When I was not in Bertha’s presence—and I was with her very often, for she continued to treat me with a playful patronage9 that wakened no jealousy10 in my brother—I spent my time chiefly in wandering, in strolling, or taking long rides while the daylight lasted, and then shutting myself up with my unread books; for books had lost the power of chaining my attention. My self-consciousness was heightened to that pitch of intensity11 in which our own emotions take the form of a drama which urges itself imperatively12 on our contemplation, and we begin to weep, less under the sense of our suffering than at the thought of it. I felt a sort of pitying anguish13 over the pathos14 of my own lot: the lot of a being finely organized for pain, but with hardly any fibres that responded to pleasure—to whom the idea of future evil robbed the present of its joy, and for whom the idea of future good did not still the uneasiness of a present yearning15 or a present dread. I went dumbly through that stage of the poet’s suffering, in which he feels the delicious pang16 of utterance17, and makes an image of his sorrows.
I was left entirely18 without remonstrance19 concerning this dreamy wayward life: I knew my father’s thought about me: “That lad will never be good for anything in life: he may waste his years in an insignificant20 way on the income that falls to him: I shall not trouble myself about a career for him.”
One mild morning in the beginning of November, it happened that I was standing21 outside the portico22 patting lazy old Cæsar, a Newfoundland almost blind with age, the only dog that ever took any notice of me—for the very dogs shunned23 me, and fawned24 on the happier people about me—when the groom25 brought up my brother’s horse which was to carry him to the hunt, and my brother himself appeared at the door, florid, broad-chested, and self-complacent, feeling what a good-natured fellow he was not to behave insolently26 to us all on the strength of his great advantages.
“Latimer, old boy,” he said to me in a tone of compassionate27 cordiality, “what a pity it is you don’t have a run with the hounds now and then! The finest thing in the world for low spirits!”
“Low spirits!” I thought bitterly, as he rode away; “that is the sort of phrase with which coarse, narrow natures like yours think to describe experience of which you can know no more than your horse knows. It is to such as you that the good of this world falls: ready dulness, healthy selfishness, good-tempered conceit—these are the keys to happiness.”
The quick thought came, that my selfishness was even stronger than his—it was only a suffering selfishness instead of an enjoying one. But then, again, my exasperating29 insight into Alfred’s self-complacent soul, his freedom from all the doubts and fears, the unsatisfied yearnings, the exquisite30 tortures of sensitiveness, that had made the web of my life, seemed to absolve31 me from all bonds towards him. This man needed no pity, no love; those fine influences would have been as little felt by him as the delicate white mist is felt by the rock it caresses32. There was no evil in store for him: if he was not to marry Bertha, it would be because he had found a lot pleasanter to himself.
Mr. Filmore’s house lay not more than half a mile beyond our own gates, and whenever I knew my brother was gone in another direction, I went there for the chance of finding Bertha at home. Later on in the day I walked thither33. By a rare accident she was alone, and we walked out in the grounds together, for she seldom went on foot beyond the trimly-swept gravel-walks. I remember what a beautiful sylph she looked to me as the low November sun shone on her blond hair, and she tripped along teasing me with her usual light banter34, to which I listened half fondly, half moodily35; it was all the sign Bertha’s mysterious inner self ever made to me. To-day perhaps, the moodiness36 predominated, for I had not yet shaken off the access of jealous hate which my brother had raised in me by his parting patronage. Suddenly I interrupted and startled her by saying, almost fiercely, “Bertha, how can you love Alfred?”
She looked at me with surprise for a moment, but soon her light smile came again, and she answered sarcastically37, “Why do you suppose I love him?”
“How can you ask that, Bertha?”
“What! your wisdom thinks I must love the man I’m going to marry? The most unpleasant thing in the world. I should quarrel with him; I should be jealous of him; our ménage would be conducted in a very ill-bred manner. A little quiet contempt contributes greatly to the elegance38 of life.”
“Bertha, that is not your real feeling. Why do you delight in trying to deceive me by inventing such cynical39 speeches?”
“I need never take the trouble of invention in order to deceive you, my small Tasso”—(that was the mocking name she usually gave me). “The easiest way to deceive a poet is to tell him the truth.”
She was testing the validity of her epigram in a daring way, and for a moment the shadow of my vision—the Bertha whose soul was no secret to me—passed between me and the radiant girl, the playful sylph whose feelings were a fascinating mystery. I suppose I must have shuddered41, or betrayed in some other way my momentary42 chill of horror.
“Tasso!” she said, seizing my wrist, and peeping round into my face, “are you really beginning to discern what a heartless girl I am? Why, you are not half the poet I thought you were; you are actually capable of believing the truth about me.”
The shadow passed from between us, and was no longer the object nearest to me. The girl whose light fingers grasped me, whose elfish charming face looked into mine—who, I thought, was betraying an interest in my feelings that she would not have directly avowed,—this warm breathing presence again possessed43 my senses and imagination like a returning siren melody which had been overpowered for an instant by the roar of threatening waves. It was a moment as delicious to me as the waking up to a consciousness of youth after a dream of middle age. I forgot everything but my passion, and said with swimming eyes—
“Bertha, shall you love me when we are first married? I wouldn’t mind if you really loved me only for a little while.”
Her look of astonishment44, as she loosed my hand and started away from me, recalled me to a sense of my strange, my criminal indiscretion.
“Forgive me,” I said, hurriedly, as soon as I could speak again; “I did not know what I was saying.”
“Ah, Tasso’s mad fit has come on, I see,” she answered quietly, for she had recovered herself sooner than I had. “Let him go home and keep his head cool. I must go in, for the sun is setting.”
I left her—full of indignation against myself. I had let slip words which, if she reflected on them, might rouse in her a suspicion of my abnormal mental condition—a suspicion which of all things I dreaded45. And besides that, I was ashamed of the apparent baseness I had committed in uttering them to my brother’s betrothed46 wife. I wandered home slowly, entering our park through a private gate instead of by the lodges47. As I approached the house, I saw a man dashing off at full speed from the stable-yard across the park. Had any accident happened at home? No; perhaps it was only one of my father’s peremptory48 business errands that required this headlong haste.
Nevertheless I quickened my pace without any distinct motive49, and was soon at the house. I will not dwell on the scene I found there. My brother was dead—had been pitched from his horse, and killed on the spot by a concussion50 of the brain.
I went up to the room where he lay, and where my father was seated beside him with a look of rigid51 despair. I had shunned my father more than any one since our return home, for the radical52 antipathy53 between our natures made my insight into his inner self a constant affliction to me. But now, as I went up to him, and stood beside him in sad silence, I felt the presence of a new element that blended us as we had never been blent before. My father had been one of the most successful men in the money-getting world: he had had no sentimental54 sufferings, no illness. The heaviest trouble that had befallen him was the death of his first wife. But he married my mother soon after; and I remember he seemed exactly the same, to my keen childish observation, the week after her death as before. But now, at last, a sorrow had come—the sorrow of old age, which suffers the more from the crushing of its pride and its hopes, in proportion as the pride and hope are narrow and prosaic55. His son was to have been married soon—would probably have stood for the borough56 at the next election. That son’s existence was the best motive that could be alleged57 for making new purchases of land every year to round off the estate. It is a dreary58 thing onto live on doing the same things year after year, without knowing why we do them. Perhaps the tragedy of disappointed youth and passion is less piteous than the tragedy of disappointed age and worldliness.
As I saw into the desolation of my father’s heart, I felt a movement of deep pity towards him, which was the beginning of a new affection—an affection that grew and strengthened in spite of the strange bitterness with which he regarded me in the first month or two after my brother’s death. If it had not been for the softening60 influence of my compassion28 for him—the first deep compassion I had ever felt—I should have been stung by the perception that my father transferred the inheritance of an eldest61 son to me with a mortified62 sense that fate had compelled him to the unwelcome course of caring for me as an important being. It was only in spite of himself that he began to think of me with anxious regard. There is hardly any neglected child for whom death has made vacant a more favoured place, who will not understand what I mean.
Gradually, however, my new deference63 to his wishes, the effect of that patience which was born of my pity for him, won upon his affection, and he began to please himself with the endeavour to make me fill any brother’s place as fully64 as my feebler personality would admit. I saw that the prospect65 which by and by presented itself of my becoming Bertha’s husband was welcome to him, and he even contemplated66 in my case what he had not intended in my brother’s—that his son and daughter-in-law should make one household with him. My softened67 feelings towards my father made this the happiest time I had known since childhood;—these last months in which I retained the delicious illusion of loving Bertha, of longing and doubting and hoping that she might love me. She behaved with a certain new consciousness and distance towards me after my brother’s death; and I too was under a double constraint—that of delicacy68 towards my brother’s memory and of anxiety as to the impression my abrupt69 words had left on her mind. But the additional screen this mutual70 reserve erected71 between us only brought me more completely under her power: no matter how empty the adytum, so that the veil be thick enough. So absolute is our soul’s need of something hidden and uncertain for the maintenance of that doubt and hope and effort which are the breath of its life, that if the whole future were laid bare to us beyond to-day, the interest of all mankind would be bent72 on the hours that lie between; we should pant after the uncertainties73 of our one morning and our one afternoon; we should rush fiercely to the Exchange for our last possibility of speculation74, of success, of disappointment: we should have a glut75 of political prophets foretelling76 a crisis or a no-crisis within the only twenty-four hours left open to prophecy. Conceive the condition of the human mind if all propositions whatsoever77 were self-evident except one, which was to become self-evident at the close of a summer’s day, but in the meantime might be the subject of question, of hypothesis, of debate. Art and philosophy, literature and science, would fasten like bees on that one proposition which had the honey of probability in it, and be the more eager because their enjoyment78 would end with sunset. Our impulses, our spiritual activities, no more adjust themselves to the idea of their future nullity, than the beating of our heart, or the irritability79 of our muscles.
Bertha, the slim, fair-haired girl, whose present thoughts and emotions were an enigma80 to me amidst the fatiguing81 obviousness of the other minds around me, was as absorbing to me as a single unknown to-day—as a single hypothetic proposition to remain problematic till sunset; and all the cramped82, hemmed-in belief and disbelief, trust and distrust, of my nature, welled out in this one narrow channel.
And she made me believe that she loved me. Without ever quitting her tone of badinage83 and playful superiority, she intoxicated84 me with the sense that I was necessary to her, that she was never at ease, unless I was near her, submitting to her playful tyranny. It costs a woman so little effort to beset85 us in this way! A half-repressed word, a moment’s unexpected silence, even an easy fit of petulance86 on our account, will serve us as hashish for a long while. Out of the subtlest web of scarcely perceptible signs, she set me weaving the fancy that she had always unconsciously loved me better than Alfred, but that, with the ignorant fluttered sensibility of a young girl, she had been imposed on by the charm that lay for her in the distinction of being admired and chosen by a man who made so brilliant a figure in the world as my brother. She satirized87 herself in a very graceful88 way for her vanity and ambition. What was it to me that I had the light of my wretched provision on the fact that now it was I who possessed at least all but the personal part of my brother’s advantages? Our sweet illusions are half of them conscious illusions, like effects of colour that we know to be made up of tinsel, broken glass, and rags.
We were married eighteen months after Alfred’s death, one cold, clear morning in April, when there came hail and sunshine both together; and Bertha, in her white silk and pale-green leaves, and the pale hues89 of her hair and face, looked like the spirit of the morning. My father was happier than he had thought of being again: my marriage, he felt sure, would complete the desirable modification90 of my character, and make me practical and worldly enough to take my place in society among sane91 men. For he delighted in Bertha’s tact92 and acuteness, and felt sure she would be mistress of me, and make me what she chose: I was only twenty-one, and madly in love with her. Poor father! He kept that hope a little while after our first year of marriage, and it was not quite extinct when paralysis93 came and saved him from utter disappointment.
I shall hurry through the rest of my story, not dwelling94 so much as I have hitherto done on my inward experience. When people are well known to each other, they talk rather of what befalls them externally, leaving their feelings and sentiments to be inferred.
We lived in a round of visits for some time after our return home, giving splendid dinner-parties, and making a sensation in our neighbourhood by the new lustre95 of our equipage, for my father had reserved this display of his increased wealth for the period of his son’s marriage; and we gave our acquaintances liberal opportunity for remarking that it was a pity I made so poor a figure as an heir and a bridegroom. The nervous fatigue96 of this existence, the insincerities and platitudes97 which I had to live through twice over—through my inner and outward sense—would have been maddening to me, if I had not had that sort of intoxicated callousness98 which came from the delights of a first passion. A bride and bridegroom, surrounded by all the appliances of wealth, hurried through the day by the whirl of society, filling their solitary99 moments with hastily-snatched caresses, are prepared for their future life together as the novice100 is prepared for the cloister—by experiencing its utmost contrast.
Through all these crowded excited months, Bertha’s inward self remained shrouded102 from me, and I still read her thoughts only through the language of her lips and demeanour: I had still the human interest of wondering whether what I did and said pleased her, of longing to hear a word of affection, of giving a delicious exaggeration of meaning to her smile. But I was conscious of a growing difference in her manner towards me; sometimes strong enough to be called haughty103 coldness, cutting and chilling me as the hail had done that came across the sunshine on our marriage morning; sometimes only perceptible in the dexterous104 avoidance of a tête-à-tête walk or dinner to which I had been looking forward. I had been deeply pained by this—had even felt a sort of crushing of the heart, from the sense that my brief day of happiness was near its setting; but still I remained dependent on Bertha, eager for the last rays of a bliss105 that would soon be gone for ever, hoping and watching for some after-glow more beautiful from the impending106 night.
I remember—how should I not remember?—the time when that dependence107 and hope utterly108 left me, when the sadness I had felt in Bertha’s growing estrangement109 became a joy that I looked back upon with longing as a man might look back on the last pains in a paralysed limb. It was just after the close of my father’s last illness, which had necessarily withdrawn110 us from society and thrown us more on each other. It was the evening of father’s death. On that evening the veil which had shrouded Bertha’s soul from me—had made me find in her alone among my fellow-beings the blessed possibility of mystery, and doubt, and expectation—was first withdrawn. Perhaps it was the first day since the beginning of my passion for her, in which that passion was completely neutralized111 by the presence of an absorbing feeling of another kind. I had been watching by my father’s deathbed: I had been witnessing the last fitful yearning glance his soul had cast back on the spent inheritance of life—the last faint consciousness of love he had gathered from the pressure of my hand. What are all our personal loves when we have been sharing in that supreme112 agony? In the first moments when we come away from the presence of death, every other relation to the living is merged113, to our feeling, in the great relation of a common nature and a common destiny.
In that state of mind I joined Bertha in her private sitting-room114. She was seated in a leaning posture115 on a settee, with her back towards the door; the great rich coils of her pale blond hair surmounting116 her small neck, visible above the back of the settee. I remember, as I closed the door behind me, a cold tremulousness seizing me, and a vague sense of being hated and lonely—vague and strong, like a presentiment117. I know how I looked at that moment, for I saw myself in Bertha’s thought as she lifted her cutting grey eyes, and looked at me: a miserable118 ghost-seer, surrounded by phantoms119 in the noonday, trembling under a breeze when the leaves were still, without appetite for the common objects of human desires, but pining after the moon-beams. We were front to front with each other, and judged each other. The terrible moment of complete illumination had come to me, and I saw that the darkness had hidden no landscape from me, but only a blank prosaic wall: from that evening forth120, through the sickening years which followed, I saw all round the narrow room of this woman’s soul—saw petty artifice121 and mere122 negation123 where I had delighted to believe in coy sensibilities and in wit at war with latent feeling—saw the light floating vanities of the girl defining themselves into the systematic124 coquetry, the scheming selfishness, of the woman—saw repulsion and antipathy harden into cruel hatred125, giving pain only for the sake of wreaking126 itself.
For Bertha too, after her kind, felt the bitterness of disillusion127. She had believed that my wild poet’s passion for her would make me her slave; and that, being her slave, I should execute her will in all things. With the essential shallowness of a negative, unimaginative nature, she was unable to conceive the fact that sensibilities were anything else than weaknesses. She had thought my weaknesses would put me in her power, and she found them unmanageable forces. Our positions were reversed. Before marriage she had completely mastered my imagination, for she was a secret to me; and I created the unknown thought before which I trembled as if it were hers. But now that her soul was laid open to me, now that I was compelled to share the privacy of her motives128, to follow all the petty devices that preceded her words and acts, she found herself powerless with me, except to produce in me the chill shudder40 of repulsion—powerless, because I could be acted on by no lever within her reach. I was dead to worldly ambitions, to social vanities, to all the incentives129 within the compass of her narrow imagination, and I lived under influences utterly invisible to her.
She was really pitiable to have such a husband, and so all the world thought. A graceful, brilliant woman, like Bertha, who smiled on morning callers, made a figure in ball-rooms, and was capable of that light repartee130 which, from such a woman, is accepted as wit, was secure of carrying off all sympathy from a husband who was sickly, abstracted, and, as some suspected, crack-brained. Even the servants in our house gave her the balance of their regard and pity. For there were no audible quarrels between us; our alienation131, our repulsion from each other, lay within the silence of our own hearts; and if the mistress went out a great deal, and seemed to dislike the master’s society, was it not natural, poor thing? The master was odd. I was kind and just to my dependants132, but I excited in them a shrinking, half-contemptuous pity; for this class of men and women are but slightly determined133 in their estimate of others by general considerations, or even experience, of character. They judge of persons as they judge of coins, and value those who pass current at a high rate.
After a time I interfered134 so little with Bertha’s habits that it might seem wonderful how her hatred towards me could grow so intense and active as it did. But she had begun to suspect, by some involuntary betrayal of mine, that there was an abnormal power of penetration135 in me—that fitfully, at least, I was strangely cognizant of her thoughts and intentions, and she began to be haunted by a terror of me, which alternated every now and then with defiance136. She meditated2 continually how the incubus137 could be shaken off her life—how she could be freed from this hateful bond to a being whom she at once despised as an imbecile, and dreaded as an inquisitor. For a long while she lived in the hope that my evident wretchedness would drive me to the commission of suicide; but suicide was not in my nature. I was too completely swayed by the sense that I was in the grasp of unknown forces, to believe in my power of self-release. Towards my own destiny I had become entirely passive; for my one ardent138 desire had spent itself, and impulse no longer predominated over knowledge. For this reason I never thought of taking any steps towards a complete separation, which would have made our alienation evident to the world. Why should I rush for help to a new course, when I was only suffering from the consequences of a deed which had been the act of my intensest will? That would have been the logic139 of one who had desires to gratify, and I had no desires. But Bertha and I lived more and more aloof140 from each other. The rich find it easy to live married and apart.
That course of our life which I have indicated in a few sentences filled the space of years. So much misery141—so slow and hideous142 a growth of hatred and sin, may be compressed into a sentence! And men judge of each other’s lives through this summary medium. They epitomize the experience of their fellow-mortal, and pronounce judgment143 on him in neat syntax, and feel themselves wise and virtuous—conquerors over the temptations they define in well-selected predicates. Seven years of wretchedness glide144 glibly145 over the lips of the man who has never counted them out in moments of chill disappointment, of head and heart throbbings, of dread and vain wrestling, of remorse147 and despair. We learn words by rote148, but not their meaning; that must be paid for with our life-blood, and printed in the subtle fibres of our nerves.
But I will hasten to finish my story. Brevity is justified149 at once to those who readily understand, and to those who will never understand.
Some years after my father’s death, I was sitting by the dim firelight in my library one January evening—sitting in the leather chair that used to be my father’s—when Bertha appeared at the door, with a candle in her hand, and advanced towards me. I knew the ball-dress she had on—the white ball-dress, with the green jewels, shone upon by the light of the wax candle which lit up the medallion of the dying Cleopatra on the mantelpiece. Why did she come to me before going out? I had not seen her in the library, which was my habitual150 place for months. Why did she stand before me with the candle in her hand, with her cruel contemptuous eyes fixed151 on me, and the glittering serpent, like a familiar demon152, on her breast? For a moment I thought this fulfilment of my vision at Vienna marked some dreadful crisis in my fate, but I saw nothing in Bertha’s mind, as she stood before me, except scorn for the look of overwhelming misery with which I sat before her . . . “Fool, idiot, why don’t you kill yourself, then?”—that was her thought. But at length her thoughts reverted153 to her errand, and she spoke154 aloud. The apparently155 indifferent nature of the errand seemed to make a ridiculous anticlimax156 to my prevision and my agitation157.
“I have had to hire a new maid. Fletcher is going to be married, and she wants me to ask you to let her husband have the public-house and farm at Molton. I wish him to have it. You must give the promise now, because Fletcher is going to-morrow morning—and quickly, because I’m in a hurry.”
“Very well; you may promise her,” I said, indifferently, and Bertha swept out of the library again.
I always shrank from the sight of a new person, and all the more when it was a person whose mental life was likely to weary my reluctant insight with worldly ignorant trivialities. But I shrank especially from the sight of this new maid, because her advent158 had been announced to me at a moment to which I could not cease to attach some fatality159: I had a vague dread that I should find her mixed up with the dreary drama of my life—that some new sickening vision would reveal her to me as an evil genius. When at last I did unavoidably meet her, the vague dread was changed into definite disgust. She was a tall, wiry, dark-eyed woman, this Mrs. Archer160, with a face handsome enough to give her coarse hard nature the odious161 finish of bold, self-confident coquetry. That was enough to make me avoid her, quite apart from the contemptuous feeling with which she contemplated me. I seldom saw her; but I perceived that she rapidly became a favourite with her mistress, and, after the lapse162 of eight or nine months, I began to be aware that there had arisen in Bertha’s mind towards this woman a mingled163 feeling of fear and dependence, and that this feeling was associated with ill-defined images of candle-light scenes in her dressing-room, and the locking-up of something in Bertha’s cabinet. My interviews with my wife had become so brief and so rarely solitary, that I had no opportunity of perceiving these images in her mind with more definiteness. The recollections of the past become contracted in the rapidity of thought till they sometimes bear hardly a more distinct resemblance to the external reality than the forms of an oriental alphabet to the objects that suggested them.
Besides, for the last year or more a modification had been going forward in my mental condition, and was growing more and more marked. My insight into the minds of those around me was becoming dimmer and more fitful, and the ideas that crowded my double consciousness became less and less dependent on any personal contact. All that was personal in me seemed to be suffering a gradual death, so that I was losing the organ through which the personal agitations164 and projects of others could affect me. But along with this relief from wearisome insight, there was a new development of what I concluded—as I have since found rightly—to be a prevision of external scenes. It was as if the relation between me and my fellow-men was more and more deadened, and my relation to what we call the inanimate was quickened into new life. The more I lived apart from society, and in proportion as my wretchedness subsided165 from the violent throb146 of agonized166 passion into the dulness of habitual pain, the more frequent and vivid became such visions as that I had had of Prague—of strange cities, of sandy plains, of gigantic ruins, of midnight skies with strange bright constellations167, of mountain-passes, of grassy168 nooks flecked with the afternoon sunshine through the boughs169: I was in the midst of such scenes, and in all of them one presence seemed to weigh on me in all these mighty170 shapes—the presence of something unknown and pitiless. For continual suffering had annihilated171 religious faith within me: to the utterly miserable—the unloving and the unloved—there is no religion possible, no worship but a worship of devils. And beyond all these, and continually recurring172, was the vision of my death—the pangs173, the suffocation174, the last struggle, when life would be grasped at in vain.
Things were in this state near the end of the seventh year. I had become entirely free from insight, from my abnormal cognizance of any other consciousness than my own, and instead of intruding175 involuntarily into the world of other minds, was living continually in my own solitary future. Bertha was aware that I was greatly changed. To my surprise she had of late seemed to seek opportunities of remaining in my society, and had cultivated that kind of distant yet familiar talk which is customary between a husband and wife who live in polite and irrevocable alienation. I bore this with languid submission176, and without feeling enough interest in her motives to be roused into keen observation; yet I could not help perceiving something triumphant177 and excited in her carriage and the expression of her face—something too subtle to express itself in words or tones, but giving one the idea that she lived in a state of expectation or hopeful suspense178. My chief feeling was satisfaction that her inner self was once more shut out from me; and I almost revelled179 for the moment in the absent melancholy180 that made me answer her at cross purposes, and betray utter ignorance of what she had been saying. I remember well the look and the smile with which she one day said, after a mistake of this kind on my part: “I used to think you were a clairvoyant181, and that was the reason why you were so bitter against other clairvoyants182, wanting to keep your monopoly; but I see now you have become rather duller than the rest of the world.”
I said nothing in reply. It occurred to me that her recent obtrusion183 of herself upon me might have been prompted by the wish to test my power of detecting some of her secrets; but I let the thought drop again at once: her motives and her deeds had no interest for me, and whatever pleasures she might be seeking, I had no wish to baulk her. There was still pity in my soul for every living thing, and Bertha was living—was surrounded with possibilities of misery.
Just at this time there occurred an event which roused me somewhat from my inertia184, and gave me an interest in the passing moment that I had thought impossible for me. It was a visit from Charles Meunier, who had written me word that he was coming to England for relaxation185 from too strenuous186 labour, and would like too see me. Meunier had now a European reputation; but his letter to me expressed that keen remembrance of an early regard, an early debt of sympathy, which is inseparable from nobility of character: and I too felt as if his presence would be to me like a transient resurrection into a happier pre-existence.
He came, and as far as possible, I renewed our old pleasure of making tête-à-tête excursions, though, instead of mountains and glacers and the wide blue lake, we had to content ourselves with mere slopes and ponds and artificial plantations187. The years had changed us both, but with what different result! Meunier was now a brilliant figure in society, to whom elegant women pretended to listen, and whose acquaintance was boasted of by noblemen ambitious of brains. He repressed with the utmost delicacy all betrayal of the shock which I am sure he must have received from our meeting, or of a desire to penetrate188 into my condition and circumstances, and sought by the utmost exertion189 of his charming social powers to make our reunion agreeable. Bertha was much struck by the unexpected fascinations190 of a visitor whom she had expected to find presentable only on the score of his celebrity191, and put forth all her coquetries and accomplishments192. Apparently she succeeded in attracting his admiration193, for his manner towards her was attentive194 and flattering. The effect of his presence on me was so benignant, especially in those renewals195 of our old tête-à-tête wanderings, when he poured forth to me wonderful narratives196 of his professional experience, that more than once, when his talk turned on the psychological relations of disease, the thought crossed my mind that, if his stay with me were long enough, I might possibly bring myself to tell this man the secrets of my lot. Might there not lie some remedy for me, too, in his science? Might there not at least lie some comprehension and sympathy ready for me in his large and susceptible197 mind? But the thought only flickered198 feebly now and then, and died out before it could become a wish. The horror I had of again breaking in on the privacy of another soul, made me, by an irrational199 instinct, draw the shroud101 of concealment200 more closely around my own, as we automatically perform the gesture we feel to be wanting in another.
When Meunier’s visit was approaching its conclusion, there happened an event which caused some excitement in our household, owing to the surprisingly strong effect it appeared to produce on Bertha—on Bertha, the self-possessed, who usually seemed inaccessible202 to feminine agitations, and did even her hate in a self-restrained hygienic manner. This event was the sudden severe illness of her maid, Mrs. Archer. I have reserved to this moment the mention of a circumstance which had forced itself on my notice shortly before Meunier’s arrival, namely, that there had been some quarrel between Bertha and this maid, apparently during a visit to a distant family, in which she had accompanied her mistress. I had overheard Archer speaking in a tone of bitter insolence203, which I should have thought an adequate reason for immediate204 dismissal. No dismissal followed; on the contrary, Bertha seemed to be silently putting up with personal inconveniences from the exhibitions of this woman’s temper. I was the more astonished to observe that her illness seemed a cause of strong solicitude205 to Bertha; that she was at the bedside night and day, and would allow no one else to officiate as head-nurse. It happened that our family doctor was out on a holiday, an accident which made Meunier’s presence in the house doubly welcome, and he apparently entered into the case with an interest which seemed so much stronger than the ordinary professional feeling, that one day when he had fallen into a long fit of silence after visiting her, I said to him—
“No,” he answered, “it is an attack of peritonitis, which will be fatal, but which does not differ physically207 from many other cases that have come under my observation. But I’ll tell you what I have on my mind. I want to make an experiment on this woman, if you will give me permission. It can do her no harm—will give her no pain—for I shall not make it until life is extinct to all purposes of sensation. I want to try the effect of transfusing208 blood into her arteries209 after the heart has ceased to beat for some minutes. I have tried the experiment again and again with animals that have died of this disease, with astounding210 results, and I want to try it on a human subject. I have the small tubes necessary, in a case I have with me, and the rest of the apparatus211 could be prepared readily. I should use my own blood—take it from my own arm. This woman won’t live through the night, I’m convinced, and I want you to promise me your assistance in making the experiment. I can’t do without another hand, but it would perhaps not be well to call in a medical assistant from among your provincial212 doctors. A disagreeable foolish version of the thing might get abroad.”
“Have you spoken to my wife on the subject?” I said, “because she appears to be peculiarly sensitive about this woman: she has been a favourite maid.”
“To tell you the truth,” said Meunier, “I don’t want her to know about it. There are always insuperable difficulties with women in these matters, and the effect on the supposed dead body may be startling. You and I will sit up together, and be in readiness. When certain symptoms appear I shall take you in, and at the right moment we must manage to get every one else out of the room.”
I need not give our farther conversation on the subject. He entered very fully into the details, and overcame my repulsion from them, by exciting in me a mingled awe213 and curiosity concerning the possible results of his experiment.
We prepared everything, and he instructed me in my part as assistant. He had not told Bertha of his absolute conviction that Archer would not survive through the night, and endeavoured to persuade her to leave the patient and take a night’s rest. But she was obstinate214, suspecting the fact that death was at hand, and supposing that he wished merely to save her nerves. She refused to leave the sick-room. Meunier and I sat up together in the library, he making frequent visits to the sick-room, and returning with the information that the case was taking precisely215 the course he expected. Once he said to me, “Can you imagine any cause of ill-feeling this woman has against her mistress, who is so devoted216 to her?”
“I think there was some misunderstanding between them before her illness. Why do you ask?”
“Because I have observed for the last five or six hours—since, I fancy, she has lost all hope of recovery—there seems a strange prompting in her to say something which pain and failing strength forbid her to utter; and there is a look of hideous meaning in her eyes, which she turns continually towards her mistress. In this disease the mind often remains217 singularly clear to the last.”
“I am not surprised at an indication of malevolent218 feeling in her,” I said. “She is a woman who has always inspired me with distrust and dislike, but she managed to insinuate219 herself into her mistress’s favour.” He was silent after this, looking at the fire with an air of absorption, till he went upstairs again. He stayed away longer than usual, and on returning, said to me quietly, “Come now.”
I followed him to the chamber220 where death was hovering221. The dark hangings of the large bed made a background that gave a strong relief to Bertha’s pale face as I entered. She started forward as she saw me enter, and then looked at Meunier with an expression of angry inquiry222; but he lifted up his hand as if to impose silence, while he fixed his glance on the dying woman and felt her pulse. The face was pinched and ghastly, a cold perspiration223 was on the forehead, and the eyelids224 were lowered so as to conceal201 the large dark eyes. After a minute or two, Meunier walked round to the other side of the bed where Bertha stood, and with his usual air of gentle politeness towards her begged her to leave the patient under our care—everything should be done for her—she was no longer in a state to be conscious of an affectionate presence. Bertha was hesitating, apparently almost willing to believe his assurance and to comply. She looked round at the ghastly dying face, as if to read the confirmation225 of that assurance, when for a moment the lowered eyelids were raised again, and it seemed as if the eyes were looking towards Bertha, but blankly. A shudder passed through Bertha’s frame, and she returned to her station near the pillow, tacitly implying that she would not leave the room.
The eyelids were lifted no more. Once I looked at Bertha as she watched the face of the dying one. She wore a rich peignoir, and her blond hair was half covered by a lace cap: in her attire226 she was, as always, an elegant woman, fit to figure in a picture of modern aristocratic life: but I asked myself how that face of hers could ever have seemed to me the face of a woman born of woman, with memories of childhood, capable of pain, needing to be fondled? The features at that moment seemed so preternaturally sharp, the eyes were so hard and eager—she looked like a cruel immortal227, finding her spiritual feast in the agonies of a dying race. For across those hard features there came something like a flash when the last hour had been breathed out, and we all felt that the dark veil had completely fallen. What secret was there between Bertha and this woman? I turned my eyes from her with a horrible dread lest my insight should return, and I should be obliged to see what had been breeding about two unloving women’s hearts. I felt that Bertha had been watching for the moment of death as the sealing of her secret: I thanked Heaven it could remain sealed for me.
Meunier said quietly, “She is gone.” He then gave his arm to Bertha, and she submitted to be led out of the room.
I suppose it was at her order that two female attendants came into the room, and dismissed the younger one who had been present before. When they entered, Meunier had already opened the artery228 in the long thin neck that lay rigid on the pillow, and I dismissed them, ordering them to remain at a distance till we rang: the doctor, I said, had an operation to perform—he was not sure about the death. For the next twenty minutes I forgot everything but Meunier and the experiment in which he was so absorbed, that I think his senses would have been closed against all sounds or sights which had no relation to it. It was my task at first to keep up the artificial respiration229 in the body after the transfusion230 had been effected, but presently Meunier relieved me, and I could see the wondrous231 slow return of life; the breast began to heave, the inspirations became stronger, the eyelids quivered, and the soul seemed to have returned beneath them. The artificial respiration was withdrawn: still the breathing continued, and there was a movement of the lips.
Just then I heard the handle of the door moving: I suppose Bertha had heard from the women that they had been dismissed: probably a vague fear had arisen in her mind, for she entered with a look of alarm. She came to the foot of the bed and gave a stifled cry.
The dead woman’s eyes were wide open, and met hers in full recognition—the recognition of hate. With a sudden strong effort, the hand that Bertha had thought for ever still was pointed59 towards her, and the haggard face moved. The gasping232 eager voice said—
“You mean to poison your husband . . . the poison is in the black cabinet . . . I got it for you . . . you laughed at me, and told lies about me behind my back, to make me disgusting . . . because you were jealous . . . are you sorry . . . now?”
The lips continued to murmur233, but the sounds were no longer distinct. Soon there was no sound—only a slight movement: the flame had leaped out, and was being extinguished the faster. The wretched woman’s heart-strings had been set to hatred and vengeance234; the spirit of life had swept the chords for an instant, and was gone again for ever. Great God! Is this what it is to live again . . . to wake up with our unstilled thirst upon us, with our unuttered curses rising to our lips, with our muscles ready to act out their half-committed sins?
Bertha stood pale at the foot of the bed, quivering and helpless, despairing of devices, like a cunning animal whose hiding-places are surrounded by swift-advancing flame. Even Meunier looked paralysed; life for that moment ceased to be a scientific problem to him. As for me, this scene seemed of one texture235 with the rest of my existence: horror was my familiar, and this new revelation was only like an old pain recurring with new circumstances.
Since then Bertha and I have lived apart—she in her own neighbourhood, the mistress of half our wealth, I as a wanderer in foreign countries, until I came to this Devonshire nest to die. Bertha lives pitied and admired; for what had I against that charming woman, whom every one but myself could have been happy with? There had been no witness of the scene in the dying room except Meunier, and while Meunier lived his lips were sealed by a promise to me.
Once or twice, weary of wandering, I rested in a favourite spot, and my heart went out towards the men and women and children whose faces were becoming familiar to me; but I was driven away again in terror at the approach of my old insight—driven away to live continually with the one Unknown Presence revealed and yet hidden by the moving curtain of the earth and sky. Till at last disease took hold of me and forced me to rest here—forced me to live in dependence on my servants. And then the curse of insight—of my double consciousness, came again, and has never left me. I know all their narrow thoughts, their feeble regard, their half-wearied pity.
It is the 20th of September, 1850. I know these figures I have just written, as if they were a long familiar inscription236. I have seen them on this page in my desk unnumbered times, when the scene of my dying struggle has opened upon me . . .
点击
收听单词发音
收听单词发音 |
1
beeches
|
|
| n.山毛榉( beech的名词复数 )；山毛榉木材 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
meditated
|
|
| 深思，沉思，冥想( meditate的过去式和过去分词 )； 内心策划，考虑 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
confession
|
|
| n.自白，供认，承认 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
longing
|
|
| n.（for）渴望 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
dread
|
|
| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
corrosive
|
|
| adj.腐蚀性的；有害的；恶毒的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
clogged
|
|
| （使）阻碍( clog的过去式和过去分词 )； 淤滞 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
stifled
|
|
| （使）窒息， （使）窒闷( stifle的过去式和过去分词 )； 镇压，遏制； 堵 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
patronage
|
|
| n.赞助，支援，援助；光顾，捧场 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
jealousy
|
|
| n.妒忌，嫉妒，猜忌 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
intensity
|
|
| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
imperatively
|
|
| adv.命令式地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
anguish
|
|
| n.(尤指心灵上的)极度痛苦，烦恼 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
pathos
|
|
| n.哀婉，悲怆 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
yearning
|
|
| a.渴望的；向往的；怀念的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
pang
|
|
| n.剧痛，悲痛，苦闷 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
utterance
|
|
| n.用言语表达，话语，言语 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
entirely
|
|
| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
remonstrance
|
|
| n抗议，抱怨 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
insignificant
|
|
| adj.无关紧要的，可忽略的，无意义的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
standing
|
|
| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
portico
|
|
| n.柱廊，门廊 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
shunned
|
|
| v.避开，回避，避免( shun的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
fawned
|
|
| v.（尤指狗等）跳过来往人身上蹭以示亲热( fawn的过去式和过去分词 )；巴结；讨好 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
25
groom
|
|
| vt.给（马、狗等）梳毛，照料，使...整洁 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
26
insolently
|
|
| adv.自豪地，自傲地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
27
compassionate
|
|
| adj.有同情心的，表示同情的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
28
compassion
|
|
| n.同情，怜悯 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
29
exasperating
|
|
| adj. 激怒的 动词exasperate的现在分词形式 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
30
exquisite
|
|
| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
31
absolve
|
|
| v.赦免，解除（责任等） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
32
caresses
|
|
| 爱抚，抚摸( caress的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
33
thither
|
|
| adv.向那里；adj.在那边的，对岸的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
34
banter
|
|
| n.嘲弄，戏谑；v.取笑，逗弄，开玩笑 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
35
moodily
|
|
| adv.喜怒无常地；情绪多变地；心情不稳地；易生气地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
36
moodiness
|
|
| n.喜怒无常；喜怒无常，闷闷不乐；情绪 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
37
sarcastically
|
|
| adv.挖苦地，讽刺地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
38
elegance
|
|
| n.优雅；优美，雅致；精致，巧妙 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
39
cynical
|
|
| adj.(对人性或动机)怀疑的，不信世道向善的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
40
shudder
|
|
| v.战粟，震动，剧烈地摇晃；n.战粟，抖动 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
41
shuddered
|
|
| v.战栗( shudder的过去式和过去分词 )；发抖；（机器、车辆等）突然震动；颤动 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
42
momentary
|
|
| adj.片刻的，瞬息的；短暂的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
43
possessed
|
|
| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
44
astonishment
|
|
| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
45
dreaded
|
|
| adj.令人畏惧的；害怕的v.害怕，恐惧，担心( dread的过去式和过去分词) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
46
betrothed
|
|
| n. 已订婚者 动词betroth的过去式和过去分词 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
47
lodges
|
|
| v.存放( lodge的第三人称单数 )；暂住；埋入；（权利、权威等）归属 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
48
peremptory
|
|
| adj.紧急的，专横的，断然的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
49
motive
|
|
| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
50
concussion
|
|
| n.脑震荡；震动 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
51
rigid
|
|
| adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
52
radical
|
|
| n.激进份子，原子团，根号；adj.根本的，激进的，彻底的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
53
antipathy
|
|
| n.憎恶；反感，引起反感的人或事物 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
54
sentimental
|
|
| adj.多愁善感的，感伤的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
55
prosaic
|
|
| adj.单调的，无趣的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
56
borough
|
|
| n.享有自治权的市镇；(英)自治市镇 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
57
alleged
|
|
| a.被指控的，嫌疑的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
58
dreary
|
|
| adj.令人沮丧的，沉闷的，单调乏味的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
59
pointed
|
|
| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
60
softening
|
|
| 变软，软化 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
61
eldest
|
|
| adj.最年长的，最年老的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
62
mortified
|
|
| v.使受辱( mortify的过去式和过去分词 )；伤害（人的感情）；克制；抑制（肉体、情感等） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
63
deference
|
|
| n.尊重，顺从；敬意 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
64
fully
|
|
| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
65
prospect
|
|
| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
66
contemplated
|
|
| adj. 预期的 动词contemplate的过去分词形式 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
67
softened
|
|
| （使）变软( soften的过去式和过去分词 )； 缓解打击； 缓和； 安慰 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
68
delicacy
|
|
| n.精致，细微，微妙，精良；美味，佳肴 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
69
abrupt
|
|
| adj.突然的，意外的；唐突的，鲁莽的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
70
mutual
|
|
| adj.相互的，彼此的；共同的，共有的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
71
ERECTED
|
|
| adj. 直立的，竖立的，笔直的 vt. 使 ... 直立，建立 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
72
bent
|
|
| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
73
uncertainties
|
|
| 无把握( uncertainty的名词复数 )； 不确定； 变化不定； 无把握、不确定的事物 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
74
speculation
|
|
| n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
75
glut
|
|
| n.存货过多，供过于求；v.狼吞虎咽 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
76
foretelling
|
|
| v.预言，预示( foretell的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
77
whatsoever
|
|
| adv.（用于否定句中以加强语气）任何；pron.无论什么 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
78
enjoyment
|
|
| n.乐趣；享有；享用 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
79
irritability
|
|
| n.易怒 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
80
enigma
|
|
| n.谜，谜一样的人或事 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
81
fatiguing
|
|
| a.使人劳累的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
82
cramped
|
|
| a.狭窄的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
83
badinage
|
|
| n.开玩笑，打趣 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
84
intoxicated
|
|
| 喝醉的，极其兴奋的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
85
beset
|
|
| v.镶嵌；困扰，包围 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
86
petulance
|
|
| n.发脾气，生气，易怒，暴躁，性急 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
87
satirized
|
|
| v.讽刺，讥讽( satirize的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
88
graceful
|
|
| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
89
hues
|
|
| 色彩( hue的名词复数 )； 色调； 信仰； 观点 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
90
modification
|
|
| n.修改，改进，缓和，减轻 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
91
sane
|
|
| adj.心智健全的，神志清醒的，明智的，稳健的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
92
tact
|
|
| n.机敏，圆滑，得体 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
93
paralysis
|
|
| n.麻痹(症)；瘫痪(症) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
94
dwelling
|
|
| n.住宅，住所，寓所 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
95
lustre
|
|
| n.光亮，光泽；荣誉 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
96
fatigue
|
|
| n.疲劳，劳累 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
97
platitudes
|
|
| n.平常的话，老生常谈，陈词滥调( platitude的名词复数 )；滥套子 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
98
callousness
|
|
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
99
solitary
|
|
| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
100
novice
|
|
| adj.新手的，生手的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
101
shroud
|
|
| n.裹尸布，寿衣；罩，幕；vt.覆盖，隐藏 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
102
shrouded
|
|
| v.隐瞒( shroud的过去式和过去分词 )；保密 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
103
haughty
|
|
| adj.傲慢的，高傲的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
104
dexterous
|
|
| adj.灵敏的；灵巧的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
105
bliss
|
|
| n.狂喜，福佑，天赐的福 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
106
impending
|
|
| a.imminent, about to come or happen | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
107
dependence
|
|
| n.依靠，依赖；信任，信赖；隶属 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
108
utterly
|
|
| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
109
estrangement
|
|
| n.疏远，失和，不和 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
110
withdrawn
|
|
| vt.收回；使退出；vi.撤退，退出 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
111
neutralized
|
|
| v.使失效( neutralize的过去式和过去分词 )；抵消；中和；使（一个国家）中立化 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
112
supreme
|
|
| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
113
merged
|
|
| （使）混合( merge的过去式和过去分词 )； 相融； 融入； 渐渐消失在某物中 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
114
sitting-room
|
|
| n.（BrE）客厅，起居室 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
115
posture
|
|
| n.姿势，姿态，心态，态度；v.作出某种姿势 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
116
surmounting
|
|
| 战胜( surmount的现在分词 )； 克服（困难）； 居于…之上； 在…顶上 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
117
presentiment
|
|
| n.预感，预觉 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
118
miserable
|
|
| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
119
phantoms
|
|
| n.鬼怪，幽灵( phantom的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
120
forth
|
|
| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
121
artifice
|
|
| n.妙计，高明的手段；狡诈，诡计 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
122
mere
|
|
| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
123
negation
|
|
| n.否定；否认 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
124
systematic
|
|
| adj.有系统的，有计划的，有方法的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
125
hatred
|
|
| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
126
wreaking
|
|
| 诉诸（武力），施行（暴力），发（脾气）( wreak的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
127
disillusion
|
|
| vt.使不再抱幻想，使理想破灭 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
128
motives
|
|
| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
129
incentives
|
|
| 激励某人做某事的事物( incentive的名词复数 )； 刺激； 诱因； 动机 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
130
repartee
|
|
| n.机敏的应答 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
131
alienation
|
|
| n.疏远；离间；异化 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
132
dependants
|
|
| 受赡养者，受扶养的家属( dependant的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
133
determined
|
|
| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
134
interfered
|
|
| v.干预( interfere的过去式和过去分词 )；调停；妨碍；干涉 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
135
penetration
|
|
| n.穿透，穿人，渗透 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
136
defiance
|
|
| n.挑战，挑衅，蔑视，违抗 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
137
incubus
|
|
| n.负担；恶梦 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
138
ardent
|
|
| adj.热情的，热烈的，强烈的，烈性的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
139
logic
|
|
| n.逻辑(学)；逻辑性 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
140
aloof
|
|
| adj.远离的；冷淡的，漠不关心的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
141
misery
|
|
| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
142
hideous
|
|
| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
143
judgment
|
|
| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
144
glide
|
|
| n./v.溜，滑行；(时间)消逝 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
145
glibly
|
|
| adv.流利地，流畅地；满口 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
146
throb
|
|
| v.震颤，颤动；(急速强烈地)跳动，搏动 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
147
remorse
|
|
| n.痛恨，悔恨，自责 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
148
rote
|
|
| n.死记硬背，生搬硬套 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
149
justified
|
|
| a.正当的，有理的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
150
habitual
|
|
| adj.习惯性的；通常的，惯常的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
151
fixed
|
|
| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
152
demon
|
|
| n.魔鬼，恶魔 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
153
reverted
|
|
| 恢复( revert的过去式和过去分词 )； 重提； 回到…上； 归还 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
154
spoke
|
|
| 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 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
155
apparently
|
|
| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
156
anticlimax
|
|
| n.令人扫兴的结局；突降法 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
157
agitation
|
|
| n.搅动；搅拌；鼓动，煽动 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
158
advent
|
|
| n.(重要事件等的)到来，来临 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
159
fatality
|
|
| n.不幸，灾祸，天命 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
160
archer
|
|
| n.射手，弓箭手 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
161
odious
|
|
| adj.可憎的，讨厌的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
162
lapse
|
|
| n.过失，流逝，失效，抛弃信仰，间隔；vi.堕落，停止，失效，流逝；vt.使失效 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
163
mingled
|
|
| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
164
agitations
|
|
| （液体等的）摇动( agitation的名词复数 )； 鼓动； 激烈争论； （情绪等的）纷乱 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
165
subsided
|
|
| v.（土地）下陷（因在地下采矿）( subside的过去式和过去分词 )；减弱；下降至较低或正常水平；一下子坐在椅子等上 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
166
agonized
|
|
| v.使（极度）痛苦，折磨( agonize的过去式和过去分词 )；苦斗；苦苦思索；感到极度痛苦 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
167
constellations
|
|
| n.星座( constellation的名词复数 )；一群杰出人物；一系列（相关的想法、事物）；一群（相关的人） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
168
grassy
|
|
| adj.盖满草的；长满草的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
169
boughs
|
|
| 大树枝( bough的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
170
mighty
|
|
| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
171
annihilated
|
|
| v.（彻底）消灭( annihilate的过去式和过去分词 )；使无效；废止；彻底击溃 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
172
recurring
|
|
| adj.往复的，再次发生的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
173
pangs
|
|
| 突然的剧痛( pang的名词复数 )； 悲痛 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
174
suffocation
|
|
| n.窒息 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
175
intruding
|
|
| v.侵入，侵扰，打扰( intrude的现在分词)；把…强加于 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
176
submission
|
|
| n.服从，投降；温顺，谦虚；提出 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
177
triumphant
|
|
| adj.胜利的，成功的；狂欢的，喜悦的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
178
suspense
|
|
| n.（对可能发生的事）紧张感，担心，挂虑 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
179
revelled
|
|
| v.作乐( revel的过去式和过去分词 )；狂欢；着迷；陶醉 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
180
melancholy
|
|
| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
181
clairvoyant
|
|
| adj.有预见的；n.有预见的人 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
182
clairvoyants
|
|
| n.透视者，千里眼的人( clairvoyant的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
|
183
obtrusion
|
|
| n.强制，莽撞 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
184
inertia
|
|
| adj.惰性，惯性，懒惰，迟钝 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
185
relaxation
|
|
| n.松弛，放松；休息；消遣；娱乐 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
186
strenuous
|
|
| adj.奋发的，使劲的；紧张的；热烈的，狂热的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
187
plantations
|
|
| n.种植园，大农场( plantation的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
188
penetrate
|
|
| v.透(渗)入；刺入，刺穿；洞察，了解 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
189
exertion
|
|
| n.尽力，努力 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
190
fascinations
|
|
| n.魅力( fascination的名词复数 )；有魅力的东西；迷恋；陶醉 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
191
celebrity
|
|
| n.名人，名流；著名，名声，名望 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
192
accomplishments
|
|
| n.造诣；完成( accomplishment的名词复数 )；技能；成绩；成就 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
193
admiration
|
|
| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
194
attentive
|
|
| adj.注意的，专心的；关心(别人)的，殷勤的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
195
renewals
|
|
| 重建( renewal的名词复数 )； 更新； 重生； 合同的续订 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
196
narratives
|
|
| 记叙文( narrative的名词复数 )； 故事； 叙述； 叙述部分 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
197
susceptible
|
|
| adj.过敏的，敏感的；易动感情的，易受感动的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
198
flickered
|
|
| （通常指灯光）闪烁，摇曳( flicker的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
199
irrational
|
|
| adj.无理性的，失去理性的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
200
concealment
|
|
| n.隐藏, 掩盖，隐瞒 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
201
conceal
|
|
| v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
202
inaccessible
|
|
| adj.达不到的，难接近的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
203
insolence
|
|
| n.傲慢；无礼；厚颜；傲慢的态度 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
204
immediate
|
|
| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
205
solicitude
|
|
| n.焦虑 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
206
peculiar
|
|
| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
207
physically
|
|
| adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
208
transfusing
|
|
| v.输（血或别的液体）( transfuse的现在分词 )；渗透；使…被灌输或传达 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
|
209
arteries
|
|
| n.动脉( artery的名词复数 )；干线，要道 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
210
astounding
|
|
| adj.使人震惊的vt.使震惊，使大吃一惊astound的现在分词) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
211
apparatus
|
|
| n.装置，器械；器具，设备 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
212
provincial
|
|
| adj.省的，地方的；n．外省人，乡下人 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
213
awe
|
|
| n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
214
obstinate
|
|
| adj.顽固的，倔强的，不易屈服的，较难治愈的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
215
precisely
|
|
| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
216
devoted
|
|
| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
217
remains
|
|
| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
218
malevolent
|
|
| adj.有恶意的，恶毒的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
219
insinuate
|
|
| vt.含沙射影地说，暗示 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
220
chamber
|
|
| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
221
hovering
|
|
| 鸟( hover的现在分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
222
inquiry
|
|
| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
223
perspiration
|
|
| n.汗水；出汗 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
224
eyelids
|
|
| n.眼睑( eyelid的名词复数 )；眼睛也不眨一下；不露声色；面不改色 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
225
confirmation
|
|
| n.证实，确认，批准 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
226
attire
|
|
| v.穿衣，装扮[同]array；n.衣着；盛装 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
227
immortal
|
|
| adj.不朽的；永生的，不死的；神的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
228
artery
|
|
| n.干线，要道；动脉 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
229
respiration
|
|
| n.呼吸作用；一次呼吸；植物光合作用 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
230
transfusion
|
|
| n.输血，输液 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
231
wondrous
|
|
| adj.令人惊奇的，奇妙的；adv.惊人地；异乎寻常地；令人惊叹地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
232
gasping
|
|
| adj. 气喘的, 痉挛的 动词gasp的现在分词 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
233
murmur
|
|
| n.低语，低声的怨言；v.低语，低声而言 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
234
vengeance
|
|
| n.报复，报仇，复仇 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
235
texture
|
|
| n.(织物)质地；(材料)构造；结构；肌理 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
236
inscription
|
|
| n.（尤指石块上的）刻印文字，铭文，碑文 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |