Chapter 2 II
When the sun came in through her east window with a musical sound, Delly Alice awoke as usual.She kicked back the patterned quilt and lay naked in the sun for a moment, waking herself up by touch to find her eyes, knees, breasts, and rose gold hair all intact and in place.Then she stood up and stretched, to wipe the last trace of sleep from her face, and knelt down in a sunlit spot beside her bed to pray, as she had done every morning since she could talk:
After praying, she adjusted the long standing mirror inherited from her great-grandmother to reveal her whole body, and then asked the same question as usual.The answer this morning was "very good" (she sometimes gets ambiguous answers).She put on a brown gown, twirled on tiptoe, letting the frayed skirt fly, and walked cautiously into the still cold hall.She passed her father's study and heard his old Remington shotgun rattling away, telling tales of the adventures of mice and rabbits.She opened the door of her sister Sophie's room.Sophie lay between the tangled sheets, sleeping with her fists clenched like a baby, a long blond hair running across her parted lips.The morning sun had just entered the room, and Sophie moved reluctantly.The appearance of most people sleeping is a bit strange, a little strange, as if they are not the same person.But Sophie is most like herself when she is asleep, and she loves to sleep, she can sleep anywhere, even standing up.Delly Alice stopped and watched her for a moment, wondering where she had ventured again.Well, I can listen to her in detail later.
At the other end of the spiral hall was the Gothic bathroom, which, to her, was the only bathroom in the house with a long enough tub.The sun hadn't yet reached the corner of the house; the stained-glass windows were dim, and the cold tiled floor made her stand on tiptoe.The faucet in the shape of a monster coughed a few times as if suffering from tuberculosis, and then the water pipe deep in the house decided to give her some hot water.The sudden flow of water produced a certain effect, so she lifted up her brown skirt, sat on the toilet that looked like a bishop's throne, and watched the steam rising from the coffin-like bathtub with her chin resting. With drowsiness.
She flushed the toilet, and after a large pile of stubborn water was carried away with a loud splash, she undid her belt, took off her clothes, shivered, and stepped carefully into the bathtub.The gothic bathroom is already foggy.This kind of Gothic style is actually more like a forest than a church. The vaulted ceiling is like intertwined branches, intertwined above the head of Daili Alice, and there are carvings of ivy, leaves, tendrils and vines everywhere, forming A never-ending dynamic gesture.On the narrow stained-glass windows, there are drops of water on the cartoonishly bright patterns of trees, as do the patterns of distant hunters and blurred fields.As the sun rose lazily and lit up the twelve panes of glass, and the mist from the bathtub took on a jewel-like tint, it seemed as if Delly Alice was lying in a medieval In the pool in the forest.The room had been designed by her great-grandfather, but the glass had been made by another man named Conford, and Delly Alice was really comfortable.She even sang.
While she was bathing and singing, her groom woke up, not only with numb feet, but also surprised to find that his muscles were so aching from yesterday's journey.As she ate breakfast in the rectangular kitchen and made plans with her busy mother, Smoky climbed a sunny mountain and entered a valley.While Delly Alice and Sophie were calling each other's names through the intersecting halls, and the Doctor was looking out the window for inspiration, Smoky was standing at a crossroads where four old elms stood like four talking Serious old man.There was a sign that said "Edgewood" and pointed to a dirt road under a tree-lined avenue; just as he was stepping on this road, looking left and right to guess what was going to happen next, Daly Alice and Sophie were in the The clothes that Delly Alice will wear the next day are prepared in the room, and Sophie also tells her dream.
"I dreamed that I learned a way to save time I didn't want to spend and claim it when I needed it. Such as waiting time for a doctor's appointment, or time returning from a place you didn't want to go, or waiting Bus time, anyway, is some useless trivial time. Well, basically fold them up, like breaking a box, to make it more space-saving. In fact, it is very easy as long as you get the knack. When I said I learned this method, everyone looked like no surprise, and my mother just nodded and smiled, as if everyone is supposed to learn these things when they reach a certain age. Just tear along the creases and fold them flat , be careful not to lose any of them. Dad also brought me a huge marbled envelope and told me to put them all in, and when he gave it to me, I remembered seeing envelopes like these at home and guessed they were What is it for. It's so strange that some memories are made up in the dream to explain the whole story." As Sophie spoke, her fingers quickly handled a piece of skirt, and Delly Alice couldn't hear Sophie clearly. Every word, because she was talking while biting a pin.The dream was difficult to understand anyway, and every time Sophie finished speaking, Delly Alice would forget it as soon as she had dreamed it herself.She picked up a pair of satin shoes, put them down again, and went out to the little balcony outside her bay window. "Then I got scared," said Sophie, "and I had a big, dull envelope full of unhappy times, and I didn't know how to get the time out when I needed it." Use instead of letting all the dull stuff run out after me. It seems like I shouldn't have started in the first place. Besides..." Dai Li Alice looked down the road in front of the door, which was a brown driveway with a soft bump in the center. A row of weeds, all swaying in the wind under the shade of trees.At the end of the driveway was a pair of goalposts, each with a ball embedded in the top, like gray stone oranges.At this moment, a "traveler" appeared in front of the gate, hesitating.
Her heart fluttered for a while.Since she had been so peaceful all day, she decided that he was not coming; she decided that her heart already knew that he would not appear today, so she had no reason to be fluttering and beating with anticipation.But she was taken aback.
"Then it all came crashing down. It seemed like all the time was unraveled, flattened, put away, but I stopped, and it just happened on its own. At last there was only the dreaded time, from the lobby Time to walk down, time to wake up in the middle of the night, time to do nothing..."
Delly Alice let her heart continue beating wildly because she couldn't help herself anyway.Below, Smoky approached, very slowly, as if in awe, but she could not tell what he was in awe of.When she was sure he had seen her, she undid the belt of her brown robe and let it fall from her shoulders.It slid down her arms and wrists, and she felt the shadows of the leaves and the sun beat on her skin, alternately cool and warm.
His legs felt hot, starting from the heels and working their way up the calves, as if heated by the constant friction of the journey.His sunburned head buzzed in the hot midday sun, and his right thigh felt a sharp stabbing pain.But he was in Edgewood, no doubt about it.As he walked down the path to the huge gabled house, he realized that he didn't need to ask the old woman on the porch for directions, because he was already there.As he got closer, Delly Alice appeared before his eyes.He stood there dazed, still carrying the sweat-stained backpack.He dared not respond (because there was an old lady on the porch), but he couldn't take his eyes off either.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?" said the old woman at last.He flushed.She smiled at him, sitting upright in her peacock chair, beside a small glass table, where she was playing solitaire. "I said it's beautiful." She repeated, raising her voice.
"That's right!"
"That's right...so beautiful. I'm glad that's the first thing you see when you walk up the driveway. The window frames are new, but the balconies and all the stone are original. Would you like to come out on the porch? It's hard like this speak."
He glanced up again, but Alice was gone, just the strange roof bathed in sunlight.He ascended the pillared porch. "I'm Smoky Barnaby."
"Well. I'm Nora Crowder. Sit down, please?" She skillfully collected the cards, put them into a velvet bag, and put the velvet bag into a carved box.
"The one who made those demands on me," he said, sitting down in a creaky wicker chair, "could it be you? Suits, walks . . . a whole bunch of them."
"Oh no," she said, "I just discovered them."
"It's a kind of trial."
"Maybe. I don't know." She seemed surprised by the statement.She took a brown cigarette from her breast pocket (on which was pinned a neat, useless handkerchief), and lit a kitchen match on the sole of her shoe.She was wearing a thin dress in a color suitable for an old lady, but Smokey had never seen such a rich blue-green, and such a dense intertwining of leaves and florets and vines: as if all the harvest of the day had been woven into it. "Looking at the overall situation, I think it's a precautionary measure."
"Oh?"
"For your own safety."
"Well, that's it." They sat in silence for a while, Aunt Claude calm and smiling, Smoky expectant.He couldn't help but wonder why no one took him in to meet everyone.He felt the heat rising from his collar and realized it was Sunday.He cleared his throat. "Did Dr. Drinkwater and his wife go to church?"
"Oh, you can put it that way." The strange thing is that every time he said a word, she reacted as if she had never thought of such a thing. "Do you have faith?"
He has always been terrified of this question. "Well." He said.
"Women are always easier to trust, aren't they?"
"Maybe. I grew up with few people who believed me."
"My mother and I feel faith far more than my father and my brother. But they probably also suffer from faith more than we do."
He didn't know how to answer, and he couldn't tell whether the reason she was staring at him so carefully was because she was waiting for his answer, or because she was short-sighted.
"And so is my nephew, Dr. Drinkwater, but of course there are animals, and he does care about animals. He cares about animals very much. He doesn't seem to care about anything else."
"So some sort of pantheist?"
"Oh, no, he's not that stupid. He just seems to—" she waved the hand with the cigarette, "—not to notice that. Ah, who's here?"
A woman appeared at the gate on a bicycle, wearing a huge sombrero.She was wearing a blouse of the same color as Aunt Claude's dress but in a brighter color, and baggy jeans.She jumped off the bicycle unskillfully and took out a wooden barrel from the basket.When she pushed back her sombrero, Smokey recognized her as Mrs. Drinkwater.She stepped forward and sat down heavily on the steps. "Claude," she said, "I always say this is the last time I'll ask you about picking berries."
"Mr. Barnaba and I," said Aunt Claude cheerfully, "are discussing the question of faith."
"Claude," said Mrs. Drinkwater gloomily, scratching her ankle in a pair of sneakers with a frayed thumb. "Claude, I'm going the wrong way."
"Your barrel is full."
"I was going the wrong way. That bucket, damn it, I filled it in the first ten minutes."
"Oh. That's right."
"You didn't say I would go the wrong way."
"I didn't ask."
The three were silent for a moment.Aunt Crowder was smoking a cigarette, and Mrs. Drinkwater was scratching her ankle in a daze.Smoky had plenty of time to wonder why Aunt Crowder didn't say "you didn't ask" (he didn't mind Mrs. He has been treated as a transparent person since he was a child, and he is used to it). "As for religion," said Mrs. Drinkwater, "ask Auberon."
"Oh, look. The man doesn't believe it." Aunt Claude went on to Smoky: "We're talking about my brother."
"That's all he thinks about all day," said Mrs. Drinkwater.
"Yes," said Aunt Claude thoughtfully, "that's right. Well, here you go."
"Do you believe it?" asked Mrs. Drinkwater to Smoky.
"He doesn't believe it." Aunt Claude said, "Of course, there is August."
"I had no religious upbringing." Smoky grinned. "I guess I'm a polytheist."
"What?" said Mrs. Drinkwater.
"Gods. I have a classical education."
"You've got to start somewhere," she replied, picking leaves and worms out of her bucket of wild berries. "Shouldn't there be any more of these disgusting things. It's midsummer tomorrow, thanks."
"My brother August," said Aunt Claude, "is Alice's grandfather, probably of faith. He's gone, gone somewhere."
"A missionary?" asked Smoky.
"Oh, yes." Aunt Claude said, once again showing the appearance of hearing this for the first time, "Yes, it should be."
"They should be dressed," said Mrs. Drinkwater. "We might as well go in."
It was a large old screen door with perforated wood and a slight stain treatment to create a summer feel.The bottom half of the screen door protrudes from years of reckless bumping by the children.Rusty springs creaked as Smoky held the ceramic handle and pulled the door open.He stepped over the threshold and entered the house.
The smell of cool evening air in the high-ceilinged, waxed vestibule, and last winter's fire, and the smell of lavender sacs in the copper-handled cupboard, what else?Wax, sunshine, calibrated seasons: as the screen door creaked shut behind him, June outside slipped in.The stairs climbed up in front of him, making a semicircle to reach the second floor.His bride stood just around the first corner, the sun streaming down on her through a pointed arched window.She is barefoot and wearing a pair of patchwork jeans.Sophie stood right behind her, a year older but still not as tall as her sister, in a thin white dress and lots of rings.
"Hi," said Delly Alice.
"Hi," said Smoky.
"Take Smokey upstairs," said Mrs. Drinkwater, "he's in the virtual bedroom. And he'd definitely like a bath." She patted him on the shoulder, and he went up the first step.Years later, he often wondered, sometimes idly and sometimes painfully, whether he had never really left the house since he stepped in.But in that moment, he just went upstairs to meet her, ecstatic that he had finally arrived at his destination after this long and eccentric journey, and that she was there to greet him, brown eyes full of promise.She took his knapsack, took his hand, and led him upstairs in the coolness (but maybe the pleasure of that moment was the only purpose of the trip, and even that was reason enough; he had nothing else to do. begging).
"I should take a shower." He said a little breathlessly.She leaned down and whispered in his ear, "I'll lick you clean, like a cat." Sophie giggled behind them.
"This is the hall," Alice said, running her hands over the dark wainscoting.She tapped the glass doorknob as she walked. "Mom and Dad's room. Dad's study—shhhh...this is my room—do you see that?" He peeped in, but most likely he could only see himself in the standing mirror. "This is the virtual study. Up the stairs is the old stargazer. Left, then left." The foyer seemed to be a concentric circle, and Smoky couldn't figure out how all the rooms sprang out of it. "Here we are," she said.
The shape of the room was hard to define, and the ceiling dropped sharply in one corner, making one end of the room lower than the other, where the windows were smaller.The room looked bigger than it was, or smaller than it looked, he couldn't tell which.Alice threw his knapsack on the bed, a narrow bed with summer polka-dot sheets. "The bathroom is down the hall," she said. "Sophie, go get some water."
"Is there a shower?" he asked, imagining the cool water on his body.
"No," said Sophie, "we're trying to replace the pipes, but we can't find them..."
"Sophie."
Sophie closed the door, leaving them both alone.
First she wanted to taste the sweat on his neck and collarbone before he undid the hem of her shirt tied under her chest.Then the two forget to take turns because they can't wait, and quietly rush to explore each other, like pirates sharing long-sought, long-imagined, long-hidden treasures.
At noon they sat alone in the garden at the back of the house eating peanut butter and apple sandwiches.
"Back to the front?"
The verdant trees poked their heads over the gray garden walls like calm spectators on their elbows.They sat at a stone table in the corner, in the shade of a beech tree, still bearing the remains of the squashed caterpillars of past summers.Their paper dinner plates looked flimsy and impermanent on the thick stone table.Smoky swallowed hard, he was not used to peanut butter.
"Originally this was the front of the house," said Delly Alice, "but then they built the garden and the fence, so the back became the front." She straddled a bench and picked up a branch, and at the same time, with the little finger, hooked out a shiny strand of hair that was blown into the mouth by the wind.She quickly drew a five-pointed star on the dirt.Smoky looked at it, then at her tight jeans. "Not exactly," she said, squinting at the star, "but it's more or less like this. You see, this house has fronts on every side. It's a model home. Remember I mentioned it to you in my letter." My great grandfather? He built this house as a sample mix so people could come and look at it from every different side and decide what kind of house they wanted. That's why the interior is so crazy .Because it’s actually a lot of houses stacked on top of each other, with only the fronts exposed.”
"What?" He had been watching her talk, but not listening.She saw this and laughed. "Look. Is there any?" she said.He looked in the direction of her finger and saw the back and front of the house.Austere Classical façade, covered with ivy; dark tear-spattered gray stone, with high arched windows; foot.Someone looked out of one of the windows with a melancholy air. "Come on now." She took a big bite of the sandwich with her big teeth, and took his hand as she walked along the side of the building.It folds up like a stage set.Things that seemed flat originally protruded, things that originally protruded became concave, and the pillars became semi-dew pillars and then disappeared.Just like the pattern that children often play from a crying face to a smiling face, the back and front of the house also slowly changes, so when they reach the opposite wall and look back, the house has become a happy imitation of Tudor. , with deep curved eaves and close together hat-like chimneys.One of the windows on the second floor was open (one or two of the panes were stained glass), and Sophie stood there waving. "Smoky," she cried, "you'll have to talk to Papa in the study after lunch." She stayed at the window, leaning on the sill with her arms folded, looking at him with a smile, as if glad to bring the news.
"Oh, aha," Smoky responded absently.He went back to the stone table, and the house returned to Romanesque.Delly Alice is eating his sandwich. "What am I going to tell him?" She shrugged, her mouth full. "What if he asks me what my future is?" She covered her mouth with a smile, as she had in George Mouse's study. "Oh, I can't tell him I'm proofreading the phone book." The stress he's facing has nestled like a bird on his shoulders, and it's clearly Dr. Drinkwater's responsibility to place it on him. .Suddenly he hesitated and doubted.He looked at his tall lover.What future does he have?Could it be enough to explain to the doctor that his daughter cured his sense of non-existence in one go?Could it be said that once the wedding was consummated (whatever religious vows they made him make), all he wanted was to be like everyone else and live happily ever after?
She took out her pocketknife and peeled the skin of a green apple, the rind forming a curly ribbon.She has that talent.What can he bring her?
"Do you like children?" she said, never taking her eyes off the apple.
It was dark in the study.According to an ancient philosophy, houses are kept cool in the heat of summer by closing them up.It's really cool.Dr. Drinkwater was not in the study.Through the curtained arched window he caught glimpses of Delly Alice and Sophie chatting at the stone table in the garden, and so he felt like a boy locked up at home for misbehavior or ill health .He yawned nervously and looked at the books nearby; it seemed that these heavy bookcases had not been touched in a long time.There are sets of sermons, and volumes of writings by, and others.There was a set of children's storybooks written by doctors, several yards long, handsomely bound, with often repeated titles.There are also some beautifully bound classic books piled up next to an anonymous bust wearing a laurel wreath.He took down a book, but he also brought down a booklet stuffed between the books.It was old, worn and discolored, and it contained pearlescent gravure illustrations, and the book was called North State Houses and Their History.Turning the pages carefully so as not to mar the old glue in the binding, he saw dark gardens with black flowers, a roofless castle on an islet in the river, and a house made of beer barrels.
He looked up and turned to the next page.Delly Alice and Sophie were gone, and the wind lifted the paper dinner plate off the table, spinning it in a ballet until it hit the floor.
At this time, a photo appeared, showing two people drinking tea sitting at a stone table.The man looked like the poet Yeats, in a light summer suit and polka-dot tie, with thick snow-white hair and glasses with the glare of the sun so that you couldn't see his eyes clearly.The woman is younger, wearing a white wide-brimmed hat, her deep features are sunk in the shadow of the brim of the hat, perhaps blurred by a sudden movement.Behind them was the house of Smoky, and beside them a small figure, about a foot high, wearing a pointed hat and pointed shoes, was stretching out his heels toward the woman. small hands.The woman may have seen him and was about to take his hand, but that may not be the case (difficult to judge).His broad, non-human features also seemed to be blurred by the sudden movement, and he appeared to have gauzy insect wings.The photo was captioned: "John Drinkwater and Mrs. Drinkwater (Violette Bramble); Elf. Edgewood, 1912." The text below the photo read:
"Of all the crazy buildings of the turn of the century, John Drinkwater's 'Edgewood' was the weirdest, but it wasn't originally designed to be crazy at all. Its history must go back to Drinkwater The Architecture of Country Houses, published in 1880. This charming and influential introduction to Victorian domestic architecture catapulted the young Drinkwater to fame, and he later joined the well-known East Landscape Architecture Team. In 1894, Drinkwater designed Edgewood, which is a synthesis of all the illustrations in his famous book, combining many houses of different styles and sizes into one, simply Ink is hard to shape. It can still present an aspect (or aspects) of logic and order, which is a testament to Drinkwater's ability (although it has been declining). In 1897, Drinkwater Married a young British woman, Violet Bramble, and was influenced by his wife's comprehensive sexuality after marriage. His wife is the daughter of the mystic priest Theodore Burne Bramble, who is a charming woman in her own right. Spiritualist. Her ideas also infiltrated later editions of The Architecture of Country Houses, as he added more and more Theosophy and Spiritualist philosophy to it without removing anything from the original. Sixth Edition, That is to say, the last edition (1910) had to be financed privately, because the commercial publishers were no longer willing to take over, and still contained all the illustrations of the 1880 edition.
"Over the years, the Drinkwaters have assembled a group of like-minded people, artists, aesthetes, world-weary sensibilities. The occult has had an Anglophile feel to it from the start, and interested guests include The poet Yeats, several well-known illustrators, and those "poetic" characters who survived in the beautiful atmosphere before the outbreak of the war have disappeared without a trace in today's harsh environment.
"It's interesting that the area was going through a general depopulation at the time, and these people benefited from it. The poor homesteaders in the five towns around Edgewood left for the big city and west, and those Moderate poets escaping economic realities just happened to take over their house. Perhaps it is no surprise that this small remaining group would become 'conscientious objectors' at a time when the country needed it most, and their strange and unsolvable mysteries It is also not surprising that the problem will disappear.
"Drinkwater's descendants still live in that house. It is said that there is a crazy summer house on that (very large) land, but the house and the grounds are closed to outsiders."
Elf?
"We should talk, shall we?" said Dr. Drinkwater. "Where would you like to sit?" Smokey chose a leather armchair with buttons.Dr. Drinkwater sat down on the couch, stroked his fluffy hair, sucked his teeth, and coughed like a prologue.Smoky waited for his first question.
"Do you like animals?" he asked.
"Well," said Smoky, "I don't know many animals. My father was fond of dogs." Dr. Drinkwater nodded, as if disappointed. "I've always lived in the city, or the suburbs. I like to hear the birds in the morning." He paused. "I've read your stories, and I think they're... realistic." He smiled, then realized it was a terribly flattering smile, but the doctor didn't seem to notice.He just let out a long sigh.
"I think," he said, "you know what you're doing."
At this moment, Smoky cleared his throat as if opening the scene. "Oh, sir, of course I know I can't get Alice, er, to live the grand life she's used to, or at least not for a while. I'm doing... research. I'm well-educated, not counting It's formal, but I'm trying to put my... my knowledge to good use. I might teach."
"Teaching?"
"Classics."
The doctor had been gazing up at the towering bookcases lined with books all this time. "Well. This room always gives me the creeps. My mother used to say, 'Go talk to the boy in the study.' I wouldn't come in here unless I had to. What did you say you taught?"
"Oh, I haven't started teaching yet. I'm... about to start."
"Can you write? I mean by hand? That's important for teaching."
"Oh, yes. I can write well." Silence. "I have a little money, an inheritance..."
"Oh, money. Don't worry about money. We're rich." He grinned at Smoky. "As rich as he is." He leaned back, resting his ridiculously small hands on his flannel-clad knees. "Mostly from my grandfather, who was an architect. And my money, from writing stories. And we've always been able to get good advice." He gave a strange look that almost resembled pity Look at Smoky. "Nothing, there must be good advice." Then he straightened his legs, patted his knees, and stood up, as if he had given a good advice just now. "Okay, I have to go. See you at dinner time? Very good. Don't be exhausted. There are many things waiting for you tomorrow." Because he was too eager to leave, he had already walked out of the door after saying these words outside.
He had noticed them, in the glass case behind the couch where Dr. Drinkwater had been sitting.He climbed onto the sofa and turned the key in the lock to open the door.There are six volumes in total, arranged neatly from thin to thick, as written in the guidebook.There are other books or printed matter piled up and down all around.He pulled out the thinnest one, which was only about an inch thick. "Country House Architecture".The intaglio cover is diagonally printed in "rustic" Victorian lettering, adorned with twigs and leaves.It is olive-like in color with dead leaves.He quickly flipped through the thick pages.There are buildings, either full or improved.There are Italian-style villas, which are suitable for building in open fields or countryside.And Tudor and Modified Neoclassical, spartanly printed on two pages each.Cottages, manors, among aspens or pine trees, fountains or hills, and small black figures of visitors. (Or the proud homeowner coming to claim sovereignty?) He figured if all the pictures were printed on glass, then he'd just stack them all up and point them at the dusty sunbeam coming in the window, Ikey Wood will fully emerge.He read the text for a while, which carefully listed the dimensions, visual design, and complete and funny accounting records (the stonemason who paid ten yuan a week was not only dead for a long time, but also went to the grave with his skills and secrets).Oddly enough, the book also explains what kind of house suits what kind of personality and what kind of profession.He put the book back.
He pulled out a second volume, which was almost twice as thick as the first.It read "Fourth Edition, Little Brown, Boston, 1898."There was a frontispiece, a portrait of a mournful Drinkwater, drawn in soft pencil.Smoky vaguely recognized the artist's double hyphenated name.There is an inscription on the title page full of words: I get up and tear it down.Shelley.The photos are all the same, but there is an extra set of charts, all of which are floor plans, and Smoky can't understand the labels on them at all.
The sixth and final edition is a massive, beautifully bound volume in Art Nouveau lavender.The font of the title stretches out curly lines as if to grow limbs, and as a whole seems to be reflected on a rippling pond full of lilies in the evening.The frontispiece this time is not Drinkwater himself, but his wife, a sketch-like photo with a charcoal smoky feel and fuzzy facial features.Maybe it wasn't some artistic effect; maybe she wasn't always fully there, like Smoky, but she was beautiful.There are also poems, letters, and a lot of prefaces, prefaces, and introductions in the book, all in red and black.Then there were the cottages, as usual, only this time they looked outdated and out of place, like an ordinary town caught up in the tide of modernity.Violet's scribes seem to be trying to maintain some sanity in the page after page of capitalized abstractions (in smaller and smaller fonts as the book gets thicker), so that annotations appear on basically every page , and epigraphs, chapter headings, and all that sort of thing that turns a paragraph into an object, all clear, logical, unreadable stuff.There is also a blueprint or map attached to the blank page at the end of the volume. It has been folded several times, but it is actually quite thick.The paper was so thin that Smoky didn't know how to spread it out at first.He tried one direction first, but an ancient crease cracked slightly with a hiss. He twitched and tried again.He glimpsed some parts and saw that it was a huge blueprint, but what was the design?Finally he finally spread it all out.The picture rested face down on his lap, and he had only to turn it over.But now he paused, not sure if he really wanted to know what was up there.I think you know what you're doing, the doctor said.He lifted it over the edge.Because of its age and fine paper, it fluttered gently like a moth's wing, and a ray of sunlight pierced through the back, and he caught a glimpse of the intricately annotated image.He put it down to study.
“她到底会不会去，克劳德？”妈妈问，而克劳德姑婆回答：“好啦，好像不会。”但她不肯再多说，只是坐在桌子另一端，香烟在阳光下释出朦胧烟雾。妈妈正在做馅饼，面粉一路沾到手肘，尽管她喜欢把这称作不花脑筋的工作，但事实却非如此。事实上，她发现自己思路最清晰、想法最敏锐的时候往往就是烹饪时；她可以在身体忙碌的情形下完成其他时候做不到的事，例如将她的烦恼编排列队，每一队都由一份希望主导。有时她会在煮饭时突然想起遗忘已久的诗歌，或用先生、孩子、先父或她尚未出生但已能清晰预见的孙辈（有三个已毕业的女孩和一个清瘦忧郁的男孩）的语言说话。她对天气了如指掌。她把玻璃馅饼盘放进呼呼吐着热气的烤箱内，说不久就会有场暴风雨。克劳德姑婆没有响应，只是叹口气、吸口烟，用一条小手帕擦擦她满是皱纹的脖子上的汗，然后将它仔细塞回袖子里。“晚点就会清朗很多了。”她说完随即缓缓走出厨房，穿越大厅回到她的房间，看能不能在晚餐前小睡一会儿。她曾在这张宽大的羽毛床上跟哈维·克劳德度过短短几年同枕共眠的时光。躺下前她望向了山丘，确实看见有白色的积云往那儿集结，带着胜利的姿态节节攀升。索菲无疑是对的。她躺在那儿想：至少他是来了，而且没有造成任何冲突。其余的事她就不知道了。
与此同时，戴着低顶宽边帽的德林克沃特医生气喘吁吁地在“老石墙”旁停下脚步。这道围墙，也就是那片长满昆虫的多岩之地，分隔了“绿野”和“老牧野”，一路通到荷塘边缘。血压造成的嗡嗡声逐渐退去，因此他开始听得见他唯一关注的那出戏码：啁啾不停的鸟语、不成调的蝉鸣，以及上千生物进进出出的窸窣声。人类曾经插手于这块土地，但现在多半已经抽离。他可以在荷塘对岸的远方看见布朗家谷仓的屋顶，知道这片牧野已遭那家人遗弃，而这道古墙正是他们所留下的遗迹。景色因人类事业的进驻而变化多端，多出了大大小小的房屋、绵延的围墙、阳光明媚的牧野、池塘。医生认为这似乎才是“生态”一词的真义，他不时会在大城报上看到这个词在那些密密麻麻的专栏里遭到误用。当他坐在一块长着青苔的温暖岩石上聚精会神时，一阵微风吹来，告诉他傍晚时分就会有一朵来自山间的云在此地化成雨水落下。
同时，约翰·德林克沃特和瓦奥莱特·布兰波的两个曾孙女就躺在索菲房里那张宽大的羽毛床上。黛莉·艾丽斯隔天要穿（这辈子可能只穿这么一次）的浅色长裙小心翼翼地挂在衣柜外，在衣柜门上的镜中映出一模一样的倒影，背对着背。裙子下方和周围也缀满配件。索菲和姊姊赤身裸体，躺在午后的暑热中。索菲的手扫过了姊姊汗湿的身侧，因此黛莉·艾丽斯说：“哎，真的太热了。”但却觉得妹妹沾在她肩上的泪水更加滚烫。她说：“不久就会轮到你了。你会选中一个人，也可能被人选中，到时候你也会成为六月新娘。”但索菲说：“我永远不会，永远不会。”接下来的话艾丽斯就听不到了，因为索菲把脸埋在姊姊的脖子上喃喃低语。索菲说的是：“他永远不会理解、永远不会看见，他们永远不会让他得到跟我们一样的东西。他会跑到不该去的地方、看见不该看的东西，永远看不出哪里有门、哪里该转弯。等着看好了，你尽管等着看。”就在这一刻，克劳德姑婆也在思考这件事，想着他们若等一等不知会看到什么。她们的母亲也感受到这点，但不是出自普通的好奇心，而是在刺探各种可能性。史墨基则以为此时是周日的休息时间，于是独自留在那满是尘埃的黑暗书房里，将整张图在面前摊开。而就在这一刻，这件事也让他浑身战栗，如一道火焰般蹿起、永不止息。
Notes: 的作者。
Notes: 的作者。