When the night crept down in shadowy blue and silver they threaded the shimmering1 channel in the rowboat and, tying it to a jutting2 rock, began climbing the cliff together. The first shelf was ten feet up, wide, and furnishing a natural diving platform. There they sat down in the bright moonlight and watched the faint incessant3 surge of the waters almost stilled now as the tide set seaward.
“Are you happy?” he asked suddenly.
She nodded.
“Always happy near the sea. You know,” she went on, “I’ve been thinking all day that you and I are somewhat alike. We’re both rebels — only for different reasons. Two years ago, when I was just eighteen and you were ——”
“Twenty-five.”
“—— well, we were both conventional successes. I was an utterly4 devastating5 débutante and you were a prosperous musician just commissioned in the army ——”
“Gentleman by act of Congress,” he put in ironically.
“Well, at any rate, we both fitted. If our corners were not rubbed off they were at least pulled in. But deep in us both was something that made us require more for happiness. I didn’t know what I wanted. I went from man to man, restless, impatient, month by month getting less acquiescent6 and more dissatisfied. I used to sit sometimes chewing at the insides of my mouth and thinking I was going crazy — I had a frightful7 sense of transiency. I wanted things now — now — now! Here I was — beautiful — I am, aren’t I?”
“Yes,” agreed Carlyle tentatively.
Ardita rose suddenly.
“Wait a second. I want to try this delightful-looking sea.”
She walked to the end of the ledge8 and shot out over the sea, doubling up in mid-air and then straightening out and entering to water straight as a blade in a perfect jack-knife dive.
In a minute her voice floated up to him.
“You see, I used to read all day and most of the night. I began to resent society ——”
“Come on up here,” he interrupted. “What on earth are you doing?”
“Just floating round on my back. I’ll be up in a minute. Let me tell you. The only thing I enjoyed was shocking people; wearing something quite impossible and quite charming to a fancy-dress party, going round with the fastest men in New York, and getting into some of the most hellish scrapes imaginable.”
The sounds of splashing mingled9 with her words, and then he heard her hurried breathing as she began climbing up side to the ledge.
“Go on in!” she called
Obediently he rose and dived. When he emerged, dripping, and made the climb he found that she was no longer on the ledge, but after a frightened he heard her light laughter from another shelf ten feet up. There he joined her and they both sat quietly for a moment, their arms clasped round their knees, panting a little from the climb.
“The family were wild,” she said suddenly. “They tried to marry me off. And then when I’d begun to feel that after all life was scarcely worth living I found something”— her eyes went skyward exultantly10 ——“I found something!”
Carlyle waited and her words came with a rush.
“Courage — just that; courage as a rule of life, and something to cling to always. I began to build up this enormous faith in myself. I began to see that in all my idols11 in the past some manifestation12 of courage had unconsciously been the thing that attracted me. I began separating courage from the other things of life. All sorts of courage — the beaten, bloody13 prize-fighter coming up for more — I used to make men take me to prize-fights; the déclassé woman sailing through a nest of cats and looking at them as if they were mud under her feet; the liking14 what you like always; the utter disregard for other people’s opinions — just to live as I liked always and to die in my own way — Did you bring up the cigarettes?”
He handed one over and held a match for her gently.
“Still,” Ardita continued, “the men kept gathering15 — old men and young men, my mental and physical inferiors, most of them, but all intensely desiring to have me — to own this rather magnificent proud tradition I’d built up round me. Do you see?”
“Sort of. You never were beaten and you never apologized.”
“Never!”
She sprang to the edge, poised16 for a moment like a crucified figure against the sky; then describing a dark parabola plunked without a slash17 between two silver ripples18 twenty feet below.
Her voice floated up to him again.
“And courage to me meant ploughing through that dull gray mist that comes down on life — not only overriding19 people and circumstances but overriding the bleakness20 of living. A sort of insistence21 on the value of life and the worth of transient things.”
She was climbing up now, and at her last words her head, with the damp yellow hair slicked symmetrically back appeared on his level.
“All very well,” objected Carlyle. “You can call it courage, but your courage is really built, after all, on a pride of birth. You were bred to that defiant22 attitude. On my gray days even courage is one of the things that’s gray and lifeless.”
She was sitting near the edge, hugging her knees and gazing abstractedly at the white moon; he was farther back, crammed23 like a grotesque24 god into a niche25 in the rock.
“I don’t want to sound like Pollyanna,” she began, “but you haven’t grasped me yet. My courage is faith — faith in the eternal resilience of me — that joy’ll come back, and hope and spontaneity. And I feel that till it does I’ve got to keep my lips shut and my chin high, and my eyes wide — not necessarily any silly smiling. Oh, I’ve been through hell without a whine26 quite often — and the female hell is deadlier than the male.”
“But supposing,” suggested Carlyle” that before joy and hope and all that came back the curtain was drawn27 on you for good?”
Ardita rose, and going to the wall climbed with some difficulty to the next ledge, another ten or fifteen feet above.
“Why,” she called back “then I’d have won!”
He edged out till he could see her.
“Better not dive from there! You’ll break your back,” he said quickly.
She laughed.
“Not I!”
Slowly she spread her arms and stood there swan-like, radiating a pride in her young perfection that lit a warm glow in Carlyle’s heart.
“We’re going through the black air with our arms wide and our feet straight out behind like a dolphin’s tail, and we’re going to think we’ll never hit the silver down there till suddenly it’ll be all warm round us and full of little kissing, caressing28 waves.”
Then she was in the air, and Carlyle involuntarily held his breath. He had not realized that the dive was nearly forty feet. It seemed an eternity29 before he heard the swift compact sound as she reached the sea.
And it was with his glad sigh of relief when her light watery30 laughter curled up the side of the cliff and into his anxious ears that he knew he loved her.
收听单词发音 |
1
shimmering
|
|
| v.闪闪发光，发微光( shimmer的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
jutting
|
|
| v.（使）突出( jut的现在分词 )；伸出；（从…）突出；高出 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
incessant
|
|
| adj.不停的，连续的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
utterly
|
|
| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
devastating
|
|
| adj.毁灭性的，令人震惊的，强有力的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
acquiescent
|
|
| adj.默许的，默认的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
frightful
|
|
| adj.可怕的；讨厌的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
ledge
|
|
| n.壁架，架状突出物；岩架，岩礁 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
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： |
|
|
|
|
10
exultantly
|
|
| adv.狂欢地，欢欣鼓舞地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
idols
|
|
| 偶像( idol的名词复数 )； 受崇拜的人或物； 受到热爱和崇拜的人或物； 神像 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
manifestation
|
|
| n.表现形式；表明；现象 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
bloody
|
|
| adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
liking
|
|
| n.爱好；嗜好；喜欢 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
gathering
|
|
| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
poised
|
|
| a.摆好姿势不动的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
slash
|
|
| vi.大幅度削减；vt.猛砍，尖锐抨击，大幅减少；n.猛砍，斜线，长切口，衣衩 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
ripples
|
|
| 逐渐扩散的感觉( ripple的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
overriding
|
|
| a.最主要的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
bleakness
|
|
| adj. 萧瑟的, 严寒的, 阴郁的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
insistence
|
|
| n.坚持；强调；坚决主张 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
defiant
|
|
| adj.无礼的，挑战的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
crammed
|
|
| adj.塞满的，挤满的；大口地吃；快速贪婪地吃v.把…塞满；填入；临时抱佛脚( cram的过去式) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
grotesque
|
|
| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
25
niche
|
|
| n.壁龛；合适的职务(环境、位置等) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
26
whine
|
|
| v.哀号，号哭；n.哀鸣 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
27
drawn
|
|
| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
28
caressing
|
|
| 爱抚的，表现爱情的，亲切的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
29
eternity
|
|
| n.不朽，来世；永恒，无穷 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
30
watery
|
|
| adj.有水的，水汪汪的；湿的，湿润的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |