The Lost Road and Other Writings. Christopher Tolkien

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СКАЧАТЬ go on anyway, if he really has a bent – and it had better not be bent inwards.’

      Alboin was trying to explain his feeling about ‘language-atmosphere’. ‘You get echoes coming through, you know,’ he said, ‘in odd words here and there – often very common words in their own language, but quite unexplained by the etymologists; and in the general shape and sound of all the words, somehow; as if something was peeping through from deep under the surface.’

‘Of course, I am not a philologist,’ said his father; ‘but I never could see that there was much evidence in favour of ascribing language-changes to a substratum. Though I suppose underlying ingredients do have an influence, though it is not easy to define, on the final mixture in the case of peoples taken as a whole, different national talents and temperaments, and that sort of thing. But races, and cultures, are different from languages.’

      ‘Yes,’ said Alboin; ‘but very mixed up, all three together. And after all, language goes back by a continuous tradition into the past, just as much as the other two. I often think that if you knew the living faces of any man’s ancestors, a long way back, you might find some queer things. You might find that he got his nose quite clearly from, say, his mother’s great-grandfather; and yet that something about his nose, its expression or its set or whatever you like to call it, really came down from much further back, from, say, his father’s great-great-great-grandfather or greater. Anyway I like to go back – and not with race only, or culture only, or language; but with all three. I wish I could go back with the three that are mixed in us, father; just the plain Errols, with a little house in Cornwall in the summer. I wonder what one would see.’

      ‘It depends how far you went back,’ said the elder Errol. ‘If you went back beyond the Ice-ages, I imagine you would find nothing in these parts; or at any rate a pretty beastly and uncomely race, and a tooth-and-nail culture, and a disgusting language with no echoes for you, unless those of food-noises.’

      ‘Would you?’ said Alboin. ‘I wonder.’

      ‘Anyway you can’t go back,’ said his father; ‘except within the limits prescribed to us mortals. You can go back in a sense by honest study, long and patient work. You had better go in for archaeology as well as philology: they ought to go well enough together, though they aren’t joined very often.’

      ‘Good idea,’ said Alboin. ‘But you remember, long ago, you said I was not all-bone. Well, I want some mythology, as well. I want myths, not only bones and stones.’

      ‘Well, you can have ’em! Take the whole lot on!’ said his father laughing. ‘But in the meanwhile you have a smaller job on hand. Your Latin needs improving (or so I am told), for school purposes. And scholarships are useful in lots of ways, especially for folk like you and me who go in for antiquated subjects. Your first shot is this winter, remember.’

      ‘I wish Latin prose was not so important,’ said Alboin. ‘I am really much better at verses.’

‘Don’t go putting any bits of your Eressëan, or Elf-latin, or whatever you call it, into your verses at Oxford. It might scan, but it wouldn’t pass.’

      ‘Of course not!’ said the boy, blushing. The matter was too private, even for private jokes. ‘And don’t go blabbing about Eressëan outside the partnership,’ he begged; ‘or I shall wish I had kept it quiet.’

      ‘Well, you did pretty well. I don’t suppose I should ever have heard about it, if you hadn’t left your note-books in my study. Even so I don’t know much about it. But, my dear lad, I shouldn’t dream of blabbing, even if I did. Only don’t waste too much time on it. I am afraid I am anxious about that schol[arship], not only from the highest motives. Cash is not too abundant.’

      ‘Oh, I haven’t done anything of that sort for a long while, at least hardly anything,’ said Alboin.

      ‘It isn’t getting on too well, then?’

‘Not lately. Too much else to do, I suppose. But I got a lot of jolly new words a few days ago: I am sure lōmelindë means nightingale, for instance, and certainly lōmë is night (though not darkness). The verb is very sketchy still. But –’ He hesitated. Reticence (and uneasy conscience) were at war with his habit of what he called ‘partnership with the pater’, and his desire to unbosom the secret anyway. ‘But, the real difficulty is that another language is coming through, as well. It seems to be related but quite different, much more – more Northern. Alda was a tree (a word I got a long time ago); in the new language it is galadh, and orn. The Sun and Moon seem to have similar names in both: Anar and Isil beside Anor and Ithil. I like first one, then the other, in different moods. Beleriandic is really very attractive; but it complicates things.’

      ‘Good Lord!’ said his father, ‘this is serious! I will respect unsolicited secrets. But do have a conscience as well as a heart, and – moods. Or get a Latin and Greek mood!’

      ‘I do. I have had one for a week, and I have got it now; a Latin one luckily, and Virgil in particular. So here we part.’ He got up. ‘I am going to do a bit of reading. I’ll look in when I think you ought to go to bed.’ He closed the door on his father’s snort.

      As a matter of fact Errol did not really like the parting shot. The affection in it warmed and saddened him. A late marriage had left him now on the brink of retirement from a schoolmaster’s small pay to his smaller pension, just when Alboin was coming of University age. And he was also (he had begun to feel, and this year to admit in his heart) a tired man. He had never been a strong man. He would have liked to accompany Alboin a great deal further on the road, as a younger father probably would have done; but he did not somehow think he would be going very far. ‘Damn it,’ he said to himself, ‘a boy of that age ought not to be thinking such things, worrying whether his father is getting enough rest. Where’s my book?’

      Alboin in the old play-room, turned into junior study, looked out into the dark. He did not for a long time turn to books. ‘I wish life was not so short,’ he thought. ‘Languages take such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about. And the pater, he is looking tired. I want him for years. If he lived to be a hundred I should be only about as old as he is now. and I should still want him. But he won’t. I wish we could stop getting old. The pater could go on working and write that book he used to talk about, about Cornwall; and we could go on talking. He always plays up, even if he does not agree or understand. Bother Eressëan. I wish he hadn’t mentioned it. I am sure I shall dream tonight; and it is so exciting. The Latin-mood will go. He is very decent about it, even though he thinks I am making it all up. If I were, I would stop it to please him. But it comes, and I simply can’t let it slip when it does. Now there is Beleriandic.’

      Away west the moon rode in ragged clouds. The sea glimmered palely out of the gloom, wide, flat, going on to the edge of the world. ‘Confound you, dreams!’ said Alboin. ‘Lay off, and let me do a little patient work at least until December. A schol[arship] would brace the pater.’

      He found his father asleep in his chair at half past ten. They went up to bed together. Alboin got into bed and slept with no shadow of a dream. The Latin-mood was in full blast after breakfast; and the weather allied itself with virtue and sent torrential rain.

      Chapter II

       Alboin and Audoin СКАЧАТЬ