The Legislature elected two Senators. To the amazement7 of the world, the day before the caucus8 of the Republicans met, McLeod withdrew. He had no opposition9 so far as anybody knew, but a curious thing had happened. The Rev10. John Durham discovered the fact that McLeod kept a still and had established his mother as an illicit11 distiller years before. One of his deputies who had become an inebriate12, confessed this to the doctor who had informed the Preacher.
The Preacher put this important piece of information into the hands of a daring young Republican who had always been one from principle. He went to Raleigh and interviewed McLeod. At first McLeod denied, and blustered13, and swore. When he produced the proofs, he gave up, and asked sullenly15, “What do you want?”
“Get out of the race.”
“All right. Is that all? You’re on top.”
“No, give me the nomination16.”
“Never!” he yelled with an oath.
“Then I ’ll expose you in to-morrow morning’s paper, and that’s the end of you.”
McLeod hesitated a moment, and then said, “I ’ll agree. You’ve got me. But I ’ll make one little condition. You must give me the name of your informant.”
“The Rev. John Durham.”
“I thought as much.”
To the amazement of everyone McLeod waived17 the crown aside and placed it on the head of one of his lieutenants18. He returned to Hambright from this dramatic event with an unruffled front. To his cronies he said, “Bah! I was joking. Never had any idea of taking the office for myself. I’m playing for larger stakes. I make these puppets, and pull the strings19.”
He devoted20 himself assiduously in the leisure which followed to Mrs. Durham. He never intimated to Durham that he knew anything about the part he had taken in his withdrawal21 from the Senatorship. Nor had the Preacher told his wife of his discovery. They had quarrelled several times about McLeod. His wife seemed determined22 to remain loyal to the boy she had taught.
McLeod in his talk with her intimated that he had withdrawn23 from a desire vaguely24 forming in his mind to get out of the filth25 of politics altogether, sooner or later, influenced by her voice alone.
With subtle skill he played upon her vanity and jealousy26, and at last felt that he had entangled27 her so far he could dare a declaration of his feelings. There was one element only in her mental make-up he feared. She held tenaciously28 the old-fashioned romantic ideals of love. To her it seemed a divine mystery linking the souls that felt it to the infinite. If he could only destroy this divine mystery idea, he felt sure that her sense of isolation29, and her proud rebellion against the disappointments of life would make her an easy prey30 to his blandishments.
He searched his library over for a book that could scientifically demonstrate the purely31 physical basis of love. He knew that somewhere in his studies at a medical college in New York he had read it.
At last he discovered it among a lot of old magazines. It was a brief study by a great physician of Paris, entitled “The Natural History of Love.” He gave it to her, and asked her to read it and give him her candid32 opinion of its philosophy.
He waited a week and on a Saturday when the Preacher was absent at one of his county mission stations he called at the hotel for a long afternoon’s talk. He determined to press his suit.
“Do you know, Mrs. Durham, what gives a preacher his boasted power of the spirit over his audiences?” he inquired with a curious laugh in the midst of which he changed his tone of voice.
“No, you are an expert on the diseases of preachers, what is it?”
“Very simple. Religion is founded on love, there never was a magnetic preacher who was not a resistless magnet for scores of magnetic women. If you don’t believe it, watch how resistless is the impulse of all these good-looking women to shake hands with their preacher, and how fondly they look at him across the pews if the crowd is too dense33 to reach his hand.”
A frown passed over her face, and she winced34 at the thrust, yet her answer was a surprising question to him.
“Do you really believe in anything, Allan?”
“You ask that?” he said leaning closer. “You whose great dark eyes look through a man’s very soul?”
“I begin to think I have never seen yours. I doubt if you have a soul.”
“Well, what’s the use of a soul? I can’t satisfy the wants of my body.”
“Answer my question. Do you believe in anything?”
“Yes,” he replied, his voice sinking to a tense whisper, “I believe in Woman,—in love.”
“In Woman?”
“Yes, Woman.”
“You mean women,” she sneered35.
He started at her answer, looked intently at her, and said deliberately36, “I mean you, the One Woman, the only woman in the world to me.”
“I do not believe one word you have uttered, yet, I confess with shame, you have always fascinated me.”
“Why with shame? You have but one life to live. The years pass. Even beauty so rare as yours fades at last. The end is the grave and worms. Why dash from your beautiful lips the cup of life when it is full to the brim?”
“How skillfully you echo the dark thoughts that flit on devil wings through the soul, when we feel the bitterness of life’s failure, its contradictions and mysteries!” she exclaimed, closing her eyes for a moment and leaning back in her chair.
“You’ve often talked to me about the necessity of some sort of slavery for the Negro if he remain in America. I begin to believe that slavery is a necessity for all women.”
“I fail to see it, sir.”
“All women are born slaves and choose to remain so through life. It is curious to see you, a proud imperious woman, born of a race of unconquerable men, staggering to-day under the chains of four thousand years of conventional laws made by the brute37 strength of men. And you, if you struggle at all, beat your wings against the bars that the slaveholding male brute has built about your soul, fall back at last and give up to the will of your master. This too, when you hold in your simple will the key that would unlock your prison door and make you free. It’s a pitiful sight.”
“How shrewd a tempter!”
“There you are again. He who dares to tell you that you are of yourself a living human being, divinely free, is a tempter from the devil. You are thinking about eternity38. Well, now is eternity. Live, stand erect39, take a deep breath, and dare to be yourself and do what you please. That is what I do. The future is a myth.”
“Yes, I know the freedom of which you boast,” she quietly observed, “it is the freedom of lust14. The return to nature you dream of is simply the fall downward into the dirt out of which a rational and spiritual manhood has grown. I feel and know this in spite of your handsome face and the fine ring of your voice.”
“Dirt. Dirt!” he mused40. “Yes, I was in the dirt once, was born in it, the dirt of poverty and superstition41 and fears of laws here and hereafter. But I awoke at last, and shook it off, washed myself in knowledge and stood erect. I am a man now, with the eye of a king, conscious of my power. I look a lying hypocritical world in the face. I have made up my mind to live my own life in spite of fools, and in spite of the laws and conventions of fools.”
“And yet I believe you carry a horse-chestnut in your pocket, and will not undertake an important work on Friday?” she returned.
“But I never strangle a normal impulse of my nature that I can satisfy. I am not that big a fool, at least.”
She was silent, and then said, “I can never thank you enough for the book you sent me.”
McLeod sighed in relief at her change of tone. After all she was just tantalising him!
“Then you liked it?” he cried with glittering eyes.
“I devoured42 every word of it with a greed you can not understand. A great man wrote it.”
“Then we can understand each other better from today,” he interrupted smilingly.
“Yes, far better. You gave me this book hoping that it might influence my character by destroying my ideal of love, didn’t you, now frankly43?”
“Honestly, I did hope it would emancipate44 you from superstitions45.”
“It has,” she declared, but with a curious curve of her lip that chilled him.
“What are you driving at?” he asked suspiciously.
“This book has given me the key that unlocked for me, for the first time, the riddle46 of my physical being. It has shown me the physical basis of love, just as I knew before there was a physical basis of the soul.”
“What did you understand the book to teach?” he asked.
“Simply that love is based in its material life, on the lobe47 of the brain which develops at the base of a child’s head near the age of thirteen. That this lobe of the brain is the sex centre, and love is impossible until it develops. That this centre of new powers at the base of the skull48 is a physical magnet. That when a man and woman approach each other, who are by nature mates, these magnetic centres are disturbed by action and reaction, and that this disturbance49 develops the second elemental passion called love. The first elemental passion, hunger, has for its end the preservation50 of the individual; while love finds its fulfillment in the preservation of the species. Love finds its satisfaction in the child, its ardour cools, and it dies, unless kept alive by the social conventions of the family, which are not based merely on this violent emotion, but also on unity51 of tastes, which produce the sense of comradeship. For these reasons it is possible to fall violently in love more than once, and there are dozens of people who possess this magnetic power over us and would respond to it violently if we only came in social contact with them. That the romantic bombast52 about the possibility of but one love in life, and that of supernatural origin, is twaddle, and leads to false ideals. Have I given the argument?”
“Exactly. But what do you deduce from it?”
“Freedom!”
“Good!” he cried, licking his lips.
“Freedom from superstitions about love,” she answered, “and positive knowledge of its elemental beauty which Nature reveals. In short, I no longer wonder and brood over your charm for me. I know exactly what it means, and how it might occur again and again with another and another. I have simply throttled53 it in a moment by an act of my will, based on this knowledge.”
“You amaze me.”
“No doubt. One’s character centres in the soul, or the appetites. Mine is in the soul, yours in the appetites. I see you to-day as you really are, and I loathe54 you with an unspeakable loathing55. You have opened my eyes with this beautiful little book of Nature. I thank you. Your scientist has convinced me that there are possibly a hundred men in the world who would affect me as you do, were we to meet. And when I looked back into the sweet face of my dead boy, I learned another truth, that in the union of my first great love I was bound in marriage, not simply by a social convention, or a state contract, but for life by Nature’s eternal law. The period of infancy56 of one child extends over twenty-one years, covering the whole maternal57 life of the woman who marries at the proper age of twenty-four. This union of one man and one woman never seemed so sacred to me as now. It is Nature’s law, it is God’s law.”
McLeod’s anger was fast rising.
“Don’t fool yourself,” he sneered, “You may overwork your maternal intuitions. You remember the kiss you gave me when a boy just fifteen? Well, you fooled yourself then about its maternal quality. The magnet of my red head drew your coal black one down to it with irresistible58 power.”
“Perhaps so, Allan. Your work is done. There is the door. I say a last good-bye, with pity for your shallow nature, and the bitter revelation you have given me of your worthlessness.”
Without another word he left, but with a dark resolution of slander59 with which he would tarnish60 her name, and wring61 the Preacher’s heart with anguish62.
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收听单词发音
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1
hitch
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| v.免费搭(车旅行)；系住；急提；n.故障；急拉 | |
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2
democrats
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| n.民主主义者，民主人士( democrat的名词复数 ) | |
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3
breach
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| n.违反，不履行；破裂；vt.冲破，攻破 | |
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supremacy
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| n.至上；至高权力 | |
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legacy
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| n.遗产，遗赠；先人(或过去)留下的东西 | |
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corruption
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| n.腐败，堕落，贪污 | |
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7
amazement
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| n.惊奇，惊讶 | |
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8
caucus
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| n.秘密会议；干部会议；v.（参加）干部开会议 | |
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9
opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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10
rev
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| v.发动机旋转，加快速度 | |
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11
illicit
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| adj.非法的，禁止的，不正当的 | |
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12
inebriate
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| v.使醉 | |
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13
blustered
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| v.外强中干的威吓( bluster的过去式和过去分词 )；咆哮；（风）呼啸；狂吹 | |
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14
lust
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| n.性(淫)欲；渴(欲)望；vi.对…有强烈的欲望 | |
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15
sullenly
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| 不高兴地，绷着脸，忧郁地 | |
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16
nomination
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| n.提名，任命，提名权 | |
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17
waived
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| v.宣布放弃( waive的过去式和过去分词 )；搁置；推迟；放弃（权利、要求等） | |
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18
lieutenants
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| n.陆军中尉( lieutenant的名词复数 )；副职官员；空军；仅低于…官阶的官员 | |
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19
strings
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| n.弦 | |
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20
devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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21
withdrawal
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| n.取回，提款；撤退，撤军；收回，撤销 | |
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22
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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23
withdrawn
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| vt.收回；使退出；vi.撤退，退出 | |
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24
vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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25
filth
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| n.肮脏，污物，污秽；淫猥 | |
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26
jealousy
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| n.妒忌，嫉妒，猜忌 | |
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27
entangled
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| adj.卷入的；陷入的；被缠住的；缠在一起的v.使某人（某物/自己）缠绕，纠缠于（某物中），使某人（自己）陷入（困难或复杂的环境中）( entangle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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28
tenaciously
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| 坚持地 | |
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29
isolation
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| n.隔离，孤立，分解，分离 | |
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30
prey
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| n.被掠食者，牺牲者，掠食；v.捕食，掠夺，折磨 | |
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31
purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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32
candid
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| adj.公正的，正直的；坦率的 | |
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33
dense
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| a.密集的，稠密的，浓密的；密度大的 | |
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34
winced
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| 赶紧避开，畏缩( wince的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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35
sneered
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| 讥笑，冷笑( sneer的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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36
deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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37
brute
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| n.野兽，兽性 | |
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38
eternity
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| n.不朽，来世；永恒，无穷 | |
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39
erect
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| n./v.树立，建立，使竖立；adj.直立的，垂直的 | |
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40
mused
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| v.沉思，冥想( muse的过去式和过去分词 )；沉思自语说（某事） | |
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41
superstition
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| n.迷信，迷信行为 | |
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42
devoured
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| 吞没( devour的过去式和过去分词 )； 耗尽； 津津有味地看； 狼吞虎咽地吃光 | |
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43
frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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44
emancipate
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| v.解放，解除 | |
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45
superstitions
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| 迷信，迷信行为( superstition的名词复数 ) | |
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46
riddle
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| n.谜，谜语，粗筛；vt.解谜，给…出谜，筛，检查，鉴定，非难，充满于；vi.出谜 | |
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47
lobe
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| n.耳垂，（肺，肝等的）叶 | |
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48
skull
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| n.头骨；颅骨 | |
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49
disturbance
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| n.动乱，骚动；打扰，干扰；(身心)失调 | |
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50
preservation
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| n.保护，维护，保存，保留，保持 | |
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51
unity
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| n.团结，联合，统一；和睦，协调 | |
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52
bombast
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| n.高调，夸大之辞 | |
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53
throttled
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| v.扼杀( throttle的过去式和过去分词 )；勒死；使窒息；压制 | |
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54
loathe
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| v.厌恶，嫌恶 | |
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55
loathing
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| n.厌恶，憎恨v.憎恨，厌恶( loathe的现在分词)；极不喜欢 | |
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56
infancy
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| n.婴儿期；幼年期；初期 | |
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57
maternal
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| adj.母亲的，母亲般的，母系的，母方的 | |
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58
irresistible
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| adj.非常诱人的，无法拒绝的，无法抗拒的 | |
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59
slander
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| n./v.诽谤，污蔑 | |
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60
tarnish
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| n.晦暗，污点；vt.使失去光泽；玷污 | |
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61
wring
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| n.扭绞；v.拧，绞出，扭 | |
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62
anguish
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| n.(尤指心灵上的)极度痛苦，烦恼 | |
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