devoted1 his gifts and ambitions to the perfection of a drama to exploit one’s charms and one’s gifts, and comes back years after with the extraordinary tribute.
The idol2 needs the idolater or it is no idol, and it doubtless watches the worshiper with as much respect and trepidation3 as the worshiper it. That is why gods, like
other artists, have always been jealous. Their trade lies in their power to attract crowds and hold them. Rivals for glory are rivals for business.
Vickery was Sheila’s first playwright4. She could not fail to regard him as a rescuer from mediocrity, and see a glamour5 about him.
She had planned to go to a late dance that night with some people of social altitude. But she would have snubbed the abbess of all aristocracy for a playwright who
came offering her transportation to the clouds.
She had taken her best bib and tucker to her dressing-room and she put it on for Vickery. But she could not dredge up the faintest memory of him, and he found her
almost utterly6 strange as he stared at her between the shaded candles on the restaurant table. She was different even from the girl he had seen on the stage recoiling
from Bret Winfield’s unlucky chivalry7. The few months of intermission had altered her with theatrical8 speed. She had had her sentiments awakened9 by Eldon and her
authority enlarged by two important r?les. Her own character was a whole repertoire10.
When Vickery had last seen her she was playing the second young woman under her aunt’s protection; now she was a metropolitan11 favorite at whose side the big manager
First came the necessary business of ordering a supper. Sheila’s appetite amazed Vickery, who did not realize that this was her dinner, or how hard she had worked for
it.
When the waiter had hurried off with a speed which he would not duplicate in returning, Sheila must hear about her first acquaintance with Vickery. He spoke13 with
enthusiasm of the little witch she had been, and described with homage14 her fiery15 interpretation16 of Ophelia and her maniac17 shrieks18. He could still hear them, he said,
on quiet nights. He pictured her so vividly19 as she had sat on his mother’s knee and defended her family name and profession that Sheila’s eyes filled with tears and
she turned to Reben for confirmation20 of her emotions. There are few children for whom we feel kindlier than for our early selves.
Her eyes glistened21 as Vickery recounted his own boyish ambitions to write her a play; the depths of woe22 he had felt when he found her gone. Then he described his
retrieval of her during the riot at Leroy. He told how his friend Bret Winfield had been knocked galley-west by some actor in her troupe23. He had forgotten the man’s
name, but his words brought Eldon back in the room and seated him like a forlorn and forgotten Banquo at the table. Sheila blushed to remember that she had owed the
poor fellow a letter for a long time.
Then Vickery explained that Winfield had gone to her defense24 and not to her offense25, and she felt a pang26 of remorse27 at her injustice28 to him, also. A pretty girl has to
be unjust to so many men.
She had a queer thrill, too, from Vickery’s statement that Winfield had vowed29 to meet her some day and square himself with her; also to meet “that actor” some day
and square himself with him.
This strange man Winfield began to loom30 across her horizon like an approaching Goliath. She tried to remember how he had looked, but recalled only that he was very big
and that she was very much afraid of him.
This confusion of retrospect31 and prospect32 was dissipated, however, when Vickery began to talk of the play he had written for her. Then Sheila could see nothing but her
opportunity, and that strange self an actor visualizes33 in a new r?le. The rest of us think of Hamlet as a certain personage. The actor thinks of “Hamlet as Myself”
or “Myself as Hamlet.”
Vickery’s play, as Reben’s play-reader had told him, contained an idea. But an idea is as dangerous to a playwright as a loaded gun is to a child. The problem is,
What will he do with it?
When Vickery told Sheila the central character and theme of his play she was enraptured34 with the possibilities. When he began to describe in detail what he had done
with them she was tormented35 with disappointments and resentments36. She gave way to little gasps37 of, “Oh, would she do that?” “Oh, do you think you ought to have her
say that?”
Vickery was young and opinionated and had never seen one of his plays after the critics and the public had made tatters of it. He could only realize that he had spent
How could one who simply heard his story for the first time know what ought to be done with it? He forgot that a play’s prosperity, like a joke’s, lies in the ear of
those who hear it for the first time.
He responded to Sheila’s skepticisms with all the fanatic39 eloquence40 of faith. He convinced her against her will for the moment. She liked him for his ardor41. She liked
the reasons he gave. She could not help feeling: “What a decent fellow he is! What a kind, wholesome42 view of life he takes!”
Woman-like, as she listened to his ideas she fell to studying his character and the features that published it. She was contrasting him with Eldon—Eldon so powerful,
so handsome, so rich-voiced, so magnetic, and so obstinate43; Vickery so homely44, so lean, so shambling of gait and awkward of gesture, his voice so inadequate45 to the big
emotions he had concocted46. And yet Eldon only wanted to join her in the interpretation of other people’s creations. This spindle-shanks was himself a creator; he had
idealized and dramatized a play from and for Sheila’s very own personality.
She began to think that there was something a trifle more exhilarating about an alliance with a creative genius than with just another actor. In her youth and
ignorance she used the words “creative” and “genius” with reverence47. She had never known a “creative genius” before—except Sir Ralph Incledon, and she loathed
him. Vickery was different.
Suddenly in the midst of Vickery’s description of the complexest tangle48 of his best situation Sheila dumfounded him by saying, “You have gray eyes, haven’t you?”
He collapsed50 like a punctured51 balloon and a look of intense discouragement dulled his expression. Misunderstanding the cause of his collapse49 entirely53, she hastened to
add:
“Oh, but I like gray eyes! Really! Please go on!”
Vickery understood her misunderstanding, smiled laboriously54, then with an effort gathered together the wreckage55 of his plot for a fresh ascension. Just as he was
fairly well away from the ground again Sheila turned to Reben and spoke very earnestly:
“He ought to write a good play. He has the hands of a creative genius—those spatulate fingers, you know. See!”
Since she had known Vickery from childhood, she felt at liberty to stop his hand in the midst of an ardent56 gesture and submit it to Reben’s inspection57. Vickery was
hugely embarrassed. Reben was gruff:
She stared at Reben in amazement59; there was a clang of anger in his sarcasm60. Abruptly61 she realized that she had quite ignored him. She had lent Vickery her eyes and
ears for half an hour. Reben’s anger was due to hurt pride, the miff of a great manager neglected by a minor62 actress and an unproduced author. But as she glanced up
into the Oriental blackness of his glare she saw something lurking63 there that frightened her. Her instant intuition was, “Jealousy!” Slower-footed reason said,
“Absurd!”
Reben had been closely attached for years to the exaltation of the famous actress, Mrs. Diana Rhys, who had floated to the stage on the crest64 of a famous scandal from
a city where she had been known as Diana the Huntress. She had behaved rather better as an actress than as a housewife, but none too well in either calling. For some
years she had been bound to Reben by ties that were supposed to be permanent.
Sheila reproached herself for imagining that Reben could be jealous of herself. Yet she cherished a superstitious65 belief that when she disregarded her intuition she
went wrong. The superstition66 had fastened itself on her, as superstitions67 do, from her habit of remembering the occasional events that seemed to confirm it and
forgetting the numberless events that disproved it.
She restored her attention to Vickery’s plot, but the background of her thoughts was full of ominous68 lightnings and rumblings like a summer sky when a storm is far
off but inevitable69.
Now the plight70 of Vickery’s heroine seemed much less thrilling than her own. Here she sat almost betrothed71 to the distant Eldon, almost bewitched by the new-comer,
Vickery, and threatened with the wrath72 of an unexpected claimant who was her manager and held both her present and her future in his hand.
She studied Reben out of the corner of her eye. This new, this utterly unsuspected phase of his, made necessary a fresh appraisal73 of him. He was now something more and
something less than her manager. He was something of a conquest of hers; but did he hope to be a conqueror74, too?
It was strange to think of him as a suitor—an amorous75 manager! a business man with a bouquet76! In this guise77 he looked younger than she had seen him, yet more crafty,
more cruel than ever. The Orientalism that had made him so shrewd a bargainer in the bazar was now in a harem humor. His black hair was, after all, in curls; his big
eyes were shadowy, wet; his fat hands wore rings—a sanguine78 ruby79 twinned with a gross diamond and a shifty opal, like the back of an iridescent80 and venomous beetle81.
Sheila thought of David and Solomon with their many loves, and she felt that perhaps Mrs. Rhys was not sufficient for this man. If he should claim her, too, what
should she say to him? Must she sacrifice her career at its very outset just because this man turned monster?
She became so involved in her own meditations82 that Vickery found her almost deaf to his narrative83. He lost the thread of his spinning and tangled84 himself in it like
another Lady of Shalott.
Finally Sheila confessed her bewilderment. She spoke with an assumption of vast experience: “I never could tell anything from a scenario85. The play is written out, isn
’t it?”
“Oh yes,” said Vickery. “May I send it to your hotel?”
“I’d rather you’d read it to me,” Sheila pleaded. “You could explain it, you know. I’m so stupid.”
“That would be splendid!” said Vickery. “When? Where?”
Before Sheila could answer, Reben broke in, “At my office, at three to-morrow, if that suits you, Miss Kemble.”
She demurred86 feebly that they would be interrupted all the time. Reben promised absolute peace and said, with a grim finality: “That’s settled, then, Mr. Vickery.
To-morrow, my office, three o’clock.”
There was such a sharp dismissal in his tone that Vickery found himself standing52 with his hand out in farewell before he quite realized what had lifted him from his
chair.
“You’re not going?” said Sheila. “You haven’t finished your coffee.”
“I’ve had more than is good for me,” said Vickery. “Good night, and thank you a thousand times. Good night, Mr. Reben.”
As he shambled through the tables to the door Sheila said, “Nice boy.”
She stared at him again, troubled at his manner, confirmed in her suspicion, afraid of it and of him. But she said nothing.
“Want a liqueur?” he snapped.
She shook her head.
He said to her, “I’ll take you home,” and to the waiter, “Check!”
“Just put me in a cab,” said Sheila.
He fumed88 with impatience89 over the waiter’s delay with the check and the change, the time Sheila spent getting her wrap from the cloak-woman, and her gloves and her
hand-bag. He tapped his foot with impatience while the starter whistled up a taxicab. Then he spoke to the driver and got in with her.
He said nothing but, “May I smoke?” But she noted90 his fearsome mien91 as the light of his match painted it with startling vividness against the dark. The ruby of his
ring was like an evil eye. His thick brows drew down over the black fire of his own eyes, and his lips were red over the big teeth that clenched92 the cigar. Then he
puffed93 out the match and his face vanished. He said nothing till they reached the apartment-hotel where she lived. He helped her out and paid the driver. She put forth
her hand to bid him good night, but he said:
“I want a word with you, please.”
点击
收听单词发音
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1
devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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idol
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| n.偶像，红人，宠儿 | |
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3
trepidation
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| n.惊恐，惶恐 | |
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4
playwright
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| n.剧作家，编写剧本的人 | |
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glamour
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| n.魔力，魅力；vt.迷住 | |
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6
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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chivalry
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| n.骑士气概，侠义；（男人）对女人彬彬有礼，献殷勤 | |
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theatrical
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| adj.剧场的，演戏的；做戏似的，做作的 | |
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9
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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10
repertoire
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| n.(准备好演出的)节目，保留剧目；(计算机的)指令表，指令系统， <美>(某个人的)全部技能；清单，指令表 | |
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11
metropolitan
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| adj.大城市的，大都会的 | |
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12
royalty
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| n.皇家，皇族 | |
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13
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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14
homage
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| n.尊敬，敬意，崇敬 | |
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15
fiery
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| adj.燃烧着的，火红的；暴躁的；激烈的 | |
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16
interpretation
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| n.解释，说明，描述；艺术处理 | |
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17
maniac
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| n.精神癫狂的人；疯子 | |
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18
shrieks
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| n.尖叫声( shriek的名词复数 )v.尖叫( shriek的第三人称单数 ) | |
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19
vividly
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| adv.清楚地，鲜明地，生动地 | |
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20
confirmation
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| n.证实，确认，批准 | |
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21
glistened
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| v.湿物闪耀，闪亮( glisten的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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22
woe
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| n.悲哀，苦痛，不幸，困难；int.用来表达悲伤或惊慌 | |
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23
troupe
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| n.剧团，戏班；杂技团；马戏团 | |
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24
defense
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| n.防御，保卫；[pl.]防务工事；辩护，答辩 | |
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25
offense
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| n.犯规，违法行为；冒犯，得罪 | |
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26
pang
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| n.剧痛，悲痛，苦闷 | |
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27
remorse
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| n.痛恨，悔恨，自责 | |
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28
injustice
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| n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利 | |
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29
vowed
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| 起誓，发誓（vow的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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30
loom
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| n.织布机，织机；v.隐现，(危险、忧虑等)迫近 | |
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31
retrospect
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| n.回顾，追溯；v.回顾，回想，追溯 | |
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32
prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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33
visualizes
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| 在脑中使（某人或某物）形象化，设想，想像( visualize的名词复数 ) | |
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34
enraptured
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| v.使狂喜( enrapture的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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35
tormented
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| 饱受折磨的 | |
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36
resentments
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| （因受虐待而）愤恨，不满，怨恨( resentment的名词复数 ) | |
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37
gasps
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| v.喘气( gasp的第三人称单数 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
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38
glib
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| adj.圆滑的，油嘴滑舌的 | |
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39
fanatic
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| n.狂热者，入迷者；adj.狂热入迷的 | |
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40
eloquence
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| n.雄辩；口才，修辞 | |
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41
ardor
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| n.热情，狂热 | |
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42
wholesome
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| adj.适合；卫生的；有益健康的；显示身心健康的 | |
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43
obstinate
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| adj.顽固的，倔强的，不易屈服的，较难治愈的 | |
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44
homely
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| adj.家常的，简朴的；不漂亮的 | |
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45
inadequate
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| adj.(for,to)不充足的，不适当的 | |
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46
concocted
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| v.将（尤指通常不相配合的）成分混合成某物( concoct的过去式和过去分词 )；调制；编造；捏造 | |
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47
reverence
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| n.敬畏，尊敬，尊严；Reverence:对某些基督教神职人员的尊称；v.尊敬，敬畏，崇敬 | |
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48
tangle
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| n.纠缠；缠结；混乱；v.(使)缠绕；变乱 | |
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49
collapse
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| vi.累倒；昏倒；倒塌；塌陷 | |
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50
collapsed
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| adj.倒塌的 | |
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51
punctured
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| v.在（某物）上穿孔( puncture的过去式和过去分词 )；刺穿（某物）；削弱（某人的傲气、信心等）；泄某人的气 | |
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52
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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53
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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54
laboriously
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| adv.艰苦地；费力地；辛勤地；（文体等）佶屈聱牙地 | |
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55
wreckage
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| n.（失事飞机等的）残骸，破坏，毁坏 | |
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56
ardent
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，强烈的，烈性的 | |
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57
inspection
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| n.检查，审查，检阅 | |
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58
gene
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| n.遗传因子，基因 | |
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59
amazement
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| n.惊奇，惊讶 | |
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60
sarcasm
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| n.讥讽，讽刺，嘲弄，反话 （adj.sarcastic） | |
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61
abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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62
minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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63
lurking
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| 潜在 | |
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64
crest
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| n.顶点；饰章；羽冠；vt.达到顶点；vi.形成浪尖 | |
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65
superstitious
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| adj.迷信的 | |
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66
superstition
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| n.迷信，迷信行为 | |
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67
superstitions
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| 迷信，迷信行为( superstition的名词复数 ) | |
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68
ominous
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| adj.不祥的，不吉的，预兆的，预示的 | |
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inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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70
plight
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| n.困境，境况，誓约，艰难；vt.宣誓，保证，约定 | |
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71
betrothed
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| n. 已订婚者 动词betroth的过去式和过去分词 | |
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72
wrath
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| n.愤怒，愤慨，暴怒 | |
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73
appraisal
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| n.对…作出的评价；评价，鉴定，评估 | |
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74
conqueror
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| n.征服者，胜利者 | |
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75
amorous
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| adj.多情的；有关爱情的 | |
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76
bouquet
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| n.花束，酒香 | |
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77
guise
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| n.外表，伪装的姿态 | |
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sanguine
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| adj.充满希望的，乐观的，血红色的 | |
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79
ruby
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| n.红宝石，红宝石色 | |
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80
iridescent
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| adj.彩虹色的，闪色的 | |
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81
beetle
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| n.甲虫，近视眼的人 | |
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82
meditations
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| 默想( meditation的名词复数 )； 默念； 沉思； 冥想 | |
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83
narrative
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| n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的 | |
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84
tangled
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| adj. 纠缠的，紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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scenario
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| n.剧本，脚本；概要 | |
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86
demurred
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| v.表示异议，反对( demur的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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growled
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| v.（动物）发狺狺声， （雷）作隆隆声( growl的过去式和过去分词 )；低声咆哮着说 | |
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fumed
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| 愤怒( fume的过去式和过去分词 )； 大怒； 发怒； 冒烟 | |
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89
impatience
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| n.不耐烦，急躁 | |
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90
noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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mien
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| n.风采；态度 | |
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92
clenched
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| v.紧握，抓紧，咬紧( clench的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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puffed
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| adj.疏松的v.使喷出( puff的过去式和过去分词 )；喷着汽（或烟）移动；吹嘘；吹捧 | |
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