He eased himself out of bed. Save for the pool of scarlet6 that weltered across floor and ceiling from the hearth7, the room was filled with blackness.
“Who’s there?” he whispered.
No answer. He tiptoed up the steps and out into the passage. It was long and gloomy; at the end of it a strip of light escaped from a door which had been left ajar. It was from there that the voice was calling. Steadying himself with his hand against the wall, he stole noiselessly towards it Just as he reached the strip of light the singing abruptly8 ended.
“No, Hal. You shouldn’t do that. You do it too often. Please not any more.”
“Just once on your lips.”
“If it’s only once. You promise?”
“I promise.”
The door creaked. When he saw them, their bodies were still close together, but as they turned to glance across their shoulders their heads had drawn9 a little apart. Her hands, resting on the keyboard, were held captive by the man’s. Candles, flickering10 behind their heads, scorched11 a hole in the dusk to frame them.
The man’s face was boyish and clean-shaven, self-indulgent and almost handsome. It was a pleasant face: the corners of the mouth turned up with a hint of humor; the lips were full and kind; the eyes blue and impatient His complexion12 was high and his hair flaxen; his bearing sensitive and a little self-conscious. He was a man who could give himself excessively to any one he loved and who consequently would be always encountering new disappointments.
And the woman—she was like her voice: remote and passionate13; haunting and unsatisfying; an instrument of romance for the awakening14 of idealized desires. She was fashioned no less for the attracting of love than for its repulse15. Her forehead was intensely white; her brows were like the shadow of wings, hovering16 and poised17; her eyes now vague as a sea-cloud, now flashing like sudden gleams of blue-gray sunlight Her hair was the color of ancient bronze—dark in the hollows and burnished18 at the edges. Her throat was her glory—full and young, throbbing19 like a bird’s and slender as the stalk of a flower. It was her mouth that gave the key to her character. It could be any shape that an emotion made it: petulant20 and unreasonable21; kind and gracious and adoring. She was a darkened house when she was unresponsive; there was no stir in her—she seemed uninhabited. In the street below her windows some chance traveler of thought or affection halted; instantly all her windows blazed and the people of her soul gazed out.
The odd little figure, hesitating in the doorway22, had worked this miracle. Her eyes, which had been troubled when first they rested on him, brightened. Her lips relaxed. Like a bubble rising from a still depth, laughter rippled23 up her throat and broke across the scarlet threshold of her mouth.
“Oh, Hal, what a darling! Where did you get him? And what a dear, funny nightgown!”
She tore her hands free from the man’s. Running to the little boy, she knelt beside him, bringing her face down to his level. As if to prevent him from escaping, she looped her arms about his neck.
“You are dear and funny,” she said. “Where d’you come from?”
Teddy was abashed24. He didn’t mind being called dear, but he strongly objected to being called funny. He was terribly conscious of the pink flannel25 garment which clothed him. It hung like a sack from his narrow shoulders. If Mrs. Sheerug hadn’t safety-pinned a reef in at the neck, there would have been danger of its slipping off him. He couldn’t see his hands; they only reached to where his elbows ought to have been. He couldn’t see his feet; a yard of pink stuff draped them. He had had to kilt it to make his way along the passage. But the garment’s chief offense26, as he regarded it, was that it was a woman’s: a rather stout27 middle-aged28 woman’s—the sort of woman who had given up trying to look pretty and probably wore a nightcap. Teddy forgot that had he not been press-ganged into sickness, the beautiful lady’s arms would not have been about him. All he remembered was that he looked a caricature at a moment when—he scarcely knew why—he wanted to appear most manly29. Mrs. Sheerug was responsible and he felt hotly resentful.
“Where did you come from?”
“Bed.”
“But isn’t it rather early to be in bed? Perhaps you’re not well.”
“I’m quite well.” He spoke30 stubbornly, looking aside and trying to keep the tears back. “I’m quite well; it’s she who pretends I isn’t.”
“She! Ah, I understand. Poor old boy, never mind.”
She drew him against her breast and kissed him. He thought she would release him; but still she held him. He could feel the beating of her heart and the slow movement of her breath. He didn’t want her to let him go; but why did she still hold him? Shyly he raised his eyes.
“Won’t you smile?” she said. “I’d like to see what you look like. And now tell me, what made you come here?”
“I heard you,” he whispered. “Please let me stay.”
She glanced back at the man; he sat where she had left him, by the piano, watching. She rather liked to make him jealous. Turning to the child, she lowered her voice, “You’ll catch cold if you don’t get back to bed and I’ll be blamed for it. If I come with you, will that be as good as if I let you stay?”
“Oh, better.”
“Then kiss me.”
As she rose from her knees she gathered him in her arms. The man left his seat to follow. She paused in the doorway, gazing across her shoulder. “No, Hal, it’s a time when you’re not wanted.”
“But Vashti——”
She laughed mischievously31. “I said no. There’s some one else to-night who wants me all to himself.”
When Teddy became a man and looked back on that night there were two things that he remembered: the first was his pride and sense of triumph at hearing himself preferred to Hal; the second was that love, as an inspiring and torturing reality, entered into his experience for the first time. As she carried him into the darkness of the passage which had been full of fears without her, her act seemed symbolic32. Gazing back from her arms, he saw the man—saw the perplexed33 humiliation34 of his expression, his aloneness and instinctively35 his tragedy, yet without pity and rather with contentment In later years all that happened to him seemed a refinement36 of spiritual revenge for his childish callousness37. The solitary38 image of the man in the dim-lit room, his empty hands and following eyes took a place in the gallery of memory as a Velasquezesque masterpiece—a composition in brown and white of the St. Sebastian of a love self-pierced by the arrows of its own too great desire.
点击
收听单词发音
收听单词发音 |
1
luring
|
|
| 吸引，引诱（lure的现在分词形式） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
casement
|
|
| n.竖铰链窗；窗扉 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
swooping
|
|
| 俯冲，猛冲( swoop的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
tapestry
|
|
| n.挂毯，丰富多采的画面 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
infinitely
|
|
| adv.无限地，无穷地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
scarlet
|
|
| n.深红色，绯红色，红衣；adj.绯红色的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
hearth
|
|
| n.壁炉炉床，壁炉地面 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
abruptly
|
|
| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
drawn
|
|
| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
flickering
|
|
| adj.闪烁的，摇曳的，一闪一闪的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
scorched
|
|
| 烧焦，烤焦( scorch的过去式和过去分词 )； 使（植物）枯萎，把…晒枯； 高速行驶； 枯焦 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
complexion
|
|
| n.肤色；情况，局面；气质，性格 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
passionate
|
|
| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
awakening
|
|
| n.觉醒，醒悟 adj.觉醒中的；唤醒的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
repulse
|
|
| n.击退，拒绝；vt.逐退，击退，拒绝 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
hovering
|
|
| 鸟( hover的现在分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
poised
|
|
| a.摆好姿势不动的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
burnished
|
|
| adj.抛光的，光亮的v.擦亮（金属等），磨光( burnish的过去式和过去分词 )；被擦亮，磨光 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
throbbing
|
|
| a. 跳动的,悸动的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
petulant
|
|
| adj.性急的，暴躁的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
unreasonable
|
|
| adj.不讲道理的，不合情理的，过度的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
doorway
|
|
| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
rippled
|
|
| 使泛起涟漪（ripple的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
abashed
|
|
| adj.窘迫的，尴尬的v.使羞愧，使局促，使窘迫( abash的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
25
flannel
|
|
| n.法兰绒；法兰绒衣服 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
26
offense
|
|
| n.犯规，违法行为；冒犯，得罪 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
28
middle-aged
|
|
| adj.中年的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
29
manly
|
|
| adj.有男子气概的；adv.男子般地，果断地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
30
spoke
|
|
| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
31
mischievously
|
|
| adv.有害地；淘气地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
32
symbolic
|
|
| adj.象征性的，符号的，象征主义的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
33
perplexed
|
|
| adj.不知所措的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
34
humiliation
|
|
| n.羞辱 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
35
instinctively
|
|
| adv.本能地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
36
refinement
|
|
| n.文雅；高尚；精美；精制；精炼 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
37
callousness
|
|
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
38
solitary
|
|
| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |