She therefore locked her door and proceeded to consider the question of what she should wear with as much attention as if she had been going to a ball. Neither barefoot nor with only stockings would she go into any passage which had left those unpleasant dark stains upon Lady Heritage’s overall. A really heartfelt shudder3 passed over her at the very idea. No, Renata possessed4 slippers5 of maroon6 felt. Misguided talent had stenciled7 upon the toe of one a Dutch boy in full trousers, and upon the toe of the other a Dutch girl in full petticoats. Jane had a fierce loathing8 for the slippers, but they had cork9 soles and would at once keep out the damp and be very silent. She therefore placed them in readiness.
Prolonged hesitation10 between the claims of the crimson11 flannel12 dressing-gown and an aged13 blue serge dress resulted in a final selection of the latter. She decided14 that it would flap less, and that if it got stained and damp the housemaids would be less likely to notice it.
“Of course, on the other hand,” said Jane to herself, “if I’m caught, it absolutely does in any excuse about walking in my sleep, but I don’t think that’s an earthly, anyhow. If I’m caught, they’ll jolly well know what I was doing. The thing is not to be caught.”
To-night there was no patch of moonlight to pass through, only a vague greyness which showed that the moon had risen and that the clouds outside were thin enough to let some of the light filter through.
Jane felt her way downstairs and across the hall to Sir William’s study. The study door afforded the nearest point from which she could watch what she called Willoughby Luttrell’s corner without exposing herself to detection.
She made up her mind that she would wait until she heard twelve strike, and then explore the corner. She had so thoroughly16 planned a period of waiting that it was with a feeling of shocked surprise that she became aware, even as she reached and crossed the threshold of the study, that some one was coming down the stairs behind her.
If she had been one moment later, if she had stayed, as she very nearly did stay, to look out of the window and see whether the night was fair, they would have walked into one another at the top of the stairs. As it was, she had escaped by the very narrowest margin17.
The door opened inwards, and she had just time to get behind it and close all but a crack, when through that crack she saw Raymond Heritage pass, wrapped in the same black cloak which she had worn the night before, only this time she wore beneath it, not her linen18 overall, but the dress she had worn for dinner. She held an electric lamp in her left hand.
As soon as she had passed the door, Jane opened it a little wider and came forward a step.
Lady Heritage went straight to the corner of the hall. She put the torch down upon a chair which stood immediately under Willoughby Luttrell’s portrait. Then she went quite close to the wall and reached up, with her arms stretched out widely. Her right hand touched the bottom left-hand corner of the portrait and her left rested in the angle of the corner.
Jane heard the same click which she had heard the night before.
Lady Heritage stepped back, took up her light, and, going to the corner, pushed hard against the wall.
Jane watched with all her eyes, and saw a section of the panelling turn on some unseen pivot19, leaving a narrow door through which Raymond passed. For a moment she stared at the lighter20 oblong in the wall; then there was a second click and the unbroken shadow once again.
Tingling21 with excitement, Jane stepped from her doorway22 and came to the corner. She must, oh she must, find the spring, and find it in time to follow. Raymond stood here and reached up, but she was tall, much taller than Jane. She stood on her tiptoes and could not reach the lowest edge of the portrait.
With the very greatest of care she moved the chair that was under the picture a yard or two to the left. It weighed as though it were made of lead instead of oak, and she was gasping23 as she set it down, but she had made no noise. Renata’s cork soles slipped as she climbed on to the polished seat, but she gripped the solid back and did not fall.
Raymond had pressed something in the wall with both hands at once. Jane began to feel carefully along the lower edge of the portrait until she came to the massively foliated corner with its fat gilt25 acanthus leaves. A cross-piece of the panelling came just on the same level. She felt along it with light, sensitive finger-tips. There was a knot in the wood, but nothing else. “If there is another knot in the corner, I’ll try pressing on them,” she thought to herself, and on the instant her left hand found the second knot. She pressed with all her might, and for the third time that evening she heard the little scarcely audible click. This time it spelt victory.
In a curiously26 methodical manner Jane got down, put the chair carefully back into its place, and pushed against the wall as she had seen Lady Heritage do. The panelling yielded to her hand and swung inwards.
There was a black gap in the corner. Jane passed through it without any hesitation, and pulled the panelling to. She meant to leave it just ajar, but her hand must have shaken, or else there was some controlling spring, for as she stood in the black dark she heard the click again. She drew a long breath and stood motionless for a moment, but only for a moment. She had come there to follow Raymond Heritage, and follow her she would.
She put out a cautious foot and it went down, so far down that for a sickening instant she thought that she must overbalance and fall headlong; then, just in time, it touched a step, the first of ten which went down very steeply. At the bottom she felt her way round a corner, and then with intensest thankfulness she saw, a good way ahead, a moving figure with a light.
The passage that stretched before her was about six feet high and four feet wide. The air felt very damp and heavy. At intervals27 there were openings on the left-hand side where other passages seemed to branch off. Jane began to have a growing horror of these other passages. If she lost Lady Heritage, how would she ever find her way back, and—yet more horrid28 thought—who, or what, might at any moment come out of one of those dark tunnels behind her? It was at this point that she began to run, only to check herself severely29. “She’ll hear you, you fool. Jane, I absolutely forbid you to be such a fool; and Renata’s slippers will come off if you run, nasty sloppy30 things, and then you’ll tread in green slime, and get it between all your toes. It will squelch31.” The horror of the black passages was eclipsed; Jane stopped running obediently, but she took longer steps and diminished the distance between herself and her unconscious guide.
174
The passage had begun to run uphill. Jane wondered where they were going. At any moment Lady Heritage might turn. If she did so, Jane must infallibly be caught unless she were near enough to one of the side tunnels. She went on with her heart in her mouth.
A line from one of Christina Rossetti’s poems came into her head:
“Does the road wind uphill all the way?
Yes, to the very end.”
“The sort of cheery thing one would remember,” thought Jane to herself; and she continued to climb the endless slope, her eyes fixed32 on the dark, moving silhouette33 of Lady Heritage.
At last there was a pause. The light ceased to move. Jane crept closer, but dared not come too near. Next moment she saw what looked like a slab34 of stone in the passage wall swing round on a pivot as the panelling had done. Lady Heritage passed out of sight through the opening, and at the same moment a great breath of wind from the sea drove into the passage, clear, fresh, exquisite35.
Jane hurried to the opening and looked out. She saw first the dark, curving walls of a small cave, and, immediately in front of her, the black outline of a bench, beyond that a stretch of uneven36 ground, a tangle37 of wire, and the black movement of the sea. The moon behind the clouds made a vague, dusky twilight38, and the wind blew. Lady Heritage was standing39 just on the other side of the stone seat. It startled Jane to find that she was so near. She stood quite still looking at the shadowed water and the cloudy sky.
Then, without any warning, a tall, dark figure came into sight. To Jane it seemed as if it rose out of the ground. Afterwards she thought that, if any one had been sitting on the grass and then had risen, it would, of course, have looked like that. At the time she leaned against the rock for support and had much ado not to scream.
It was Lady Heritage who called out, with an inarticulate cry that mingled40 with the wind and was carried away.
The dark figure stood still just where it had so suddenly appeared, and in an instant Raymond had turned her light upon it. In the circle of light Jane saw a man—a tall man, bareheaded. He had thrown up his arm as if to screen his face, but it only hid the mouth and chin. Over it his eyes looked straight at Raymond Heritage.
And Raymond gave a great cry of “Anthony!” The light dropped from her hand, fell with a crash on the stones, rolled over, and went out. Anthony Luttrell did not stir, but Raymond began to move towards him after a strange rigid41 fashion, and as she moved, she kept saying his name over and over:
“Tony—Tony—Tony—Tony.”
Her voice fell lower and lower. As she reached him it was nearly gone.
Jane turned from the stone wall where she was leaning, and stumbled back along the dark passage with the tears running down her face.
“I’m not a ghost, Raymond. Did you think I was?”
They were so close together that if she had stretched out those groping hands another inch they would have touched him. Something in his tone set a barrier between them and Raymond’s hands fell empty. The world was whirling round her. Life and death, love and hate, their parting and this meeting were merged43 in a confusion that robbed her of thought and almost of consciousness. It seemed to her as if they had been standing there for a long, long time, or, rather, as if time had nothing to do with them, and they had been cast into a strange eternity44. Out of the turmoil45 of her thought arose the remembrance of the last time she and Anthony had trysted in this place—a sky almost unbearably46 blue and the sea brilliant under the noonday sun. Now there was no light anywhere.
Anthony was alive. That should have been joy unbelievable. All through the years since she had read his name in the list of missing with what an overwhelming surge of joy would her heart have lifted to the words, “Anthony is alive.” Now she said them to herself and felt only a deeper, more terrible sense of separation than any that had touched her yet. They stood together, and between them there was a gulf47 unpassable—and no light anywhere.
Raymond moved very slowly back along the way that she had come. She came to the stone seat, caught at the back of it with a hand that suddenly began to shake, and sat down. A few slow moments passed. Then she bent48 and began to grope for the torch which she had dropped.
Anthony came towards her.
“What is it?” he said, and she answered him in a low, fluttering voice:
“My light—I dropped—it’s so dark—I want the light.”
The strong, capable hand groping without aim stirred something in Anthony. He said, almost roughly:
“I’ll find it.”
Then a moment later he had picked it up, found it intact save for a crack in the glass, and, switching it on, put it down on the seat beside her.
He was not prepared for her immediately flashing the light on to his face. An exclamation49 broke from him, and to cover it he said:
“I am changed out of knowledge.”
“Changed—yes—Tony, that scar.”
Her voice trembled away into silence. Her hand fell. The dusk was between them.
“Ugly, isn’t it? But I haven’t the monopoly of change, have I? You, I think, have changed also.”
“Yes.”
With an impulse she hardly understood, she raised the light and turned it until her face and her bare throat were brilliantly illuminated50. The dark cloak fell away a little. The dark eyes looked at him with defiance51 and appeal. Her beauty, seen like that, had something that startled; it was so devoid52 of life and colour, and yet so great! After a long, breathless minute Anthony said in his slow voice:
“You have changed more than I have, Lady Heritage, for you have changed your name.”
He saw the last vestige53 of colour leave her face. She put the lamp down, and her silence startled him.
“No one would have known me,” he said after a pause that was all strain.
“I knew you,” said Raymond very low.
“Only because the lower part of my face was hidden. You’d have passed me in daylight. You have passed me.”
“You are working in the laboratory—that’s—that’s why....” She broke off for a minute and went on with a sort of violence, “You say that I didn’t know you, but I did—I did. All this week I’ve been tormented55 with your presence. All this week I’ve felt you just at hand, just out of reach. I kept saying to myself, ‘Tony’s dead,’ and expecting to meet you round every corner. It was driving me mad.”
“It sounds most uncomfortable,” said Anthony dryly.
Raymond saw a mocking look pass over his face. She turned the light away and set it down. If she had not felt physically56 incapable57 of rising to her feet, she would have left him then. This was not Anthony at all, only the anger, the bitterness, the cold resentment58 which she had hated in him. These, not Anthony, had come back from the grave.
He was speaking again:
“Perhaps I shouldn’t ask, but ... are you expecting to meet any one here? Am I in the way?”
She answered him with a sort of heartbroken simplicity59 quite beyond pride:
“I don’t know what I expected. You were haunting me so. I came here because ... oh, Tony, don’t you remember at all?”
“I remember something that you appear to have forgotten, Raymond. When like a fool, and a dishonourable fool at that, I gave you the secret of these passages, I remember very well the rather enthusiastic terms in which you asserted your conviction that the secret was a sacred trust, and one that you would keep absolutely inviolate60. As, however, I broke my own trust in giving you the secret, I can, I suppose, hardly complain because you have imitated my lack of discretion61.”
Raymond did rise then.
“Tony, what do you mean?” she cried.
“My dear Raymond, you know very well what I mean.”
“I do not.” Her voice had risen; this was more the Raymond of their old quarrels, a creature quick to passionate62 anger, vehement63 and reckless.
“I say you know very well.”
“And I say that I do not. That I haven’t the shadow of an idea—and that you must explain, Tony; explain.”
“Oh, I’ll explain all right!”
The last word was almost lost in a battering64 gust65 of wind. He waited for it to die away, and then:
“To Jeffrey—you think I told Jeffrey?”
Anthony laughed. It needed only her use of Ember’s name.
“I know that you told Ember,” he said in a voice like ice.
Raymond put her hands to her head. She pressed her throbbing66 temples and stared at this shadow of Anthony. It was beyond any nightmare that they should meet like this. She made a very great effort, and came up to him, touching67 his wrist, trying to take his hand.
“Tony, I don’t know what you’re thinking of. I don’t know how you can speak to me like this. I don’t know what you mean—I don’t indeed. Since you went I have only been into the passages twice, last night and to-night. I went there because—oh, why do people go and weep upon a grave? I had no grave to go to, but I thought that, if I came here where we used to meet, perhaps the you that was haunting me would take shape so that I could see it, or else leave me. I felt driven, and I didn’t know what was driving me.”
In the breathless silence that followed she heard him say:
“I know that you told Ember”—and quite suddenly all the strength went out of her.
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收听单词发音
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1
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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sleepless
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| adj.不睡眠的，睡不著的，不休息的 | |
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3
shudder
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| v.战粟，震动，剧烈地摇晃；n.战粟，抖动 | |
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4
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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slippers
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| n. 拖鞋 | |
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6
maroon
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| v.困住，使（人）处于孤独无助之境；n.逃亡黑奴；孤立的人；酱紫色，褐红色；adj.酱紫色的，褐红色的 | |
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7
stenciled
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| v.用模板印（文字或图案）( stencil的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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8
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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9
cork
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| n.软木，软木塞 | |
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10
hesitation
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| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
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11
crimson
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| n./adj.深(绯)红色(的)；vi.脸变绯红色 | |
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12
flannel
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| n.法兰绒；法兰绒衣服 | |
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13
aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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14
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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15
precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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16
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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margin
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| n.页边空白；差额；余地，余裕；边，边缘 | |
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18
linen
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| n.亚麻布，亚麻线，亚麻制品；adj.亚麻布制的，亚麻的 | |
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pivot
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| v.在枢轴上转动；装枢轴，枢轴；adj.枢轴的 | |
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20
lighter
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| n.打火机，点火器；驳船；v.用驳船运送；light的比较级 | |
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21
tingling
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| v.有刺痛感( tingle的现在分词 ) | |
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22
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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23
gasping
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| adj. 气喘的, 痉挛的 动词gasp的现在分词 | |
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gasp
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| n.喘息，气喘；v.喘息；气吁吁他说 | |
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25
gilt
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| adj.镀金的；n.金边证券 | |
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26
curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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27
intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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28
horrid
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| adj.可怕的；令人惊恐的；恐怖的；极讨厌的 | |
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severely
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| adv.严格地；严厉地；非常恶劣地 | |
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30
sloppy
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| adj.邋遢的，不整洁的 | |
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squelch
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| v.压制，镇压；发吧唧声 | |
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32
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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33
silhouette
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| n.黑色半身侧面影，影子，轮廓；v.描绘成侧面影，照出影子来，仅仅显出轮廓 | |
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34
slab
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| n.平板，厚的切片；v.切成厚板，以平板盖上 | |
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exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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uneven
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| adj.不平坦的，不规则的，不均匀的 | |
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37
tangle
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| n.纠缠；缠结；混乱；v.(使)缠绕；变乱 | |
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38
twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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39
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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40
mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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rigid
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| adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的 | |
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42
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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43
merged
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| （使）混合( merge的过去式和过去分词 )； 相融； 融入； 渐渐消失在某物中 | |
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44
eternity
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| n.不朽，来世；永恒，无穷 | |
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45
turmoil
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| n.骚乱，混乱，动乱 | |
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46
unbearably
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| adv.不能忍受地，无法容忍地；慌 | |
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gulf
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| n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂 | |
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48
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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49
exclamation
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| n.感叹号，惊呼，惊叹词 | |
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50
illuminated
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| adj.被照明的；受启迪的 | |
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51
defiance
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| n.挑战，挑衅，蔑视，违抗 | |
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52
devoid
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| adj.全无的，缺乏的 | |
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53
vestige
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| n.痕迹，遗迹，残余 | |
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54
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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55
tormented
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| 饱受折磨的 | |
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56
physically
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| adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律 | |
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57
incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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58
resentment
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| n.怨愤，忿恨 | |
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59
simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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60
inviolate
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| adj.未亵渎的，未受侵犯的 | |
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61
discretion
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| n.谨慎；随意处理 | |
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62
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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63
vehement
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| adj.感情强烈的；热烈的；(人)有强烈感情的 | |
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64
battering
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| n.用坏，损坏v.连续猛击( batter的现在分词 ) | |
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65
gust
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| n.阵风，突然一阵（雨、烟等），（感情的）迸发 | |
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throbbing
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| a. 跳动的,悸动的 | |
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touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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