when her face had been pressed down to his he had felt sympathy with that long line of young men whom it was his duty to persecute. But Hector was no kitchen-haunting mongrel. By the code of all well-born dogs it is money that counts. It is the purchaser, not the mere feeder and fondler, to whom ultimate loyalty is due. The hand which had once fumbled with the fivers in the livestock department of the mammoth store, now tilled the unfertile soil of equatorial Africa, but the sacred words of commission still rang in Hector’s memory. All through the Sunday night and the journey of Monday morning, Hector wrestled with his problem; then he came to the decision. The nose must go. You will not find your father greatly changed,” remarked Lady Moping, as the car turned into the gates of the County Asylum. “Will he be wearing a uniform?” asked Angela. “No, dear, of course not. He is receiving the very best attention.” It was Angela’s first visit and it was being made at her own suggestion. Ten years had passed since the showery day in late summer when Lord Moping had been taken away; a day of confused but bitter memories for her; the day of Lady Moping’s annual garden party, always bitter, confused that day by the caprice of the weather which, remaining clear and brilliant with promise until the arrival of the first guests, had suddenly blackened into a squall. There had been a scuttle for cover; the marquee had capsized; a frantic carrying of cushions and chairs; a tablecloth lofted to the boughs of the monkey-puzzler, fluttering in the rain; a bright period and the cautious emergence of guests on to the soggy lawns; another squall; another twenty minutes of sunshine. It had been an abominable afternoon, culminating at about six o’clock in her father’s attempted suicide. Lord Moping habitually threatened suicide on the occasion of the garden party; that year he had been found black in the face, hanging by his braces in the orangery; some neighbours, who were sheltering there from the rain, set him on his feet again, and before dinner a van had called for him. Since then Lady Moping had paid seasonal calls at the asylum and returned in time for tea, rather reticent of her experience. Many of her neighbours were inclined to be critical of Lord Moping’s accommodation. He was not, of course, an ordinary inmate. He lived in a separate wing of the asylum, specially devoted to the segregation of wealthier lunatics. These were given every consideration which their foibles permitted. They might choose their own clothes (many indulged in the liveliest fancies), smoke the most expensive brands of cigars and, on the anniversaries of their certification, entertain any other inmates for whom they had an attachment to private dinner parties. The fact remained, however, that it was far from being the most expensive kind of institution; the uncompromising address, “county home for mental defectives,” stamped across the notepaper, worked on the uniforms of their attendants, painted, even, upon a prominent hoarding at the main entrance, suggested the lowest associations. From time to time, with less or more tact, her friends attempted to bring to Lady Moping’s notice particulars of seaside nursing homes, of “qualified practitioners with large private grounds suitable for the charge of nervous or difficult cases,” but she accepted them lightly; when her son came of age he might make any changes that he thought fit; meanwhile she felt no inclination to relax her economical régime; her husband had betrayed her basely on the one day in the year when she looked for loyal support, and was far better off than he deserved. A few lonely figures in greatcoats were shuffling and loping about the park. “Those are the lower-class lunatics,” observed Lady Moping. “There is a very nice little flower garden for people like your father. I sent them some cuttings last year.” They drove past the blank, yellow brick façade to the doctor’s private entrance and were received by him in the “visitors room,” set aside for interviews of this kind. The window was protected on the inside by bars and wire netting; there was no fireplace; when Angela nervously attempted to move her chair further from the radiator, she found that it was screwed to the floor. “Lord Moping is quite ready to see you,” said the doctor. “How is he?” “Oh, very well, very well indeed, I’m glad to say. He had rather a nasty cold some time ago, but apart from that his condition is excellent. He spends a lot of his time in writing.” They heard a shuffling, skipping sound approaching along the flagged passage. Outside the door a high peevish voice, which Angela recognized as her father’s, said: “I haven’t the time, I tell you. Let them come back later.” A gentler tone, with a slight rural burr, replied, “Now come along. It is a purely formal audience. You need stay no longer than you like.” Then the door was pushed open (it had no lock or fastening) and Lord Moping came into the room. He was attended by an elderly little man with full white hair and an expression of great kindness. “That is Mr. Loveday who acts as Lord Moping’s attendant.” “Secretary,” said Lord Moping. He moved with a jogging gait and shook hands with his wife. “This is Angela. You remember Angela, don’t you?”
Par lucyshanxu - 5 commentaire(s)le 06 mai 2011

growing bolder

The men looked at each other in surprise, and one very old white beard giggled slightly. After a painful delay the leader nodded and said, “Lunnon.” Then they cautiously encircled him until, growing bolder, they came right up to him and began to finger his outlandish garments, tapping his crumpled shirt with their horny nails and plucking at his studs and buttons. The women meanwhile were shrieking with excitement in the house-tops. When Rip looked up to them and smiled, they dodged into the doorways, peeping out at him from the smoky interiors. He felt remarkably foolish and very dizzy. The men were discussing him; they squatted on their hams and began to debate, without animation or conviction. Occasional phrases came to him, “white,” “black boss,” “trade,” but for the most part the jargon was without meaning. Rip sat down too. The voices rose and fell liturgically. Rip closed his eyes and made a desperate effort to wake himself from this preposterous nightmare. “I am in London, in nineteen-thirty-three, staying at the Ritz Hotel. I drank too much last night at Margot’s. Have to go carefully in future. Nothing really wrong. I am in the Ritz in nineteen-thirty-three.” He said it over and over again, shutting his senses to all outward impression, forcing his will towards sanity. At last, fully convinced, he raised his head and opened his eyes ... early morning on the river, a cluster of wattle huts, a circle of impassive barbarous faces ... It is not to be supposed that one who has lightly skipped five hundred years would take great notice of the passage of days and nights. Often in Rip’s desultory reading, he had struck such phrases as, “From then time ceased to have any reality for her”; at last he knew what they meant. There was a time when he lived under guard among the Londoners; they fed him on fish and coarse bread and heady, viscous beer; often, in the late afternoon when the work for the day was over, the village women would collect round him in a little circle, watching all his movements with an intent scrutiny; sometimes impatiently (once a squat young matron came up to him and suddenly tweaked his hair) but more often shyly—ready to giggle or take flight at any unusual movement. This captivity may have lasted many days. He was conscious of restraint and strangeness; nothing else. Then there was another impression; the coming of the boss. A day of excitement in the village; the arrival of a large mechanically propelled boat, with an awning and a flag; a crew of smart Negroes, all wearing uniforms of leather and fur although it was high summer; a commander among the Negroes issuing orders in a quiet supercilious voice. The Londoners brought out sacks from their huts and spread on the beach the things they had recovered from the ruins by digging—pieces of machinery and ornament, china and glass and carved stonework, jewellery and purposeless bits of things they hoped might have value. The blacks landed bales of thick cloth, cooking utensils, fish-hooks, knife-blades and axe-heads; discussion and barter followed, after which the finds from the diggings were bundled up into the launch. Rip was led forward and presented, turned round and inspected; then he too was put in the launch. A phantasmagoric journey downstream; Rip seated on the cargo; the commander puffing imperturbably at a cigar. Now and then they stopped at other villages, smaller than London, but built on the same plan. Here curious Englishmen crowded the banks and paddled in to stare at him until peremptorily told to keep their distance. The nightmare journey continued. Arrival at the coast; a large military station; uniforms of leather and fur; black faces; flags; saluting. A pier with a large steamer alongside; barracks and a government house. A Negro anthropologist with vast spectacles. Impressions became more vivid and more brief; momentary illumination like flickering lightning. Someone earnestly trying to talk to Rip. Saying English words very slowly; reading to him from a book, familiar words with an extraordinary accent; a black man trying to read Shakespeare to Rip. Someone measured his skull with calipers. Growing blackness and despair; restraint and strangeness; moments of illumination rarer and more fantastic.

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It took an hour’s substantial eating and drinking before Rip began to feel at ease again. He was well placed between two married women of his own generation, with both of whom, at one time and another, he had had affairs; but even their genial gossip could not entirely hold his attention and he found himself continually gazing down the table to where, ten places away, Dr. Kakophilos was frightening a pop-eyed débutante out of all semblance of intelligence. Later, however, wine and reminiscence began to glow within him. He remembered that he had been brought up a Catholic and had therefore no need to fear black magic. He reflected that he was wealthy and in good health; that none of his women had ever borne him ill-will (and what better sign of good character was there than that?); that it was his first week in London and that everyone he most liked seemed to be there too; that the wine was so copious he had ceased to notice its excellence. He got going well and soon had six neighbours listening as he told some successful stories in his soft, lazy voice; he became aware with familiar, electric tremors that he had captured the attention of a lady opposite on whom he had had his eye last summer in Venice and two years before in Paris; he drank a good deal more and didn’t care a damn for Dr. Kakophilos. Presently, almost imperceptibly to Rip, the ladies left the dining room. He found himself with a ballon of brandy and a cigar, leaning back in his chair and talking for about the first time in his life to Lord Metroland. He was telling him about big game when he was aware of a presence at his other side, like a cold draught. He turned and saw that Dr. Kakophilos had come sidling up to him. “You will see me home tonight,” said the magician. “You and Sir Alastair?” “Like hell I will,” said Rip. “Like hell,” repeated Dr. Kakophilos, deep meaning resounding through his horrible Cockney tones. “I have need of you.” “Perhaps we ought to be going up,” said Lord Metroland, “or Margot will get restless.” For Rip the rest of the evening passed in a pleasant daze. He remembered Margot confiding in him that Norah and that silly little something girl had had a scene about Dr. Kakophilos and had both gone home in rages. Presently the party began to thin until he found himself alone with Alastair Trumptington drinking whiskeys in the small drawing room. They said good-bye and descended the stairs arm in arm. “I’ll drop you, old boy.” “No, old boy, I’ll drop you.” “I like driving at night.” “So do I, old boy.” They were on the steps when a cold Cockney voice broke in on their friendly discussion. “Will you please drop me?” A horrible figure in a black cloak had popped out on them. “Where do you want to go?” asked Alastair in some distaste. Dr. Kakophilos gave an obscure address in Bloomsbury. “Sorry, old boy, bang out of my way.” “And mine.” “But you said you liked driving at night.” “Oh God! All right, jump in.” And the three went off together. Rip never quite knew how it came about that he and Alastair went up to Dr. Kakophilos’s sitting room. It was certainly not for a drink, because there was none there; nor did he know how it was that Dr. Kakophilos came to be wearing a crimson robe embroidered with gold symbols and a conical crimson hat. It only came to him quite suddenly that Dr. Kakophilos was wearing these clothes; and when it came it set him giggling, so uncontrollably that he had to sit on the bed. And Alastair began to laugh too, and they both sat on the bed for a long time laughing. But quite suddenly Rip found that they had stopped laughing and that Dr. Kakophilos, still looking supremely ridiculous in his sacerdotal regalia, was talking to them ponderously about time and matter and spirit and a number of things which Rip had got through forty-three eventful years without considering. “And so,” Dr. Kakophilos was saying, “you must breathe the fire and call upon Omraz the spirit of release and journey back through the centuries and recover the garnered wisdom which the ages of reason have wasted. I chose you because you are the two most ignorant men I ever met. I have too much knowledge to risk my safety. If you never come back nothing will be lost.” “Oh, I say,” said Alastair. “And what’s more, you’re tipsy,” said Dr. Kakophilos relapsing suddenly into everyday speech. Then he became poetic again and Rip yawned and Alastair yawned. At last Rip said: “Jolly decent of you to tell us all this, old boy; I’ll come in another time to hear the rest. Must be going now, you know.” “Yes,” said Alastair. “A most interesting evening.” Dr. Kakophilos removed his crimson hat and mopped his moist, hairless head. He surveyed his parting guests with undisguised disdain. “Sots,” he said. “You are partakers in a mystery beyond your comprehension. In a few minutes your drunken steps will have straddled the centuries. Tell me, Sir Alastair,” he asked, his face alight with ghastly, facetious courtesy, “have you any preference with regard to your translation? You may choose any age you like.” “Oh, I say, jolly decent of you ... Never was much of a dab at History you know.” “Say.” “Well, any time really. How about Ethelred the Unready?—always had a soft spot for him.” “And you, Mr. Van Winkle?” “Well, if I’ve got to be moved about, being an American, I’d sooner go forwards—say five hundred years.” Dr. Kakophilos drew himself up. “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.” “I can answer that one. ‘Love is the law, Love under will.’” “God, we’ve been a long time in that house,” said Alastair as at length they regained the Bentley. “Awful old humbug. Comes of getting tight.” “Hell, I could do with another,” said Rip. “Know anywhere?” “I do,” said Alastair and, turning a corner sharply, ran, broadside on, into a mail van that was thundering down Shaftesbury Avenue at forty-five miles an hour. When Rip stood up, dazed but, as far as he could judge, without specific injury, he was scarcely at all surprised to observe that both cars had disappeared. There was so much else to surprise him; a light breeze, a clear, star-filled sky, a wide horizon unobscured by buildings. The moon, in her last quarter, hung low above a grove of trees, illumined a slope of hummocky turf and a herd of sheep, peacefully cropping the sedge near Piccadilly Circus and, beyond, was reflected in a still pool, pierced here and there with reed. Instinctively, for his head and eyes were still aflame from the wine he had drunk and there was a dry, stale taste in his mouth, Rip approached the water. His evening shoes sank deeper with each step and he paused, uncertain. The entrance of the Underground Station was there, transformed into a Piranesi ruin; a black aperture tufted about with fern and some crumbling steps leading down to black water. Eros had gone, but the pedestal rose above the reeds, moss grown and dilapidated. “Golly,” said Mr. Van Winkle slowly, “the twenty-fifth century.” Then he crossed the threshold of the underground station and, kneeling on the slippery fifth step, immersed his head in the water. Absolute stillness lay all around him except for rhythmic, barely audible nibbling of the pastured sheep. Clouds drifted across the moon and Rip stood awed by the darkness; they passed and Rip stepped out into the light, left the grotto and climbed to a grass mound at the corner of the Haymarket. To the south, between the trees, he could pick out the silver line of the river. Warily, for the ground was full of pits and crevices, he crossed what had once been Leicester and Trafalgar Squares. Great flats of mud, submerged at high water, stretched to his feet over the Strand, and at the margin of mud and sedge was a cluster of huts, built on poles; inaccessible because their careful householders had drawn up the ladders at sunset. Two campfires, almost extinct, glowed red upon platforms of beaten earth. A ragged guard slept with his head on his knees. Two or three dogs prowled below the huts, nosing for refuse, but the breeze was blowing from the riverbank and, though Rip had made some noise in his approach, they gave no alarm. Limitless calm lay on all sides among the monstrous shapes of grassgrown masonry and concrete. Rip crouched in a damp hollow and waited for day. It was still night, darker from the setting of the moon, when the cocks began to crow—twenty or thirty of them, Rip judged—from the roosts under the village. The sentry came to life and raked over the embers sending up a spatter of wood sparks. Presently a thin line of light appeared downstream, broadening into delicate summer dawn. Birds sang all round him. Tousled households appeared on the little platforms before the huts; women scratching their heads, shaking out blankets, naked children. They let down ladders of hide and stick; two or three women padded down to the river with earthenware pots to draw water; they hitched up their clothes to the waist and waded thigh deep. From where Rip lay he could see the full extent of the village. The huts extended for half a mile or so, in a single line along the bank. There were about fifty of them; all of the same size and character, built of wattle and mud with skin-lined roofs; they seemed sturdy and in good repair. A dozen or more canoes were beached along the mud flats; some of them dug-out trees, others of a kind of basketwork covered in skins. The people were fair-skinned and fair-haired, but shaggy, and they moved with the loping gait of savages. They spoke slowly in the sing-song tones of an unlettered race who depend on oral tradition for the preservation of their lore. Their words seemed familiar yet unintelligible. For more than an hour Rip watched the village come to life and begin the routine of its day, saw the cooking-pots slung over the fires, the men going down and muttering sagely over their boats as longshoremen do; saw the children scrambling down the supports of the houses to the refuse below—and for perhaps the first time in his life felt uncertain of what he should do. Then with as much resolution as he could muster, he walked towards the village. The effect was instantaneous. There was a general scramble of women for their children, a general stampede for the ladders. The men at the boats stopped fiddling with tackle and came lumbering up the banks. Rip smiled and walked on. The men got together and showed no inclination to budge. Rip raised his clasped hands and shook them amicably in the air as he had seen boxers do when entering the ring. The shaggy white men made no sign of recognition.
Par lucyshanxu - 0 commentaire(s)le 06 mai 2011
Jeudi 05 mai 2011

this trouble's about Dust

They flew on. Lyra chewed some of the seal meat she found in her pocket. "Serafina Pekkala," she said after some time, "what's Dust? 'Cause it seems to me that all this trouble's about Dust, only no one's told me what it is." "I don't know," Serafina Pekkala told her. "Witches have never worried about Dust. All I can tell you is that where there are priests, there is fear of Dust. Mrs. Coulter is not a priest, of course, but she is a powerful agent of the Magisterium, and it was she who set up the Oblation Board and persuaded the Church to pay for Bolvangar, because of her interest in Dust. We can't understand her feelings about it. But there are many things we have never understood. We see the Tartars making holes in their skulls, and we can only wonder at the strangeness of it. So Dust may be strange, and we wonder at it, but we don't fret and tear things apart to examine it. Leave that to the Church." "The Church?" said Lyra. Something had come back to her: she remembered talking with Pantalaimon, in the fens, about what it might be that was moving the needle of the alethiometer, and they had thought of the photomill on the high altar at Gabriel College, and how elementary particles pushed the little vanes around. The Intercessor there was clear about the link between elementary particles and religion. "Could be," she said, nodding. "Most Church things, they keep secret, after all. But most Church things are old, and Dust en't old, as far as I know. I wonder if Lord Asriel might tell me...." She yawned. "I better lie down," she said to Serafina Pekkala, "else I'll probably freeze. I been cold down on the ground, but I never been this cold. I think I might die if I get any colder." "Then lie down and wrap yourself in the furs." "Yeah, I will. If I was going to die, I'd rather die up here than down there, any day. I thought when they put us under that blade thing, I thought that was it....We both did. Oh, that was cruel. But we'll lie down now. Wake us up when we get there," she said, and got down on the pile of furs, clumsy and aching in every part of her with the profound intensity of the cold, and lay as close as she could to the sleeping Roger. And so the four travelers sailed on, sleeping in the ice-encrusted balloon, toward the rocks and glaciers, the fire mines and the ice forts of Svalbard. Serafina Pekkala called to the aeronaut, and he woke at once, groggy with cold, but aware from the movement of the basket that something was wrong. It was swinging wildly as strong winds buffeted the gas bag, and the witches pulling the rope were barely managing to hold it. If they let go, the balloon would be swept off course at once, and to judge by his glance at the compass, would be swept toward Nova Zembla at nearly a hundred miles an hour. "Where are we?" Lyra heard him call. She was half-waking herself, uneasy because of the motion, and so cold that every part of her body was numb. She couldn't hear the witch's reply, but through her half-closed hood she saw, in the light of an anbaric lantern, Lee Scoresby hold on to a strut and pull at a rope leading up into the gas bag itself. He gave a sharp tug as if against some obstruction, and looked up into the buffeting dark before looping the rope around a cleat on the suspension ring. "I'm letting out some gas!" he shouted to Serafina Pekkala. "We'll go down. We're way too high." The witch called something in return, but again Lyra couldn't hear it. Roger was waking too; the creaking of the basket was enough to wake the deepest sleeper, never mind the rocking and bumping. Roger's daemon and Pantalaimon clung together like marmosets, and Lyra concentrated on lying still and not leaping up in fear. '"S all right," Roger said, sounding much more cheerful than she was. "Soon's we get down we can make a fire and get warm. I got some matches in me pocket. I pinched 'em out the kitchen at Bolvangar." The balloon was certainly descending, because they were enveloped a second later in thick freezing cloud. Scraps and wisps of it flew through the basket, and then everything was obscured, all at once. It was like the thickest fog Lyra had ever known. After a moment or two there came another cry from Serafina Pekkala, and the aeronaut unlooped the rope from the cleat and let go. It sprang upward through his hands, and even over the creak and the buffeting and the howl of wind through the rigging Lyra heard or felt a mighty thump from somewhere far above. Lee Scoresby saw her wide eyes. "That's the gas valve!" he shouted. "It works on a spring to hold the gas in. When I pull it down, some gas escapes outta the top, and we lose buoyancy and go down." "Are we nearly-" She didn't finish, because something hideous happened. A creature half the size of a man, with leathery wings and hooked claws, was crawling over the side of the basket toward Lee Scoresby. It had a flat head, with bulging eyes and a wide frog mouth, and from it came wafts of abominable stink. Lyra had no time to scream, even, before lorek Byrnison reached up and cuffed it away. It fell out of the basket and vanished with a shriek. "Cliff-ghast," said lorek briefly. The next moment Serafina Pekkala appeared, and clung to the side of the basket, speaking urgently. "The cliff-ghasts are attacking. We'll bring the balloon to the ground, and then we must defend ourselves. They're-" But Lyra didn't hear the rest of what she said, because there was a rending, ripping sound, and everything tilted sideways. Then a terrific blow hurled the three humans against the side of the balloon where lorek Byrnison's armor was stacked, lorek put out a great paw to hold them in, because the basket was jolting so violently. Serafina Pekkala had vanished. The noise was appalling: over every other sound there came the shrieking of the cliff-ghasts, and Lyra saw them hurtling past, and smelled their foul stench. Then there came another jerk, so sudden that it threw them all to the floor again, and the basket began to sink with frightening speed, spinning all the while. It felt as if they had torn loose from the balloon, and were dropping unchecked by anything; and then came another series of jerks and crashes, the basket being tossed rapidly from side to side as if they were bouncing between rock walls.

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They flew on. Because of the clouds below there was no way of telling how fast they were going. Normally, of course, a balloon remained still with respect to the wind, floating at whatever speed the air itself was moving; but now, pulled by the witches, the balloon was moving through the air instead of with it, and resisting the movement, too, because the unwieldy gas bag had none of the streamlined smoothness of a zeppelin. As a result, the basket swung this way and that, rocking and bumping much more than on a normal flight. Lee Scoresby wasn't concerned for his comfort so much as for his instruments, and he spent some time making sure they were securely lashed to the main struts. According to the altimeter, they were nearly ten thousand feet up. The temperature was minus 20 degrees. He had been colder than this, but not much, and he didn't want to get any colder now; so he unrolled the canvas sheet he used as an emergency bivouac, and spread it in front of the sleeping children to keep off the wind, before lying down back to back with his old comrade in arms, lorek Byrnison, and falling asleep. When Lyra woke up, the moon was high in the sky, and everything in sight was silver-plated, from the roiling surface of the clouds below to the frost spears and icicles on the rigging of the balloon. Roger was sleeping, and so were Lee Scoresby and the bear. Beside the basket, however, the witch queen was flying steadily. "How far are we from Svalbard?" Lyra said. "If we meet no winds, we shall be over Svalbard in twelve hours or so." "Where are we going to land?" "It depends on the weather. We'll try to avoid the cliffs, though. There are creatures living there who prey on anything that moves. If we can, we'll set you down in the interior, away from lofur Raknison's palace." "What's going to happen when I find Lord Asriel? Will he want to come back to Oxford, or what? I don't know if I ought to tell him I know he's my father, neither. He might want to pretend he's still my uncle. I don't hardly know him at all." "He won't want to go back to Oxford, Lyra. It seems that there is something to be done in another world, and Lord Asriel is the only one who can bridge the gulf between that world and this. But he needs something to help him." "The alethiometer!" Lyra said. "The Master of Jordan gave it to me and I thought there was something he wanted to say about Lord Asriel, except he never had the chance. I knew he didn't really want to poison him. Is he going to read it and see how to make the bridge? I bet I could help him. I can probably read it as good as anyone now." "I don't know," said Serafina Pekkala. "How he'll do it, and what his task will be, we can't tell. There are powers who speak to us, and there are powers above them; and there are secrets even from the most high." "The alethiometer would tell me! I could read it now...." But it was too cold; she would never have managed to hold it. She bundled herself up and pulled the hood tight against the chill of the wind, leaving only a slit to look through. Far ahead, and a little below, the long rope extended from the suspension ring of the balloon, pulled by six or seven witches sitting on their cloud-pine branches. The stars shone as bright and cold and hard as diamonds. "Why en't you cold, Serafina Pekkala?" "We feel cold, but we don't mind it, because we will not come to harm. And if we wrapped up against the cold, we wouldn't feel other things, like the bright tingle of the stars, or the music of the Aurora, or best of all the silky feeling of moonlight on our skin. It's worth being cold for that." "Could I feel them?" "No. You would die if you took your furs off. Stay wrapped up." "How long do witches live, Serafina Pekkala? Farder Coram says hundreds of years. But you don't look old at all." "I am three hundred years or more. Our oldest witch mother is nearly a thousand. One day, Yambe-Akka will come for her. One day she'll come for me. She is the goddess of the dead. She comes to you smiling and kindly, and you know it is time to die." "Are there men witches? Or only women?" "There are men who serve us, like the consul at Trollesund. And there are men we take for lovers or husbands. You are so young, Lyra, too young to understand this, but I shall tell you anyway and you'll understand it later: men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are brave, proud, beautiful, clever; and they die almost at once. They die so soon that our hearts are continually racked with pain. We bear their children, who are witches if they are female, human if not; and then in the blink of an eye they are gone, felled, slain, lost. Our sons, too. When a little boy is growing, he thinks he is immortal. His mother knows he isn't. Each time becomes more painful, until finally your heart is broken. Perhaps that is when Yambe-Akka comes for you. She is older than the tundra. Perhaps, for her, witches' lives are as brief as men's are to us." "Did you love Farder Coram?" "Yes. Does he know that?" "I don't know, but I know he loves you." "When he rescued me, he was young and strong and full of pride and beauty. I loved him at once. I would have changed my nature, I would have forsaken the star-tingle and the music of the Aurora; I would never have flown again-I would have given all that up in a moment, without a thought, to be a gyptian boat wife and cook for him and share his bed and bear his children. But you cannot change what you are, only what you do. I am a witch. He is a human. I stayed with him for long enough to bear him a child...." "He never said! Was it a girl? A witch?" "No. A boy, and he died in the great epidemic of forty years ago, the sickness that came out of the East. Poor little child; he flickered into life and out of it like a mayfly. And it tore pieces out of my heart, as it always does. It broke Coram's. And then the call came for me to return to my own people, because Yambe-Akka had taken my mother, and I was clan queen. So I left, as I had to." "Did you never see Farder Coram again?" "Never. I heard of his deeds; I heard how he was wounded by the Skraelings, with a poisoned arrow, and I sent herbs and spells to help him recover, but I wasn't strong enough to see him. I heard how broken he was after that, and how his wisdom grew, how much he studied and read, and I was proud of him and his goodness. But I stayed away, for they were dangerous times for my clan, and witch wars were threatening, and besides, I thought he would forget me and find a human wife...." "He never would," said Lyra stoutly. "You oughter go and see him. He still loves you, I know he does." "But he would be ashamed of his own age, and I wouldn't want to make him feel that." "Perhaps he would. But you ought to send a message to him, at least. That's what I think." Serafina Pekkala said nothing for a long time. Pantalaimon became a tern and flew to her branch for a second, to acknowledge that perhaps they had been insolent. Then Lyra said, "Why do people have daemons, Serafina Pekkala?" "Everyone asks that, and no one knows the answer. As long as there have been human beings, they have had daemons. It's what makes us different from animals." "Yeah! We're different from them all right....Like bears. They're strange, en't they, bears? You think they're like a person, and then suddenly they do something so strange or ferocious you think you'll never understand them....But you know what lorek said to me, he said that his armor for him was like what a daemon is for a person. It's his soul, he said. But that's where they're different again, because he made this armor his-self. They took his first armor away when they sent him into exile, and he found some sky iron and made some new armor, like making a new soul. We can't make our daemons. Then the people at Trollesund, they got him drunk on spirits and stole it away, and I found out where it was and he got it back....But what I wonder is, why's he coming to Svalbard? They'll fight him. They might kill him....I love lorek. I love him so much I wish he wasn't coming." "Has he told you who he is?" "Only his name. And it was the consul at Trollesund who told us that." "He is highborn. He is a prince. In fact, if he had not committed a great crime, he would be the king of the bears by now." "He told me their king was called lofur Raknison." "lofur Raknison became king when lorek Byrnison was exiled. lofur is a prince, of course, or he wouldn't be allowed to rule; but he is clever in a human way; he makes alliances and treaties; he lives not as bears do, in ice forts, but in a new-built palace; he talks of exchanging ambassadors with human nations and developing the fire mines with the help of human engineers....He is very skillful and subtle. Some say that he provoked lorek into the deed for which he was exiled, and others say that even if he didn't, he encourages them to think he did, because it adds to his reputation for craft and subtlety." "What did lorek do? See, one reason I love lorek, it's because of my father doing what he did and being punished. Seems to me they're like each other. lorek told me he'd killed another bear, but he never said how it came about." "The fight was over a she-bear. The male whom lorek killed would not display the usual signals of surrender when it was clear that lorek was stronger. For all their pride, bears never fail to recognize superior force in another bear and surrender to it, but for some reason this bear didn't do it. Some say that lofur Raknison worked on his mind, or gave him confusing herbs to eat. At any rate, the young bear persisted, and lorek Byrnison allowed his temper to master him. The case was not hard to judge; he should have wounded, not killed." "So otherwise he'd be king," Lyra said. "And I heard something about lofur Raknison from the Palmerian Professor at Jordan, 'cause he'd been to the North and met him. He said... I wish I could remember what it was....I think he'd tricked his way on to the throne or something....But you know, lorek said to me once that bears couldn't be tricked, and showed me that I couldn't trick him. It sounds as if they was both tricked, him and the other bear. Maybe only bears can trick bears, maybe people can't. Except...The people at Trollesund, they tricked him, didn't they? When they got him drunk and stole his armor?" "When bears act like people, perhaps they can be tricked," said Serafina Pekkala. "When bears act like bears, perhaps they can't. No bear would normally drink spirits. lorek Byrnison drank to forget the shame of exile, and it was only that which let the Trollesund people trick him." "Ah, yes," said Lyra, nodding. She was satisfied with that idea. She admired lorek almost without limit, and she was glad to find confirmation of his nobility. "That's clever of you," she said. "I wouldn't have known that if you hadn't told me. I think you're probably cleverer than Mrs. Coulter."
Par lucyshanxu - 1 commentaire(s)le 05 mai 2011

boy laughed in scorn

why do they do it?" demanded one boy. "Why do they cut people's daemons away? That's torture! Why do they do it?" "Dust," suggested someone doubtfully. But the boy laughed in scorn. "Dust!" he said. "There en't no such thing! They just made that up! I don't believe in it." "Here," said someone else, "look what's happening to the zeppelin!" They all looked back. Beyond the dazzle of lights, where the fight was still continuing, the great length of the airship was not floating freely at the mooring mast any longer; the free end was drooping downward, and beyond it was rising a globe of- "Lee Scoresby's balloon!" Lyra cried, and clapped her mit-tened hands with delight. The other children were baffled. Lyra herded them onward, wondering how the aeronaut had got his balloon that far. It was clear what he was doing, and what a good idea, to fill his balloon with the gas out of theirs, to escape by the same means that crippled their pursuit! "Come on, keep moving, else you'll freeze," she said, for some of the children were shivering and moaning from the cold, and their daemons were crying too in high thin voices. Pantalaimon found this irritating, and as a wolverine he snapped at one girl's squirrel daemon who was just lying across her shoulder whimpering faintly. "Get in her coat! Make yourself big and warm her up!" he snarled, and the girl's daemon, frightened, crept inside her coal-silk anorak at once. The trouble was that coal silk wasn't as warm as proper fur, no matter how much it was padded out with hollow coal-silk fibers. Some of the children looked like walking puffballs, they were so bulky, but their gear had been made in factories and laboratories far away from the cold, and it couldn't really cope. Lyra's furs looked ragged and they stank, but they kept the warmth in. "If we don't find the gyptians soon, they en't going to last," she whispered to Pantalaimon. "Keep 'em moving then," he whispered back. "If they lie down, they're finished. You know what Farder Coram said...." Farder Coram had told her many tales of his own journeys in the North, and so had Mrs. Coulter-always supposing that hers were true. But they were both quite clear about one point, which was that you must keep going. "How far we gotta go?" said a little boy. "She's just making us walk out here to kill us," said a girl. "Rather be out here than back there," someone said. "I wouldn't! It's warm back in the station. There's food and hot drinks and everything." "But it's all on fire!" "What we going to do out here? I bet we starve to death...." Lyra's mind was full of dark questions that flew around like witches, swift and untouchable, and somewhere, just beyond where she could reach, there was a glory and a thrill which she didn't understand at all. But it gave her a surge of strength, and she hauled one girl up out of a snowdrift, and shoved at a boy who was dawdling, and called to them all: "Keep going! Follow the bear's tracks! He come up with the gyptians, so the tracks'll lead us to where they are! Just keep walking!" Big flakes of snow were beginning to fall. Soon it would have covered lorek Byrnison's tracks altogether. Now that they were out of sight of the lights of Bolvangar, and the blaze of the fire was only a faint glow, the only light came from the faint radiance of the snow-covered ground. Thick clouds obscured the sky, so there was neither moon nor Northern Lights; but by peering closely, the children could make out the deep trail lorek Byrnison had plowed in the snow. Lyra encouraged, bullied, hit, half-carried, swore at, pushed, dragged, lifted tenderly, wherever it was needed, and Pantalaimon (by the state of each child's daemon) told her what was needed in each case. I'll get them there, she kept saying to herself. I come here to get 'em and I'll bloody get 'em. Roger was following her example, and Billy Costa was leading the way, being sharper-eyed than most. Soon the snow was falling so thickly that they had to cling on to one another to keep from getting lost, and Lyra thought, perhaps if we all lie close and keep warm like that...Dig holes in the snow... She was hearing things. There was the snarl of an engine somewhere, not the heavy thump of a zeppelin but something higher like the drone of a hornet. It drifted in and out of hearing. And howling...Dogs? Sledge dogs? That too was distant and hard to be sure of, blanketed by millions of snowflakes and blown this way and that by little puffing gusts of wind. It might have been the gyptians' sledge dogs, or it might have been wild spirits of the tundra, or even those freed daemons crying for their lost children. She was seeing things....There weren't any lights in the snow, were there? They must be ghosts as well....Unless they'd come round in a circle, and were stumbling back into Bolvangar. But these were little yellow lantern beams, not the white glare of anbaric lights. And they were moving, and the howling was nearer, and before she knew for certain whether she'd fallen asleep, Lyra was wandering among familiar figures, and men in furs were holding her up: John Faa's mighty arm lifted her clear of the ground, and Farder Coram was laughing with pleasure; and as far through the blizzard as she could see, gyptians were lifting children into sledges, covering them with furs, giving them seal meat to chew. And Tony Costa was there, hugging Billy and then punching him softly only to hug him again and shake him for joy. And Roger... "Roger's coming with us," she said to Farder Coram. "It was him I meant to get in the first place. We'll go back to Jordan in the end. What's that noise-" It was that snarl again, that engine, like a crazed spy-fly ten thousand times the size. Suddenly there came a blow that sent her sprawling, and Pantalaimon couldn't defend her, because the golden monkey- Mrs. Coulter-

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Through it all Lyra and Pantalaimon darted like fish, making always for the dormitory, and just as they reached it, there was a dull explosion from behind that shook the building. The other girls had fled: the room was empty. Lyra dragged the locker to the corner, jumped up, hauled the furs out of the ceiling, felt for the alethiometer. It was still there. She tugged the furs on quickly, pulling the hood forward, and then Pantalaimon, a sparrow at the door, called: "Now!" She ran out. By luck a group of children who'd already found some cold-weather clothing were racing down the corridor toward the main entrance, and she joined them, sweating, her heart thumping, knowing that she had to escape or die. The way was blocked. The fire in the kitchen had taken quickly, and whether it was the flour or the gas, something had brought down part of the roof. People were clambering over twisted struts and girders to get up to the bitter cold air. The smell of gas was strong. Then came another explosion, louder than the first and closer. The blast knocked several people over, and cries of fear and pain filled the air. Lyra struggled up, and with Pantalaimon calling, "This way! This way!" among the other daemon-cries and flutter-ings, she hauled herself over the rubble. The air she was breathing was frozen, and she hoped that the children had managed to find their outdoor clothing; it would be a fine thing to escape from the station only to die of cold. There really was a blaze now. When she got out onto the roof under the night sky, she could see flames licking at the edges of a great hole in the side of the building. There was a throng of children and adults by the main entrance, but this time the adults were more agitated and the children more fearful: much more fearful. "Roger! Roger!" Lyra called, and Pantalaimon, keen-eyed as an owl, hooted that he'd seen him. A moment later they found each other. "Tell 'em all to come with me!" Lyra shouted into his ear. "They won't-they're all panicky-" "Tell 'em what they do to the kids that vanish! They cut their demons off with a big knife! Tell 'em what you saw this afternoon-all them daemons we let out! Tell 'em that's going to happen to them too unless they get away!" Roger gaped, horrified, but then collected his wits and ran to the nearest group of hesitating children. Lyra did the same, and as the message passed along, some children cried out and clutched their daemons in fear. "Come with me!" Lyra shouted. "There's a rescue a coming! We got to get out of the compound! Come on, run!" The children heard her and followed, streaming across the enclosure toward the avenue of lights, their boots pattering and creaking in the hard-packed snow. Behind them, adults were shouting, and there was a rumble and crash as another part of the building fell in. Sparks gushed into the air, and flames billowed out with a sound like tearing cloth; but cutting through this came another sound, dreadfully close and violent. Lyra had never heard it before, but she knew it at once: it was the howl of the Tartar guards' wolf daemons. She felt weak from head to foot, and many children turned in fear and stumbled to a stop, for there running at a low swift tireless lope came the first of the Tartar guards, rifle at the ready, with the mighty leaping grayness of his daemon beside him. Then came another, and another. They were all in padded mail, and they had no eyes-or at least you couldn't see any eyes behind the snow slits of their helmets. The only eyes you could see were the round black ends of the rifle barrels and the blazing yellow eyes of the wolf daemons above the slaver dripping from their jaws. Lyra faltered. She hadn't dreamed of how frightening those wolves were. And now that she knew how casually people at Bolvangar broke the great taboo, she shrank from the thought of those dripping teeth.... The Tartars ran to stand in a line across the entrance to the avenue of lights, their daemons beside them as disciplined and drilled as they were. In another minute there'd be a second line, because more were coming, and more behind them. Lyra thought with despair: children can't fight soldiers. It wasn't like the battles in the Oxford claybeds, hurling lumps of mud at the brickburners' children. Or perhaps it was! She remembered hurling a handful of clay in the broad face of a brickburner boy bearing down on her. He'd stopped to claw the stuff out of his eyes, and then the townies leaped on him. She'd been standing in the mud. She was standing in the snow. Just as she'd done that afternoon, but in deadly earnest now, she scooped a handful together and hurled it at the nearest soldier. "Get 'em in the eyes!" she yelled, and threw another. Other children joined in, and then someone's daemon had the notion of flying as a swift beside the snowball and nudging it directly at the eye slits of the target-and then they all joined in, and in a few moments the Tartars were stumbling about, spitting and cursing and trying to brush the packed snow out of the narrow gap in front of their eyes. "Come on!" Lyra screamed, and flung herself at the gate into the avenue of lights. The children streamed after her, every one, dodging the snapping jaws of the wolves and racing as hard as they could down the avenue toward the beckoning open dark beyond. A harsh scream came from behind as an officer shouted an order, and then a score of rifle bolts worked at once, and then there was another scream and a tense silence, with only the fleeing children's pounding feet and gasping breath to be heard. They were taking aim. They wouldn't miss. But before they could fire, a choking gasp came from one of the Tartars, and a cry of surprise from another. Lyra stopped and turned to see a man lying on the snow, with a gray-feathered arrow in his back. He was writhing and twitching and coughing out blood, and the other soldiers were looking around to left and right for whoever had fired it, but the archer was nowhere to be seen. And then an arrow came flying straight down from the sky, and struck another man behind the head. He fell at once. A shout from the officer, and everyone looked up at the dark sky. "Witches!" said Pantalaimon. And so they were: ragged elegant black shapes sweeping past high above, with a hiss and swish of air through the needles of the cloud-pine branches they flew on. As Lyra watched, one swooped low and loosed an arrow: another man fell. And then all the Tartars turned their rifles up and blazed into the dark, firing at nothing, at shadows, at clouds, and more and more arrows rained down on them. But the officer in charge, seeing the children almost away, ordered a squad to race after them. Some children screamed. And then more screamed, and they weren't moving forward anymore, they were turning back in confusion, terrified by the monstrous shape hurtling toward them from the dark beyond the avenue of lights. "lorek Byrnison!" cried Lyra, her chest nearly bursting with joy. The armored bear at the charge seemed to be conscious of no weight except what gave him momentum. He bounded past Lyra almost in a blur and crashed into the Tartars, scattering soldiers, daemons, rifles to all sides. Then he stopped and whirled round, with a lithe athletic power, and struck two massive blows, one to each side, at the guards closest to him. A wolf daemon leaped at him: he slashed at her in midair, and bright fire spilled out of her as she fell to the snow, where she hissed and howled before vanishing. Her human died at once. The Tartar officer, faced with this double attack, didn't hesitate. A long high scream of orders, and the force divided itself into two: one to keep off the witches, the bigger part to overcome the bear. His troops were magnificently brave. They dropped to one knee in groups of four and fired their rifles as if they were on the practice range, not budging an inch as lorek's mighty bulk hurtled toward them. A moment later they were dead. lorek struck again, twisting to one side, slashing, snarling, crushing, while bullets flew about him like wasps or flies, doing no harm at all. Lyra urged the children on and out into the darkness beyond the lights. They must get away, because dangerous as the Tartars were, far more dangerous were the adults of Bolvangar. So she called and beckoned and pushed to get the children moving. As the lights behind them threw long shadows on the snow, Lyra found her heart moving out toward the deep dark of the arctic night and the clean coldness, leaping forward to love it as Pantalaimon was doing, a hare now delighting in his own propulsion. "Where we going?" someone said. "There's nothing out here but snow!" "There's a rescue party coming," Lyra told them. "There's fifty gyptians or more. I bet there's some relations of yours, too. All the gyptian families that lost a kid, they all sent someone." "I en't a gyptian," a boy said. "Don't matter. They'll take you anyway." "Where?" someone said querulously. "Home," said Lyra. "That's what I come here for, to rescue you, and I brung the gyptians here to take you home again. We just got to go on a bit further and then we'll find 'em. The bear was with 'em, so they can't be far off." "D'you see that bear!" one boy was saying. "When he slashed open that daemon-the man died as if someone whipped his heart out, just like that!" "I never knew daemons could be killed," someone else said. They were all talking now; the excitement and relief had loosened everyone's tongue. As long as they kept moving, it didn't matter if they talked. "Is that true," said a girl, "about what they do back there?" "Yeah," Lyra said. "I never thought I'd ever see anyone without their daemon. But on the way here, we found this boy on his own without any daemon. He kept asking for her, where she was, would she ever find him. He was called Tony Makarios." "I know him!" said someone, and others joined in: "Yeah, they took him away about a week back...." "Well, they cut his daemon away," said Lyra, knowing how it would affect them. "And a little bit after we found him, he died. And all the daemons they cut away, they kept them in cages in a square building back there." "It's true," said Roger. "And Lyra let 'em out during the fire drill."
Par lucyshanxu - 0 commentaire(s)le 05 mai 2011
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