Never in her life had Frida enjoyed anything so much as those first four happy days at Heymoor. She had come away with Bertram exactly as Bertram himself desired her to do, without one thought of anything on earth except to fulfil the higher law of her own nature; and she was happy in her intercourse2 with the one man who could understand it, the one man who had waked it to its fullest pitch, and could make it resound3 sympathetically to his touch in every chord and every fibre. They had chosen a lovely spot on a heather-clad moorland, where she could stroll alone with Bertram among the gorse and ling, utterly4 oblivious5 of Robert Monteith and the unnatural6 world she had left for ever behind her. Her soul drank in deep draughts7 of the knowledge of good and evil from Bertram's lips; she felt it was indeed a privilege to be with him and listen to him; she wondered how she could ever have endured that old bad life with the lower man who was never her equal, now she had once tasted and known what life can be when two well-matched souls walk it together, abreast9, in holy fellowship.
The children, too, were as happy as the day was long. The heath was heaven to them. They loved Bertram well, and were too young to be aware of anything unusual in the fact of his accompanying them. At the little inn on the hill-top where they stopped to lodge10, nobody asked any compromising questions: and Bertram felt so sure he could soon complete his arrangements for taking Frida and the children “home,” as he still always phrased it, that Frida had no doubts for their future happiness. As for Robert Monteith, that bleak11, cold man, she hardly even remembered him: Bertram's first kiss seemed almost to have driven the very memory of her husband clean out of her consciousness. She only regretted, now she had left him, the false and mistaken sense of duty which had kept her so long tied to an inferior soul she could never love, and did wrong to marry.
And all the time, what strange new lessons, what beautiful truths, she learned from Bertram! As they strolled together, those sweet August mornings, hand locked in hand, over the breezy upland, what new insight he gave her into men and things! what fresh impulse he supplied to her keen moral nature! The misery12 and wrong of the world she lived in came home to her now in deeper and blacker hues13 than ever she had conceived it in: and with that consciousness came also the burning desire of every wakened soul to right and redress14 it. With Bertram by her side, she felt she could not even harbour an unholy wish or admit a wrong feeling; that vague sense of his superiority, as of a higher being, which she had felt from the very first moment she met him at Brackenhurst, had deepened and grown more definite now by closer intercourse; and she recognised that what she had fallen in love with from the earliest beginning was the beauty of holiness shining clear in his countenance15. She had chosen at last the better part, and she felt in her soul that, come what might, it could not be taken away from her.
In this earthly paradise of pure love, undefiled, she spent three full days and part of another. On the morning of the fourth, she sent the country girl they had engaged to take care of the children, out on the moor1 with the little ones, while she herself and Bertram went off alone, past the barrow that overlooks the Devil's Saucepan, and out on the open ridge16 that stretches with dark growth of heath and bracken far away into the misty17 blue distance of Hampshire. Bertram had just been speaking to her, as they sat on the dry sand, of the buried chieftain whose bones still lay hid under that grass-grown barrow, and of the slaughtered18 wives whose bodies slept beside him, massacred in cold blood to accompany their dead lord to the world of shadows. He had been contrasting these hideous19 slaveries of taboo-ridden England, past or present, with the rational freedom of his own dear country, whither he hoped so soon with good luck to take her, when suddenly Frida raised her eager eyes from the ground, and saw somebody or something coming across the moor from eastward20 in their direction.
All at once, a vague foreboding of evil possessed21 her. Hardly quite knowing why, she felt this approaching object augured22 no good to their happiness. “Look, Bertram,” she cried, seizing his arm in her fright, “there's somebody coming.”
Bertram raised his eyes and looked. Then he shaded them with his hands. “How strange!” he said simply, in his candid23 way: “it looks for all the world just like the man who was once your husband!”
Frida rose in alarm. “Oh, what can we do?” she cried, wringing24 her hands. “What ever can we do? It's he! It's Robert!”
“Surely he can't have come on purpose!” Bertram exclaimed, taken aback. “When he sees us, he'll turn aside. He must know of all people on earth he's the one least likely at such a time to be welcome. He can't want to disturb the peace of another man's honeymoon25!”
But Frida, better used to the savage26 ways of the world she had always lived in, made answer, shrinking and crouching27, “He's hunted us down, and he's come to fight you.”
“To fight me!” Bertram exclaimed. “Oh, surely not that! I was told by those who ought best to know, you English had got far beyond the stage of private war and murderous vendetta28.”
“For everything else,” Frida answered, cowering29 down in her terror of her husband's vengeance30, not for herself indeed so much as for Bertram. “For everything else, we have; but NOT for a woman.”
There was no time just then, however, for further explanation of this strange anomaly. Monteith had singled them out from a great distance with his keen, clear sight, inherited from generations of Highland31 ancestors, and now strode angrily across the moor, with great wrathful steps, in his rival's direction. Frida nestled close to Bertram, to protect her from the man to whom her country's laws and the customs of her tribe would have handed her over blindfold33. Bertram soothed34 her with his hand, and awaited in silence, with some dim sense of awe35, the angry barbarian's arrival.
He came up very quickly, and stood full in front of them, glaring with fierce eyes at the discovered lovers. For a minute or two his rage would not allow him to speak, nor even to act; he could but stand and scowl36 from under his brows at Bertram. But after a long pause his wrath32 found words. “You infernal scoundrel!” he burst forth37, “so at last I've caught you! How dare you sit there and look me straight in the face? You infernal thief, how dare you? how dare you?”
Bertram rose and confronted him. His own face, too, flushed slightly with righteous indignation; but he answered for all that in the same calm and measured tones as ever: “I am NOT a scoundrel, and I will not submit to be called so even by an angry savage. I ask you in return, how dare you follow us? You must have known your presence would be very unwelcome. I should have thought this was just the one moment in your life and the one place on earth where even YOU would have seen that to stop away was your imperative38 duty. Mere39 self-respect would dictate40 such conduct. This lady has given you clear proof indeed that your society and converse41 are highly distasteful to her.”
Robert Monteith glared across at him with the face of a tiger. “You infamous42 creature,” he cried, almost speechless with rage, “do you dare to defend my wife's adultery?”
Bertram gazed at him with a strange look of mingled43 horror and astonishment44. “You poor wretch45!” he answered, as calmly as before, but with evident contempt; “how can you dare, such a thing as you, to apply these vile8 words to your moral superiors? Adultery it was indeed, and untruth to her own higher and purer nature, for this lady to spend one night of her life under your roof with you; what she has taken now in exchange is holy marriage, the only real and sacred marriage, the marriage of true souls, to which even the wiser of yourselves, the poets of your nation, would not admit impediment. If you dare to apply such base language as this to my lady's actions, you must answer for it to me, her natural protector, for I will not permit it.”
At the words, quick as lightning, Monteith pulled from his pocket a loaded revolver and pointed46 it full at his rival. With a cry of terror, Frida flung herself between them, and tried to protect her lover with the shield of her own body. But Bertram gently unwound her arms and held her off from him tenderly. “No, no, darling,” he said slowly, sitting down with wonderful calm upon a big grey sarsen-stone that abutted47 upon the pathway; “I had forgotten again; I keep always forgetting what kind of savages48 I have to deal with. If I chose, I could snatch that murderous weapon from his hand, and shoot him dead with it in self-defence—for I'm stronger than he is. But if I did, what use? I could never take you home with me. And after all, what could we either of us do in the end in this bad, wild world of your fellow-countrymen? They would take me and hang me; and all would be up with you. For your sake, Frida, to shield you from the effects of their cruel taboos49, there's but one course open: I must submit to this madman. He may shoot me if he will.... Stand free, and let him!”
But with a passionate50 oath, Robert Monteith seized her arm and flung her madly from him. She fell, reeling, on one side. His eyes were bloodshot with the savage thirst for vengeance. He raised the deadly weapon. Bertram Ingledew, still seated on the big round boulder51, opened his breast in silence to receive the bullet. There was a moment's pause. For that moment, even Monteith himself, in his maniac52 mood, felt dimly aware of that mysterious restraining power all the rest who knew him had so often felt in their dealings with the Alien. But it was only for a moment. His coarser nature was ill adapted to recognise that ineffable53 air as of a superior being that others observed in him. He pulled the trigger and fired. Frida gave one loud shriek54 of despairing horror. Bertram's body fell back on the bare heath behind it.
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1
moor
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| n.荒野，沼泽；vt.(使)停泊；vi.停泊 | |
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intercourse
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| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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3
resound
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| v.回响 | |
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4
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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5
oblivious
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| adj.易忘的，遗忘的，忘却的，健忘的 | |
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unnatural
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| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
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7
draughts
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| n. <英>国际跳棋 | |
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8
vile
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| adj.卑鄙的，可耻的，邪恶的；坏透的 | |
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abreast
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| adv.并排地；跟上(时代)的步伐，与…并进地 | |
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lodge
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| v.临时住宿，寄宿，寄存，容纳；n.传达室，小旅馆 | |
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11
bleak
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| adj.(天气)阴冷的；凄凉的；暗淡的 | |
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misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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13
hues
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| 色彩( hue的名词复数 )； 色调； 信仰； 观点 | |
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14
redress
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| n.赔偿，救济，矫正；v.纠正，匡正，革除 | |
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15
countenance
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| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
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ridge
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| n.山脊；鼻梁；分水岭 | |
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misty
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| adj.雾蒙蒙的，有雾的 | |
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18
slaughtered
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| v.屠杀，杀戮，屠宰( slaughter的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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eastward
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| adv.向东；adj.向东的；n.东方，东部 | |
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21
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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augured
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| v.预示，预兆，预言( augur的过去式和过去分词 )；成为预兆；占卜 | |
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23
candid
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| adj.公正的，正直的；坦率的 | |
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24
wringing
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| 淋湿的，湿透的 | |
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25
honeymoon
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| n.蜜月（假期）；vi.度蜜月 | |
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26
savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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27
crouching
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| v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的现在分词 ) | |
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28
vendetta
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| n.世仇，宿怨 | |
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29
cowering
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| v.畏缩，抖缩( cower的现在分词 ) | |
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30
vengeance
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| n.报复，报仇，复仇 | |
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31
highland
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| n.(pl.)高地，山地 | |
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32
wrath
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| n.愤怒，愤慨，暴怒 | |
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33
blindfold
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| vt.蒙住…的眼睛；adj.盲目的；adv.盲目地；n.蒙眼的绷带[布等]； 障眼物，蒙蔽人的事物 | |
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34
soothed
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| v.安慰( soothe的过去式和过去分词 )；抚慰；使舒服；减轻痛苦 | |
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35
awe
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| n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧 | |
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36
scowl
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| vi.(at)生气地皱眉，沉下脸，怒视；n.怒容 | |
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37
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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38
imperative
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| n.命令，需要；规则；祈使语气；adj.强制的；紧急的 | |
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39
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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40
dictate
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| v.口授；(使)听写；指令，指示，命令 | |
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41
converse
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| vi.谈话，谈天，闲聊；adv.相反的，相反 | |
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42
infamous
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| adj.声名狼藉的，臭名昭著的，邪恶的 | |
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43
mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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44
astonishment
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| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
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45
wretch
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| n.可怜的人，不幸的人；卑鄙的人 | |
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46
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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47
abutted
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| v.（与…）邻接( abut的过去式和过去分词 )；（与…）毗连；接触；倚靠 | |
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48
savages
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| 未开化的人，野蛮人( savage的名词复数 ) | |
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49
taboos
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| 禁忌( taboo的名词复数 )； 忌讳； 戒律； 禁忌的事物（或行为） | |
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50
passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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51
boulder
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| n.巨砾；卵石，圆石 | |
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52
maniac
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| n.精神癫狂的人；疯子 | |
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53
ineffable
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| adj.无法表达的，不可言喻的 | |
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54
shriek
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| v./n.尖叫，叫喊 | |
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