Grace observed, for the first time, that her husband was restless, that at moments he even was disposed to avoid her. The scrupulous2 civility of mere3 acquaintanceship crept into his manner; yet, when sitting at meals, he seemed hardly to hear her remarks. Her little doings interested him no longer, while towards her father his bearing was not far from supercilious4. It was plain that his mind was entirely5 outside her life, whereabouts outside it she could not tell; in some region of science, possibly, or of psychological literature. But her hope that he was again immersing himself in those lucubrations which before her marriage had made his light a landmark6 in Hintock, was founded simply on the slender fact that he often sat up late.
One evening she discovered him leaning over a gate on Rub-Down Hill, the gate at which Winterborne had once been standing7, and which opened on the brink8 of a steep, slanting9 down directly into Blackmoor Vale, or the Vale of the White Hart, extending beneath the eye at this point to a distance of many miles. His attention was fixed10 on the landscape far away, and Grace’s approach was so noiseless that he did not hear her. When she came close she could see his lips moving unconsciously, as to some impassioned visionary theme.
She spoke11, and Fitzpiers started. “What are you looking at?” she asked.
“Oh! I was contemplating12 our old place of Buckbury, in my idle way,” he said.
It had seemed to her that he was looking much to the right of that cradle and tomb of his ancestral dignity; but she made no further observation, and taking his arm walked home beside him almost in silence. She did not know that Middleton Abbey lay in the direction of his gaze. “Are you going to have out Darling this afternoon?” she asked, presently. Darling being the light-gray mare13 which Winterborne had bought for Grace, and which Fitzpiers now constantly used, the animal having turned out a wonderful bargain, in combining a perfect docility14 with an almost human intelligence; moreover, she was not too young. Fitzpiers was unfamiliar15 with horses, and he valued these qualities.
“Yes,” he replied, “but not to drive. I am riding her. I practise crossing a horse as often as I can now, for I find that I can take much shorter cuts on horseback.”
He had, in fact, taken these riding exercises for about a week, only since Mrs. Charmond’s absence, his universal practice hitherto having been to drive.
Some few days later, Fitzpiers started on the back of this horse to see a patient in the aforesaid Vale. It was about five o’clock in the evening when he went away, and at bedtime he had not reached home. There was nothing very singular in this, though she was not aware that he had any patient more than five or six miles distant in that direction. The clock had struck one before Fitzpiers entered the house, and he came to his room softly, as if anxious not to disturb her.
The next morning she was stirring considerably16 earlier than he.
In the yard there was a conversation going on about the mare; the man who attended to the horses, Darling included, insisted that the latter was “hag-rid;” for when he had arrived at the stable that morning she was in such a state as no horse could be in by honest riding. It was true that the doctor had stabled her himself when he got home, so that she was not looked after as she would have been if he had groomed17 and fed her; but that did not account for the appearance she presented, if Mr. Fitzpiers’s journey had been only where he had stated. The phenomenal exhaustion18 of Darling, as thus related, was sufficient to develop a whole series of tales about riding witches and demons19, the narration20 of which occupied a considerable time.
Grace returned indoors. In passing through the outer room she picked up her husband’s overcoat which he had carelessly flung down across a chair. A turnpike ticket fell out of the breast-pocket, and she saw that it had been issued at Middleton Gate. He had therefore visited Middleton the previous night, a distance of at least five-and-thirty miles on horseback, there and back.
During the day she made some inquiries21, and learned for the first time that Mrs. Charmond was staying at Middleton Abbey. She could not resist an inference — strange as that inference was.
A few days later he prepared to start again, at the same time and in the same direction. She knew that the state of the cottager who lived that way was a mere pretext22; she was quite sure he was going to Mrs. Charmond. Grace was amazed at the mildness of the passion which the suspicion engendered23 in her. She was but little excited, and her jealousy24 was languid even to death. It told tales of the nature of her affection for him. In truth, her antenuptial regard for Fitzpiers had been rather of the quality of awe25 towards a superior being than of tender solicitude26 for a lover. It had been based upon mystery and strangeness — the mystery of his past, of his knowledge, of his professional skill, of his beliefs. When this structure of ideals was demolished27 by the intimacy28 of common life, and she found him as merely human as the Hintock people themselves, a new foundation was in demand for an enduring and stanch29 affection — a sympathetic interdependence, wherein mutual30 weaknesses were made the grounds of a defensive31 alliance. Fitzpiers had furnished none of that single-minded confidence and truth out of which alone such a second union could spring; hence it was with a controllable emotion that she now watched the mare brought round.
“I’ll walk with you to the hill if you are not in a great hurry,” she said, rather loath32, after all, to let him go.
“Do; there’s plenty of time,” replied her husband. Accordingly he led along the horse, and walked beside her, impatient enough nevertheless. Thus they proceeded to the turnpike road, and ascended33 Rub-Down Hill to the gate he had been leaning over when she surprised him ten days before. This was the end of her excursion. Fitzpiers bade her adieu with affection, even with tenderness, and she observed that he looked weary-eyed.
“Why do you go to-night?” she said. “You have been called up two nights in succession already.”
“I must go,” he answered, almost gloomily. “Don’t wait up for me.” With these words he mounted his horse, passed through the gate which Grace held open for him, and ambled34 down the steep bridle-track to the valley.
She closed the gate and watched his descent, and then his journey onward35. His way was east, the evening sun which stood behind her back beaming full upon him as soon as he got out from the shade of the hill. Notwithstanding this untoward36 proceeding37 she was determined38 to be loyal if he proved true; and the determination to love one’s best will carry a heart a long way towards making that best an ever-growing thing. The conspicuous39 coat of the active though blanching40 mare made horse and rider easy objects for the vision. Though Darling had been chosen with such pains by Winterborne for Grace, she had never ridden the sleek41 creature; but her husband had found the animal exceedingly convenient, particularly now that he had taken to the saddle, plenty of staying power being left in Darling yet. Fitzpiers, like others of his character, while despising Melbury and his station, did not at all disdain42 to spend Melbury’s money, or appropriate to his own use the horse which belonged to Melbury’s daughter.
And so the infatuated young surgeon went along through the gorgeous autumn landscape of White Hart Vale, surrounded by orchards43 lustrous44 with the reds of apple-crops, berries, and foliage45, the whole intensified46 by the gilding47 of the declining sun. The earth this year had been prodigally48 bountiful, and now was the supreme49 moment of her bounty50. In the poorest spots the hedges were bowed with haws and blackberries; acorns51 cracked underfoot, and the burst husks of chestnuts52 lay exposing their auburn contents as if arranged by anxious sellers in a fruit-market. In all this proud show some kernels53 were unsound as her own situation, and she wondered if there were one world in the universe where the fruit had no worm, and marriage no sorrow.
Herr Tannhauser still moved on, his plodding54 steed rendering55 him distinctly visible yet. Could she have heard Fitzpiers’s voice at that moment she would have found him murmuring —
“ . . . Towards the loadstar of my one desire
I flitted, even as a dizzy moth56 in the owlet light.”
But he was a silent spectacle to her now. Soon he rose out of the valley, and skirted a high plateau of the chalk formation on his right, which rested abruptly57 upon the fruity district of loamy clay, the character and herbage of the two formations being so distinct that the calcareous upland appeared but as a deposit of a few years’ antiquity58 upon the level vale. He kept along the edge of this high, unenclosed country, and the sky behind him being deep violet, she could still see white Darling in relief upon it — a mere speck59 now — a Wouvermans eccentricity60 reduced to microscopic61 dimensions. Upon this high ground he gradually disappeared.
Thus she had beheld62 the pet animal purchased for her own use, in pure love of her, by one who had always been true, impressed to convey her husband away from her to the side of a new-found idol63. While she was musing64 on the vicissitudes65 of horses and wives, she discerned shapes moving up the valley towards her, quite near at hand, though till now hidden by the hedges. Surely they were Giles Winterborne, with his two horses and cider-apparatus, conducted by Robert Creedle. Up, upward they crept, a stray beam of the sun alighting every now and then like a star on the blades of the pomace-shovels, which had been converted to steel mirrors by the action of the malic acid. She opened the gate when he came close, and the panting horses rested as they achieved the ascent66.
“How do you do, Giles?” said she, under a sudden impulse to be familiar with him.
He replied with much more reserve. “You are going for a walk, Mrs. Fitzpiers?” he added. “It is pleasant just now.”
“No, I am returning,” said she.
The vehicles passed through, the gate slammed, and Winterborne walked by her side in the rear of the apple-mill.
He looked and smelt67 like Autumn’s very brother, his face being sunburnt to wheat-color, his eyes blue as corn-flowers, his boots and leggings dyed with fruit-stains, his hands clammy with the sweet juice of apples, his hat sprinkled with pips, and everywhere about him that atmosphere of cider which at its first return each season has such an indescribable fascination68 for those who have been born and bred among the orchards. Her heart rose from its late sadness like a released spring; her senses revelled69 in the sudden lapse70 back to nature unadorned. The consciousness of having to be genteel because of her husband’s profession, the veneer71 of artificiality which she had acquired at the fashionable schools, were thrown off, and she became the crude, country girl of her latent, earliest instincts.
Nature was bountiful, she thought. No sooner had she been starved off by Edgar Fitzpiers than another being, impersonating bare and undiluted manliness72, had arisen out of the earth, ready to hand. This was an excursion of the imagination which she did not encourage, and she said suddenly, to disguise the confused regard which had followed her thoughts, “Did you meet my husband?”
Winterborne, with some hesitation73, “Yes.”
“Where did you meet him?”
“At Calfhay Cross. I come from Middleton Abbey; I have been making there for the last week.”
“Haven’t they a mill of their own?”
“Yes, but it’s out of repair.”
“I think — I heard that Mrs. Charmond had gone there to stay?”
“Yes. I have seen her at the windows once or twice.”
Grace waited an interval74 before she went on: “Did Mr. Fitzpiers take the way to Middleton?”
“Yes . . . I met him on Darling.” As she did not reply, he added, with a gentler inflection, “You know why the mare was called that?”
“Oh yes — of course,” she answered, quickly.
They had risen so far over the crest75 of the hill that the whole west sky was revealed. Between the broken clouds they could see far into the recesses76 of heaven, the eye journeying on under a species of golden arcades77, and past fiery78 obstructions79, fancied cairns, logan-stones, stalactites and stalagmite of topaz. Deeper than this their gaze passed thin flakes80 of incandescence81, till it plunged82 into a bottomless medium of soft green fire.
Her abandonment to the luscious83 time after her sense of ill-usage, her revolt for the nonce against social law, her passionate84 desire for primitive85 life, may have showed in her face. Winterborne was looking at her, his eyes lingering on a flower that she wore in her bosom86. Almost with the abstraction of a somnambulist he stretched out his hand and gently caressed87 the flower.
She drew back. “What are you doing, Giles Winterborne!” she exclaimed, with a look of severe surprise. The evident absence of all premeditation from the act, however, speedily led her to think that it was not necessary to stand upon her dignity here and now. “You must bear in mind, Giles,” she said, kindly88, “that we are not as we were; and some people might have said that what you did was taking a liberty.”
It was more than she need have told him; his action of forgetfulness had made him so angry with himself that he flushed through his tan. “I don’t know what I am coming to!” he exclaimed, savagely89. “Ah — I was not once like this!” Tears of vexation were in his eyes.
“No, now — it was nothing. I was too reproachful.”
“It would not have occurred to me if I had not seen something like it done elsewhere — at Middleton lately,” he said, thoughtfully, after a while.
“By whom?”
“Don’t ask it.”
She scanned him narrowly. “I know quite well enough,” she returned, indifferently. “It was by my husband, and the woman was Mrs. Charmond. Association of ideas reminded you when you saw me. . . . Giles — tell me all you know about that — please do, Giles! But no — I won’t hear it. Let the subject cease. And as you are my friend, say nothing to my father.”
They reached a place where their ways divided. Winterborne continued along the highway which kept outside the copse, and Grace opened a gate that entered it.
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收听单词发音
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1
sojourn
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| v./n.旅居，寄居；逗留 | |
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scrupulous
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| adj.审慎的，小心翼翼的，完全的，纯粹的 | |
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3
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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supercilious
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| adj.目中无人的，高傲的；adv.高傲地；n.高傲 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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landmark
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| n.陆标，划时代的事，地界标 | |
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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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brink
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| n.(悬崖、河流等的)边缘，边沿 | |
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slanting
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| 倾斜的，歪斜的 | |
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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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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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12
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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mare
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| n.母马，母驴 | |
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docility
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| n.容易教，易驾驶，驯服 | |
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unfamiliar
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| adj.陌生的，不熟悉的 | |
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considerably
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| adv.极大地；相当大地；在很大程度上 | |
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groomed
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| v.照料或梳洗（马等）( groom的过去式和过去分词 )；使做好准备；训练；（给动物）擦洗 | |
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18
exhaustion
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| n.耗尽枯竭，疲惫，筋疲力尽，竭尽，详尽无遗的论述 | |
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demons
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| n.恶人( demon的名词复数 )；恶魔；精力过人的人；邪念 | |
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narration
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| n.讲述，叙述；故事；记叙体 | |
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inquiries
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| n.调查( inquiry的名词复数 )；疑问；探究；打听 | |
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pretext
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| n.借口，托词 | |
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engendered
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| v.产生（某形势或状况），造成，引起( engender的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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24
jealousy
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| n.妒忌，嫉妒，猜忌 | |
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awe
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| n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧 | |
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solicitude
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| n.焦虑 | |
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demolished
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| v.摧毁( demolish的过去式和过去分词 )；推翻；拆毁（尤指大建筑物）；吃光 | |
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28
intimacy
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| n.熟悉，亲密，密切关系，亲昵的言行 | |
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stanch
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| v.止住（血等）；adj.坚固的；坚定的 | |
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mutual
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| adj.相互的，彼此的；共同的，共有的 | |
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defensive
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| adj.防御的；防卫的；防守的 | |
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loath
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| adj.不愿意的；勉强的 | |
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ascended
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| v.上升，攀登( ascend的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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ambled
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| v.（马）缓行( amble的过去式和过去分词 )；从容地走，漫步 | |
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onward
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| adj.向前的，前进的；adv.向前，前进，在先 | |
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untoward
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| adj.不利的，不幸的，困难重重的 | |
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proceeding
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| n.行动，进行，(pl.)会议录，学报 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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conspicuous
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| adj.明眼的，惹人注目的；炫耀的，摆阔气的 | |
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blanching
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| adj.漂白的n.热烫v.使变白( blanch的现在分词 )；使（植物）不见阳光而变白；酸洗（金属）使有光泽；用沸水烫（杏仁等）以便去皮 | |
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sleek
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| adj.光滑的，井然有序的；v.使光滑，梳拢 | |
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42
disdain
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| n.鄙视，轻视；v.轻视，鄙视，不屑 | |
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orchards
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| （通常指围起来的）果园( orchard的名词复数 ) | |
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lustrous
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| adj.有光泽的；光辉的 | |
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foliage
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| n.叶子，树叶，簇叶 | |
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46
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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gilding
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| n.贴金箔，镀金 | |
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48
prodigally
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| adv.浪费地，丰饶地 | |
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49
supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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50
bounty
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| n.慷慨的赠予物，奖金；慷慨，大方；施与 | |
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51
acorns
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| n.橡子，栎实( acorn的名词复数 ) | |
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52
chestnuts
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| n.栗子( chestnut的名词复数 )；栗色；栗树；栗色马 | |
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53
kernels
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| 谷粒( kernel的名词复数 )； 仁； 核； 要点 | |
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54
plodding
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| a.proceeding in a slow or dull way | |
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rendering
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| n.表现，描写 | |
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moth
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| n.蛾，蛀虫 | |
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57
abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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antiquity
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| n.古老；高龄；古物，古迹 | |
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speck
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| n.微粒，小污点，小斑点 | |
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eccentricity
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| n.古怪，反常，怪癖 | |
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microscopic
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| adj.微小的，细微的，极小的，显微的 | |
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62
beheld
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| v.看，注视( behold的过去式和过去分词 )；瞧；看呀；（叙述中用于引出某人意外的出现）哎哟 | |
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63
idol
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| n.偶像，红人，宠儿 | |
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64
musing
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| n. 沉思，冥想 adj. 沉思的, 冥想的 动词muse的现在分词形式 | |
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vicissitudes
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| n.变迁，世事变化；变迁兴衰( vicissitude的名词复数 )；盛衰兴废 | |
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ascent
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| n.(声望或地位)提高；上升，升高；登高 | |
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67
smelt
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| v.熔解，熔炼；n.银白鱼，胡瓜鱼 | |
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68
fascination
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| n.令人着迷的事物，魅力，迷恋 | |
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69
revelled
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| v.作乐( revel的过去式和过去分词 )；狂欢；着迷；陶醉 | |
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70
lapse
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| n.过失，流逝，失效，抛弃信仰，间隔；vi.堕落，停止，失效，流逝；vt.使失效 | |
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71
veneer
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| n.(墙上的)饰面，虚饰 | |
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72
manliness
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| 刚毅 | |
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73
hesitation
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| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
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74
interval
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| n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息 | |
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75
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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76
recesses
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| n.壁凹( recess的名词复数 )；（工作或业务活动的）中止或暂停期间；学校的课间休息；某物内部的凹形空间v.把某物放在墙壁的凹处( recess的第三人称单数 )；将（墙）做成凹形，在（墙）上做壁龛；休息，休会，休庭 | |
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77
arcades
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| n.商场( arcade的名词复数 )；拱形走道（两旁有商店或娱乐设施）；连拱廊；拱形建筑物 | |
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78
fiery
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| adj.燃烧着的，火红的；暴躁的；激烈的 | |
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79
obstructions
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| n.障碍物( obstruction的名词复数 )；阻碍物；阻碍；阻挠 | |
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80
flakes
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| 小薄片( flake的名词复数 )； （尤指）碎片； 雪花； 古怪的人 | |
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81
incandescence
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| n.白热，炽热；白炽 | |
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82
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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83
luscious
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| adj.美味的；芬芳的；肉感的，引与性欲的 | |
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84
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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85
primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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86
bosom
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| n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的 | |
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87
caressed
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| 爱抚或抚摸…( caress的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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88
kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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89
savagely
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| adv. 野蛮地，残酷地 | |
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