Rose hesitated. “ Mrs. Beever repeated to you that I told her so? Yes, then; I probably do know.” She waited again a little. “The poor darling announced to you her conviction that she’s dying.” Then at the face with which he greeted her exactitude: “ I haven’t needed to be a monster of cunning to guess! ” she exclaimed.
He had perceptibly paled: it made a difference, a kind of importance for that absurdity1 that it was already in other ears. “She has said the same to you? ”
Rose gave a pitying smile. “ She has done me that honour.”
“Do you mean today? ”
“To-day and once before.”
Tony looked simple in his wonder. “Yester day?”
Rose hesitated again. “No; before your child was born. Soon after I came.”
“She had made up her mind then from the first? ”
“Yes,” said Rose, with the serenity2 of superior sense; “she had laid out for herself that pleasant little prospect3. She called it a presentiment4, a fixed5 idea.”
Tony took this in with a frown. “And you never spoke6 of it? ”
“To you? Why in the world should I when she herself didn’t? I took it perfectly7 for what it was an inevitable8 but unimportant result of the nervous depression produced by her step mother’s visit.”
Tony had fidgeted away with his hands in the pockets of his trousers. “Damn her stepmother’s visit! ”
“That’s exactly what I did! ” Rose laughed. “Damn her stepmother too! ” the young man angrily pursued.
“Hush!” said the girl soothingly9: “we mustn’t curse our relations before the Doctor! ” Doctor Ramage had come back from his patient, and she mentioned to him that the medicine for which she had gone out would immediately be delivered.
“Many thanks,” he replied: “I’ll pick it up myself. I must run out to another case.” Then with a friendly hand to Tony and a nod at the room he had quitted: “Things are quiet.”
Tony, gratefully grasping his hand, detained him by it. “ And what was that loud ring that called you? ”
“A stupid flurry of Nurse. I was ashamed of her.”
“Then why did you stay so long? ”
“To have it out with your wife. She wants you again.”
Tony eagerly dropped his hand. “Then I go!”
The Doctor raised his liberated11 member. “ In a quarter of an hour not before. I’m most reluctant, but I allow her five minutes.”
“It may make her easier afterwards,” Rose observed.
“That’s precisely12 the ground of my giving in. Take care, you know; Nurse will time you,” the Doctor said to Tony.
“So many thanks. And you’ll come back? ”
“The moment I’m free.”
When he had gone Tony stood there sombre. “She wants to say it again that’s what she wants.”
“Well,” Rose answered, “ the more she says it the less it’s true. It’s not she who decides it.”
“No,” Tony brooded; “it’s not she. But it’s not you and I either,” he soon went on.
“It’s not even the Doctor,” Rose remarked with her conscious irony13.
Her companion rested his troubled eyes on her. “And yet he’s as worried as if it were.” She protested against this imputation14 with a word to which he paid no heed15. “ If anything should happen ” and his eyes seemed to go as far as his thought “ what on earth do you suppose would become of me? ”
The girl looked down, very grave. “Men have borne such things.”
“Very badly the real ones.” He seemed to lose himself in the effort to embrace the worst, to think it out. “ What should I do? where should I turn? ”
She was silent a little. “ You ask me too much! ” she helplessly sighed.
“Don’t say that,” replied Tony, “ at a moment when I know so little if I mayn’t have to ask you still more! ” This exclamation16 made her meet his eyes with a turn of her own that might have struck him had he not been following another train. “ To you I can say it, Rose she’s inex pressibly dear to me.”
She showed him a face intensely receptive. “ It’s for your affection for her that I’ve really given you mine.” Then she shook her head seemed to shake out, like the overflow17 of a cup, her generous gaiety. “ But be easy. We shan’t have loved her so much only to lose her.”
“I’ll be hanged if we shall! ” Tony responded. “And such talk’s a vile18 false note in the midst of a joy like yours.”
“Like mine? ” Rose exhibited some vague ness.
Her companion was already accessible to the amusement of it. “ I hope that’s not the way you mean to look at Mr. Vidal! ”
“Ah, Mr. Vidal!” she ambiguously murmured.
“Shan’t you then be glad to see him? ”
“Intensely glad. But how shall I say it? ” She thought a moment and then went on as if she found the answer to her question in Tony’s exceptional intelligence and their comfortable in timacy. “ There’s gladness and gladness. It isn’t love’s young dream; it’s rather an old and rather a sad story. We’ve worried and waited we’ve been acquainted with grief. We’ve come together a weary way.”
“I know you’ve had a horrid19 grind. But isn’t this the end of it? ”
Rose hesitated. “That’s just what he’s to settle.”
“Happily, I see! Just look at him.”
The glass doors, as Tony spoke, had been thrown open by the butler. The young man from China was there a short, meagre young man, with a smooth face and a dark blue double-breasted jacket. “ Mr. Vidal! ” the butler an nounced, withdrawing again, while the visitor, whose entrance had been rapid, suddenly and shyly faltered20 at the sight of his host. His pause, however, lasted but just long enough to enable Rose to bridge it over with the frankest maidenly21 grace; and Tony’s quick sense of being out of place at this reunion was not a bar to the im pression of her charming, instant action, her soft “Dennis, Dennis! ” her light, fluttered arms, her tenderly bent22 head and the short, bright stillness of her clasp of her lover. Tony shone down at them with the pleasure of having helped them, and the warmth of it was in his immediate10 grasp of the traveller’s hand. He cut short his em barrassed thanks he was too delighted; and leav ing him with the remark that he would presently come back to show him his room, he went off again to poor Julia.
点击
收听单词发音
收听单词发音 |
1
absurdity
|
|
| n.荒谬，愚蠢；谬论 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
serenity
|
|
| n.宁静，沉着，晴朗 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
prospect
|
|
| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
presentiment
|
|
| n.预感，预觉 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
fixed
|
|
| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
spoke
|
|
| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
perfectly
|
|
| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
inevitable
|
|
| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
soothingly
|
|
| adv.抚慰地，安慰地；镇痛地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
immediate
|
|
| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
liberated
|
|
| a.无拘束的，放纵的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
precisely
|
|
| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
irony
|
|
| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
imputation
|
|
| n.归罪，责难 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
heed
|
|
| v.注意，留意；n.注意，留心 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
exclamation
|
|
| n.感叹号，惊呼，惊叹词 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
overflow
|
|
| v.(使)外溢，(使)溢出；溢出，流出，漫出 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
vile
|
|
| adj.卑鄙的，可耻的，邪恶的；坏透的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
horrid
|
|
| adj.可怕的；令人惊恐的；恐怖的；极讨厌的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
faltered
|
|
| （嗓音）颤抖( falter的过去式和过去分词 )； 支吾其词； 蹒跚； 摇晃 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
maidenly
|
|
| adj. 像处女的, 谨慎的, 稳静的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
bent
|
|
| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |