长日留痕3

"The fact is, Mr Stevens, your father is entrusted with far more than a man of his age can cope with."

"Miss Kenton, you clearly have little idea of what you are suggesting."

"Whatever your father was once, Mr Stevens, his powers are now greatly diminished. This is what these 'trivial errors' as you call them really signify and if you do not heed them, it will not be long before your father commits an error of major proportions."

"Miss Kenton, you are merely making yourself look foolish."

"I am sorry, Mr Stevens, but I must go on. I believe there are many duties your father should now be relieved of. He should not, for one, be asked to go on carrying heavily laden trays. The way his hands tremble as he carries them into dinner is nothing short of alarming. It is surely only a matter of time before a tray falls from his hands on to a lady or gentleman's lap. And furthermore, Mr Stevens, and I am very sorry to say this, I have noticed your father's nose."

"I regret to say I have, Mr Stevens. The evening before last I watched your father proceeding very slowly towards the dining room with his tray, and I am afraid I observed clearly a large drop on the end of his nose dangling over the soup bowls. I would not have thought such a style of waiting a great stimulant to appetite."

The study doors are those that face one as one comes down the great staircase. There is outside the study today a glass cabinet displaying various of Mr Farraday's ornaments, but throughout Lord Darlington's days, there stood at that spot a bookshelf containing many volumes of encyclopedia, including a complete set of the Britannica.

It was a ploy of Lord Darlington's to stand at this shelf studying the spines of the encyclopedias as I came down the staircase, and sometimes, to increase the effect of an accidental meeting, he would actually pull out a volume and pretend to be engrossed as I completed my descent. Then, as I passed him, he would say: 'Oh, Stevens, there was something I meant to say to you.' And with that, he would wander back into his study, to all appearances still thoroughly engrossed in the volume held open in his hands.

It was invariably embarrassment at what he was about to impart which made Lord Darlington adopt such an approach, and even once the study door was closed behind us, he would often stand by the window and make a show of consulting the encyclopedia throughout our conversation. What I am now describing, incidentally, is one of many instances I could relate to you to underline Lord Darlington's essentially shy and modest nature.

Mr. F: put down the periodical he was reading when Stevens stepped into the study and use his body language to indicate his anticipation of a conversation with Stevens

A great deal of nonsense has been spoken and written in recent years concerning his lordship and the prominent role he came to play in great affairs, and some utterly ignorant reports have had it that he was motivated by egotism or else arrogance. Let me say here that nothing could be further from the truth. It was completely contrary to Lord Darlington's natural tendencies to take such public stances as he came to do and I can say with conviction that his lordship was persuaded to overcome his more retiring side only through a deep sense of moral duty. Whatever may be said about his lordship these days - and the great majority of it is, as I say, utter nonsense - I can declare that he was a truly good man at heart, a gentleman through and through, and one I am today proud to have given my best years of service to.

On the particular afternoon to which I am referring, his lordship would still have been in his mid-fifties; but as I recall, his hair had greyed entirely and his tall slender figure already bore signs of the stoop that was to become so pronounced in his last years.

The question of how one could broach the topic of reducing his responsibilities was not, then, an easy one. My difficulty was further compounded by the fact that for some years my father and I had tended - for some reason I have never really fathomed - to converse less and less. So much so that after his arrival at Darlington Hall, even the brief exchanges necessary to communicate information relating to work took place in an atmosphere of mutual embarrassment.

In the end, I judged the best option to be to talk in the privacy of his room, thus giving him the opportunity to ponder his new situation in solitude once I took my leave. The only times my father could be found in his room were first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Choosing the former, I climbed up to his small attic room at the top of the servants' wing early one morning and knocked gently.

I had rarely had reason to enter my father's room prior to this occasion and I was newly struck by the smallness and starkness of it. Indeed, I recall my impression at the time was of having stepped into a prison cell, but then this might have had as much to do with the pale early light as with the size of the room or the bareness of its walls.

For my father had opened his curtains and was sitting, shaved and in full uniform, on the edge of his bed from where evidently he had been watching the sky turn to dawn.

At least one assumed he had been watching the sky, there being little else to view from his small window other than roof-tiles and guttering.

The oil lamp beside his bed had been extinguished, and when I saw my father glance disapprovingly at the lamp I had brought to guide me up the rickety staircase, I quickly lowered the wick. Having done this, I noticed all the more the effect of the pale light coming into the room and the way it lit up the edges of my father's craggy, lined, still awesome features

Ah," I said, and gave a short laugh, "I might have known Father would be up and ready for the day."

"I've been up for the past three hours," he said, looking me up and down

rather coldly.

"Then relate it briefly and concisely. I haven't all morning to listen to you chatter."

"Come to the point then and be done with it.

My father's face, in the half-light, betrayed no emotion whatsoever.

"I have waited at table every day for the last fifty-four years," my father remarked, his voice perfectly unhurried.

I felt disinclined actually to hand to him the piece of paper I was holding, and so put it down on the end of his bed. My father glanced at it then returned his gaze to me. There was still no trace of emotion discernible in his expression, and his hands on the back of the chair appeared perfectly relaxed. Hunched over or not, it was impossible not to be reminded of the sheer impact of his physical presence - the very same that had once reduced two drunken gentlemen to sobriety in the back of a car. Eventually, he said:"I only fell that time because of those steps.”

No doubt, she was feeling a certain sense of guilt as the two of us watched from our window my father's figure down below.

The shadows of the poplar trees had fallen across much of the lawn, but the sun was still lighting up the far corner where the grass sloped up to the Summerhouse. My father could be seen standing by those four stone steps, deep in thought. A breeze was slightly disturbing his hair.

Then, as we watched, he walked very slowly up the steps. At the top, he turned and came back down, a little faster. Turning once more, my father became still again for several seconds, contemplating the steps before him. Eventually, he climbed them a second time, very deliberately. This time he continued on across the grass until he had almost reached the summerhouse, then turned and came walking slowly back, his eyes never leaving the ground.

In fact, I can describe his manner at that moment no better than the way Miss Kenton puts it in her letter; it was indeed 'as though he hoped to find some precious jewel he had dropped there.'

But I see I am becoming preoccupied with these memories and this is perhaps a little foolish. This present trip represents, after all, a rare opportunity for me to savour to the full the many splendours of the English countryside, and I know I shall greatly regret it later if I allow myself to become unduly diverted.

That is to say, the important international conference to take place at Darlington Hall was by then looming ahead of us, leaving little room for indulgence or 'beating about the bush'.

It is important to be reminded, moreover, that although Darlington Hall was to witness many more events of equal gravity over the fifteen or so years that followed, that conference of March 1923 was the first of them; one was, one supposes, relatively inexperienced, and inclined to leave little to chance. In fact, I often look back to that conference and, for more than one reason, regard it as a turning point in my life.

For one thing, I suppose I do regard it as the moment in my career when I truly came of age as a butler. That is not to say I consider I became, necessarily, a 'great' butler; But should it be that anyone ever wished to posit that I have attained at least a little of that crucial quality of 'dignity' in the course of my career. It was one of those events which at a crucial stage in one's development arrive to challenge and stretch one to the limit of one's ability and beyond, so- that thereafter one has new standards by which to judge oneself.

That conference was also memorable, of course, for other quite separate reasons, as I would like now to explain.

The conference of 1923 was the culmination of long planning on the part of Lord Darlington; indeed, in retrospect, one can see clearly how his lordship had been moving towards this point from some three years or so before. As I recall, he had not been initially so preoccupied with the peace treaty when it was drawn up at the end of the Great War.

And I think it is fair to say that his interest was prompted not so much by an analysis of the treaty, but by his friendship with Herr Karl-Heinz Bremann.

Herr Bremann first visited Darlington Hall very shortly after the war while still in his officer's uniform, and it was evident to any observer that he and Lord Darlington had struck up a close friendship. This did not surprise me, since one could see at a glance that Herr Bremann was a gentleman of great decency. He returned again, having left the German army, at fairly regular intervals during the following two years, and one could not help noticing with some alarm the deterioration he underwent from one visit to the next. His clothes became increasingly impoverished - his frame thinner; a hunted look appeared in his eyes,and on his last visits, he would spend long periods staring into space, oblivious of his lordship's presence or, sometimes, even of having been addressed.

A heavy air of preoccupation hung over him for days after his return, and I recall once, in reply to my inquiring how he had enjoyed his trip, his remarking:

"Disturbing, Stevens. Deeply disturbing. It does us great discredit to treat a defeated foe like this. A complete break with the traditions of this country."

"He was my enemy," he was saying, "but he always behaved like a gentleman. We treated each other decently over six months of shelling each other. He was a gentleman doing his job and I bore him no malice. I said to him: 'Look here, we're enemies now and I'll fight you with all I've got. But when this wretched business is over, we shan't have to be enemies any more and we'll have a drink together.' Wretched thing is, this treaty is making a liar out of me. But how can I look him in the face and tell him that's turned out to be true?"

"I fought that war to preserve justice in this world. As far as I understood, I wasn't taking part in a vendetta against the German race."

"Dupont hates Germans. He hated them before the war and he hates them now with a depth you gentlemen here would find hard to understand." With that, Mr Lewis sat back in his chair again, the genial smile returning fully to his face. "But tell me, gentlemen," he continued, "you can hardly blame a Frenchman for hating the Germans, can you? After all, a Frenchman has good cause to do so, hasn't he?"

There was a moment of slight awkwardness as Mr Lewis glanced around the table. Then Lord Darlington said:

"Naturally, some bitterness is inevitable. But then, of course, we English also fought the Germans long and hard."

"But the difference with you Englishmen", Mr Lewis said, seems to be-that you don't really hate the Germans any more. But the way the French see it, the Germans destroyed civilization here in Europe and no punishment is too bad for them. Of course, that looks an impractical kind of position to us in the United States, but what's always puzzled me is how you English don't seem to share the view of the French. After all, like you say, Britain lost a lot in that war too."

Most of us in England find the present French attitude despicable. You may indeed call it a temperamental difference, but I venture we are talking about something rather more. It is unbecoming to go on hating an enemy like this once a conflict is over.

Once you've got a man on the canvas, that ought to be the end of it. You don't then proceed to kick him.To us, the French behaviour has become increasingly barbarous. "

You gentlemen here, forgive me, but you are just a bunch of naive dreamers. And if you didn't insist on meddling in large affairs that affect the globe, you would actually be charming. Let's take our good host here. What is he? He is a gentleman. No one here, I trust, would care to disagree. A classic English gentleman. Decent, honest, well-meaning. But his lordship here is an amateur." He paused at the word and looked around the table. "He is an amateur and international affairs today are no longer for gentlemen amateurs. The sooner you here in Europe realize that the better. All you decent, well-meaning gentlemen, let me ask you, have you any idea what sort of place the world is becoming all around you? The days when you could act put of your noble instincts are over. Except of course, you here in Europe don't yet seem to know it. Gentlemen like our good host still believe it's their business to meddle in matters they don't understand. So much hog-wash has been spoken here these past two days. Well-meaning, naive hog-wash. You here in Europe need professionals to run your affairs. If you don't realize that soon you're headed for disaster. A toast, gentlemen. Let me make a toast. To professionalism."

"I believe I have a good idea of what you mean by 'professionalism'. It appears to mean getting one's way by cheating and manipulating. It means ordering one's priorities according to greed and advantage rather than the desire to see goodness and justice prevail in the world. If that is the 'professionalism' you refer to, sir, I don't much care for it and have no wish to acquire it."

This was met by the loudest burst of approval yet, followed by warm and sustained applause.

I could see Mr Lewis smiling at his wine glass and shaking his head wearily.

As this date grew ever nearer, the pressures on myself, though of an altogether more humble nature than those mounting on his lordship, were nevertheless not inconsequential.

I thus set about preparing for the days ahead as, I imagine, a general might prepare for a battle: I devised with utmost care a special staff plan anticipating all sorts of eventualities; I analyzed where our weakest points lay and set about making contingency plans to fall back upon in the event of these points giving way; I even gave the staff a military-style 'pep-talk', impressing upon them that, for all their having to work at an exhausting rate, they could feel great pride in discharging their duties over the days that lay ahead. "History could well be made under this roof," I told them. And they, knowing me to be one not prone to exaggerated statements, well understood that something of an extraordinary nature was impending.

In fact, as the great challenge of the conference drew nearer, an astonishing change seemed to come over my father. It was almost as though some supernatural force possessed him, causing him to shed twenty years; his face lost much of the sunken look of recent times, and he went about his work with such youthful vigour that a stranger might have believed there were not one but several such figures pushing trolleys about the corridors of Darlington Hall.

My father opened his eyes, turned his head a little on the pillow, and looked at me.

"I hope Father is feeling better now," I said. He went on gazing at me for a moment, then asked: "Everything in hand downstairs?'

"The situation is rather volatile. It is just after six o'clock, so Father can well imagine the atmosphere in the kitchen at this moment."

An impatient look crossed my father's face. "But is everything in hand?" he said again. "Yes, I dare say you can rest assured on that. I'm very glad Father is feeling better."

With some deliberation, he withdrew his arms from under the bedclothes and gazed tiredly at the backs of his hands. He continued to do this for some time.

"I'm glad Father is feeling so much better," I said again eventually. "Now really, I'd best be getting back. As I say, the situation is rather volatile."

He went on looking at his hands for a moment.

Then he said slowly: "I hope I've been a good father to you."

I laughed a little and said: "I'm so glad you're feeling better now."

"I'm proud of you. A good son. I hope I've been a good father to you. I suppose I haven't."

"I'm afraid we're extremely busy now, but we can talk again in the morning."

My father was still looking at ,his hands as though he were faintly irritated by them.

"I'm so glad you're feeling better now," I said again and took my leave .

"You look as though you're crying."

I laughed and taking out a handkerchief, quickly wiped my face. "I'm very sorry, sir. The strains of a hard day."

Comment: Ironically, the moments when Stevens feels he is being “unprofessional” are those when he seems most human, and when we can best relate to him.

She is the one who first notices Stevens’ father’s ability is waning.

She is the one who pushes and forces Stevens to realize and accept this fact.

She is the one who shows her understanding to Stevens’ pursuit of dignity. Therefore, she is the one who stays with the old man when Stevens must attend to matters downstairs and closes his father’s eyes after he passes away.

Assign a bizarre extra task to Stevens

Tell Sir David Cardinal’s son, Mr. Reginald Cardinal, who was twenty-three at the time and engaged to be married, “the facts of life”.

"The facts of life, Stevens. Birds, bees. You are familiar, aren't you?"

"Let me put my cards on the table, Stevens.”

"If I may come straight to the point, sir. You will notice the geese not far from us."

"Geese?" He looked around a little bewildered. "Oh yes. That's what they are."

"And likewise the flowers and shrubs. This is not, in fact, the best time of year to see them in their full glory, but you will appreciate, sir, that with the arrival of spring, we will see a change - a very special sort of change - in these surroundings."

"Yes, I'm sure the grounds are not at their best just now. But to be perfectly frank, Stevens, I wasn't paying much attention to the glories of nature.

修辞拓展：文学中或者生活中谈到sex, 常常用比较隐晦的表达，以避免尴尬，这种修辞就叫做Euphemism, 委婉语。例子：

第一类：to soften expression

Pass away/departed instead of died

Differently-abled instead of disabled

On the streets instead of homeless

Turn a trick instead of engage in prostitution

第二类：to be polite

The birds and bees instead of sex

Go all the way / sleep together instead of have sex

Adult entertainment instead of pornography

Big-boned instead of heavy or overweight

Comfort woman instead of prostitute

第三类：to be impolite

Kick the bucket/cement shoes instead of die

Hide the sausage instead of sex

Butlers of my father's generation, I would say, tended to see the world in terms of a ladder - the houses of royalty, dukes and the lords from the oldest families placed at the top, those of 'new money' lower down and so on, until one reached a point below which the hierarchy was determined simply by wealth - or the lack of it.

Any butler with ambition simply did his best to climb as high up this ladder as possible, and by and large, the higher he went, the greater was his professional prestige.

For our generation, I believe it is accurate to say, viewed the world not as a ladder, but more as a wheel.

It is my impression that our generation was the first to recognize something which had passed the notice of all earlier generations: namely that the great decisions of the world are not, in fact, arrived at simply in the public chambers, or else during a handful of days given over to an international conference under the full gaze of the public and the press. Rather, debates are conducted, and crucial decisions arrived at, in the privacy and calm of the great houses of this country.

To us, then, the world was" a wheel, revolving with these great houses at the hub, their mighty decisions emanating out to all else, rich and poor, who revolved around them. It was the aspiration of all those of us with professional ambition to work our way as close to this hub as we were each of us capable. For we were, as I say, an idealistic generation for whom the question was not simply one of how well one practised one's skills, but to what end one did so; each of us harboured the desire to make our own small contribution to the creation of a better world, and saw that, as professionals, the surest means of doing so would be to serve the great gentlemen of our times in whose hands civilization had been entrusted.

"She kept asserting everything was 'mock' this and 'mock' that. She even thought you were 'mock', Stevens."

"Indeed, sir?"

"Indeed, Stevens. I'd told her you were the real thing. A real old English butler. That you'd been in this house for over thirty years, serving a real English lord. But Mrs Wakefield contradicted me on this point. In fact, she contradicted me with great confidence."

"Is that so, sir?"

"Mrs Wakefield, Stevens, was convinced you never worked here until I hired you. In fact, she seemed to be under the impression she'd had that from your own lips. Made me look pretty much a fool, as you can imagine."

"It's most regrettable, sir."

"I mean to say, Stevens, this is a genuine grand old English house, isn't it? That's what I paid for. And you're a genuine old-fashioned English butler, not just some waiter pretending to be one. You're the real thing, aren't you? That's what I wanted, isn't that what I have?"

I now find myself much indebted to the batman, for quite aside from assisting with the Ford, he has allowed me to discover a most charming spot which it is most improbable I would ever have found otherwise.

The pond is not a large one - a quarter of a mile around its perimeter perhaps - so that by stepping out to any promontory, one can command a view of its entirety. An atmosphere of great calm pervades here. Trees have been planted all around the water just closely enough to give a pleasant shade to the banks, while here and there clusters of tall reeds and bulrushes break the water's surface and its still reflection of the sky.

My footwear is not such as to permit me easily to walk around the perimeter - I can see even from where I now sit the path disappearing into areas of deep mud - but I will say that such is the charm of this spot that on first arriving, I was sorely tempted to do just that. Only the thought of the possible catastrophes that might befall such an expedition, and of sustaining damage to my travelling suit, persuaded me to content myself with sitting here on this bench.

It is no doubt the quiet of these surroundings that has enabled me to ponder all the more thoroughly these thoughts which have entered my mind over this past half-hour or so.

It could simply be that a meaningless whim had suddenly overtaken me at that moment - but that is hardly a convincing way to account for such distinctly odd behaviour.

"But it has often been considered desirable for employees to give such an impression. If I may put it this way, sir, it is a little akin to the custom as regards marriages. If a divorced lady were present in the company of her second husband, it is often thought desirable not to allude to the original marriage at all. There is a similar custom as regards our profession, sir."

It soon became clear, however, that these local people were perturbed by my presence, feeling something of a need to show hospitality. Whenever there was a break in their conversation, one or the other of them would steal a glance in my direction as though trying to find it in himself to approach me. Eventually one raised his voice and said to me:

"It seems you've let yourself in for a night upstairs here, sir."

"Is that indeed so?" I said. And as I spoke, I was struck by the thought - the same thought as had struck me on numerous occasions of late in Mr Farraday's presence - that some sort of witty retort was required "of me. Indeed, the local people were now observing a polite silence, awaiting my next remark. I thus searched my imagination and eventually declared:

At first the silence continued, as though the local persons thought I intended to elaborate further. But then noticing the mirthful expression on my face, they broke into a laugh, though in a somewhat bemused fashion.

With this, they returned to their previous conversation, and I exchanged no further words with them until exchanging good nights a little while later.

I must confess I was slightly disappointed it had not been better received than it was. I was particularly disappointed, I suppose, because I have been devoting some time and effort over recent months to improving my skill in this very area. That is to say, I have been endeavouring to add this skill to my professional armoury so as to fulfil with confidence all Mr Farraday's expectations with respect to bantering.

Listen to a program Twice a Week or More，the witticisms performed on it are always in the best of taste and, to my mind

whenever an odd moment presents itself, I attempt to formulate three witticisms based on my immediate surroundings at that moment.

For some time, Giffen's. was undoubtedly the finest silver polish available, and it was only the appearance of new chemical substances on the market shortly before the war that caused demand for this impressive product to decline.

It was Mr Marshall, it is generally agreed, who was the first to recognize the Nil significance of silver - namely, that no other objects in the house were likely to come under such intimate scrutiny from outsiders as was silver during a meal, and as such, it served as a public index of a house's standards. And Mr Marshall it was who first caused stupefaction amongst ladies and gentlemen visiting Charleville House with displays of silver polished to previously unimagined standards. Very soon, naturally, butlers up and down the country, under pressure from their employers, were focusing their minds on the question of silver-polishing.

I am glad to be able to recall numerous occasions when the silver at Darlington Hall had a pleasing impact upon observers. For instance, I recall Lady Astor remarking, not without a certain bitterness, that our silver 'was probably unrivalled'. I recall also watching Mr George Bernard Shaw, the renowned playwright, at dinner one evening, examining closely the dessert spoon before him, holding it up to the light and comparing its surface to that of a nearby platter, quite oblivious to the company around him. But perhaps the instance I recall with most satisfaction today concerns the night that a certain distinguished personage - a cabinet minister, shortly afterwards to become foreign secretary - paid a very 'off the record' visit to the house~

But then at one point I overheard Lord Halifax exclaiming: "My goodness, Darlington, the silver in this house is a delight." I was of course very pleased to hear this at the time, but what was for me the truly satisfying corollary to this episode came two or three days later, when Lord Darlington remarked to me: "By the way, Stevens, Lord Halifax was jolly impressed with the silver the other night. Put him into a quite different frame of mind altogether."