Section 1
I CANNOT now remember (the story resumed), what interval1 separated that evening on which Parload first showed me the comet — I think I only pretended to see it then — and the Sunday afternoon I spent at Checkshill.
Between the two there was time enough for me to give notice and leave Rawdon’s, to seek for some other situation very strenuously2 in vain, to think and say many hard and violent things to my mother and to Parload, and to pass through some phases of very profound wretchedness. There must have been a passionate3 correspondence with Nettie, but all the froth and fury of that has faded now out of my memory. All I have clear now is that I wrote one magnificent farewell to her, casting her off forever, and that I got in reply a prim4 little note to say, that even if there was to be an end to everything, that was no excuse for writing such things as I had done, and then I think I wrote again in a vein5 I considered satirical. To that she did not reply. That interval was at least three weeks, and probably four, because the comet which had been on the first occasion only a dubious6 speck7 in the sky, certainly visible only when it was magnified, was now a great white presence, brighter than Jupiter, and casting a shadow on its own account. It was now actively8 present in the world of human thought, every one was talking about it, every one was looking for its waxing splendor9 as the sun went down — the papers, the music-halls, the hoardings, echoed it.
Yes; the comet was already dominant10 before I went over to make everything clear to Nettie. And Parload had spent two hoarded11 pounds in buying himself a spectroscope, so that he could see for himself, night after night, that mysterious, that stimulating12 line — the unknown line in the green. How many times I wonder did I look at the smudgy, quivering symbol of the unknown things that were rushing upon us out of the inhuman13 void, before I rebelled? But at last I could stand it no longer, and I reproached Parload very bitterly for wasting his time in “astronomical dilettantism14.”
“Here,” said I. “We’re on the verge15 of the biggest lock-out in the history of this countryside; here’s distress16 and hunger coming, here’s all the capitalistic competitive system like a wound inflamed17, and you spend your time gaping18 at that damned silly streak19 of nothing in the sky!”
Parload stared at me. “Yes, I do,” he said slowly, as though it was a new idea. “Don’t I? . . . I wonder why.”
“I want to start meetings of an evening on Howden’s Waste.”
“You think they’d listen?”
“They’d listen fast enough now.”
“They didn’t before,” said Parload, looking at his pet instrument.
“There was a demonstration20 of unemployed21 at Swathinglea on Sunday. They got to stone throwing.”
Parload said nothing for a little while and I said several things. He seemed to be considering something.
“But, after all,” he said at last, with an awkward movement towards his spectroscope, “that does signify something.”
“The comet?”
“Yes.”
“What can it signify? You don’t want me to believe in astrology. What does it matter what flames in the heavens — when men are starving on earth?”
“It’s — it’s science.”
“Science! What we want now is socialism — not science.”
He still seemed reluctant to give up his comet.
“Socialism’s all right,” he said, “but if that thing up there WAS to hit the earth it might matter.”
“Nothing matters but human beings.”
“Suppose it killed them all.”
“Oh,” said I, “that’s Rot,”
“I wonder,” said Parload, dreadfully divided in his allegiance.
He looked at the comet. He seemed on the verge of repeating his growing information about the nearness of the paths of the earth and comet, and all that might ensue from that. So I cut in with something I had got out of a now forgotten writer called Ruskin, a volcano of beautiful language and nonsensical suggestions, who prevailed very greatly with eloquent22 excitable young men in those days. Something it was about the insignificance23 of science and the supreme24 importance of Life. Parload stood listening, half turned towards the sky with the tips of his fingers on his spectroscope. He seemed to come to a sudden decision.
“No. I don’t agree with you, Leadford,” he said. “You don’t understand about science.”
Parload rarely argued with that bluntness of opposition25. I was so used to entire possession of our talk that his brief contradiction struck me like a blow. “Don’t agree with me!” I repeated.
“No,” said Parload
“But how?”
“I believe science is of more importance than socialism,” he said. “Socialism’s a theory. Science — science is something more.”
And that was really all he seemed to be able to say.
We embarked26 upon one of those queer arguments illiterate27 young men used always to find so heating. Science or Socialism? It was, of course, like arguing which is right, left handedness or a taste for onions, it was altogether impossible opposition. But the range of my rhetoric28 enabled me at last to exasperate29 Parload, and his mere30 repudiation31 of my conclusions sufficed to exasperate me, and we ended in the key of a positive quarrel. “Oh, very well!” said I. “So long as I know where we are!”
I slammed his door as though I dynamited32 his house, and went raging down the street, but I felt that he was already back at the window worshiping his blessed line in the green, before I got round the corner.
I had to walk for an hour or so, before I was cool enough to go home.
And it was Parload who had first introduced me to socialism!
The most extraordinary things used to run through my head in those days. I will confess that my mind ran persistently35 that evening upon revolutions after the best French pattern, and I sat on a Committee of Safety and tried backsliders. Parload was there, among the prisoners, backsliderissimus, aware too late of the error of his ways. His hands were tied behind his back ready for the shambles36; through the open door one heard the voice of justice, the rude justice of the people. I was sorry, but I had to do my duty.
“If we punish those who would betray us to Kings,” said I, with a sorrowful deliberation, “how much the more must we punish those who would give over the State to the pursuit of useless knowledge”; and so with a gloomy satisfaction sent him off to the guillotine.
“Ah, Parload! Parload! If only you’d listened to me earlier, Parload.” . .
None the less that quarrel made me extremely unhappy. Parload was my only gossip, and it cost me much to keep away from him and think evil of him with no one to listen to me, evening after evening.
That was a very miserable37 time for me, even before my last visit to Checkshill. My long unemployed hours hung heavily on my hands. I kept away from home all day, partly to support a fiction that I was sedulously38 seeking another situation, and partly to escape the persistent34 question in my mother’s eyes. “Why did you quarrel with Mr. Rawdon? Why DID you? Why do you keep on going about with a sullen39 face and risk offending IT more? I spent most of the morning in the newspaper-room of the public library, writing impossible applications for impossible posts — I remember that among other things of the sort I offered my services to a firm of private detectives, a sinister40 breed of traders upon base jealousies41 now happily vanished from the world, and wrote apropos42 of an advertisement for “stevedores” that I did not know what the duties of a stevedore43 might be, but that I was apt and willing to learn — and in the afternoons and evenings I wandered through the strange lights and shadows of my native valley and hated all created things. Until my wanderings were checked by the discovery that I was wearing out my boots.
The stagnant45 inconclusive malaria46 of that time!
I perceive that I was an evil-tempered, ill-disposed youth with a great capacity for hatred47, BUT—
There was an excuse for hate.
It was wrong of me to hate individuals, to be rude, harsh, and vindictive48 to this person or that, but indeed it would have been equally wrong to have taken the manifest offer life made me, without resentment49. I see now clearly and calmly, what I then felt obscurely and with an unbalanced intensity50, that my conditions were intolerable. My work was tedious and laborious52 and it took up an unreasonable53 proportion of my time, I was ill clothed, ill fed, ill housed, ill educated and ill trained, my will was suppressed and cramped54 to the pitch of torture, I had no reasonable pride in myself and no reasonable chance of putting anything right. It was a life hardly worth living. That a large proportion of the people about me had no better a lot, that many had a worse, does not affect these facts. It was a life in which contentment would have been disgraceful. If some of them were contented56 or resigned, so much the worse for every one. No doubt it was hasty and foolish of me to throw up my situation, but everything was so obviously aimless and foolish in our social organization that I do not feel disposed to blame myself even for that, except in so far as it pained my mother and caused her anxiety.
Think of the one comprehensive fact of the lock-out!
That year was a bad year, a year of world-wide economic disorganization. Through their want of intelligent direction the great “Trust” of American ironmasters, a gang of energetic, narrow-minded furnace owners, had smelted57 far more iron than the whole world had any demand for. (In those days there existed no means of estimating any need of that sort beforehand.) They had done this without even consulting the ironmasters of any other country. During their period of activity they had drawn58 into their employment a great number of workers, and had erected59 a huge productive plant. It is manifestly just that people who do headlong stupid things of this sort should suffer, but in the old days it was quite possible, it was customary for the real blunderers in such disasters, to shift nearly all the consequences of their incapacity. No one thought it wrong for a light-witted “captain of industry” who had led his workpeople into overproduction, into the disproportionate manufacture, that is to say, of some particular article, to abandon and dismiss them, nor was there anything to prevent the sudden frantic60 underselling of some trade rival in order to surprise and destroy his trade, secure his customers for one’s own destined61 needs, and shift a portion of one’s punishment upon him. This operation of spasmodic underselling was known as “dumping.” The American ironmasters were now dumping on the British market. The British employers were, of course, taking their loss out of their workpeople as much as possible, but in addition they were agitating62 for some legislation that would prevent — not stupid relative excess in production, but “dumping”— not the disease, but the consequences of the disease. The necessary knowledge to prevent either dumping or its causes, the uncorrelated production of commodities, did not exist, but this hardly weighed with them at all, and in answer to their demands there had arisen a curious party of retaliatory-protectionists who combined vague proposals for spasmodic responses to these convulsive attacks from foreign manufacturers, with the very evident intention of achieving financial adventures. The dishonest and reckless elements were indeed so evident in this movement as to add very greatly to the general atmosphere of distrust and insecurity, and in the recoil63 from the prospect64 of fiscal65 power in the hands of the class of men known as the “New Financiers,” one heard frightened old-fashioned statesmen asserting with passion that “dumping” didn’t occur, or that it was a very charming sort of thing to happen. Nobody would face and handle the rather intricate truth of the business. The whole effect upon the mind of a cool observer was of a covey of unsubstantial jabbering66 minds drifting over a series of irrational67 economic cataclysms68, prices and employment tumbled about like towers in an earthquake, and amidst the shifting masses were the common work-people going on with their lives as well as they could, suffering, perplexed69, unorganized, and for anything but violent, fruitless protests, impotent. You cannot hope now to understand the infinite want of adjustment in the old order of things. At one time there were people dying of actual starvation in India, while men were burning unsalable wheat in America. It sounds like the account of a particularly mad dream, does it not? It was a dream, a dream from which no one on earth expected an awakening70.
To us youngsters with the positiveness, the rationalism of youth, it seemed that the strikes and lockouts, the overproduction and misery71 could not possibly result simply from ignorance and want of thought and feeling. We needed more dramatic factors than these mental fogs, these mere atmospheric72 devils. We fled therefore to that common refuge of the unhappy ignorant, a belief in callous73 insensate plots — we called them “plots”— against the poor.
You can still see how we figured it in any museum by looking up the caricatures of capital and labor51 that adorned74 the German and American socialistic papers of the old time.
Section 2
I had cast Nettie off in an eloquent epistle, had really imagined the affair was over forever —“I’ve done with women,” I said to Parload — and then there was silence for more than a week.
Before that week was over I was wondering with a growing emotion what next would happen between us.
I found myself thinking constantly of Nettie, picturing her — sometimes with stern satisfaction, sometimes with sympathetic remorse75 — mourning, regretting, realizing the absolute end that had come between us. At the bottom of my heart I no more believed that there was an end between us, than that an end would come to the world. Had we not kissed one another, had we not achieved an atmosphere of whispering nearness, breached76 our virgin77 shyness with one another? Of course she was mine, of course I was hers, and separations and final quarrels and harshness and distance were no more than flourishes upon that eternal fact. So at least I felt the thing, however I shaped my thoughts.
Whenever my imagination got to work as that week drew to its close, she came in as a matter of course, I thought of her recurrently all day and dreamt of her at night. On Saturday night I dreamt of her very vividly78. Her face was flushed and wet with tears, her hair a little disordered, and when I spoke79 to her she turned away. In some manner this dream left in my mind a feeling of distress and anxiety. In the morning I had a raging thirst to see her.
That Sunday my mother wanted me to go to church very particularly. She had a double reason for that; she thought that it would certainly exercise a favorable influence upon my search for a situation throughout the next week, and in addition Mr. Gabbitas, with a certain mystery behind his glasses, had promised to see what he could do for me, and she wanted to keep him up to that promise. I half consented, and then my desire for Nettie took hold of me. I told my mother I wasn’t going to church, and set off about eleven to walk the seventeen miles to Checkshill.
It greatly intensified81 the fatigue82 of that long tramp that the sole of my boot presently split at the toe, and after I had cut the flapping portion off, a nail worked through and began to torment83 me. However, the boot looked all right after that operation and gave no audible hint of my discomfort84. I got some bread and cheese at a little inn on the way, and was in Checkshill park about four. I did not go by the road past the house and so round to the gardens, but cut over the crest85 beyond the second keeper’s cottage, along a path Nettie used to call her own. It was a mere deer track. It led up a miniature valley and through a pretty dell in which we had been accustomed to meet, and so through the hollies86 and along a narrow path close by the wall of the shrubbery to the gardens.
In my memory that walk through the park before I came upon Nettie stands out very vividly. The long tramp before it is foreshortened to a mere effect of dusty road and painful boot, but the bracken valley and sudden tumult87 of doubts and unwonted expectations that came to me, stands out now as something significant, as something unforgettable, something essential to the meaning of all that followed. Where should I meet her? What would she say? I had asked these questions before and found an answer. Now they came again with a trail of fresh implications and I had no answer for them at all. As I approached Nettie she ceased to be the mere butt88 of my egotistical self-projection, the custodian89 of my sexual pride, and drew together and became over and above this a personality of her own, a personality and a mystery, a sphinx I had evaded90 only to meet again.
I find a little difficulty in describing the quality of the old-world love-making so that it may be understandable now.
We young people had practically no preparation at all for the stir and emotions of adolescence91. Towards the young the world maintained a conspiracy92 of stimulating silences. There came no initiation93. There were books, stories of a curiously94 conventional kind that insisted on certain qualities in every love affair and greatly intensified one’s natural desire for them, perfect trust, perfect loyalty95, lifelong devotion. Much of the complex essentials of love were altogether hidden. One read these things, got accidental glimpses of this and that, wondered and forgot, and so one grew. Then strange emotions, novel alarming desires, dreams strangely charged with feeling; an inexplicable96 impulse of self-abandonment began to tickle97 queerly amongst the familiar purely98 egotistical and materialistic99 things of boyhood and girlhood. We were like misguided travelers who had camped in the dry bed of a tropical river. Presently we were knee deep and neck deep in the flood. Our beings were suddenly going out from ourselves seeking other beings — we knew not why. This novel craving100 for abandonment to some one of the other sex, bore us away. We were ashamed and full of desire. We kept the thing a guilty secret, and were resolved to satisfy it against all the world. In this state it was we drifted in the most accidental way against some other blindly seeking creature, and linked like nascent101 atoms.
We were obsessed102 by the books we read, by all the talk about us that once we had linked ourselves we were linked for life. Then afterwards we discovered that other was also an egotism, a thing of ideas and impulses, that failed to correspond with ours.
So it was, I say, with the young of my class and most of the young people in our world. So it came about that I sought Nettie on the Sunday afternoon and suddenly came upon her, light bodied, slenderly feminine, hazel eyed, with her soft sweet young face under the shady brim of her hat of straw, the pretty Venus I had resolved should be wholly and exclusively mine.
There, all unaware103 of me still, she stood, my essential feminine, the embodiment of the inner thing in life for me — and moreover an unknown other, a person like myself.
She held a little book in her hand, open as if she were walking along and reading it. That chanced to be her pose, but indeed she was standing104 quite still, looking away towards the gray and lichenous105 shrubbery wall and, as I think now, listening. Her lips were a little apart, curved to that faint, sweet shadow of a smile.
Section 3
I recall with a vivid precision her queer start when she heard the rustle106 of my approaching feet, her surprise, her eyes almost of dismay for me. I could recollect107, I believe, every significant word she spoke during our meeting, and most of what I said to her. At least, it seems I could, though indeed I may deceive myself. But I will not make the attempt. We were both too ill-educated to speak our full meanings, we stamped out our feelings with clumsy stereotyped108 phrases; you who are better taught would fail to catch our intention. The effect would be inanity109. But our first words I may give you, because though they conveyed nothing to me at the time, afterwards they meant much.
“YOU, Willie!” she said.
“I have come,” I said — forgetting in the instant all the elaborate things I had intended to say. “I thought I would surprise you —”
“Surprise me?”
“Yes.”
She stared at me for a moment. I can see her pretty face now as it looked at me — her impenetrable dear face. She laughed a queer little laugh and her color went for a moment, and then so soon as she had spoken, came back again.
“Surprise me at what?” she said with a rising note.
I was too intent to explain myself to think of what might lie in that.
“I wanted to tell you,” I said, “that I didn’t mean quite . . . the things I put in my letter.”
Section 4
When I and Nettie had been sixteen we had been just of an age and contemporaries altogether. Now we were a year and three-quarters older, and she — her metamorphosis was almost complete, and I was still only at the beginning of a man’s long adolescence.
In an instant she grasped the situation. The hidden motives110 of her quick ripened111 little mind flashed out their intuitive scheme of action. She treated me with that neat perfection of understanding a young woman has for a boy.
“But how did you come?” she asked.
I told her I had walked.
“Walked!” In an instant she was leading me towards the gardens. I MUST be tired. I must come home with her at once and sit down. Indeed it was near tea-time (the Stuarts had tea at the old-fashioned hour of five). Every one would be SO surprised to see me. Fancy walking! Fancy! But she supposed a man thought nothing of seventeen miles. When COULD I have started!
All the while, keeping me at a distance, without even the touch of her hand.
“But, Nettie! I came over to talk to you?”
“My dear boy! Tea first, if you please! And besides — aren’t we talking?”
The “dear boy” was a new note, that sounded oddly to me.
She quickened her pace a little.
“I wanted to explain —” I began.
Whatever I wanted to explain I had no chance to do so. I said a few discrepant112 things that she answered rather by her intonation113 than her words.
When we were well past the shrubbery, she slackened a little in her urgency, and so we came along the slope under the beeches114 to the garden. She kept her bright, straightforward-looking girlish eyes on me as we went; it seemed she did so all the time, but now I know, better than I did then, that every now and then she glanced over me and behind me towards the shrubbery. And all the while, behind her quick breathless inconsecutive talk she was thinking.
Her dress marked the end of her transition.
Can I recall it?
Not, I am afraid, in the terms a woman would use. But her bright brown hair, which had once flowed down her back in a jolly pig-tail tied with a bit of scarlet115 ribbon, was now caught up into an intricacy of pretty curves above her little ear and cheek, and the soft long lines of her neck; her white dress had descended116 to her feet; her slender waist, which had once been a mere geographical117 expression, an imaginary line like the equator, was now a thing of flexible beauty. A year ago she had been a pretty girl’s face sticking out from a little unimportant frock that was carried upon an extremely active and efficient pair of brown-stockinged legs. Now there was coming a strange new body that flowed beneath her clothes with a sinuous118 insistence119. Every movement, and particularly the novel droop120 of her hand and arm to the unaccustomed skirts she gathered about her, and a graceful55 forward inclination121 that had come to her, called softly to my eyes. A very fine scarf — I suppose you would call it a scarf — of green gossamer122, that some new wakened instinct had told her to fling about her shoulders, clung now closely to the young undulations of her body, and now streamed fluttering out for a moment in a breath of wind, and like some shy independent tentacle123 with a secret to impart, came into momentary124 contact with my arm.
She caught it back and reproved it.
We went through the green gate in the high garden wall. I held it open for her to pass through, for this was one of my restricted stock of stiff politenesses, and then for a second she was near touching125 me. So we came to the trim array of flower-beds near the head gardener’s cottage and the vistas126 of “glass” on our left. We walked between the box edgings and beds of begonias and into the shadow of a yew127 hedge within twenty yards of that very pond with the gold-fish, at whose brim we had plighted128 our vows129, and so we came to the wistaria-smothered porch.
The door was wide open, and she walked in before me. “Guess who has come to see us!” she cried.
Her father answered indistinctly from the parlor130, and a chair creaked. I judged he was disturbed in his nap.
“Mother!” she called in her clear young voice. “Puss!”
Puss was her sister.
She told them in a marveling key that I had walked all the way from Clayton, and they gathered about me and echoed her notes of surprise.
“You’d better sit down, Willie,” said her father; “now you hae got here. How’s your mother?”
He looked at me curiously as he spoke.
He was dressed in his Sunday clothes, a sort of brownish tweeds, but the waistcoat was unbuttoned for greater comfort in his slumbers131. He was a brown-eyed ruddy man, and I still have now in my mind the bright effect of the red-golden hairs that started out from his cheek to flow down into his beard. He was short but strongly built, and his beard and mustache were the biggest things about him. She had taken all the possibility of beauty he possessed132, his clear skin, his bright hazel-brown eyes, and wedded133 them to a certain quickness she got from her mother. Her mother I remember as a sharp-eyed woman of great activity; she seems to me now to have been perpetually bringing in or taking out meals or doing some such service, and to me — for my mother’s sake and my own — she was always welcoming and kind. Puss was a youngster of fourteen perhaps, of whom a hard bright stare, and a pale skin like her mother’s, are the chief traces on my memory. All these people were very kind to me, and among them there was a common recognition, sometimes very agreeably finding expression, that I was —“clever.” They all stood about me as if they were a little at a loss.
“Sit down!” said her father. “Give him a chair, Puss.”
We talked a little stiffly — they were evidently surprised by my sudden apparition134, dusty, fatigued135, and white faced; but Nettie did not remain to keep the conversation going.
“There!” she cried suddenly, as if she were vexed136. “I declare!” and she darted137 out of the room.
“Lord! what a girl it is!” said Mrs. Stuart. “I don’t know what’s come to her.”
It was half an hour before Nettie came back. It seemed a long time to me, and yet she had been running, for when she came in again she was out of breath. In the meantime, I had thrown out casually138 that I had given up my place at Rawdon’s. “I can do better than that,” I said.
“I left my book in the dell,” she said, panting. “Is tea ready?” and that was her apology. . .
We didn’t shake down into comfort even with the coming of the tea-things. Tea at the gardener’s cottage was a serious meal, with a big cake and little cakes, and preserves and fruit, a fine spread upon a table. You must imagine me, sullen, awkward, and preoccupied139, perplexed by the something that was inexplicably140 unexpected in Nettie, saying little, and glowering141 across the cake at her, and all the eloquence142 I had been concentrating for the previous twenty-four hours, miserably143 lost somewhere in the back of my mind. Nettie’s father tried to set me talking; he had a liking144 for my gift of ready speech, for his own ideas came with difficulty, and it pleased and astonished him to hear me pouring out my views. Indeed, over there I was, I think, even more talkative than with Parload, though to the world at large I was a shy young lout145. “You ought to write it out for the newspapers,” he used to say. “That’s what you ought to do. I never heard such nonsense.”
Or, “You’ve got the gift of the gab80, young man. We ought to ha’ made a lawyer of you.”
But that afternoon, even in his eyes, I didn’t shine. Failing any other stimulus146, he reverted147 to my search for a situation, but even that did not engage me.
Section 5
For a long time I feared I should have to go back to Clayton without another word to Nettie, she seemed insensible to the need I felt for a talk with her, and I was thinking even of a sudden demand for that before them all. It was a transparent148 manoeuver of her mother’s who had been watching my face, that sent us out at last together to do something — I forget now what — in one of the greenhouses. Whatever that little mission may have been it was the merest, most barefaced149 excuse, a door to shut, or a window to close, and I don’t think it got done.
Nettie hesitated and obeyed. She led the way through one of the hot-houses. It was a low, steamy, brick-floored alley44 between staging that bore a close crowd of pots and ferns, and behind big branching plants that were spread and nailed overhead so as to make an impervious150 cover of leaves, and in that close green privacy she stopped and turned on me suddenly like a creature at bay.
“Isn’t the maidenhair fern lovely?” she said, and looked at me with eyes that said, “NOW.”
“Nettie,” I began, “I was a fool to write to you as I did.”
She startled me by the assent151 that flashed out upon her face. But she said nothing, and stood waiting.
“Nettie,” I plunged152, “I can’t do without you. I— I love you.”
“If you loved me,” she said trimly, watching the white fingers she plunged among the green branches of a selaginella, “could you write the things you do to me?”
“I don’t mean them,” I said. “At least not always.”
I thought really they were very good letters, and that Nettie was stupid to think otherwise, but I was for the moment clearly aware of the impossibility of conveying that to her.
“You wrote them.”
“But then I tramp seventeen miles to say I don’t mean them.”
“Yes. But perhaps you do.”
I think I was at a loss; then I said, not very clearly, “I don’t.”
“You think you — you love me, Willie. But you don’t.”
“I do. Nettie! You know I do.”
For answer she shook her head.
I made what I thought was a most heroic plunge153. “Nettie,” I said, “I’d rather have you than — than my own opinions.”
The selaginella still engaged her. “You think so now,” she said.
I broke out into protestations.
“No,” she said shortly. “It’s different now.”
“But why should two letters make so much difference?” I said.
“It isn’t only the letters. But it is different. It’s different for good.”
She halted a little with that sentence, seeking her expression. She looked up abruptly154 into my eyes and moved, indeed slightly, but with the intimation that she thought our talk might end.
But I did not mean it to end like that.
“For good?” said I. “No! . . Nettie! Nettie! You don’t mean that!”
“I do,” she said deliberately155, still looking at me, and with all her pose conveying her finality. She seemed to brace156 herself for the outbreak that must follow.
Of course I became wordy. But I did not submerge her. She stood entrenched157, firing her contradictions like guns into my scattered158 discursive159 attack. I remember that our talk took the absurd form of disputing whether I could be in love with her or not. And there was I, present in evidence, in a deepening and widening distress of soul because she could stand there, defensive160, brighter and prettier than ever, and in some inexplicable way cut off from me and inaccessible161.
You know, we had never been together before without little enterprises of endearment162, without a faintly guilty, quite delightful163 excitement.
I pleaded, I argued. I tried to show that even my harsh and difficult letters came from my desire to come wholly into contact with her. I made exaggerated fine statements of the longing164 I felt for her when I was away, of the shock and misery of finding her estranged165 and cool. She looked at me, feeling the emotion of my speech and impervious to its ideas. I had no doubt — whatever poverty in my words, coolly written down now — that I was eloquent then. I meant most intensely what I said, indeed I was wholly concentrated upon it. I was set upon conveying to her with absolute sincerity167 my sense of distance, and the greatness of my desire. I toiled168 toward her painfully and obstinately169 through a jungle of words.
Her face changed very slowly — by such imperceptible degrees as when at dawn light comes into a clear sky. I could feel that I touched her, that her hardness was in some manner melting, her determination softening170 toward hesitations171. The habit of an old familiarity lurked172 somewhere within her. But she would not let me reach her.
“No,” she cried abruptly, starting into motion.
She laid a hand on my arm. A wonderful new friendliness173 came into her voice. “It’s impossible, Willie. Everything is different now — everything. We made a mistake. We two young sillies made a mistake and everything is different for ever. Yes, yes.”
She turned about.
“Nettie!” cried I, and still protesting, pursued her along the narrow alley between the staging toward the hot-house door. I pursued her like an accusation174, and she went before me like one who is guilty and ashamed. So I recall it now.
She would not let me talk to her again.
Yet I could see that my talk to her had altogether abolished the clear-cut distance of our meeting in the park. Ever and again I found her hazel eyes upon me. They expressed something novel — a surprise, as though she realized an unwonted relationship, and a sympathetic pity. And still — something defensive.
When we got back to the cottage, I fell talking rather more freely with her father about the nationalization of railways, and my spirits and temper had so far mended at the realization175 that I could still produce an effect upon Nettie, that I was even playful with Puss. Mrs. Stuart judged from that that things were better with me than they were, and began to beam mightily176.
But Nettie remained thoughtful and said very little. She was lost in perplexities I could not fathom177, and presently she slipped away from us and went upstairs.
Section 6
I was, of course, too footsore to walk back to Clayton, but I had a shilling and a penny in my pocket for the train between Checkshill and Two-Mile Stone, and that much of the distance I proposed to do in the train. And when I got ready to go, Nettie amazed me by waking up to the most remarkable178 solicitude179 for me. I must, she said, go by the road. It was altogether too dark for the short way to the lodge180 gates.
I pointed181 out that it was moonlight. “With the comet thrown in,” said old Stuart.
“No,” she insisted, “you MUST go by the road.”
I still disputed.
She was standing near me. “To please ME,” she urged, in a quick undertone, and with a persuasive182 look that puzzled me. Even in the moment I asked myself why should this please her?
I might have agreed had she not followed that up with, “The hollies by the shrubbery are as dark as pitch. And there’s the deer-hounds.”
“I’m not afraid of the dark,” said I. “Nor of the deer-hounds, either.”
“But those dogs! Supposing one was loose!”
That was a girl’s argument, a girl who still had to understand that fear is an overt166 argument only for her own sex. I thought too of those grisly lank183 brutes184 straining at their chains and the chorus they could make of a night when they heard belated footsteps along the edge of the Killing185 Wood, and the thought banished186 my wish to please her. Like most imaginative natures I was acutely capable of dreads187 and retreats, and constantly occupied with their suppression and concealment188, and to refuse the short cut when it might appear that I did it on account of half a dozen almost certainly chained dogs was impossible.
So I set off in spite of her, feeling valiant189 and glad to be so easily brave, but a little sorry that she should think herself crossed by me.
A thin cloud veiled the moon, and the way under the beeches was dark and indistinct. I was not so preoccupied with my love-affairs as to neglect what I will confess was always my custom at night across that wild and lonely park. I made myself a club by fastening a big flint to one end of my twisted handkerchief and tying the other about my wrist, and with this in my pocket, went on comforted.
And it chanced that as I emerged from the hollies by the corner of the shrubbery I was startled to come unexpectedly upon a young man in evening dress smoking a cigar.
I was walking on turf, so that the sound I made was slight. He stood clear in the moonlight, his cigar glowed like a blood-red star, and it did not occur to me at the time that I advanced towards him almost invisibly in an impenetrable shadow.
“Hullo,” he cried, with a sort of amiable190 challenge. “I’m here first!”
I came out into the light. “Who cares if you are?” said I.
I had jumped at once to an interpretation191 of his words. I knew that there was an intermittent192 dispute between the House people and the villager public about the use of this track, and it is needless to say where my sympathies fell in that dispute.
“Eh?” he cried in surprise.
“Thought I would run away, I suppose,” said I, and came close up to him.
All my enormous hatred of his class had flared193 up at the sight of his costume, at the fancied challenge of his words. I knew him. He was Edward Verrall, son of the man who owned not only this great estate but more than half of Rawdon’s pot-bank, and who had interests and possessions, collieries and rents, all over the district of the Four Towns. He was a gallant194 youngster, people said, and very clever. Young as he was there was talk of parliament for him; he had been a great success at the university, and he was being sedulously popularized among us. He took with a light confidence, as a matter of course, advantages that I would have faced the rack to get, and I firmly believed myself a better man than he. He was, as he stood there, a concentrated figure of all that filled me with bitterness. One day he had stopped in a motor outside our house, and I remember the thrill of rage with which I had noted195 the dutiful admiration196 in my mother’s eyes as she peered through her blind at him. “That’s young Mr. Verrall,” she said. “They say he’s very clever.”
“They would,” I answered. “Damn them and him!”
But that is by the way.
He was clearly astonished to find himself face to face with a man. His note changed.
“Who the devil are YOU?” he asked.
My retort was the cheap expedient197 of re-echoing, “Who the devil are you?”
“WELL,” he said.
“I’m coming along this path if I like,” I said. “See? It’s a public path — just as this used to be public land. You’ve stolen the land — you and yours, and now you want to steal the right of way. You’ll ask us to get off the face of the earth next. I sha’n’t oblige. See?”
I was shorter and I suppose a couple of years younger than he, but I had the improvised198 club in my pocket gripped ready, and I would have fought with him very cheerfully. But he fell a step backward as I came toward him.
“Socialist, I presume?” he said, alert and quiet and with the faintest note of badinage199.
“One of many.”
“We’re all socialists200 nowadays,” he remarked philosophically201, “and I haven’t the faintest intention of disputing your right of way.”
“You’d better not,” I said.
“No!”
“No.”
He replaced his cigar, and there was a brief pause. “Catching a train?” he threw out.
It seemed absurd not to answer. “Yes,” I said shortly.
He said it was a pleasant evening for a walk.
I hovered202 for a moment and there was my path before me, and he stood aside. There seemed nothing to do but go on. “Good night,” said he, as that intention took effect.
I growled203 a surly good-night.
I felt like a bombshell of swearing that must presently burst with some violence as I went on my silent way. He had so completely got the best of our encounter.
Section 7
There comes a memory, an odd intermixture of two entirely204 divergent things, that stands out with the intensest vividness.
As I went across the last open meadow, following the short cut to Checkshill station, I perceived I had two shadows.
The thing jumped into my mind and stopped its tumid flow for a moment. I remember the intelligent detachment of my sudden interest. I turned sharply, and stood looking at the moon and the great white comet, that the drift of the clouds had now rather suddenly unveiled.
The comet was perhaps twenty degrees from the moon. What a wonderful thing it looked floating there, a greenish-white apparition in the dark blue deeps! It looked brighter than the moon because it was smaller, but the shadow it cast, though clearer cut, was much fainter than the moon’s shadow . . . I went on noting these facts, watching my two shadows precede me.
I am totally unable to account for the sequence of my thoughts on this occasion. But suddenly, as if I had come on this new fact round a corner, the comet was out of my mind again, and I was face to face with an absolutely new idea. I wonder sometimes if the two shadows I cast, one with a sort of feminine faintness with regard to the other and not quite so tall, may not have suggested the word or the thought of an assignation to my mind. All that I have clear is that with the certitude of intuition I knew what it was that had brought the youth in evening dress outside the shrubbery. Of course! He had come to meet Nettie!
Once the mental process was started it took no time at all. The day which had been full of perplexities for me, the mysterious invisible thing that had held Nettie and myself apart, the unaccountable strange something in her manner, was revealed and explained.
I knew now why she had looked guilty at my appearance, what had brought her out that afternoon, why she had hurried me in, the nature of the “book” she had run back to fetch, the reason why she had wanted me to go back by the high-road, and why she had pitied me. It was all in the instant clear to me.
You must imagine me a black little creature, suddenly stricken still — for a moment standing rigid205 — and then again suddenly becoming active with an impotent gesture, becoming audible with an inarticulate cry, with two little shadows mocking my dismay, and about this figure you must conceive a great wide space of moonlit grass, rimmed206 by the looming207 suggestion of distant trees — trees very low and faint and dim, and over it all the domed208 serenity209 of that wonderful luminous210 night.
For a little while this realization stunned211 my mind. My thoughts came to a pause, staring at my discovery. Meanwhile my feet and my previous direction carried me through the warm darkness to Checkshill station with its little lights, to the ticket-office window, and so to the train.
I remember myself as it were waking up to the thing — I was alone in one of the dingy212 “third-class” compartments213 of that time — and the sudden nearly frantic insurgence214 of my rage. I stood up with the cry of an angry animal, and smote215 my fist with all my strength against the panel of wood before me . . . .
Curiously enough I have completely forgotten my mood after that for a little while, but I know that later, for a minute perhaps, I hung for a time out of the carriage with the door open, contemplating216 a leap from the train. It was to be a dramatic leap, and then I would go storming back to her, denounce her, overwhelm her; and I hung, urging myself to do it. I don’t remember how it was I decided217 not to do this, at last, but in the end I didn’t.
When the train stopped at the next station I had given up all thoughts of going back. I was sitting in the corner of the carriage with my bruised218 and wounded hand pressed under my arm, and still insensible to its pain, trying to think out clearly a scheme of action — action that should express the monstrous219 indignation that possessed me.
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interval
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strenuously
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passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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prim
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| adj.拘泥形式的，一本正经的；n.循规蹈矩，整洁；adv.循规蹈矩地，整洁地 | |
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vein
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| n.血管，静脉；叶脉，纹理；情绪；vt.使成脉络 | |
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dubious
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| adj.怀疑的，无把握的；有问题的，靠不住的 | |
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speck
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| n.微粒，小污点，小斑点 | |
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actively
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| adv.积极地，勤奋地 | |
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splendor
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| n.光彩；壮丽，华丽；显赫，辉煌 | |
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dominant
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| adj.支配的，统治的；占优势的；显性的；n.主因，要素，主要的人(或物)；显性基因 | |
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hoarded
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stimulating
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| adj.有启发性的，能激发人思考的 | |
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inhuman
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| adj.残忍的，不人道的，无人性的 | |
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dilettantism
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| n.业余的艺术爱好，浅涉文艺，浅薄涉猎 | |
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verge
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distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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inflamed
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| adj.发炎的，红肿的v.（使）变红，发怒，过热( inflame的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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gaping
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| adj.口的；张口的；敞口的；多洞穴的v.目瞪口呆地凝视( gape的现在分词 )；张开，张大 | |
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streak
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| n.条理，斑纹，倾向，少许，痕迹；v.加条纹，变成条纹，奔驰，快速移动 | |
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demonstration
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| n.表明，示范，论证，示威 | |
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unemployed
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| adj.失业的，没有工作的；未动用的，闲置的 | |
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eloquent
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| adj.雄辩的，口才流利的；明白显示出的 | |
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insignificance
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| n.不重要；无价值；无意义 | |
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supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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embarked
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| 乘船( embark的过去式和过去分词 )； 装载； 从事 | |
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illiterate
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| adj.文盲的；无知的；n.文盲 | |
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rhetoric
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| n.修辞学，浮夸之言语 | |
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exasperate
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| v.激怒，使（疾病）加剧，使恶化 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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repudiation
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| n.拒绝；否认；断绝关系；抛弃 | |
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dynamited
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| v.（尤指用于采矿的）甘油炸药( dynamite的过去式和过去分词 )；会引起轰动的人[事物] | |
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recreant
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| n.懦夫；adj.胆怯的 | |
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persistent
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| adj.坚持不懈的，执意的；持续的 | |
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persistently
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| ad.坚持地；固执地 | |
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shambles
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| n.混乱之处；废墟 | |
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miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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sedulously
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| ad.孜孜不倦地 | |
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sullen
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| adj.愠怒的，闷闷不乐的，(天气等)阴沉的 | |
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sinister
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| adj.不吉利的，凶恶的，左边的 | |
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jealousies
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| n.妒忌( jealousy的名词复数 )；妒羡 | |
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apropos
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| adv.恰好地；adj.恰当的；关于 | |
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stevedore
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| n.码头工人；v.装载货物 | |
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alley
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| n.小巷，胡同；小径，小路 | |
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stagnant
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| adj.不流动的，停滞的，不景气的 | |
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malaria
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| n.疟疾 | |
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hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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vindictive
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| adj.有报仇心的，怀恨的，惩罚的 | |
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resentment
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| n.怨愤，忿恨 | |
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intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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laborious
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| adj.吃力的，努力的，不流畅 | |
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unreasonable
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| adj.不讲道理的，不合情理的，过度的 | |
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cramped
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| a.狭窄的 | |
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graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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contented
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| adj.满意的，安心的，知足的 | |
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smelted
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| v.熔炼，提炼（矿石）( smelt的过去式和过去分词 )；合演( costar的过去式和过去分词 )；闻到；嗅出 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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ERECTED
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| adj. 直立的，竖立的，笔直的 vt. 使 ... 直立，建立 | |
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frantic
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| adj.狂乱的，错乱的，激昂的 | |
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destined
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| adj.命中注定的；(for)以…为目的地的 | |
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agitating
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| 搅动( agitate的现在分词 )； 激怒； 使焦虑不安； （尤指为法律、社会状况的改变而）激烈争论 | |
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recoil
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| vi.退却，退缩，畏缩 | |
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prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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fiscal
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| adj.财政的，会计的，国库的，国库岁入的 | |
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jabbering
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| v.急切而含混不清地说( jabber的现在分词 )；急促兴奋地说话；结结巴巴 | |
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irrational
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| adj.无理性的，失去理性的 | |
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cataclysms
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| n.（突然降临的）大灾难( cataclysm的名词复数 ) | |
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perplexed
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| adj.不知所措的 | |
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awakening
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| n.觉醒，醒悟 adj.觉醒中的；唤醒的 | |
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misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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atmospheric
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| adj.大气的，空气的；大气层的；大气所引起的 | |
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callous
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| adj.无情的，冷淡的，硬结的，起老茧的 | |
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adorned
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| [计]被修饰的 | |
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remorse
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| n.痛恨，悔恨，自责 | |
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breached
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| 攻破( breach的现在分词 )； 破坏，违反 | |
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virgin
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| n.处女，未婚女子；adj.未经使用的；未经开发的 | |
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vividly
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| adv.清楚地，鲜明地，生动地 | |
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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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gab
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| v.空谈，唠叨，瞎扯；n.饶舌，多嘴，爱说话 | |
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intensified
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| v.（使）增强， （使）加剧( intensify的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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fatigue
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| n.疲劳，劳累 | |
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torment
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| n.折磨；令人痛苦的东西(人)；vt.折磨；纠缠 | |
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discomfort
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| n.不舒服，不安，难过，困难，不方便 | |
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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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86
hollies
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| n.冬青（常绿灌木，叶尖而硬，有光泽，冬季结红色浆果）( holly的名词复数 )；（用作圣诞节饰物的）冬青树枝 | |
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87
tumult
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| n.喧哗；激动，混乱；吵闹 | |
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88
butt
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| n.笑柄；烟蒂；枪托；臀部；v.用头撞或顶 | |
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89
custodian
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| n.保管人，监护人；公共建筑看守 | |
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90
evaded
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| 逃避( evade的过去式和过去分词 )； 避开； 回避； 想不出 | |
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91
adolescence
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| n.青春期，青少年 | |
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92
conspiracy
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| n.阴谋，密谋，共谋 | |
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93
initiation
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| n.开始 | |
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94
curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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95
loyalty
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| n.忠诚，忠心 | |
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96
inexplicable
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| adj.无法解释的，难理解的 | |
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97
tickle
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| v.搔痒，胳肢；使高兴；发痒；n.搔痒，发痒 | |
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98
purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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99
materialistic
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| a.唯物主义的，物质享乐主义的 | |
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100
craving
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| n.渴望,热望 | |
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101
nascent
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| adj.初生的，发生中的 | |
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102
obsessed
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| adj.心神不宁的,鬼迷心窍的,沉迷的 | |
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103
unaware
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| a.不知道的，未意识到的 | |
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104
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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105
lichenous
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| adj.青苔的 | |
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106
rustle
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| v.沙沙作响；偷盗(牛、马等)；n.沙沙声声 | |
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107
recollect
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| v.回忆，想起，记起，忆起，记得 | |
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108
stereotyped
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| adj.(指形象、思想、人物等)模式化的 | |
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109
inanity
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| n.无意义，无聊 | |
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110
motives
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| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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111
ripened
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| v.成熟，使熟( ripen的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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112
discrepant
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| 差异的 | |
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113
intonation
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| n.语调，声调；发声 | |
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114
beeches
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| n.山毛榉( beech的名词复数 )；山毛榉木材 | |
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115
scarlet
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| n.深红色，绯红色，红衣；adj.绯红色的 | |
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116
descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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117
geographical
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| adj.地理的；地区(性)的 | |
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118
sinuous
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| adj.蜿蜒的，迂回的 | |
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119
insistence
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| n.坚持；强调；坚决主张 | |
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120
droop
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| v.低垂，下垂；凋萎，萎靡 | |
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121
inclination
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| n.倾斜；点头；弯腰；斜坡；倾度；倾向；爱好 | |
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122
gossamer
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| n.薄纱，游丝 | |
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123
tentacle
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| n.触角，触须，触手 | |
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124
momentary
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| adj.片刻的，瞬息的；短暂的 | |
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125
touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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126
vistas
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| 长条形景色( vista的名词复数 )； 回顾； 展望； （未来可能发生的）一系列情景 | |
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127
yew
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| n.紫杉属树木 | |
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128
plighted
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| vt.保证，约定（plight的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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129
vows
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| 誓言( vow的名词复数 )； 郑重宣布，许愿 | |
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130
parlor
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| n.店铺，营业室；会客室，客厅 | |
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131
slumbers
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| 睡眠，安眠( slumber的名词复数 ) | |
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132
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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133
wedded
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| adj.正式结婚的；渴望…的，执著于…的v.嫁，娶，（与…）结婚( wed的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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134
apparition
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| n.幽灵，神奇的现象 | |
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135
fatigued
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| adj. 疲乏的 | |
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136
vexed
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| adj.争论不休的；（指问题等）棘手的；争论不休的问题；烦恼的v.使烦恼( vex的过去式和过去分词 )；使苦恼；使生气；详细讨论 | |
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137
darted
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| v.投掷，投射( dart的过去式和过去分词 )；向前冲，飞奔 | |
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138
casually
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| adv.漠不关心地，无动于衷地，不负责任地 | |
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139
preoccupied
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| adj.全神贯注的，入神的；被抢先占有的；心事重重的v.占据（某人）思想，使对…全神贯注，使专心于( preoccupy的过去式) | |
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140
inexplicably
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| adv.无法说明地，难以理解地，令人难以理解的是 | |
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141
glowering
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| v.怒视( glower的现在分词 ) | |
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142
eloquence
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| n.雄辩；口才，修辞 | |
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143
miserably
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| adv.痛苦地；悲惨地；糟糕地；极度地 | |
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144
liking
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| n.爱好；嗜好；喜欢 | |
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145
lout
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| n.粗鄙的人；举止粗鲁的人 | |
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146
stimulus
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| n.刺激，刺激物，促进因素，引起兴奋的事物 | |
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147
reverted
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| 恢复( revert的过去式和过去分词 )； 重提； 回到…上； 归还 | |
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148
transparent
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| adj.明显的，无疑的；透明的 | |
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149
barefaced
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| adj.厚颜无耻的，公然的 | |
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150
impervious
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| adj.不能渗透的，不能穿过的，不易伤害的 | |
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151
assent
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| v.批准，认可；n.批准，认可 | |
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152
plunged
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| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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153
plunge
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| v.跳入，(使)投入，(使)陷入；猛冲 | |
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154
abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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155
deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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156
brace
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| n. 支柱,曲柄,大括号; v. 绷紧,顶住,(为困难或坏事)做准备 | |
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157
entrenched
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| adj.确立的，不容易改的(风俗习惯) | |
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158
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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159
discursive
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| adj.离题的，无层次的 | |
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160
defensive
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| adj.防御的；防卫的；防守的 | |
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161
inaccessible
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| adj.达不到的，难接近的 | |
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162
endearment
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| n.表示亲爱的行为 | |
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163
delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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164
longing
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| n.（for）渴望 | |
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165
estranged
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| adj.疏远的，分离的 | |
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166
overt
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| adj.公开的，明显的，公然的 | |
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167
sincerity
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| n.真诚，诚意；真实 | |
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168
toiled
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| 长时间或辛苦地工作( toil的过去式和过去分词 )； 艰难缓慢地移动，跋涉 | |
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169
obstinately
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| ad.固执地，顽固地 | |
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170
softening
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| 变软，软化 | |
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171
hesitations
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| n.犹豫( hesitation的名词复数 )；踌躇；犹豫（之事或行为）；口吃 | |
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172
lurked
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| vi.潜伏，埋伏（lurk的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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173
friendliness
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| n.友谊，亲切，亲密 | |
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174
accusation
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| n.控告，指责，谴责 | |
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175
realization
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| n.实现；认识到，深刻了解 | |
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176
mightily
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| ad.强烈地；非常地 | |
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177
fathom
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| v.领悟，彻底了解 | |
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178
remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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179
solicitude
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| n.焦虑 | |
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180
lodge
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| v.临时住宿，寄宿，寄存，容纳；n.传达室，小旅馆 | |
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181
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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182
persuasive
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| adj.有说服力的，能说得使人相信的 | |
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183
lank
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| adj.瘦削的；稀疏的 | |
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184
brutes
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| 兽( brute的名词复数 )； 畜生； 残酷无情的人； 兽性 | |
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185
killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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186
banished
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| v.放逐，驱逐( banish的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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187
dreads
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| n.恐惧，畏惧( dread的名词复数 )；令人恐惧的事物v.害怕，恐惧，担心( dread的第三人称单数 ) | |
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188
concealment
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| n.隐藏, 掩盖，隐瞒 | |
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189
valiant
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| adj.勇敢的，英勇的；n.勇士，勇敢的人 | |
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190
amiable
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| adj.和蔼可亲的，友善的，亲切的 | |
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191
interpretation
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| n.解释，说明，描述；艺术处理 | |
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192
intermittent
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| adj.间歇的，断断续续的 | |
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193
Flared
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| adj. 端部张开的, 爆发的, 加宽的, 漏斗式的 动词flare的过去式和过去分词 | |
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194
gallant
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| adj.英勇的，豪侠的；(向女人)献殷勤的 | |
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195
noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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196
admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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197
expedient
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| adj.有用的，有利的；n.紧急的办法，权宜之计 | |
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198
improvised
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| a.即席而作的,即兴的 | |
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199
badinage
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| n.开玩笑，打趣 | |
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200
socialists
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| 社会主义者( socialist的名词复数 ) | |
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201
philosophically
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| adv.哲学上；富有哲理性地；贤明地；冷静地 | |
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202
hovered
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| 鸟( hover的过去式和过去分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫 | |
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203
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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204
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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205
rigid
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| adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的 | |
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206
rimmed
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| adj.有边缘的，有框的v.沿…边缘滚动；给…镶边 | |
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207
looming
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| n.上现蜃景（光通过低层大气发生异常折射形成的一种海市蜃楼）v.隐约出现，阴森地逼近( loom的现在分词 )；隐约出现，阴森地逼近 | |
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208
domed
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| adj. 圆屋顶的, 半球形的, 拱曲的 动词dome的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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209
serenity
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| n.宁静，沉着，晴朗 | |
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210
luminous
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| adj.发光的，发亮的；光明的；明白易懂的；有启发的 | |
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211
stunned
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| adj. 震惊的，惊讶的 动词stun的过去式和过去分词 | |
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212
dingy
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| adj.昏暗的，肮脏的 | |
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213
compartments
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| n.间隔( compartment的名词复数 )；（列车车厢的）隔间；（家具或设备等的）分隔间；隔层 | |
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214
insurgence
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| n.起义；造反；暴动；叛乱 | |
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215
smote
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| v.猛打，重击，打击( smite的过去式 ) | |
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216
contemplating
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| 深思，细想，仔细考虑( contemplate的现在分词 )； 注视，凝视； 考虑接受（发生某事的可能性）； 深思熟虑，沉思，苦思冥想 | |
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217
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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218
bruised
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| [医]青肿的，瘀紫的 | |
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219
monstrous
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| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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