She would have admitted indeed that it consisted of little more than the fact that his absences, however frequent and however long, always ended with his turning up again. It was nobody’s business in the world but her own if that fact continued to be enough for her. It was of course not enough just in itself; what it had taken on to make it so was the extraordinary possession of the elements of his life that memory and attention had at last given her. There came a day when this possession on the girl’s part actually seemed to enjoy between them, while their eyes met, a tacit recognition that was half a joke and half a deep solemnity. He bade her good morning always now; he often quite raised his hat to her. He passed a remark when there was time or room, and once she went so far as to say to him that she hadn’t seen him for “ages.” “Ages” was the word she consciously and carefully, though a trifle tremulously used; “ages” was exactly what she meant. To this he replied in terms doubtless less anxiously selected, but perhaps on that account not the less remarkable1, “Oh yes, hasn’t it been awfully2 wet?” That was a specimen3 of their give and take; it fed her fancy that no form of intercourse4 so transcendent and distilled5 had ever been established on earth. Everything, so far as they chose to consider it so, might mean almost anything. The want of margin6 in the cage, when he peeped through the bars, wholly ceased to be appreciable7. It was a drawback only in superficial commerce. With Captain Everard she had simply the margin of the universe. It may be imagined therefore how their unuttered reference to all she knew about him could in this immensity play at its ease. Every time he handed in a telegram it was an addition to her knowledge: what did his constant smile mean to mark if it didn’t mean to mark that? He never came into the place without saying to her in this manner: “Oh yes, you have me by this time so completely at your mercy that it doesn’t in the least matter what I give you now. You’ve become a comfort, I assure you!”
She had only two torments8; the greatest of which was that she couldn’t, not even once or twice, touch with him on some individual fact. She would have given anything to have been able to allude9 to one of his friends by name, to one of his engagements by date, to one of his difficulties by the solution. She would have given almost as much for just the right chance — it would have to be tremendously right — to show him in some sharp sweet way that she had perfectly10 penetrated11 the greatest of these last and now lived with it in a kind of heroism12 of sympathy. He was in love with a woman to whom, and to any view of whom, a lady-telegraphist, and especially one who passed a life among hams and cheeses, was as the sand on the floor; and what her dreams desired was the possibility of its somehow coming to him that her own interest in him could take a pure and noble account of such an infatuation and even of such an impropriety. As yet, however, she could only rub along with the hope that an accident, sooner or later, might give her a lift toward popping out with something that would surprise and perhaps even, some fine day, assist him. What could people mean moreover — cheaply sarcastic13 people — by not feeling all that could be got out of the weather? She felt it all, and seemed literally14 to feel it most when she went quite wrong, speaking of the stuffy15 days as cold, of the cold ones as stuffy, and betraying how little she knew, in her cage, of whether it was foul16 or fair. It was for that matter always stuffy at Cocker’s, and she finally settled down to the safe proposition that the outside element was “changeable.” Anything seemed true that made him so radiantly assent17.
This indeed is a small specimen of her cultivation18 of insidious19 ways of making things easy for him — ways to which of course she couldn’t be at all sure he did real justice. Real justice was not of this world: she had had too often to come back to that; yet, strangely, happiness was, and her traps had to be set for it in a manner to keep them unperceived by Mr. Buckton and the counter-clerk. The most she could hope for apart from the question, which constantly flickered20 up and died down, of the divine chance of his consciously liking21 her, would be that, without analysing it, he should arrive at a vague sense that Cocker’s was — well, attractive; easier, smoother, sociably22 brighter, slightly more picturesque23, in short more propitious24 in general to his little affairs, than any other establishment just thereabouts. She was quite aware that they couldn’t be, in so huddled25 a hole, particularly quick; but she found her account in the slowness — she certainly could bear it if he could. The great pang26 was that just thereabouts post-offices were so awfully thick. She was always seeing him in imagination in other places and with other girls. But she would defy any other girl to follow him as she followed. And though they weren’t, for so many reasons, quick at Cocker’s, she could hurry for him when, through an intimation light as air, she gathered that he was pressed.
When hurry was, better still, impossible, it was because of the pleasantest thing of all, the particular element of their contact — she would have called it their friendship — that consisted of an almost humorous treatment of the look of some of his words. They would never perhaps have grown half so intimate if he had not, by the blessing27 of heaven, formed some of his letters with a queerness —! It was positive that the queerness could scarce have been greater if he had practised it for the very purpose of bringing their heads together over it as far as was possible to heads on different sides of a wire fence. It had taken her truly but once or twice to master these tricks, but, at the cost of striking him perhaps as stupid, she could still challenge them when circumstances favoured. The great circumstance that favoured was that she sometimes actually believed he knew she only feigned28 perplexity. If he knew it therefore he tolerated it; if he tolerated it he came back; and if he came back he liked her. This was her seventh heaven; and she didn’t ask much of his liking — she only asked of it to reach the point of his not going away because of her own. He had at times to be away for weeks; he had to lead lets life; he had to travel — there were places to which he was constantly wiring for “rooms”: all this she granted him, forgave him; in fact, in the long run, literally blessed and thanked him for. If he had to lead his life, that precisely29 fostered his leading it so much by telegraph: therefore the benediction30 was to come in when he could. That was all she asked — that he shouldn’t wholly deprive her.
Sometimes she almost felt that he couldn’t have deprived her even had he been minded, by reason of the web of revelation that was woven between them. She quite thrilled herself with thinking what, with such a lot of material, a bad girl would do. It would be a scene better than many in her ha’penny novels, this going to him in the dusk of evening at Park Chambers31 and letting him at last have it. “I know too much about a certain person now not to put it to you — excuse my being so lurid32 — that it’s quite worth your while to buy me off. Come, therefore; buy me!” There was a point indeed at which such flights had to drop again — the point of an unreadiness to name, when it came to that, the purchasing medium. It wouldn’t certainly be anything so gross as money, and the matter accordingly remained rather vague, all the more that she was not a bad girl. It wasn’t for any such reason as might have aggravated33 a mere34 minx that she often hoped he would again bring Cissy. The difficulty of this, however, was constantly present to her, for the kind of communion to which Cocker’s so richly ministered rested on the fact that Cissy and he were so often in different places. She knew by this time all the places — Suchbury, Monkhouse, Whiteroy, Finches — and even how the parties on these occasions were composed; but her subtlety35 found ways to make her knowledge fairly protect and promote their keeping, as she had heard Mrs. Jordan say, in touch. So, when he actually sometimes smiled as if he really felt the awkwardness of giving her again one of the same old addresses, all her being went out in the desire — which her face must have expressed — that he should recognise her forbearance to criticise36 as one of the finest tenderest sacrifices a woman had ever made for love.
收听单词发音 |
1
remarkable
|
|
| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
awfully
|
|
| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
specimen
|
|
| n.样本，标本 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
intercourse
|
|
| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
distilled
|
|
| adj.由蒸馏得来的v.蒸馏( distil的过去式和过去分词 )；从…提取精华 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
margin
|
|
| n.页边空白；差额；余地，余裕；边，边缘 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
appreciable
|
|
| adj.明显的，可见的，可估量的，可觉察的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
torments
|
|
| （肉体或精神上的）折磨，痛苦( torment的名词复数 )； 造成痛苦的事物[人] | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
allude
|
|
| v.提及，暗指 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
perfectly
|
|
| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
penetrated
|
|
| adj. 击穿的，鞭辟入里的 动词penetrate的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
heroism
|
|
| n.大无畏精神，英勇 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
sarcastic
|
|
| adj.讥讽的，讽刺的，嘲弄的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
literally
|
|
| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
stuffy
|
|
| adj.不透气的，闷热的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
foul
|
|
| adj.污秽的；邪恶的；v.弄脏；妨害；犯规；n.犯规 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
assent
|
|
| v.批准，认可；n.批准，认可 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
cultivation
|
|
| n.耕作，培养，栽培（法），养成 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
insidious
|
|
| adj.阴险的，隐匿的，暗中为害的，（疾病）不知不觉之间加剧 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
flickered
|
|
| （通常指灯光）闪烁，摇曳( flicker的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
liking
|
|
| n.爱好；嗜好；喜欢 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
sociably
|
|
| adv.成群地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
picturesque
|
|
| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
propitious
|
|
| adj.吉利的；顺利的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
25
huddled
|
|
| 挤在一起（huddle的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
26
pang
|
|
| n.剧痛，悲痛，苦闷 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
27
blessing
|
|
| n.祈神赐福；祷告；祝福，祝愿 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
28
feigned
|
|
| a.假装的，不真诚的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
29
precisely
|
|
| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
30
benediction
|
|
| n.祝福；恩赐 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
31
chambers
|
|
| n.房间( chamber的名词复数 )；（议会的）议院；卧室；会议厅 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
32
lurid
|
|
| adj.可怕的；血红的；苍白的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
33
aggravated
|
|
| 使恶化( aggravate的过去式和过去分词 )； 使更严重； 激怒； 使恼火 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
34
mere
|
|
| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
35
subtlety
|
|
| n.微妙，敏锐，精巧；微妙之处，细微的区别 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
36
criticise
|
|
| v.批评，评论；非难 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |