第 31 节
作者:花旗      更新:2021-02-18 23:52      字数:9322
  see it in the morning; she would notice the removal of the clock; and
  would make a merit of reporting its ruin by the heat to the landlord; and
  in the end they would be mulcted of its value。  Rather than suffer this
  wrong they agreed to restore it to its place; and; let it go to
  destruction upon its own terms。  March painfully rebuilt it where he had
  found it; and they went to bed with a bad conscience to worse dreams。
  He remembered; before he slept; the hour of his youth when he was in
  Mayence before; and was so care free that he had heard with impersonal
  joy two young American voices speaking English in the street under his
  window。  One of them broke from the common talk with a gay burlesque of
  pathos in the line:
  〃Oh heavens! she cried; my Heeding country save!〃
  and then with a laughing good…night these unseen; unknown spirits of
  youth parted and departed。  Who were they; and in what different places;
  with what cares or ills; had their joyous voices grown old; or fallen
  silent for evermore?  It was a moonlight night; March remembered; and he
  remembered how he wished he were out in it with those merry fellows。
  He nursed the memory and the wonder in his dreaming thought; and he woke
  early to other voices under his window。  But now the voices; though
  young; were many and were German; and the march of feet and the stamp of
  hooves kept time with their singing。  He drew his curtain and saw the
  street filled with broken squads of men; some afoot and some on
  horseback; some in uniform and some in civil dress with students' caps;
  loosely straggling on and roaring forth that song whose words he could
  not make out。  At breakfast he asked the waiter what it all meant; and he
  said that these were conscripts whose service had expired with the late
  manoeuvres; and who were now going home。  He promised March a translation
  of the song; but he never gave it; and perhaps the sense of their joyful
  home…going remained the more poetic with him because its utterance
  remained inarticulate。
  March spent the rainy Sunday; on which they had fallen; in wandering
  about the little city alone。  His wife said she was tired and would sit
  by the fire; and hear about Mayence when he came in。  He went to the
  cathedral; which has its renown for beauty and antiquity; and he there
  added to his stock of useful information the fact that the people of
  Mayence seemed very Catholic and very devout。  They proved it by
  preferring to any of the divine old Gothic shrines in the cathedral; an
  ugly baroque altar; which was everywhere hung about with votive
  offerings。  A fashionably dressed young man and young girl sprinkled
  themselves with holy water as reverently as if they had been old and
  ragged。  Some tourists strolled up and down the aisles with their red
  guide…books; and studied the objects of interest。  A resplendent beadle
  in a cocked hat; and with along staff of authority posed before his own
  ecclesiastical consciousness in blue and silver。  At the high altar a
  priest was saying mass; and March wondered whether his consciousness was
  as wholly ecclesiastical as the beadle's; or whether somewhere in it he
  felt the historical majesty; the long human consecration of the place。
  He wandered at random in the town through streets German and quaint and
  old; and streets French and fine and new; and got back to the river;
  which he crossed on one of the several handsome bridges。  The rough river
  looked chill under a sky of windy clouds; and he felt out of season; both
  as to the summer travel; and as to the journey he was making。  The summer
  of life as well as the summer of that year was past。  Better return to
  his own radiator in his flat on Stuyvesant Square; to the great ugly
  brutal town which; if it was not home to him; was as much home to him as
  to any one。  A longing for New York welled up his heart; which was
  perhaps really a wish to be at work again。  He said he must keep this
  from his wife; who seemed not very well; and whom he must try to cheer up
  when he returned to the hotel。
  But they had not a very joyous afternoon; and the evening was no gayer。
  They said that if they had not ordered their letters sent to Dusseldorf
  they believed they should push on to Holland without stopping; and March
  would have liked to ask; Why not push on to America?  But he forbore; and
  he was afterwards glad that he had done so。
  In the morning their spirits rose with the sun; though the sun got up
  behind clouds as usual; and they were further animated by the imposition
  which the landlord practised upon them。  After a distinct and repeated
  agreement as to the price of their rooms he charged them twice as much;
  and then made a merit of throwing off two marks out of the twenty he had
  plundered them of。
  〃Now I see;〃 said Mrs。 March; on their way down to the boat; 〃how
  fortunate it was that we baked his clock。  You may laugh; but I believe
  we were the instruments of justice。〃
  〃Do you suppose that clock was never baked before?〃 asked her husband。
  〃The landlord has his own arrangement with justice。  When he overcharges
  his parting guests he says to his conscience; Well; they baked my clock。〃
  LXXI。
  The morning was raw; but it was something not to have it rainy; and the
  clouds that hung upon the hills and hid their tops were at least as fine
  as the long board signs advertising chocolate on the river banks。  The
  smoke rising from the chimneys of the manufactories of Mayence was not so
  bad; either; when one got them in the distance a little; and March liked
  the way the river swam to the stems of the trees on the low grassy
  shores。  It was like the Mississippi between St。 Louis and Cairo in that;
  and it was yellow and thick; like the Mississippi; though he thought he
  remembered it blue and clear。  A friendly German; of those who began to
  come aboard more and more at all the landings after leaving Mayence;
  assured him that be was right; and that the Rhine was unusually turbid
  from the unusual rains。  March had his own belief that whatever the color
  of the Rhine might be the rains were not unusual; but he could not
  gainsay the friendly German。
  Most of the passengers at starting were English and American; but they
  showed no prescience of the international affinition which has since
  realized itself; in their behavior toward one another。  They held
  silently apart; and mingled only in the effect of one young man who kept
  the Marches in perpetual question whether he was a Bostonian or an
  Englishman。  His look was Bostonian; but his accent was English; and was
  he a Bostonian who had been in England long enough to get the accent; or
  was he an Englishman who had been in Boston long enough to get the look?
  He wore a belated straw hat; and a thin sack…coat; and in the rush of the
  boat through the raw air they fancied him very cold; and longed to offer
  him one of their superabundant wraps。  At times March actually lifted a
  shawl from his knees; feeling sure that the stranger was English and that
  he might make so bold with him; then at some glacial glint in the young
  man's eye; or at some petrific expression of his delicate face; he felt
  that he was a Bostonian; and lost courage and let the shawl sink again。
  March tried to forget him in the wonder of seeing the Germans begin to
  eat and drink; as soon as they came on boards either from the baskets
  they had brought with them; or from the boat's provision。  But he
  prevailed; with his smile that was like a sneer; through all the events
  of the voyage; and took March's mind off the scenery with a sudden wrench
  when he came unexpectedly into view after a momentary disappearance。  At
  the table d'hote; which was served when the landscape began to be less
  interesting; the guests were expected to hand their plates across the
  table to the stewards but to keep their knives and forks throughout the
  different courses; and at each of these partial changes March felt the
  young man's chilly eyes upon him; inculpating him for the semi…
  civilization of the management。  At such times he knew that he was a
  Bostonian。
  The weather cleared; as they descended the river; and under a sky at last
  cloudless; the Marches had moments of swift reversion to their former
  Rhine journey; when they were young and the purple light of love mantled
  the vineyarded hills along the shore; and flushed the castled steeps。
  The scene had lost nothing of the beauty they dimly remembered; there
  were certain features of it which seemed even fairer and grander than
  they remembered。  The town of Bingen; where everybody who knows the poem
  was more or less born; was beautiful in spite of its factory chimneys;
  though there were no compensating castles near it; and the castles seemed
  as good as those of the theatre。  Here and there some of them had been
  restored and were occupied; probably by robber barons who had gone into
  trade。  Others were still ruinous; and there was now and then such a mere
  gray snag that March; at sight of it; involuntarily put his tongue to the
  broken tooth which he was keeping for the skill of the first American
  dentist。
  For natural sublimity the Rhine scenery; as they recognized once more;
  does not compare with the Hudson scenery