"Lieutenant3," I began eagerly as he was drawing away, "is--?"
"Yes! oh, yes, yes!" His eyes danced, and a soft laugh came, as happy as a child's. "The surgeon is yonder, he will tell you."
This person Kendall and I had the luck to meet at the Roy's breakfast-table. "Yes, left lung," he said. "No, hardly 'perforated,' but the top deeply grazed." The ball, he said, had passed on and out, and he went into particulars with me, while I wondered if Kendall knew, as I did, what parts of the body the pleura, the thorax, the clavicle and the pyemia were.
We lay down to sleep on some fodder4 in the Widow Roy's stable, while around three sides of the place, in a deep wooded hollow, Quinn and the company, well guarded by hidden videttes, drowsed in secret bivouac. I dreamed. I had feared I should, and it would have been a sort of bitter heart's-ease to tell Kendall of my own particular haunting trouble. For now, peril5 and darkness, storm, hard riding, the uproar6 and rage of man-killing, all past and gone, my special private wretchedness came back to me bigger than ever, like a neglected wound stiffened7 and swollen8 as it has grown cold. But Kendall would not talk, and when I dreamed, my dream was not of Camille. It seemed to me there was a hot fight on at the front, and that I, in a sweat of terror, was at the rear, hiding among the wagons9 and telling Gholson pale-faced lies as to why I was there. All at once Gholson became Oliver, alive, bloody-handed, glaring on me spectrally10, cursing, threatening, and demanding his wife. His head seemed not "laid wide open," but to have only a streak11 of the skull12 bared by Ferry's glancing left-cut and a strip of the scalp turned inside out. Cécile drew his head down and showed it to me, in a transport of reproaches, as though my false report had wronged no one else so ruinously as her.
I awoke aghast. If Kendall had still been with me I might, in the first flush of my distress14, have told my vision; but in the place where Kendall had lain lay Harry15 Helm. Kendall was gone; a long beam of afternoon sunlight shone across my lair16 through a chink in the log stable. I sprang half up with an exclamation17, and Harry awoke with a luxurious18 yawn and smile. Kendall, he said, had left with the company, which had marched. Quinn was in command and had told Harry that he was only going to show the enemy that there was no other hostile force in their front, and get himself chased away southeastward.
"I don't know whether he was telling me the truth or not," said Helm, as we led our saddled horses toward the house; "I reckon he didn't want me alongside of him with this arm in a sling19." The hand was bad; lines of pain were on the aide's face. He had taken the dead Louisianian home, got back to camp, and ridden down here to get the latest news concerning Charlotte. Kendall had already given him our story of the night; I had to answer only one inquiry20. "Oh, yes," was my reply, "head laid wide open!" But to think of my next meeting with Ned Ferry almost made me sick.
Harry was delighted. "That lays their way wide open--Ned's and hers! Smith, some God-forsaken fool brought a chaplain here to talk religion to her! He hasn't seen her--Doctor wouldn't let him; but he's here yet, and--George! if I was them I'd put him to a better use than what he came here for, and I'd do it so quick it would make his head swim!" He went on into all the arguments for it; the awkwardnesses of Charlotte's new situation, her lack of means for even a hand-to-mouth daily existence, and so on. Seeing an ambulance coming in through the front gate, and in order not to lose the chance for my rejoinder, I interrupted. "Lieutenant, she will not allow it! She will make him wait a proper time before he may as much as begin a courtship, and then he will have to begin at the beginning. She's not going to let Ned Ferry narrow or lower her life or his--no, neither of them is going to let the other do it--because a piece of luck has laid the way wide open!" I ended with a pomp of prophecy, yet I could hear Ned Ferry saying again, with Charlotte's assenting21 eyes in his, "There is no turning back."
The driver of the ambulance did not know why he had been ordered to report here, but when the Widow Roy came to the door she brought explanation enough. A courier had come to her and gone again, and the chaplain and the surgeon and every one else of any "army sort" except us two had "put out," and she was in a sad flurry. "The Lieutenant," she said, "writes in this-yeh note that this-yeh place won't be safe f'om the Yankees much longer'n to-day, and fo' us to send the wounded lady in the avalanch. Which she says, her own self, it'd go rough with her to fall into they hands again. My married daughter she's a-goin' with her, and the'd ought to be a Mr. Sm'--oh, my Lawdy! you ain't reg-lahly in the ahmy, air you?"
With some slave men to help us, Harry and I bore Charlotte out and laid her in the ambulance, mattress22 and all, on an under bedding of fodder. She had begged off from opiates, and was as full of the old starlight as if the day, still strong, were gone. I helped the married daughter up beside the driver, Harry and I mounted, and we set forth23 for the brigade camp. Mrs. Roy's daughter had with her a new romance, which she had been reading to Charlotte. Now she was eager to resume it, and Charlotte consented. It was a work of some merit; I have the volume yet, inscribed24 to me on the fly-leaf "from C.O.," as I have once already stated, in my account of my friend "The Solitary25." At the end of a mile we made a change; Harry rode a few yards ahead with an officer who happened to overtake us, I took the reins26 from the ambulance driver, and he followed on my horse; I thought I could drive more smoothly27 than he.
And so I began to hear the tale. I was startled by its strong reminder28 of Charlotte's own life; but Charlotte answered my anxious glance with a brow so unfretted that I let the reading go on, and so made a cruel mistake. At every turning-point in the story its reader would have paused to talk it over, but Charlotte, with a steadily29 darkling brow, murmured each time "Go on," and I was silent, hoping that farther along there would be a better place to stop for good. Not so; the story's whirling flood swept us forward to a juncture30 ever drawing nearer and clearer, clearer and crueler, where a certain man would have to choose between the woman he loved and that breadth and fruitfulness of life to which his splendid gifts imperiously pointed31 him. Oh, you story-tellers! Every next page put the question plainer, drove the iron deeper: must a man, or even may a man, wed13 his love, when she stands between him and his truest career, a drawback and drag upon his finest service to his race and day? And, oh, me! who let my eye quail32 when Charlotte searched it, as though her own case had brought that question to me before ever we had seen this book. And, oh, that impenetrable woman reading! Her husband was in Lee's army, out of which, she boasted, she would steal him in a minute if she could. She was with us, now, only because, at whatever cost to others, she was going where no advancement33 of the enemy's lines could shut her off from him; and so stop reading a moment she must, to declare her choice for Love as against all the careers on earth, and to put that choice fairly to shame by the unworthiness of her pleadings in its defence. I intervened; I put her grovelling34 arguments aside and thrust better ones in, for the same choice, and then, in the fear that they were not enough, stumbled into special pleading and protested that the book itself had put the question unfairly.
"Shut it," said Charlotte, with a sigh like that which had risen when the lead first struck her. "If I could be moved ever so little,--" she said.
I had the driver tie my horse behind the vehicle and resume the lines. Then the soldier's wife and I moved Charlotte, and when the reader began to handle the book again wishfully our patient said, with the kindest voice, "Read the rest of it to yourself; I know how it will end; it will end to please you, not as it ought; not as it ought."
For a while we went in silence, and she must have seen that my heart was in a rage, for with suffering on her brow, amusement on her lips, and a sweet desperation in her eyes, she murmured my name. "Richard:--what fun it must have been to live in those old Dark Ages--when all you had to do--was to turn any one passion into--one splendid virtue--at the expense--of all the rest."
I could answer pleadingly that it were far better not to talk now. But she would go on, until in my helplessness I remarked how beautiful the day had been. Her eyes changed; she looked into mine with her calm inward-outward ken2, and once more with smiling lips and suffering brow murmured, "Yes." I marvelled35 she should betray such wealth of meaning to such as I; yet it was like her splendid bravery to do it.
At the brigade's picket36, where I was angry that Ferry did not meet us, and had resumed the saddle and stretched all the curtains of the ambulance, who should appear but Scott Gholson. Harry and I were riding abreast37 in advance of the ambulance. Gholson and he barely said good-evening. I asked him where was Lieutenant Ferry, and scarcely noted38 his words, so promptly39 convinced was I by their mere40 tone that he had somehow contrived41 to get Ferry sent on a distant errand. "Is she better?" he inquired; "has the hemorrhage stopped?"
"It's begun again," growled42 Harry, who wanted both of us to suffer all we could. Gholson led us through the camp. A large proportion of the men were sleeping when as yet it was hardly night.
"Has the brigade got marching orders?" I asked, and he said the three regiments43 had, though not the battery. He passed over to me two pint44 bottles filled, corked45, and dangling46 from his fingers by a stout47 double twine48 on the neck of each. "Every man has them," he said; "hang one on each side of your belt in front of your pistol."
I held them up and scowled49 from them to Harry, and we both laughed, so transparent50 was Gholson's purpose to get every one away from our patient who yearned51 to be near her. "One in front of each pistol," I said, so tying them; "but use the pistols first, I suppose."
"Yes," replied Gholson, "pistols first, and then the turpentine." Whereat Harry and I exchanged glances again, it came so pat that Scott Gholson should be a dispenser of inflammables. At a house a mile behind the camp the surgeon stood waiting for us. He frowned at me the instant he saw Charlotte, and I heard him swear. As we bore her in with Gholson and me next her head she murmured to him:
"Mr. Gholson, when does the command move?"
"At twelve," he replied, and I bent52 and softly added "That's why--"
"Yes," she said, with a quick, understanding look, and wiped her lips as daintily as if it were with wine they were crimsoned53.
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收听单词发音
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1
privately
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| adv.以私人的身份，悄悄地，私下地 | |
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ken
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| n.视野，知识领域 | |
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lieutenant
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| n.陆军中尉，海军上尉；代理官员，副职官员 | |
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fodder
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| n.草料；炮灰 | |
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peril
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| n.(严重的)危险；危险的事物 | |
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uproar
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| n.骚动，喧嚣，鼎沸 | |
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7
stiffened
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| 加强的 | |
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8
swollen
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| adj.肿大的，水涨的；v.使变大，肿胀 | |
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9
wagons
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| n.四轮的运货马车( wagon的名词复数 )；铁路货车；小手推车 | |
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spectrally
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| adv.幽灵似地，可怕地 | |
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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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skull
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| n.头骨；颅骨 | |
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wed
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| v.娶，嫁，与…结婚 | |
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distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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harry
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| vt.掠夺，蹂躏，使苦恼 | |
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16
lair
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| n.野兽的巢穴；躲藏处 | |
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exclamation
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| n.感叹号，惊呼，惊叹词 | |
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luxurious
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| adj.精美而昂贵的；豪华的 | |
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sling
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| vt.扔；悬挂；n.挂带；吊索，吊兜；弹弓 | |
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20
inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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21
assenting
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| 同意，赞成( assent的现在分词 ) | |
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mattress
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| n.床垫，床褥 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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inscribed
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| v.写，刻( inscribe的过去式和过去分词 )；内接 | |
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solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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26
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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smoothly
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| adv.平滑地，顺利地，流利地，流畅地 | |
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reminder
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| n.提醒物，纪念品；暗示，提示 | |
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steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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30
juncture
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| n.时刻，关键时刻，紧要关头 | |
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31
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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32
quail
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| n.鹌鹑；vi.畏惧，颤抖 | |
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33
advancement
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| n.前进，促进，提升 | |
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34
grovelling
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| adj.卑下的，奴颜婢膝的v.卑躬屈节，奴颜婢膝( grovel的现在分词 )；趴 | |
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35
marvelled
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| v.惊奇，对…感到惊奇( marvel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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36
picket
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| n.纠察队；警戒哨；v.设置纠察线；布置警卫 | |
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37
abreast
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| adv.并排地；跟上(时代)的步伐，与…并进地 | |
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38
noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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39
promptly
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| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
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40
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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41
contrived
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| adj.不自然的，做作的；虚构的 | |
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42
growled
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| v.（动物）发狺狺声， （雷）作隆隆声( growl的过去式和过去分词 )；低声咆哮着说 | |
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43
regiments
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| （军队的）团( regiment的名词复数 )； 大量的人或物 | |
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44
pint
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| n.品脱 | |
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45
corked
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| adj.带木塞气味的，塞着瓶塞的v.用瓶塞塞住( cork的过去式 ) | |
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46
dangling
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| 悬吊着( dangle的现在分词 )； 摆动不定； 用某事物诱惑…； 吊胃口 | |
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48
twine
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| v.搓，织，编饰；（使）缠绕 | |
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49
scowled
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| 怒视，生气地皱眉( scowl的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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50
transparent
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| adj.明显的，无疑的；透明的 | |
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51
yearned
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| 渴望，切盼，向往( yearn的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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52
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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53
crimsoned
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| 变为深红色（crimson的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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