Burmese Days 缅甸岁月 Chapter 19

The heat was growing worse and worse. April was nearly over, but there was no hope of rain for another three weeks, five weeks it might be. Even the lovely transient dawns were spoiled by the thought of the long, blinding hours to come, when one's head would ache and the glare would penetrate ¹ through every covering and glue up one's eyelids ² with restless sleep. No one, Oriental or European, could keep awake in the heat of the day without a struggle; at night, on the other hand, with the howling dogs and the pools of sweat that collected and tormented ³ one's prickly heat, no one could sleep. The mosquitoes at the Club were so bad that sticks of incense ⁴ had to be kept burning in all the corners, and the women sat with their legs in pillowslips. Only Verrall and Elizabeth were indifferent to the heat. They were young and their blood was fresh, and Verrall was too stoical and Elizabeth too happy to pay any attention to the climate., ,There was much bickering ⁵ and scandal-mongering at the Club these days. Verrall had put everyone's nose out of joint ⁶. He had taken to coming to the Club for an hour or two in the evenings, but he ignored the other members, refused the drinks they offered him, andanswered attempts at conversation with surly monosyllables. He would sit under the punkah in the chair that had once been sacred to Mrs Lackersteen, reading such of the papers as interested him, until Elizabeth came, when he would dance and talk with her for an hour or two and then make off without so much as a good-night to anybody. Meanwhile Mr Lackersteen was alone in his camp, and, according to the rumours ⁷ which drifted back to Kyauktada, consoling loneliness with quite a miscellany of Burmese women., ,Elizabeth and Verrall went out riding together almost every evening now. Verrall's mornings, after parade, were sacred to polo practice, but he had decided ⁸ that it was worth while giving up the evenings to Elizabeth. She took naturally to riding, just as she had to shooting; she even had the assurance to tell Verrall that she had 'hunted quite a lot' at home. He saw at a glance that she was lying, but at least she did not ride so badly as to be a nuisance to him., , ,Ah, the joy of those rides together! The joy of being on horseback and in the world of horses--the world of hunting and racing ¹⁸, polo and pigsticking! If Elizabeth had loved Verrall for nothing else, she would have loved him for bringing horses into her life. She tormented him to talk about horses as once she had tormented Flory to talk about shooting. Verrall was no talker, it was true. A few gruff, jerky sentences about polo and pigsticking, and a catalogue of Indian stations and the names of regiments ¹⁹, were the best he could do. And yet somehow the little he said could thrill Elizabeth as all Flory's talk had never done. The mere ²⁰ sight of him on horseback was more evocative than any words. An aura of horsemanship and soldiering surrounded him. In his tanned face and his hard, straight body Elizabeth saw all the romance, the splendid panache ²¹ of a cavalryman's life. She saw the North-West Frontier and the Cavalry ²² Club--she saw the polo grounds and the parched ²³ barrack yards, and the brown squadrons of horsemen galloping ²⁴ with their long lances poised ²⁵ and the trains of their pagris streaming; she heard the bugle-calls and the jingle ²⁶ of spurs, and the regimental bands playing outside the messrooms while the officers sat at dinner in their stiff, gorgeous uniforms. How splendid it was, that equestrian ²⁷ world, how splendid! And it was HER world, she belonged to it, she had been born of it. These days, she lived, thought, dreamed horses, almost like Verrall himself. The time came when she not only TOLD her taradiddle about having 'hunted quite a lot', she even came near believing it., ,In every possible way they got on so well together. He never bored her and fretted ²⁸ her as Flory had done. (As a matter of fact, she had almost forgotten Flory, these days; when she thought of him, it was for some reason always his birthmark that she remembered.) It was a bond between them that Verrall detested ²⁹ anything 'highbrow' even more than she did. He told her once that he had not read a book since he was eighteen, and that indeed he ' loathed ³⁰' books; 'except, of course, Jorrocks and all that'. On the evening of their third or fourth ride they were parting at the Lackersteens' gate. Verrall had successfully resisted all Mrs Lackersteen's invitations to meals; he had not yet set foot inside the Lackersteens' house, and he did not intend to do so. As the syce was taking Elizabeth's pony, Verrall said:#p#分页标题#e#, ,The sunshine could not penetrate where the trees were thickest.阳光不能透入树木最浓密的地方
。,She was so tired, her eyelids were beginning to droop. 她太疲倦了
，眼睑开始往下垂。