She could wait, and gain in power for the waiting. Her physician had told her that Bivens's days were numbered. Stuart had waited twelve years in silence; he could wait the few months more of her husband's flickering5 life.
But on one thing she was determined6. Now that another woman had appeared on the scene she would not live in suspense7, she must know that he loved her still, loved her passionately8, madly as she believed he did. But he must say it. She must hear his voice quiver with its old fiery9 intensity10. She wished this as she had never longed for anything on earth, and for twelve years she had lived in a magic world where she had only to breathe a desire to have it fulfilled.
Stuart had baffled and eluded11 her on every point when she had thought he was about to betray his passion. Here was something mere12 money had no power to command. Well, she had other powers. She would use them to the limit. She would no longer risk the danger of delay.
She had no difficulty in persuading Bivens to urge Stuart to visit their country estate in the mountains of North Carolina. The doctor had ordered him there to live in the open air.
The young lawyer refused to go at first, but Bivens urged with such pathetic eagerness he was compelled to accept.
It was a warm beautiful morning the last week in March when he alighted on the platform of the little railroad station on the estate, and took his seat beside Nan in her big touring car. The fruit trees were in full bloom, and their perfume filled the air. The hum of bees and the song of birds he had known in his boyhood thrilled his heart. He drew a deep breath of joy, and without a struggle resigned himself to the charm of it all.
"It's glorious, Nan!" he exclaimed.
"Your coming makes it perfect, Jim," she answered, tenderly, and turning to the chauffeur13 said:
"Drive for an hour before going to the house, Collins."
The chauffeur tipped his cap and the throbbing14 machine shot around a curve and swept along the river's edge down the green carpeted valley which stretches out for miles below the ramparts of the great chateau15 on the mountain-side above.
"There's the house, Jim!" Nan cried, pointing to the heights on the left.
Stuart could not suppress an exclamation16 of delight.
"Magnificent!" he said, with enthusiasm.
As the river made a graceful17 curve the great building swept into full view—a stunning18 pile of marble three hundred feet long, its tower piercing the turquoise19 sky in solemn grandeur20. The stone parapet, on which its front wall was built, rose in massive strength a hundred feet from the ledge21 in the granite22 cliff before touching23 the first line of the white stones of the house itself.
At the end a formal garden had been built on the foundations of masonry24 which cost a hundred thousand dollars.
"What a background that row of live oaks make behind the garden!" he exclaimed.
"Don't they?" she answered. "You would hardly believe it, but we planted every one of those trees."
"Nonsense! They must be two feet in diameter."
"More; not one of them is less than three. We moved a hundred of them from the woods, without breaking the dirt from their roots—built special machinery25 to do it. I think Cal is prouder of those trees than he is of the house."
For an hour the car swept like a spirit over the miles of smooth macadam private roads Bivens had built. At each graceful turn his wonder increased at the luxurious26 outlay27 of millions which the little man had spent to gratify a whim28.
From each hilltop, as the huge gleaming castle came into view from a new angle, revealing its marvellous beauty, he thought with a touch of pity of the shambling figure of the stricken man limping through its halls helpless, lonely, miserable29. What strange pranks30 Fate plays with the mighty31 as well as the lowly! So frail32 was the broken body now he did not dare risk a cold by taking a ride with his wife.
The machine turned suddenly up a hill and glided33 through two iron gates opening on the lawn and the great white chateau loomed34 before them in a flash of blinding beauty. Stuart caught his breath.
Turning to Nan he shook his head slowly:
"Don't you like it?" she laughed.
"I was just wondering."
"At what?"
"Whether this is the Republic for which our struggling fathers fought and died? America you know, Nan, is the tall rude youth who saw a vision, made his way into the wilderness35, slept on the ground, fought with hunger and wild beasts and grew strong by the labour of his right arm. It would be a strange thing if all he has learned is to crawl back to where he started and build a castle exactly like the one from which the tyrants36 drove him in the Old World."
"What a strange fellow you are, Jim." Her answer carried with it a touch of resentment37. "This house is mine, mine—not America's—please remember that. Let the future American take of himself!"
"Certainly, I understand," he answered quickly, as the car stopped under the vaulted38 porte-cochère. "You wouldn't be a woman if you didn't feel that way. All right; I'm in your hands. To the devil with the future American!"
"That's better!" she laughed.
Stuart shook hands with Bivens and was shocked to find him so weak.
The little man held his hand with a lingering wistfulness as he looked into his friend's strong face.
"You don't know how rich you are, Jim," he said, feebly, "with this hand that grips like iron. I'd give millions to feel my heart beat like yours to-day."
"You'll get better down here," Stuart answered, cheerfully.
"I'm trying it anyhow," he said listlessly. "Make yourself at home, old boy. This house is my pride. I want Nan to show you every nook and corner in it. I wish I could trot39 around with you, but I can't."
"As soon as you've changed your clothes," Nan said, familiarly, "come down to the library and I'll show you around."
Stuart followed the man assigned as his valet to the electric elevator and in a minute stepped out on the fourth floor. He observed with a smile that his room number was 157.
"The idea of living in a huge hotel and calling it a home!" he mused40, with grim humour. "Room 157; great Scott!"
His hostess showed him first the library. The magnificent room contained more than forty thousand volumes, bound in hand-tooled morocco.
"The funny thing, of course," Nan whispered, "is that Cal has never read one of these exquisitely41 bound books."
"Why on earth did he make this room the most stately and beautiful one in the house?"
"Maybe he didn't!" she laughed. "I'm going to give you a privilege no mere man has ever enjoyed in this house before—I am going to show you my own rooms. Will you appreciate the honour?"
The man answered with a bantering43 smile.
"If I live to tell the story!"
When the tour of inspection44 had been completed she led him to her own suite45, which was located in the south-western corner, overlooking the magnificent formal gardens with their artificial lake, fountains, statuary and a wilderness of flowers, and farther on over the beautiful valleys of the Swannanoa and the French Broad rivers. Beyond the river valleys rose range after range of mountains until the last dim peaks were lost in the clouds.
The magnificence of her bed-room was stunning. Stuart rubbed his eyes in amazement46.
The bedstead seemed a thing of life—so elaborate and wonderful was its art. Built of massive ebony with the most remarkable47 ivory carvings48 set in its gleaming black surface, artists, as many as could touch the material, had worked two years on the carving49 alone. The allegorical pictures cut into the broad band of ivory which ran around the frame had required the time of four art-workmen for eighteen months.
Stuart stood fascinated.
"You see that magnificent piece of ivory on the head, Jim?" she asked, with sparkling eyes.
"The most massive solid piece I ever saw!" he exclaimed. "I never dreamed the elephant had ever lived with such a tusk50."
"We found him at last!" Nan cried, with pride. "It took the time of fourteen hunters in Africa for seven months."
"I can easily believe it," Stuart answered. "Ludwig of Bavaria surely never dreamed anything like this."
"The walls you see are panelled in Louis XV style, permitting the most elaborate carvings which I had heavily guilded on backgrounds of white enamel51, but the thing I love best about this panelling, is not the panel at all—it's the rich purple and gold Genoese velvet52. I had it made by a noted53 firm in Lyons. Don't you think it exquisite42?"
"If I ever get rich I'll have a piece of it for the collar of my coat."
"I got my painters from Paris to do the ceilings. They worked very quickly, but they knew how to charge. The window curtains, you see, are of the same material as the purple and gold velvet in the panels, while the under curtains are hand-woven of Brussels net and interwoven with silk. The wardrobe, little washstand and dressing54 table are of ebony and ivory, the chairs, of solid ivory inlaid with gold and ebony, were all made to match the bedstead."
Stuart looked at his hostess curiously55.
"I thought I knew you, Nan, but this is a revelation. I could never have guessed by the wildest leap of my imagination. It's beyond belief."
"Don't you like it?" she asked, with a hurt expression.
"I'm stunned56. The most wonderful thing to me in the room, though, is not the bedstead, but the woman standing57 beside it."
A flash of light came from the dark eyes and the magnificent figure grew tense for a moment as she smiled with a look of inquiry58.
"I'm lost in wonder at the riotous59 glory of your capacity for sensuous60 joy. I could imagine Juno on the heights of Olympus executing such a dream of mad luxury, but I could never have conceived of this, here, if I had not seen it. And yet, now that I see you in the setting, I'm sure you were made for it. The whole scheme is harmonious—it scares me——"
"Scares you?" she repeated with quick displeasure.
"Yes," he went on, jokingly. "It almost reconciles me to being a bachelor."
A look of pain swept the expressive61 face and he was sorry he had said it. The joke seemed out of harmony with her mood. She had taken herself seriously in the creation of this room, and had spent on it a round million. The effect it had produced on the man's mind was anything but flippant. He dared not tell how deeply he was moved, how every desire had awakened62 into fierce, cruel longing63 as the subtle scheme of sensuous dreaming had unfolded itself before his eyes. He began to wonder whether there were really any complexity64 or any mystery at all about her, whether she were not very simple and very elemental.
The picture she made standing in this wonderful room was one that never faded from his memory. The poise65 of her superb form; the fires that smouldered in the depths of her eyes; the tenderness with which her senses seemed to drink in the daring luxury; the smile that played about her lips, joyous66, sensuous, cruel!
In vivid flashes he saw in her shining face the record of it all—the naked African hunters, crawling through forest jungles, stalking and bringing down in pools of blood the huge beasts who paid their tribute to her beauty; the army of toiling67 artists who bent68 their aching backs for days and weeks and months and years, carving the pictures in those white shining surfaces to please her fancy; the bowed figures of the weavers69 in Lyons and Brussels, these deft70 fingers working into matchless form the costly71 fabrics72 to please her eye and soothe73 the touch of her fingers as she drew back her curtains of purple and gold to let in the morning sunlight!
He wondered vaguely74 what such a woman, clothed with such power, would do if suddenly thwarted75 in a wish on which her heart was set?
And then it swept over him that she was no strange Egyptian princess, no sorceress of the Nile, no fairy of poet's fancy, but just the girl he had loved and lost and yet who had come back into his life in the dazzling splendour of her own day-dreams—one of the rulers of the world. He looked at her a moment and she seemed a being of another planet. He looked again and saw the laughing school-girl, his playmate on the red hills of his native state.
"Why so pensive76, Jim?" she asked.
"It seems all a dream, Nan," he answered. "I'll rub my eyes and wake up directly. I thought your New York house a miracle. This is fairyland."
"Perhaps it would be," she said, looking at him a moment through half closed eyes, "if only the prince——"
A look of pain unconsciously clouded his face and the sentence was not finished.
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1
avowal
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| n.公开宣称，坦白承认 | |
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disturbance
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| n.动乱，骚动；打扰，干扰；(身心)失调 | |
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entangled
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| adj.卷入的；陷入的；被缠住的；缠在一起的v.使某人（某物/自己）缠绕，纠缠于（某物中），使某人（自己）陷入（困难或复杂的环境中）( entangle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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intrigue
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| vt.激起兴趣，迷住；vi.耍阴谋；n.阴谋，密谋 | |
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flickering
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| adj.闪烁的，摇曳的，一闪一闪的 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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suspense
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| n.（对可能发生的事）紧张感，担心，挂虑 | |
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passionately
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| ad.热烈地，激烈地 | |
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fiery
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| adj.燃烧着的，火红的；暴躁的；激烈的 | |
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intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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eluded
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| v.（尤指机敏地）避开( elude的过去式和过去分词 )；逃避；躲避；使达不到 | |
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12
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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chauffeur
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| n.(受雇于私人或公司的)司机；v.为…开车 | |
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throbbing
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| a. 跳动的,悸动的 | |
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chateau
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| n.城堡，别墅 | |
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exclamation
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| n.感叹号，惊呼，惊叹词 | |
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graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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stunning
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| adj.极好的；使人晕倒的 | |
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19
turquoise
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| n.绿宝石；adj.蓝绿色的 | |
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grandeur
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| n.伟大，崇高，宏伟，庄严，豪华 | |
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ledge
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| n.壁架，架状突出物；岩架，岩礁 | |
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granite
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| adj.花岗岩，花岗石 | |
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touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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masonry
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| n.砖土建筑；砖石 | |
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machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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luxurious
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| adj.精美而昂贵的；豪华的 | |
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outlay
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| n.费用，经费，支出；v.花费 | |
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whim
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| n.一时的兴致，突然的念头；奇想，幻想 | |
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miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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pranks
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| n.玩笑，恶作剧( prank的名词复数 ) | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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frail
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| adj.身体虚弱的；易损坏的 | |
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glided
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| v.滑动( glide的过去式和过去分词 )；掠过；（鸟或飞机 ） 滑翔 | |
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34
loomed
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| v.隐约出现，阴森地逼近( loom的过去式和过去分词 )；隐约出现，阴森地逼近 | |
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35
wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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tyrants
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| 专制统治者( tyrant的名词复数 )； 暴君似的人； （古希腊的）僭主； 严酷的事物 | |
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resentment
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| n.怨愤，忿恨 | |
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vaulted
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| adj.拱状的 | |
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trot
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| n.疾走，慢跑；n.老太婆；现成译本；(复数）trots:腹泻（与the 连用）；v.小跑，快步走，赶紧 | |
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40
mused
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| v.沉思，冥想( muse的过去式和过去分词 )；沉思自语说（某事） | |
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41
exquisitely
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| adv.精致地；强烈地；剧烈地；异常地 | |
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42
exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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43
bantering
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| adj.嘲弄的v.开玩笑，说笑，逗乐( banter的现在分词 )；（善意地）取笑，逗弄 | |
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44
inspection
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| n.检查，审查，检阅 | |
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45
suite
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| n.一套(家具)；套房；随从人员 | |
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amazement
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| n.惊奇，惊讶 | |
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remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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48
carvings
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| n.雕刻( carving的名词复数 )；雕刻术；雕刻品；雕刻物 | |
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carving
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| n.雕刻品，雕花 | |
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50
tusk
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| n.獠牙，长牙，象牙 | |
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51
enamel
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| n.珐琅，搪瓷，瓷釉；(牙齿的)珐琅质 | |
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52
velvet
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| n.丝绒，天鹅绒；adj.丝绒制的，柔软的 | |
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noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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dressing
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| n.(食物)调料；包扎伤口的用品，敷料 | |
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55
curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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56
stunned
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| adj. 震惊的，惊讶的 动词stun的过去式和过去分词 | |
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57
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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riotous
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| adj.骚乱的；狂欢的 | |
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sensuous
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| adj.激发美感的；感官的，感觉上的 | |
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expressive
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| adj.表现的，表达…的，富于表情的 | |
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62
awakened
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| v.（使）醒( awaken的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到 | |
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63
longing
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| n.（for）渴望 | |
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complexity
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| n.复杂(性)，复杂的事物 | |
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poise
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| vt./vi. 平衡，保持平衡；n.泰然自若，自信 | |
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joyous
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| adj.充满快乐的；令人高兴的 | |
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67
toiling
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| 长时间或辛苦地工作( toil的现在分词 )； 艰难缓慢地移动，跋涉 | |
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68
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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weavers
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| 织工，编织者( weaver的名词复数 ) | |
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70
deft
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| adj.灵巧的，熟练的（a deft hand 能手） | |
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71
costly
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| adj.昂贵的，价值高的，豪华的 | |
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fabrics
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| 织物( fabric的名词复数 )； 布； 构造； （建筑物的）结构（如墙、地面、屋顶）：质地 | |
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soothe
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| v.安慰；使平静；使减轻；缓和；奉承 | |
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vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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75
thwarted
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| 阻挠( thwart的过去式和过去分词 )； 使受挫折； 挫败； 横过 | |
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pensive
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| a.沉思的,哀思的,忧沉的 | |
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