The Moon And Sixpence 31.3

I beggedStroeve to behave more wisely. His want of spirit was exasperating.

"You'redoing no good at all by going on like this, " I said. "I think you'dhave been wiser if you'd hit her over the head with a stick. She wouldn't havedespised you as she does now. "

I suggestedthat he should go home for a while. He had often spoken to me of the silenttown, somewhere up in the north of Holland, where his parents still lived. Theywere poor people. His father was a carpenter, and they dwelt in a little oldred-brick house, neat and clean, by the side of a sluggish canal. The streetswere wide and empty; for two hundred years the place had been dying, but thehouses had the homely stateliness of their time. Rich merchants, sending theirwares to the distant Indies, had lived in them calm and prosperous lives, andin their decent decay they kept still an aroma of their splendid past. Youcould wander along the canal till you came to broad green fields, withwindmills here and there, in which cattle, black and white, grazed lazily. Ithought that among those surroundings, with their recollections of his boyhood,Dirk Stroeve would forget his unhappiness. But he would not go.

"I must behere when she needs me, " he repeated. "It would be dreadful ifsomething terrible happened and I were not at hand. "

"What doyou think is going to happen?" I asked.

"I don'tknow. But I'm afraid. "

I shrugged myshoulders.

我劝说施特略夫放聪明一些。他这样没有骨气叫旁观的人都气得要命。

“你这样下去一点也没有好处，”我说，“依我看，你更应该做的倒是劈头盖脸地揍她一顿，她就不会照现在这样看不起你了。”

我建议叫他回老家去住些天。他常常同我提到他的老家，荷兰北部某个地方的一个寂静的城镇，他的父母至今仍然住在那里。他们都是穷苦人，他父亲是个木匠。他家住在一幢古老的小红砖房里，干净、整齐，房子旁是一条水流徐缓的运河。那里的街道非常宽阔，寂静无人。两百年来，这个地方日渐荒凉、冷落，但是城镇里房屋却仍然保持着当年的朴实而雄伟的气象。富有的商人把货物发往遥远的东印度群岛去，在这些房子里安静地过着优裕的生活；如今这些人家虽已衰败，但仍然闪烁着往日繁华的余辉。你可以沿着运河徜徉，直到走上一片片宽广的绿色原野，黑白斑驳的牛只懒洋洋地在上面吃草。我想在这样一个充满童年回忆的环境里，戴尔克·施特略夫是可以忘掉他这次的不幸的。但是他却不要回去。

“我一定得留在这儿，她什么时候需要我就可以找到我，”他又重复他已经对我讲过的话。“如果发生了什么不好的事，我又不在她身边，那就太可怕了。”

“你想会发生什么事呢？”我问他。

“我不知道。但是我害怕。”

我耸了耸肩膀。