【英文文学】Bliss, and other stories.docx

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1、【英文文学】Bliss, and other storiesPreludeTHERE was not an inch of room for Lottie and Kezia in the buggy. When Pat swung them on top of the luggage they wobbled; the grandmothers lap was full and Linda Burnell could not possibly have held a lump of a child on hers for any distance. Isabel, very superior

2、, was perched beside the new handy-man on the drivers seat. Hold-alls, bags and boxes were piled upon the floor. “These are absolute necessities that I will not let out of my sight for one instant,” said Linda Burnell, her voice trembling with fatigue and excitement.Lottie and Kezia stood on the pat

3、ch of lawn just inside the gate all ready for the fray in their coats with brass anchor buttons and little round caps with battleship ribbons. Hand in hand, they stared with round solemn eyes, first at the absolute necessities and then at their mother.“We shall simply have to leave them. That is all

4、. We shall simply have to cast them off,” said Linda Burnell. A strange little laugh flew from her lips; she leaned back against the buttoned leather cushions and shut her eyes, her lips tremb- ling with laughter. Happily at that moment Mrs. Samuel Josephs, who had been watching the scene from behin

5、d her drawing-room blind, waddled down the garden path.“Why nod leave the chudren with be for the afterdoon, Brs. Burnell? They could go on the dray with the storeban when he comes in the eveding. Those thigs on the path have to go, dodt they?”“Yes, everything outside the house is supposed to go,” s

6、aid Linda Burnell, and she waved a white hand at the tables and chairs standing on their heads on the front lawn. How absurd they looked! Either they ought to be the other way up, or Lottie and Kezia ought to stand on their heads, too. And she longed to say: “Stand on your heads, children, and wait

7、for the store-man.” It seemed to her that would be so exquisitely funny that she could not attend to Mrs. Samuel Josephs.The fat creaking body leaned across the gate, and the big jelly of a face smiled. “Dodt you worry, Brs. Burnell. Loddie and Kezia can have tea with my chudren in the dursery, and

8、Ill see theb on the dray afterwards.”The grandmother considered. “Yes, it really is quite the best plan. We are very obliged to you, Mrs. Samuel Josephs. Children, say thank you to Mrs. Samuel Josephs.”Two subdued chirrups: “Thank you, Mrs. Samuel Josephs.”“And be good little girls, and-come closer-

9、” they advanced, “dont forget to tell Mrs. Samuel Josephs when you want to. . . . ”“No, granma.”“Dodt worry, Brs. Burnell.”At the last moment Kezia let go Lotties hand and darted towards the buggy.“I want to kiss my granma good-bye again.”But she was too late. The buggy rolled off up the road, Isabe

10、l bursting with pride, her nose turned up at all the world, Linda Burnell prostrated, and the grandmother rummaging among the very curious oddments she had had put in her black silk reticule at the last moment, for something to give her daughter. The buggy twinkled away in the sunlight and fine gold

11、en dust up the hill and over. Kezia bit her lip, but Lottie, carefully finding her handkerchief first, set up a wail.“Mother! Granma!”Mrs. Samuel Josephs, like a huge warm black silk tea cosy, enveloped her.“Its all right, by dear. Be a brave child. You come and blay in the dursery!”She put her arm

12、round weeping Lottie and led her away. Kezia followed, making a face at Mrs. Samuel Josephs placket, which was undone as usual, with two long pink corset laces hanging out of it. . . .Lotties weeping died down as she mounted the stairs, but the sight of her at the nursery door with swollen eyes and

13、a blob of a nose gave great satisfaction to the S.J.s , who sat on two benches before a long table covered with American cloth and set out with immense plates of bread and dripping and two brown jugs that faintly steamed.“Hullo! Youve been crying!”“Ooh! Your eyes have gone right in.”“Doesnt her nose

14、 look funny.”“Youre all red-and-patchy.”Lottie was quite a success. She felt it and swelled, smiling timidly.“Go and sit by Zaidee, ducky,” said Mrs. Samuel Josephs, “and Kezia, you sid ad the end by Boses.”Moses grinned and gave her a nip as she sat down; but she pretended not to notice. She did ha

15、te boys.“Which will you have?” asked Stanley, leaning across the table very politely, and smiling at her. “Which will you have to begin with-strawberries and cream or bread and dripping?”“Strawberries and cream, please,” said she.“Ah-h-h-h.” How they all laughed and beat the table with their teaspoo

16、ns. Wasnt that a take-in! Wasnt it now! Didnt he fox her! Good old Stan!“Ma! She thought it was real.”Even Mrs. Samuel Josephs, pouring out the milk and water, could not help smiling. “You bustnt tease theb on their last day,” she wheezed.But Kezia bit a big piece out of her bread and dripping, and

17、then stood the piece up on her plate. With the bite out it made a dear little sort of gate. Pooh! She didnt care! A tear rolled down her cheek, but she wasnt crying. She couldnt have cried in front of those awful Samuel Josephs. She sat with her head bent, and as the tear dripped slowly down, she ca

18、ught it with a neat little whisk of her tongue and ate it before any of them had seen.2After tea Kezia wandered back to their own house. Slowly she walked up the back steps, and through the scullery into the kitchen. Nothing was left in it but a lump of gritty yellow soap in one corner of the kitche

19、n window-sill and a piece of flannel stained with a blue bag in another. The fireplace was choked up with rubbish. She poked among it but found nothing except a hair-tidy with a heart painted on it that had belonged to the servant girl. Even that she left lying, and she trailed through the narrow pa

20、ssage into the drawing-room. The Venetian blind was pulled down but not drawn close. Long pencil rays of sunlight shone through and the wavy shadow of a bush outside danced on the gold lines. Now it was still, now it began to flutter again, and now it came almost as far as her feet. Zoom! Zoom! a bl

21、ue-bottle knocked against the ceiling; the carpet-tacks had little bits of red fluff sticking to them.The dining-room window had a square of coloured glass at each corner. One was blue and one was yellow. Kezia bent down to have one more look at a blue lawn with blue arum lilies growing at the gate,

22、 and then at a yellow lawn with yellow lilies and a yellow fence. As she looked a little Chinese Lottie came out on to the lawn and began to dust the tables and chairs with a corner of her pinafore. Was that really Lottie? Kezia was not quite sure until she had looked through the ordinary window.Ups

23、tairs in her fathers and mothers room she found a pill box black and shiny outside and red in, holding a blob of cotton wool.“I could keep a birds egg in that,” she decided.In the servant girls room there was a stay-button stuck in a crack of the floor, and in another crack some beads and a long nee

24、dle. She knew there was nothing in her grandmothers room; she had watched her pack. She went over to the window and leaned against it, pressing her hands to the pane.Kezia liked to stand so before the window. She liked the feeling of the cold shining glass against her hot palms, and she liked to wat

25、ch the funny white tops that came on her fingers when she pressed them hard against the pane. As she stood there, the day flickered out and dark came. With the dark crept the wind snuffling and howling. The windows of the empty house shook, a creaking came from the walls and floors, a piece of loose

26、 iron on the roof banged forlornly. Kezia was suddenly quite, quite still, with wide open eyes and knees pressed together. She was frightened. She wanted to call Lottie and to go on calling all the while she ran downstairs and out of the house. But IT was just behind her, waiting at the door, at the

27、 head of the stairs, at the bottom of the stairs, hiding in the passage, ready to dart out at the back door. But Lottie was at the back door, too.“Kezia!” she called cheerfully. “The storemans here. Everything is on the dray and three horses, Kezia. Mrs. Samuel Josephs has given us a big shawl to we

28、ar round us, and she says to button up your coat. She wont come out because of asthma.”Lottie was very important.“Now then, you kids,” called the storeman. He hooked his big thumbs under their arms and up they swung. Lottie arranged the shawl “most beautifully” and the storeman tucked up their feet

29、in a piece of old blanket.“Lift up. Easy does it.”They might have been a couple of young ponies. The storeman felt over the cords holding his load, unhooked the brakechain from the wheel, and whistling, he swung up beside them.“Keep close to me,” said Lottie, “because otherwise you pull the shawl aw

30、ay from my side, Kezia.”But Kezia edged up to the storeman. He towered beside her big as a giant and he smelled of nuts and new wooden boxes.3It was the first time that Lottie and Kezia had ever been out so late. Everything looked different-the painted wooden houses far smaller than they did by day,

31、 the gardens far bigger and wilder. Bright stars speckled the sky and the moon hung over the harbour dabbling the waves with gold. They could see the lighthouse shining on Quarantine Island, and the green lights on the old coal hulks.“There comes the Picton boat,” said the storeman, pointing to a li

32、ttle steamer all hung with bright beads.But when they reached the top of the hill and began to go down the other side the harbour disappeared, and although they were still in the town they were quite lost. Other carts rattled past. Everybody knew the storeman.“Night, Fred.”“Night O,” he shouted.Kezi

33、a liked very much to hear him. Whenever a cart appeared in the distance she looked up and waited for his voice. He was an old friend; and she and her grandmother had often been to his place to buy grapes. The storeman lived alone in a cottage that had a glasshouse against one wall built by himself.

34、All the glasshouse was spanned and arched over with one beautiful vine. He took her brown basket from her, lined it with three large leaves, and then he felt in his belt for a little horn knife, reached up and snapped off a big blue cluster and laid it on the leaves so tenderly that Kezia held her b

35、reath to watch. He was a very big man. He wore brown velvet trousers, and he had a long brown beard. But he never wore a collar, not even on Sunday. The back of his neck was burnt bright red.“Where are we now?” Every few minutes one of the children asked him the question.“Why, this is Hawk Street, o

36、r Charlotte Crescent.”“Of course it is,” Lottie pricked up her ears at the last name; she always felt that Charlotte Crescent belonged specially to her. Very few people had streets with the same name as theirs.“Look, Kezia, there is Charlotte Crescent. Doesnt it look different?” Now everything famil

37、iar was left behind. Now the big dray rattled into unknown country, along new roads with high clay banks on either side, up steep hills, down into bushy valleys, through wide shallow rivers. Further and further. Lotties head wagged; she drooped, she slipped half into Kezias lap and lay there. But Ke

38、zia could not open her eyes wide enough. The wind blew and she shivered; but her cheeks and ears burned.“Do stars ever blow about?” she asked.“Not to notice,” said the storeman.“Weve got a nuncle and a naunt living near our new house,” said Kezia. “They have got two children, Pip, the eldest is call

39、ed, and the youngests name is Rags. Hes got a ram. He has to feed it with a nenamuel teapot and a glove top over the spout. Hes going to show us. What is the difference between a ram and a sheep?”“Well, a ram has horns and runs for you.”Kezia considered. “I dont want to see it frightfully,” she said

40、. “I hate rushing animals like dogs and parrots. I often dream that animals rush at me-even camels-and while they are rushing, their heads swell e-enormous.”The storeman said nothing. Kezia peered up at him, screwing up her eyes. Then she put her finger out and stroked his sleeve; it felt hairy. “Ar

41、e we near?” she asked.“Not far off, now,” answered the storeman. “Getting tired?”“Well, Im not an atom bit sleepy,” said Kezia. “But my eyes keep curling up in such a funny sort of way.” She gave a long sigh, and to stop her eyes from curling she shut them. . . . When she opened them again they were

42、 clanking through a drive that cut through the garden like a whiplash, looping suddenly an island of green, and behind the island, but out of sight until you came upon it, was the house. It was long and low built, with a pillared veranda and balcony all the way round. The soft white bulk of it lay s

43、tretched upon the green garden like a sleeping beast. And now one and now another of the windows leaped into light. Someone was walking through the empty rooms carrying a lamp. From the window downstairs the light of a fire flickered. A strange beautiful excitement seemed to stream from the house in

44、 quivering ripples.“Where are we?” said Lottie, sitting up. Her reefer cap was all on one side and on her cheek there was the print of an anchor button she had pressed against while sleeping. Tenderly the storeman lifted her, set her cap straight, and pulled down her crumpled clothes. She stood blin

45、king on the lowest veranda step watching Kezia who seemed to come flying through the air to her feet.“Ooh!” cried Kezia, flinging up her arms. The grandmother came out of the dark hall carrying a little lamp. She was smiling.“You found your way in the dark?” said she.“Perfectly well.”But Lottie stag

46、gered on the lowest veranda step like a bird fallen out of the nest. If she stood still for a moment she fell asleep; if she leaned against anything her eyes closed. She could not walk another step.“Kezia,” said the grandmother, “can I trust you to carry the lamp?”“Yes, my granma.”The old woman bent

47、 down and gave the bright breathing thing into her hands and then she caught up drunken Lottie. “This way.”Through a square hall filled with bales and hundreds of parrots (but the parrots were only on the wallpaper) down a narrow passage where the parrots persisted in flying past Kezia with her lamp

48、.“Be very quiet,” warned the grandmother, putting down Lottie and opening the dining-room door. “Poor little mother has got such a headache.”Linda Burnell, in a long cane chair, with her feet on a hassock and a plaid over her knees, lay before a crackling fire. Burnell and Beryl sat at the table in the middle of the room eating a dish of fried chops and drinking tea out of a brown china teapot. Over the back of her mothers chair leaned Isabel. She had a comb in her fingers and in a gentle absorbed fashion she was combing the curls from her mot