The physiognomy of a deserted5 highway expresses solitude6 to a degree that is not reached by mere7 dales or downs, and bespeaks8 a tomb-like stillness more emphatic9 than that of glades10 and pools. The contrast of what is with what might be probably accounts for this. To step, for instance, at the place under notice, from the hedge of the plantation11 into the adjoining pale thoroughfare, and pause amid its emptiness for a moment, was to exchange by the act of a single stride the simple absence of human companionship for an incubus12 of the forlorn.
At this spot, on the lowering evening of a by-gone winter’s day, there stood a man who had entered upon the scene much in the aforesaid manner. Alighting into the road from a stile hard by, he, though by no means a “chosen vessel” for impressions, was temporarily influenced by some such feeling of being suddenly more alone than before he had emerged upon the highway.
It could be seen by a glance at his rather finical style of dress that he did not belong to the country proper; and from his air, after a while, that though there might be a sombre beauty in the scenery, music in the breeze, and a wan13 procession of coaching ghosts in the sentiment of this old turnpike-road, he was mainly puzzled about the way. The dead men’s work that had been expended14 in climbing that hill, the blistered15 soles that had trodden it, and the tears that had wetted it, were not his concern; for fate had given him no time for any but practical things.
He looked north and south, and mechanically prodded16 the ground with his walking-stick. A closer glance at his face corroborated17 the testimony18 of his clothes. It was self-complacent, yet there was small apparent ground for such complacence. Nothing irradiated it; to the eye of the magician in character, if not to the ordinary observer, the expression enthroned there was absolute submission19 to and belief in a little assortment20 of forms and habitudes.
At first not a soul appeared who could enlighten him as he desired, or seemed likely to appear that night. But presently a slight noise of laboring21 wheels and the steady dig of a horse’s shoe-tips became audible; and there loomed22 in the notch23 of the hill and plantation that the road formed here at the summit a carrier’s van drawn24 by a single horse. When it got nearer, he said, with some relief to himself, “’Tis Mrs. Dollery’s — this will help me.”
The vehicle was half full of passengers, mostly women. He held up his stick at its approach, and the woman who was driving drew rein25.
“I’ve been trying to find a short way to Little Hintock this last half-hour, Mrs. Dollery,” he said. “But though I’ve been to Great Hintock and Hintock House half a dozen times I am at fault about the small village. You can help me, I dare say?”
She assured him that she could — that as she went to Great Hintock her van passed near it — that it was only up the lane that branched out of the lane into which she was about to turn — just ahead. “Though,” continued Mrs. Dollery, “’tis such a little small place that, as a town gentleman, you’d need have a candle and lantern to find it if ye don’t know where ’tis. Bedad! I wouldn’t live there if they’d pay me to. Now at Great Hintock you do see the world a bit.”
He mounted and sat beside her, with his feet outside, where they were ever and anon brushed over by the horse’s tail.
This van, driven and owned by Mrs. Dollery, was rather a movable attachment26 of the roadway than an extraneous27 object, to those who knew it well. The old horse, whose hair was of the roughness and color of heather, whose leg-joints, shoulders, and hoofs28 were distorted by harness and drudgery29 from colthood — though if all had their rights, he ought, symmetrical in outline, to have been picking the herbage of some Eastern plain instead of tugging30 here — had trodden this road almost daily for twenty years. Even his subjection was not made congruous throughout, for the harness being too short, his tail was not drawn through the crupper, so that the breeching slipped awkwardly to one side. He knew every subtle incline of the seven or eight miles of ground between Hintock and Sherton Abbas — the market-town to which he journeyed — as accurately31 as any surveyor could have learned it by a Dumpy level.
The vehicle had a square black tilt32 which nodded with the motion of the wheels, and at a point in it over the driver’s head was a hook to which the reins33 were hitched34 at times, when they formed a catenary curve from the horse’s shoulders. Somewhere about the axles was a loose chain, whose only known purpose was to clink as it went. Mrs. Dollery, having to hop35 up and down many times in the service of her passengers, wore, especially in windy weather, short leggings under her gown for modesty’s sake, and instead of a bonnet36 a felt hat tied down with a handkerchief, to guard against an earache37 to which she was frequently subject. In the rear of the van was a glass window, which she cleaned with her pocket-handkerchief every market-day before starting. Looking at the van from the back, the spectator could thus see through its interior a square piece of the same sky and landscape that he saw without, but intruded38 on by the profiles of the seated passengers, who, as they rumbled39 onward40, their lips moving and heads nodding in animated41 private converse42, remained in happy unconsciousness that their mannerisms and facial peculiarities43 were sharply defined to the public eye.
This hour of coming home from market was the happy one, if not the happiest, of the week for them. Snugly44 ensconced under the tilt, they could forget the sorrows of the world without, and survey life and recapitulate45 the incidents of the day with placid46 smiles.
The passengers in the back part formed a group to themselves, and while the new-comer spoke47 to the proprietress, they indulged in a confidential48 chat about him as about other people, which the noise of the van rendered inaudible to himself and Mrs. Dollery, sitting forward.
“’Tis Barber Percombe — he that’s got the waxen woman in his window at the top of Abbey Street,” said one. “What business can bring him from his shop out here at this time and not a journeyman hair-cutter, but a master-barber that’s left off his pole because ’tis not genteel!”
They listened to his conversation, but Mr. Percombe, though he had nodded and spoken genially49, seemed indisposed to gratify the curiosity which he had aroused; and the unrestrained flow of ideas which had animated the inside of the van before his arrival was checked thenceforward.
Thus they rode on till they turned into a half-invisible little lane, whence, as it reached the verge50 of an eminence51, could be discerned in the dusk, about half a mile to the right, gardens and orchards sunk in a concave, and, as it were, snipped52 out of the woodland. From this self-contained place rose in stealthy silence tall stems of smoke, which the eye of imagination could trace downward to their root on quiet hearth-stones festooned overhead with hams and flitches. It was one of those sequestered53 spots outside the gates of the world where may usually be found more meditation54 than action, and more passivity than meditation; where reasoning proceeds on narrow premises55, and results in inferences wildly imaginative; yet where, from time to time, no less than in other places, dramas of a grandeur56 and unity57 truly Sophoclean are enacted58 in the real, by virtue59 of the concentrated passions and closely knit interdependence of the lives therein.
This place was the Little Hintock of the master-barber’s search. The coming night gradually obscured the smoke of the chimneys, but the position of the sequestered little world could still be distinguished60 by a few faint lights, winking61 more or less ineffectually through the leafless boughs62, and the undiscerned songsters they bore, in the form of balls of feathers, at roost among them.
Out of the lane followed by the van branched a yet smaller lane, at the corner of which the barber alighted, Mrs. Dollery’s van going on to the larger village, whose superiority to the despised smaller one as an exemplar of the world’s movements was not particularly apparent in its means of approach.
“A very clever and learned young doctor, who, they say, is in league with the devil, lives in the place you be going to — not because there’s anybody for’n to cure there, but because ’tis the middle of his district.”
The observation was flung at the barber by one of the women at parting, as a last attempt to get at his errand that way.
But he made no reply, and without further pause the pedestrian plunged63 towards the umbrageous64 nook, and paced cautiously over the dead leaves which nearly buried the road or street of the hamlet. As very few people except themselves passed this way after dark, a majority of the denizens65 of Little Hintock deemed window-curtains unnecessary; and on this account Mr. Percombe made it his business to stop opposite the casements66 of each cottage that he came to, with a demeanor67 which showed that he was endeavoring to conjecture68, from the persons and things he observed within, the whereabouts of somebody or other who resided here.
Only the smaller dwellings69 interested him; one or two houses, whose size, antiquity70, and rambling71 appurtenances signified that notwithstanding their remoteness they must formerly73 have been, if they were not still, inhabited by people of a certain social standing72, being neglected by him entirely74. Smells of pomace, and the hiss75 of fermenting76 cider, which reached him from the back quarters of other tenements77, revealed the recent occupation of some of the inhabitants, and joined with the scent78 of decay from the perishing leaves underfoot.
Half a dozen dwellings were passed without result. The next, which stood opposite a tall tree, was in an exceptional state of radiance, the flickering79 brightness from the inside shining up the chimney and making a luminous80 mist of the emerging smoke. The interior, as seen through the window, caused him to draw up with a terminative air and watch. The house was rather large for a cottage, and the door, which opened immediately into the living-room, stood ajar, so that a ribbon of light fell through the opening into the dark atmosphere without. Every now and then a moth81, decrepit82 from the late season, would flit for a moment across the out-coming rays and disappear again into the night.
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1
Forsaken
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| adj. 被遗忘的, 被抛弃的 动词forsake的过去分词 | |
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2
interspersed
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| adj.[医]散开的；点缀的v.intersperse的过去式和过去分词 | |
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3
orchards
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| （通常指围起来的）果园( orchard的名词复数 ) | |
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4
ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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6
solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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7
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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8
bespeaks
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| v.预定( bespeak的第三人称单数 )；订（货）；证明；预先请求 | |
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9
emphatic
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| adj.强调的，着重的；无可置疑的，明显的 | |
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10
glades
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| n.林中空地( glade的名词复数 ) | |
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11
plantation
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| n.种植园，大农场 | |
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12
incubus
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| n.负担；恶梦 | |
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13
wan
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| (wide area network)广域网 | |
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14
expended
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| v.花费( expend的过去式和过去分词 )；使用（钱等）做某事；用光；耗尽 | |
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15
blistered
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| adj.水疮状的，泡状的v.（使）起水泡( blister的过去式和过去分词 )；（使表皮等）涨破，爆裂 | |
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16
prodded
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| v.刺，戳( prod的过去式和过去分词 )；刺激；促使；（用手指或尖物）戳 | |
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17
corroborated
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| v.证实，支持（某种说法、信仰、理论等）( corroborate的过去式 ) | |
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18
testimony
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| n.证词；见证，证明 | |
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19
submission
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| n.服从，投降；温顺，谦虚；提出 | |
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20
assortment
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| n.分类，各色俱备之物，聚集 | |
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21
laboring
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| n.劳动，操劳v.努力争取(for)( labor的现在分词 )；苦干；详细分析；（指引擎）缓慢而困难地运转 | |
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22
loomed
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| v.隐约出现，阴森地逼近( loom的过去式和过去分词 )；隐约出现，阴森地逼近 | |
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23
notch
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| n.(V字形)槽口，缺口，等级 | |
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24
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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rein
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| n.疆绳，统治，支配；vt.以僵绳控制，统治 | |
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26
attachment
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| n.附属物，附件；依恋；依附 | |
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27
extraneous
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| adj.体外的；外来的；外部的 | |
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28
hoofs
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| n.（兽的）蹄，马蹄( hoof的名词复数 )v.（兽的）蹄，马蹄( hoof的第三人称单数 ) | |
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29
drudgery
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| n.苦工，重活，单调乏味的工作 | |
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30
tugging
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| n.牵引感v.用力拉，使劲拉，猛扯( tug的现在分词 ) | |
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31
accurately
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| adv.准确地，精确地 | |
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32
tilt
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| v.(使)倾侧；(使)倾斜；n.倾侧；倾斜 | |
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33
reins
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| 感情，激情； 缰( rein的名词复数 )； 控制手段； 掌管； （成人带着幼儿走路以防其走失时用的）保护带 | |
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34
hitched
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| （免费）搭乘他人之车( hitch的过去式和过去分词 )； 搭便车； 攀上； 跃上 | |
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35
hop
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| n.单脚跳，跳跃；vi.单脚跳，跳跃；着手做某事；vt.跳跃，跃过 | |
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36
bonnet
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| n.无边女帽；童帽 | |
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37
earache
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| n.耳朵痛 | |
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38
intruded
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| n.侵入的，推进的v.侵入，侵扰，打扰( intrude的过去式和过去分词 )；把…强加于 | |
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39
rumbled
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| 发出隆隆声，发出辘辘声( rumble的过去式和过去分词 )； 轰鸣着缓慢行进； 发现…的真相； 看穿（阴谋） | |
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40
onward
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| adj.向前的，前进的；adv.向前，前进，在先 | |
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41
animated
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| adj.生气勃勃的，活跃的，愉快的 | |
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42
converse
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| vi.谈话，谈天，闲聊；adv.相反的，相反 | |
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43
peculiarities
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| n. 特质, 特性, 怪癖, 古怪 | |
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44
snugly
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| adv.紧贴地；贴身地；暖和舒适地；安适地 | |
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45
recapitulate
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| v.节述要旨，择要说明 | |
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46
placid
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| adj.安静的，平和的 | |
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47
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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48
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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49
genially
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| adv.亲切地，和蔼地；快活地 | |
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50
verge
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| n.边，边缘；v.接近，濒临 | |
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51
eminence
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| n.卓越，显赫；高地，高处；名家 | |
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52
snipped
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| v.剪( snip的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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53
sequestered
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| adj.扣押的；隐退的；幽静的；偏僻的v.使隔绝，使隔离( sequester的过去式和过去分词 )；扣押 | |
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54
meditation
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| n.熟虑，（尤指宗教的）默想，沉思，（pl.）冥想录 | |
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55
premises
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| n.建筑物，房屋 | |
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56
grandeur
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| n.伟大，崇高，宏伟，庄严，豪华 | |
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57
unity
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| n.团结，联合，统一；和睦，协调 | |
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58
enacted
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| 制定（法律），通过（法案）( enact的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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59
virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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60
distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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61
winking
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| n.瞬眼，目语v.使眼色( wink的现在分词 )；递眼色（表示友好或高兴等）；（指光）闪烁；闪亮 | |
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62
boughs
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| 大树枝( bough的名词复数 ) | |
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63
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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64
umbrageous
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| adj.多荫的 | |
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65
denizens
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| n.居民，住户( denizen的名词复数 ) | |
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66
casements
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| n.窗扉( casement的名词复数 ) | |
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67
demeanor
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| n.行为；风度 | |
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68
conjecture
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| n./v.推测，猜测 | |
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69
dwellings
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| n.住处，处所( dwelling的名词复数 ) | |
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70
antiquity
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| n.古老；高龄；古物，古迹 | |
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71
rambling
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| adj.[建]凌乱的，杂乱的 | |
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72
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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73
formerly
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| adv.从前，以前 | |
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74
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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75
hiss
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| v.发出嘶嘶声；发嘘声表示不满 | |
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76
fermenting
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| v.（使）发酵( ferment的现在分词 )；（使）激动；骚动；骚扰 | |
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77
tenements
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| n.房屋，住户，租房子( tenement的名词复数 ) | |
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78
scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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79
flickering
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| adj.闪烁的，摇曳的，一闪一闪的 | |
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80
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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81
moth
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| n.蛾，蛀虫 | |
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82
decrepit
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| adj.衰老的，破旧的 | |
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