Certain wobbly stair treads, certain creaky boards in the upstairs hall, had made him wince9 many times a day for twenty-odd years — and they still creaked and wobbled. He had a deft10 hand with tools, he could easily have fixed11 them, but there were always so many things to fix, and there was not time enough to go round. He went into the kitchen, where he had carpentered under a succession of cooks, went up to the bath-room on the second floor, where there was only a painted tin tub; the taps were so old that no plumber13 could ever screw them tight enough to stop the drip, the window could only be coaxed14 up and down by wriggling15, and the doors of the linen16 closet didn’t fit. He had sympathized with his daughters’ dissatisfaction, though he could never quite agree with them that the bath should be the most attractive room in the house. He had spent the happiest years of his youth in a house at Versailles where it distinctly was not, and he had known many charming people who had no bath at all. However, as his wife said: “If your country has contributed one thing, at least, to civilization, why not have it?” Many a night, after blowing out his study lamp, he had leaped into that tub, clad in his pyjamas17, to give it another coat of some one of the many paints that were advertised to behave like porcelain18, and didn’t.
The Professor in pyjamas was not an unpleasant sight; for looks, the fewer clothes he had on, the better. Anything that clung to his body showed it to be built upon extremely good bones, with the slender hips19 and springy shoulders of a tireless swimmer. Though he was born on Lake Michigan, of mixed stock (Canadian French on one side, and American farmers on the other), St. Peter was commonly said to look like a Spaniard. That was possibly because he had been in Spain a good deal, and was an authority on certain phases of Spanish history. He had a long brown face, with an oval chin over which he wore a close trimmed Van–Dyke, like a tuft of shiny black fur. With this silky, very black hair, he had a tawny20 skin with gold lights in it, a hawk21 nose, and hawk-like eyes — brown and gold and green. They were set in ample cavities, with plenty of room to move about, under thick, curly, black eyebrows22 that turned up sharply at the outer ends, like military moustaches. His wicked-looking eyebrows made his students call him Mephistopheles — and there was no evading23 the searching eyes underneath24 them; eyes that in a flash could pick out a friend or an unusual stranger from a throng25. They had lost none of their fire, though just now the man behind them was feeling a diminution26 of ardour.
His daughter Kathleen, who had done several successful studies of him in water-colour, had once said:— “The thing that really makes Papa handsome is the modelling of his head between the top of his ear and his crown; it is quite the best thing about him.” That part of his head was high, polished, hard as bronze, and the close-growing black hair threw off a streak27 of light along the rounded ridge28 where the skull29 was fullest. The mould of his head on the side was so individual and definite, so far from casual, that it was more like a statue’s head than a man’s.
From one of the dismantled windows the Professor happened to look out into his back garden, and at that cheerful sight he went quickly downstairs and escaped from the dusty air and brutal30 light of the empty rooms.
His walled-in garden had been the comfort of his life — and it was the one thing his neighbours held against him. He started to make it soon after the birth of his first daughter, when his wife began to be unreasonable31 about his spending so much time at the lake and on the tennis court. In this undertaking32 he got help and encouragement from his landlord, a retired33 German farmer, good-natured and lenient34 about everything but spending money. If the Professor happened to have a new baby at home, or a faculty35 dinner, or an illness in the family, or any unusual expense, Appelhoff cheerfully waited for the rent; but pay for repairs he would not. When it was a question of the garden, however, the old man sometimes stretched a point. He helped his tenant36 with seeds and slips and sound advice, and with his twisted old back. He even spent a little money to bear half the expense of the stucco wall.
The Professor had succeeded in making a French garden in Hamilton. There was not a blade of grass; it was a tidy half-acre of glistening37 gravel38 and glistening shrubs39 and bright flowers. There were trees, of course; a spreading horse-chestnut, a row of slender Lombardy poplars at the back, along the white wall, and in the middle two symmetrical, round-topped linden-trees. Masses of green-brier grew in the corners, the prickly stems interwoven and clipped until they were like great bushes. There was a bed for salad herbs. Salmon-pink geraniums dripped over the wall. The French marigolds and dahlias were just now at their best — such dahlias as no one else in Hamilton could grow. St. Peter had tended this bit of ground for over twenty years, and had got the upper hand of it. In the spring, when home-sickness for other lands and the fret40 of things unaccomplished awoke, he worked off his discontent here. In the long hot summers, when he could not go abroad, he stayed at home with his garden, sending his wife and daughters to Colorado to escape the humid prairie heat, so nourishing to wheat and corn, so exhausting to human beings. In those months when he was a bachelor again, he brought down his books and papers and worked in a deck chair under the linden-trees; breakfasted and lunched and had his tea in the garden. And it was there he and Tom Outland used to sit and talk half through the warm, soft nights.
On this September morning, however, St. Peter knew that he could not evade41 the unpleasant effects of change by tarrying among his autumn flowers. He must plunge42 in like a man, and get used to the feeling that under his work-room there was a dead, empty house. He broke off a geranium blossom, and with it still in his hand went resolutely43 up two flights of stairs to the third floor where, under the slope of the mansard roof, there was one room still furnished — that is, if it had ever been furnished.
The low ceiling sloped down on three sides, the slant2 being interrupted on the east by a single square window, swinging outward on hinges and held ajar by a hook in the sill. This was the sole opening for light and air. Walls and ceiling alike were covered with a yellow paper which had once been very ugly, but had faded into inoffensive neutrality. The matting on the floor was worn and scratchy. Against the wall stood an old walnut44 table, with one leaf up, holding piles of orderly papers. Before it was a cane-backed office chair that turned on a screw. This dark den8 had for many years been the Professor’s study.
Downstairs, off the back parlour, he had a show study, with roomy shelves where his library was housed, and a proper desk at which he wrote letters. But it was a sham45. This was the place where he worked. And not he alone. For three weeks in the fall, and again three in the spring, he shared his cuddy with Augusta, the sewing-woman, niece of his old landlord, a reliable, methodical spinster, a German Catholic and very devout47.
Since Augusta finished her day’s work at five o’clock, and the Professor, on week-days, worked here only at night, they did not elbow each other too much. Besides, neither was devoid48 of consideration. Every evening, before she left, Augusta swept up the scraps49 from the floor, rolled her patterns, closed the sewing-machine, and picked ravellings off the box-couch, so that there would be no threads to stick to the Professor’s old smoking-jacket if he should happen to lie down for a moment in working-hours.
St. Peter, in his turn, when he put out his lamp after midnight, was careful to brush away ashes and tobacco crumbs50 — smoking was very distasteful to Augusta — and to open the hinged window back as far as it would go, on the second hook, so that the night wind might carry away the smell of his pipe as much as possible. The unfinished dresses which she left hanging on the forms, however, were often so saturated51 with smoke that he knew she found it a trial to work on them the next morning.
These “forms” were the subject of much banter52 between them. The one which Augusta called “the bust53” stood in the darkest corner of the room, upon a high wooden chest in which blankets and winter wraps were yearly stored. It was a headless, armless female torso, covered with strong black cotton, and so richly developed in the part for which it was named that the Professor once explained to Augusta how, in calling it so, she followed a natural law of language, termed, for convenience, metonymy. Augusta enjoyed the Professor when he was risque since she was sure of his ultimate delicacy54. Though this figure looked so ample and billowy (as if you might lay your head upon its deep-breathing softness and rest safe forever), if you touched it you suffered a severe shock, no matter how many times you had touched it before. It presented the most unsympathetic surface imaginable. Its hardness was not that of wood, which responds to concussion55 with living vibration56 and is stimulating57 to the hand, nor that of felt, which drinks something from the fingers. It was a dead, opaque58, lumpy solidity, like chunks59 of putty, or tightly packed sawdust — very disappointing to the tactile60 sense, yet somehow always fooling you again. For no matter how often you had bumped up against that torso, you could never believe that contact with it would be as bad as it was.
The second form was more self-revelatory; a full-length female figure in a smart wire skirt with a trim metal waist line. It had no legs, as one could see all too well, no viscera behind its glistening ribs61, and its bosom62 resembled a strong wire bird-cage. But St. Peter contended that it had a nervous system. When Augusta left it clad for the night in a new party dress for Rosamond or Kathleen, it often took on a sprightly63, tricky64 air, as if it were going out for the evening to make a great show of being harum-scarum, giddy, folle. It seemed just on the point of tripping downstairs, or on tiptoe, waiting for the waltz to begin. At times the wire lady was most convincing in her pose as a woman of light behaviour, but she never fooled St. Peter. He had his blind spots, but he had never been taken in by one of her kind!
Augusta had somehow got it into her head that these forms were unsuitable companions for one engaged in scholarly pursuits, and she periodically apologized for their presence when she came to install herself and fulfil her “time” at the house.
“Not at all, Augusta,” the Professor had often said. “If they were good enough for Monsieur Bergeret, they are certainly good enough for me.”
This morning, as St. Peter was sitting in his desk chair, looking musingly65 at the pile of papers before him, the door opened and there stood Augusta herself. How astonishing that he had not heard her heavy, deliberate tread on the now uncarpeted stair!
“Why, Professor St. Peter! I never thought of finding you here, or I’d have knocked. I guess we will have to do our moving together.”
St. Peter had risen — Augusta loved his manners — but he offered her the sewing-machine chair and resumed his seat.
“Sit down, Augusta, and we’ll talk it over. I’m not moving just yet — don’t want to disturb all my papers. I’m staying on until I finish a piece of writing. I’ve seen your uncle about it. I’ll work here, and board at the new house. But this is confidential66. If it were noised about, people might begin to say that Mrs. St. Peter and I had — how do they put it, parted, separated?”
Augusta dropped her eyes in an indulgent smile. “I think people in your station would say separated.”
“Exactly; a good scientific term, too. Well, we haven’t, you know. But I’m going to write on here for a while.”
“Very well, sir. And I won’t always be getting in your way now. In the new house you have a beautiful study downstairs, and I have a light, airy room on the third floor.”
“Where you won’t smell smoke, eh?”
“Oh, Professor, I never really minded!” Augusta spoke67 with feeling. She rose and took up the black bust in her long arms.
The Professor also rose, very quickly. “What are you doing?”
She laughed. “Oh, I’m not going to carry them through the street, Professor! The grocery boy is downstairs with his cart, to wheel them over.”
“Wheel them over?”
“Why, yes, to the new house, Professor. I’ve come a week before my regular time, to make curtains and hem12 linen for Mrs. St. Peter. I’ll take everything over this morning except the sewing-machine — that’s too heavy for the cart, so the boy will come back for it with the delivery wagon68. Would you just open the door for me, please?”
“No, I won’t! Not at all. You don’t need her to make curtains. I can’t have this room changed if I’m going to work here. He can take the sewing-machine — yes. But put her back on the chest where she belongs, please. She does very well there.” St. Peter had got to the door, and stood with his back against it.
Augusta rested her burden on the edge of the chest.
“But next week I’ll be working on Mrs. St. Peter’s clothes, and I’ll need the forms. As the boy’s here, he’ll just wheel them over,” she said soothingly69.
“I’m damned if he will! They shan’t be wheeled. They stay right there in their own place. You shan’t take away my ladies. I never heard of such a thing!”
Augusta was vexed70 with him now, and a little ashamed of him. “But, Professor, I can’t work without my forms. They’ve been in your way all these years, and you’ve always complained of them, so don’t be contrary, sir.”
“I never complained, Augusta. Perhaps of certain disappointments they recalled, or of cruel biological necessities they imply — but of them individually, never! Go and buy some new ones for your airy atelier, as many as you wish — I’m said to be rich now, am I not? — Go buy, but you can’t have my women. That’s final.”
Augusta looked down her nose as she did at church when the dark sins were mentioned. “Professor,” she said severely71, “I think this time you are carrying a joke too far. You never used to.” From the tilt72 of her chin he saw that she felt the presence of some improper73 suggestion.
“No matter what you think, you can’t have them.” They considered, both were in earnest now. Augusta was first to break the defiant74 silence.
“I suppose I am to be allowed to take my patterns?”
“Your patterns? Oh, yes, the cut-out things you keep in the couch with my old note-books? Certainly, you can have them. Let me lift it for you.” He raised the hinged top of the box-couch that stood against the wall, under the slope of the ceiling. At one end of the upholstered box were piles of notebooks and bundles of manuscript tied up in square packages with mason’s cord. At the other end were many little rolls of patterns, cut out of newspapers and tied with bits of ribbon, gingham, silk, georgette; notched75 charts which followed the changing stature76 and figures of the Misses St. Peter from early childhood to womanhood. In the middle of the box, patterns and manuscripts interpenetrated.
“I see we shall have some difficulty in separating our life work, Augusta. We’ve kept our papers together a long while now.”
“Yes, Professor. When I first came to sew for Mrs. St. Peter, I never thought I should grow grey in her service.”
He started. What other future could Augusta possibly have expected? This disclosure amazed him.
“Well, well, we mustn’t think mournfully of it, Augusta. Life doesn’t turn out for any of us as we plan.” He stood and watched her large slow hands travel about among the little packets, as she put them into his waste-basket to carry them down to the cart. He had often wondered how she managed to sew with hands that folded and unfolded as rigidly77 as umbrellas — no light French touch about Augusta; when she sewed on a bow, it stayed there. She herself was tall, large-boned, flat and stiff, with a plain, solid face, and brown eyes not destitute78 of fun. As she knelt by the couch, sorting her patterns, he stood beside her, his hand on the lid, though it would have stayed up unsupported. Her last remark had troubled him.
“What a fine lot of hair you have, Augusta! You know I think it’s rather nice, that grey wave on each side. Gives it character. You’ll never need any of this false hair that’s in all the shop windows.”
“There’s altogether too much of that, Professor. So many of my customers are using it now — ladies you wouldn’t expect would. They say most of it was cut off the heads of dead Chinamen. Really, it’s got to be such a frequent thing that the priest spoke against it only last Sunday.”
“Did he, indeed? Why, what could he say? Seems such a personal matter.”
“Well, he said it was getting to be a scandal in the Church, and a priest couldn’t go to see a pious79 woman any more without finding switches and rats and transformations80 lying about her room, and it was disgusting.”
“Goodness gracious, Augusta! What business has a priest going to see a woman in the room where she takes off these ornaments81 — or to see her without them?”
Augusta grew red, and tried to look angry, but her laugh narrowly missed being a giggle82. “He goes to give them the Sacrament, of course, Professor! You’ve made up your mind to be contrary today, haven’t you?”
“You relieve me greatly. Yes, I suppose in cases of sudden illness the hair would be lying about where it was lightly taken off. But as you first quoted the priest, Augusta, it was rather shocking. You’ll never convert me back to the religion of my fathers now, if you’re going to sew in the new house and I’m going to work on here. Who is ever to remind me when it’s All Souls’ day, or Ember day, or Maundy Thursday, or anything?”
Augusta said she must be leaving. St. Peter heard her well-known tread as she descended83 the stairs. How much she reminded him of, to be sure! She had been most at the house in the days when his daughters were little girls and needed so many clean frocks. It was in those very years that he was beginning his great work; when the desire to do it and the difficulties attending such a project strove together in his mind like Macbeth’s two spent swimmers — years when he had the courage to say to himself: “I will do this dazzling, this beautiful, this utterly84 impossible thing!”
During the fifteen years he had been working on his Spanish Adventures in North America, this room had been his centre of operations. There had been delightful85 excursions and digressions; the two Sabbatical years when he was in Spain studying records, two summers in the Southwest on the trail of his adventurers, another in Old Mexico, dashes to France to see his foster-brothers. But the notes and the records and the ideas always came back to this room. It was here they were digested and sorted, and woven into their proper place in his history.
Fairly considered, the sewing-room was the most inconvenient86 study a man could possibly have, but it was the one place in the house where he could get isolation87, insulation88 from the engaging drama of domestic life. No one was tramping over him, and only a vague sense, generally pleasant, of what went on below came up the narrow stairway. There were certainly no other advantages. The furnace heat did not reach the third floor. There was no way to warm the sewing-room, except by a rusty90, round gas stove with no flue — a stove which consumed gas imperfectly and contaminated the air. To remedy this, the window must be left open — otherwise, with the ceiling so low, the air would speedily become unfit to breathe. If the stove were turned down, and the window left open a little way, a sudden gust46 of wind would blow the wretched thing out altogether, and a deeply absorbed man might be asphyxiated92 before he knew it. The Professor had found that the best method, in winter, was to turn the gas on full and keep the window wide on the hook, even if he had to put on a leather jacket over his working-coat. By that arrangement he had somehow managed to get air enough to work by.
He wondered now why he had never looked about for a better stove, a newer model; or why he had not at least painted this one, flaky with rust89. But he had been able to get on only by neglecting negative comforts. He was by no means an ascetic93. He knew that he was terribly selfish about personal pleasures, fought for them. If a thing gave him delight, he got it, if he sold his shirt for it. By doing without many so-called necessities he had managed to have his luxuries. He might, for instance, have had a convenient electric drop-light attached to the socket94 above his writing table. Preferably he wrote by a faithful kerosene95 lamp which he filled and tended himself. But sometimes he found that the oil-can in the closet was empty; then, to get more, he would have had to go down through the house to the cellar, and on his way he would almost surely become interested in what the children were doing or in what his wife was doing — or he would notice that the kitchen linoleum96 was breaking under the sink where the maid kicked it up, and he would stop to tack97 it down. On that perilous98 journey down through the human house he might lose his mood, his enthusiasm, even his temper. So when the lamp was empty — and that usually occurred when he was in the middle of a most important passage — he jammed an eyeshade on his forehead and worked by the glare of that tormenting99 pear-shaped bulb, sticking out of the wall on a short curved neck just about four feet above his table. It was hard on eyes even as good as his. But once at his desk, he didn’t dare quit it. He had found that you can train the mind to be active at a fixed time, just as the stomach is trained to be hungry at certain hours of the day.
If someone in the family happened to be sick, he didn’t go to his study at all. Two evenings of the week he spent with his wife and daughters, and one evening he and his wife went out to dinner, or to the theatre or a concert. That left him only four. He had Saturdays and Sundays, of course, and on those two days he worked like a miner under a landslide100. Augusta was not allowed to come on Saturday, though she was paid for that day. All the while that he was working so fiercely by night, he was earning his living during the day; carrying full university work and feeding himself out to hundreds of students in lectures and consultations101. But that was another life.
St. Peter had managed for years to live two lives, both of them very intense. He would willingly have cut down on his university work, would willingly have given his students chaff102 and sawdust — many instructors103 had nothing else to give them and got on very well — but his misfortune was that he loved youth — he was weak to it, it kindled104 him. If there was one eager eye, one doubting, critical mind, one lively curiosity in a whole lecture-room full of commonplace boys and girls, he was its servant. That ardour could command him. It hadn’t worn out with years, this responsiveness, any more than the magnetic currents wear out; it had nothing to do with Time.
But he had burned his candle at both ends to some purpose — he had got what he wanted. By many petty economies of purse, he had managed to be extravagant105 with not a cent in the world but with his professor’s salary — he didn’t, of course, touch his wife’s small income from her father. By eliminations106 and combinations so many and subtle that it now made his head ache to think of them, he had done full justice to his university lectures, and at the same time carried on an engrossing107 piece of creative work. A man can do anything if he wishes to enough, St. Peter believed. Desire is creation, is the magical element in that process. If there were an instrument by which to measure desire, one could foretell108 achievement. He had been able to measure it, roughly, just once, in his student Tom Outland, — and he had foretold109.
There was one fine thing about this room that had been the scene of so many defeats and triumphs. From the window he could see, far away, just on the horizon, a long, blue, hazy110 smear111 — Lake Michigan, the inland sea of his childhood. Whenever he was tired and dull, when the white pages before him remained blank or were full of scratched out sentences, then he left his desk, took the train to a little station twelve miles away, and spent a day on the lake with his sail-boat; jumping out to swim, floating on his back alongside, then climbing into his boat again.
When he remembered his childhood, he remembered blue water. There were certain human figures against it, of course; his practical, strong-willed Methodist mother, his gentle, weaned-away Catholic father, the old Kanuck grandfather, various brothers and sisters. But the great fact in life, the always possible escape from dullness, was the lake. The sun rose out of it, the day began there; it was like an open door that nobody could shut. The land and all its dreariness112 could never close in on you. You had only to look at the lake, and you knew you would soon be free. It was the first thing one saw in the morning, across the rugged113 cow pasture studded with shaggy pines, and it ran through the days like the weather, not a thing thought about, but a part of consciousness itself. When the ice chunks came in of a winter morning, crumbly and white, throwing off gold and rose-coloured reflections from a copper-coloured sun behind the grey clouds, he didn’t observe the detail or know what it was that made him happy; but now, forty years later, he could recall all its aspects perfectly91. They had made pictures in him when he was unwilling114 and unconscious, when his eyes were merely open wide.
When he was eight years old, his parents sold the lakeside farm and dragged him and his brothers and sisters out to the wheat lands of central Kansas. St. Peter nearly died of it. Never could he forget the few moments on the train when that sudden, innocent blue across the sand dunes115 was dying for ever from his sight. It was like sinking for the third time. No later anguish116, and he had had his share, went so deep or seemed so final. Even in his long, happy student years with the Thierault family in France, that stretch of blue water was the one thing he was home-sick for. In the summer he used to go with the Thierault boys to Brittany or to the Languedoc coast; but his lake was itself, as the Channel and the Mediterranean117 were themselves. “No,” he used to tell the boys, who were always asking him about le Michigan, “it is altogether different. It is a sea, and yet it is not salt. It is blue, but quite another blue. Yes, there are clouds and mists and sea-gulls, but — I don’t know, il est toujours plus na?f.”
Afterward118, when St. Peter was looking for a professorship, because he was very much in love and must marry at once, out of the several positions offered him he took the one at Hamilton, not because it was the best, but because it seemed to him that any place near the lake was a place where one could live. The sight of it from his study window these many years had been of more assistance than all the convenient things he had done without would have been.
Just in that corner, under Augusta’s archaic119 “forms,” he had always meant to put the filing-cabinets he had never spared the time or money to buy. They would have held all his notes and pamphlets, and the spasmodic rough drafts of passages far ahead. But he never got them, and now he really didn’t need them; it would be like locking the stable after the horse is stolen. For the horse was gone — that was the thing he was feeling most just now. In spite of all he’d neglected, he had completed his Spanish Adventurers in eight volumes — without filing cabinets or money or a decent study or a decent stove — and without encouragement, Heaven knew! For all the interest the first three volumes awoke in the world, he might as well have dropped them into Lake Michigan. They had been timidly reviewed by other professors of history, in technical and educational journals. Nobody saw that he was trying to do something quite different — they merely thought he was trying to do the usual thing, and had not succeeded very well. They recommended to him the more even and genial120 style of John Fiske.
St. Peter hadn’t, he could honestly say, cared a whoop121 — not in those golden days. When the whole plan of his narrative122 was coming clearer and clearer all the time, when he could feel his hand growing easier with his material, when all the foolish conventions about that kind of writing were falling away and his relation with his work was becoming every day more simple, natural, and happy — he cared as little as the Spanish Adventurers themselves what Professor So-and-So thought about them. With the fourth volume he began to be aware that a few young men, scattered123 about the United States and England, were intensely interested in his experiment. With the fifth and sixth, they began to express their interest in lectures and in print. The two last volumes brought him a certain international reputation and what were called rewards — among them, the Oxford124 prize for history, with its five thousand pounds, which had built him the new house into which he did not want to move.
“Godfrey,” his wife had gravely said one day, when she detected an ironical125 turn in some remark he made about the new house, “is there something you would rather have done with that money than to have built a house with it?”
“Nothing, my dear, nothing. If with that cheque I could have brought back the fun I had writing my history, you’d never have got your house. But one couldn’t get that for twenty thousand dollars. The great pleasures don’t come so cheap. There is nothing else, thank you.”
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dismantled
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| 拆开( dismantle的过去式和过去分词 )； 拆卸； 废除； 取消 | |
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slant
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| v.倾斜，倾向性地编写或报道；n.斜面，倾向 | |
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slanting
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| 倾斜的，歪斜的 | |
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sagging
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| 下垂[沉，陷]，松垂，垂度 | |
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cramped
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mantles
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| vt.&vi.覆盖（mantle的第三人称单数形式） | |
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bumptious
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den
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| n.兽穴；秘密地方；安静的小房间，私室 | |
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wince
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| n.畏缩，退避，（因痛苦，苦恼等)面部肌肉抽动；v.畏缩，退缩，退避 | |
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deft
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| adj.灵巧的，熟练的（a deft hand 能手） | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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hem
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| n.贴边，镶边；vt.缝贴边；(in)包围，限制 | |
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plumber
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| n.(装修水管的)管子工 | |
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coaxed
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| v.哄，用好话劝说( coax的过去式和过去分词 )；巧言骗取；哄劝，劝诱 | |
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wriggling
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| v.扭动，蠕动，蜿蜒行进( wriggle的现在分词 )；（使身体某一部位）扭动；耍滑不做，逃避（应做的事等）；蠕蠕 | |
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16
linen
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| n.亚麻布，亚麻线，亚麻制品；adj.亚麻布制的，亚麻的 | |
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17
pyjamas
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| n.（宽大的）睡衣裤 | |
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18
porcelain
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| n.瓷；adj.瓷的，瓷制的 | |
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19
hips
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| abbr.high impact polystyrene 高冲击强度聚苯乙烯，耐冲性聚苯乙烯n.臀部( hip的名词复数 )；[建筑学]屋脊；臀围（尺寸）；臀部…的 | |
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20
tawny
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| adj.茶色的，黄褐色的；n.黄褐色 | |
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21
hawk
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| n.鹰，骗子；鹰派成员 | |
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22
eyebrows
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| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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23
evading
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| 逃避( evade的现在分词 )； 避开； 回避； 想不出 | |
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24
underneath
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| adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面 | |
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25
throng
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| n.人群，群众；v.拥挤，群集 | |
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26
diminution
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| n.减少；变小 | |
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27
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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28
ridge
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| n.山脊；鼻梁；分水岭 | |
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29
skull
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| n.头骨；颅骨 | |
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30
brutal
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| adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的 | |
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31
unreasonable
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| adj.不讲道理的，不合情理的，过度的 | |
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32
undertaking
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| n.保证，许诺，事业 | |
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33
retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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34
lenient
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| adj.宽大的，仁慈的 | |
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35
faculty
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| n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员 | |
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36
tenant
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| n.承租人；房客；佃户；v.租借，租用 | |
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37
glistening
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| adj.闪耀的，反光的v.湿物闪耀，闪亮( glisten的现在分词 ) | |
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38
gravel
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| n.砂跞；砂砾层；结石 | |
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39
shrubs
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| 灌木( shrub的名词复数 ) | |
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40
fret
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| v.(使)烦恼；(使)焦急；(使)腐蚀，(使)磨损 | |
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41
evade
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| vt.逃避，回避；避开，躲避 | |
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42
plunge
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| v.跳入，(使)投入，(使)陷入；猛冲 | |
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43
resolutely
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| adj.坚决地，果断地 | |
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44
walnut
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| n.胡桃，胡桃木，胡桃色，茶色 | |
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45
sham
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| n./adj.假冒(的)，虚伪(的) | |
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46
gust
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| n.阵风，突然一阵（雨、烟等），（感情的）迸发 | |
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47
devout
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| adj.虔诚的，虔敬的，衷心的 (n.devoutness) | |
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48
devoid
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| adj.全无的，缺乏的 | |
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49
scraps
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| 油渣 | |
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50
crumbs
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| int. (表示惊讶)哎呀 n. 碎屑 名词crumb的复数形式 | |
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51
saturated
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| a.饱和的，充满的 | |
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52
banter
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| n.嘲弄，戏谑；v.取笑，逗弄，开玩笑 | |
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53
bust
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| vt.打破；vi.爆裂；n.半身像；胸部 | |
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54
delicacy
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| n.精致，细微，微妙，精良；美味，佳肴 | |
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55
concussion
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| n.脑震荡；震动 | |
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56
vibration
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| n.颤动，振动；摆动 | |
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57
stimulating
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| adj.有启发性的，能激发人思考的 | |
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58
opaque
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| adj.不透光的；不反光的，不传导的；晦涩的 | |
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59
chunks
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| 厚厚的一块( chunk的名词复数 )； （某物）相当大的数量或部分 | |
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60
tactile
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| adj.触觉的，有触觉的，能触知的 | |
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61
ribs
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| n.肋骨( rib的名词复数 )；（船或屋顶等的）肋拱；肋骨状的东西；（织物的）凸条花纹 | |
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62
bosom
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| n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的 | |
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63
sprightly
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| adj.愉快的，活泼的 | |
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64
tricky
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| adj.狡猾的，奸诈的；(工作等)棘手的，微妙的 | |
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65
musingly
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| adv.沉思地，冥想地 | |
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66
confidential
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| adj.秘（机）密的，表示信任的，担任机密工作的 | |
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67
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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68
wagon
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| n.四轮马车，手推车，面包车；无盖运货列车 | |
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69
soothingly
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| adv.抚慰地，安慰地；镇痛地 | |
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70
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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71
severely
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| adv.严格地；严厉地；非常恶劣地 | |
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72
tilt
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| v.(使)倾侧；(使)倾斜；n.倾侧；倾斜 | |
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73
improper
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| adj.不适当的，不合适的，不正确的，不合礼仪的 | |
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74
defiant
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| adj.无礼的，挑战的 | |
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75
notched
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| a.有凹口的，有缺口的 | |
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76
stature
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| n.（高度）水平，（高度）境界，身高，身材 | |
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77
rigidly
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| adv.刻板地，僵化地 | |
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78
destitute
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| adj.缺乏的；穷困的 | |
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79
pious
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| adj.虔诚的；道貌岸然的 | |
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80
transformations
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| n.变化( transformation的名词复数 )；转换；转换；变换 | |
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81
ornaments
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| n.装饰( ornament的名词复数 )；点缀；装饰品；首饰v.装饰，点缀，美化( ornament的第三人称单数 ) | |
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82
giggle
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| n.痴笑，咯咯地笑；v.咯咯地笑着说 | |
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83
descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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84
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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85
delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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86
inconvenient
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| adj.不方便的，令人感到麻烦的 | |
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87
isolation
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| n.隔离，孤立，分解，分离 | |
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88
insulation
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| n.隔离；绝缘；隔热 | |
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89
rust
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| n.锈；v.生锈；(脑子)衰退 | |
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90
rusty
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| adj.生锈的；锈色的；荒废了的 | |
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91
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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92
asphyxiated
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| v.渴望的，有抱负的，追求名誉或地位的( aspirant的过去式和过去分词 )；有志向或渴望获得…的人 | |
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93
ascetic
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| adj.禁欲的；严肃的 | |
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94
socket
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| n.窝，穴，孔，插座，插口 | |
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95
kerosene
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| n.(kerosine)煤油，火油 | |
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96
linoleum
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| n.油布，油毯 | |
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97
tack
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| n.大头钉；假缝，粗缝 | |
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98
perilous
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| adj.危险的，冒险的 | |
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99
tormenting
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| 使痛苦的，使苦恼的 | |
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100
landslide
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| n.(竞选中)压倒多数的选票；一面倒的胜利 | |
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101
consultations
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| n.磋商（会议）( consultation的名词复数 )；商讨会；协商会；查找 | |
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102
chaff
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| v.取笑，嘲笑；n.谷壳 | |
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103
instructors
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| 指导者，教师( instructor的名词复数 ) | |
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104
kindled
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| （使某物）燃烧，着火( kindle的过去式和过去分词 )； 激起（感情等）； 发亮，放光 | |
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105
extravagant
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| adj.奢侈的；过分的；(言行等)放肆的 | |
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106
eliminations
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| n.排除( elimination的名词复数 )；除去；根除；淘汰 | |
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107
engrossing
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| adj.使人全神贯注的，引人入胜的v.使全神贯注( engross的现在分词 ) | |
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108
foretell
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| v.预言，预告，预示 | |
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109
foretold
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| v.预言，预示( foretell的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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110
hazy
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| adj.有薄雾的，朦胧的；不肯定的，模糊的 | |
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111
smear
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| v.涂抹；诽谤，玷污；n.污点；诽谤，污蔑 | |
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112
dreariness
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| 沉寂，可怕，凄凉 | |
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113
rugged
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| adj.高低不平的，粗糙的，粗壮的，强健的 | |
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114
unwilling
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| adj.不情愿的 | |
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115
dunes
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| 沙丘( dune的名词复数 ) | |
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116
anguish
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| n.(尤指心灵上的)极度痛苦，烦恼 | |
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117
Mediterranean
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| adj.地中海的；地中海沿岸的 | |
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118
afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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119
archaic
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| adj.(语言、词汇等)古代的，已不通用的 | |
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120
genial
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| adj.亲切的，和蔼的，愉快的，脾气好的 | |
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121
whoop
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| n.大叫，呐喊，喘息声；v.叫喊，喘息 | |
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122
narrative
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| n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的 | |
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123
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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124
Oxford
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| n.牛津（英国城市） | |
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125
ironical
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| adj.讽刺的，冷嘲的 | |
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