Читать книгу Sherston's Progress - Siegfried Sassoon - Страница 7

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My previous chapter began with a little exordium on the needfulness for exactitude when one is remembering and writing down what occurred a decade or two ago. At the present moment I am—to be exact—exactly 936 weeks away from my material; but that sort of accuracy is, of course, merely a matter of chronological arithmetic. Since what I am about to relate is only an interlude, I propose to allow my fantasies more freedom than is my conscientious habit. Don’t assume, though, that I am about to describe something which never happened at all. Were I to do that I should be extending the art of reminiscence beyond its prescribed purpose, which is, in my case, to show myself as I am now in relation to what I was during the War.

Allow yourself then to imagine that the before-mentioned 936 weeks have not yet intervened between “now” and the autumn of 1917. You will at once observe what I can only call “one George Sherston” going full speed up a hill on the outskirts of Edinburgh. The reason for his leg locomotive velocity is that he is keeping pace with that quick walker, W. H. R. Rivers. The clocks of Edinburgh are announcing the hour of “One” (which we shall, I fear, someday be obliged by law to call “Thirteen,” though I myself intend, for an obvious reason, to compromise by referring to it as “12 A”). Up that hill we go, talking (and walking) as hard as we can. For we, a couple of khaki-clad figures in (do you doubt my veracity?) “the mellow rays of an October sun,” are on our way to have luncheon with an astronomer; and not an ordinary astronomer either, since this one was—to put it plainly—none other than the Astronomer Royal of Scotland. That, so far, was all I knew and all I needed to know, my ignorance of astronomy being what it was. Rivers was taking me up there, and it promised to be a very agreeable outing, and quite a contrast to that Mecca of psychoneuroses, Slateford War Hospital.

***

Anybody who desires to verify my observations on the observatory is—or ought to be—at liberty to go there and see it for himself. But it will be one-sided verification, since I am unable to visualize, even vaguely, the actual observatory. Let us therefore assume it to be a building in all respects worthy of the lofty investigations which were why it was there—or, if you prefer it, “to which it was dedicated.” Arrival and admittance having followed one another in accordance with immemorial usage, the Astronomer Royal welcomed us with the cordiality of a man who has plenty to spare for his fellow men—no cordiality being required of him by the constellations, comets, and other self-luminous bodies which he had spent so much of his time in scrutinizing. I have known people who would probably have improvised some such conversational opening as “Well, sir, and how are the stars? Any new ones lately?”—but I was too shy to say anything at all to a man so widely acquainted with the universe. We were introduced to the fourth member of the quartet, a jocular-looking parson who rejoiced in the name of Father Rosary, and was, I inferred, a priest. We then sat down to luncheon. As I glanced around the room, which had eighteenth-century charm, I no longer felt shy and was completely prepared to enjoy myself. This feeling may have been brought on by Father Rosary, who was evidently an artist at creating a pleasant impression and following it up by being the best possible company. What did he talk about? I wonder, during that luncheon which has now become a memory of indistinct delightfulness—as all such luncheons should.

He told us amusing stories; witty stories, well worth remembering; but I have forgotten them. He spoke of entrancing places in foreign countries; but I had never seen them and they were only names which made me wish I’d been less unenterprising, instead of waiting for a European war to transport me abroad. He talked, without ostentation, about famous people whom he’d known. Who were they? I wonder. I rather think he mentioned Walter Pater, (whose cadenced prose I had read with more awareness of its music than of its instructive ingredients) and if he didn’t, he ought to have done. There was indeed an untranslatably Paterish quality about Father Rosary when he was being eloquently urbane. I suppose one should call it “an aroma of humanism”—which means that his religious vocation had not prevented him from being helpfully interested in everything that men think and do.

He was, so to speak, a connoisseur in the wisdom of the ages, and I can imagine his rich voice rolling out that fine passage of Pater’s which cannot be quoted too often: “For the essence of humanism is that belief of which he seems never to have doubted, that nothing which has ever interested living men and women can wholly lose its vitality—no language they have spoken, no oracle beside which they have hushed their voices, no dream which has once been entertained by actual human minds, nothing about which they have ever been passionate, or expended time and zeal.”

Meanwhile our lively host had uncorked a bottle of ancient champagne. It might be a century old, he said, or it might be less. But it was probably the most absurdly obsolete bottle of champagne in Edinburgh, and might, he added, be a bit insipid. He had discovered it in his cellar; some previous astronomer had left it there, and by miraculous oversight it had survived to be sniffed and inspected by Father Rosary and finally subjected to the tasting test of his impeccable palate for wine. Rivers, who was a good judge of water, sipped it respectfully and (after admiring the delicate old glass from which it was fulfilling its destiny by being at last imbibed) remarked that he’d never tasted anything like it in his life. Father Rosary commented on its “solemn stillness,” and then, he alone knew why, began talking about Tennyson. “Do you young men read Tennyson?” he asked me, and quoted “Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white” with the subdued relish of an epicure. The Astronomer, however, hadn’t much use for poetry. Astronomy made it seem a bit unnecessary, he thought. “Now slides the silent meteor on—pretty enough—but if he’d known what I do about meteors he wouldn’t have put it into a poem.”

“But I thought he took a great interest in astronomy,” I ventured.

“Yes; but he used it to suit his own game of idealizing the universe, and never really faced those ghastly immensities I’m always staring at,” he replied, revealing for a moment the “whatever brute or blackguard made the world” outlook which showed itself in his face when he wasn’t cracking jokes with Father Rosary, whose personality seemed to imply that Heaven was an invisible Vatican, complete with library, art collection, and museum. Rivers, who wasn’t a great poetry reader (he was handicapped by having no visual memory), remarked that he had an indistinct recollection of some poem by Tennyson in which he had to some extent “seen eye to eye” with the Astronomer. There was no copy of Tennyson’s works up at the observatory, but had we consulted one we should have found that Rivers was right. The lines “These are Astronomy and Geology, terrible Muses” can scarcely be classed as an idealization of those two realities.

Father Rosary now recreated harmonious gaiety by seating himself at the piano and trolling out a series of delightful ditties. After that he led us yet further from uncomfortable controversies by playing some classical and nobly serious pieces, for he loved the old Italian masters. And when, at the final chords, I looked across the room, the ultimate serenity of the music seemed to be at rest in the face of my friend.