CHAP: XII. THE NIGHTMARE

 He had known such different deep fears. In Sicily, a sudden fear, in the night of some single murderer, some single thing hovering¹ as it were out of the violent past, with the intent of murder. Out of the old Greek past, that had been so vivid, sometimes an unappeased spirit of murderous-hate against the usurping² moderns. A sudden presence of murder in the air, because of something which the modern psyche³ had excluded, some old and vital thing which Christianity has cut out. An old spirit, waiting for vengeance⁵. But in England, during the later years of the war, a true and deadly fear of the criminal living spirit which arose in all the stay-at-home bullies⁶ who governed the country during those years. From 1916 to 1919 a wave of criminal lust⁷ rose and possessed⁸ England, there was a reign⁹ of terror, under a set of indecent bullies like Bottomley of John Bull and other bottom-dog members of the House of Commons. Then Somers had known what it was to live in a perpetual state of semi-fear: the fear of the criminal public and the criminal government. The torture was steadily¹⁰ applied¹¹, during those years after Asquith fell, to break the independent soul in any man who would not hunt with the criminal mob. A man must identify himself with the criminal mob, sink his sense of truth, of justice, and of human honour, and bay like some horrible unclean hound, bay with a loud sound, from slavering, unclean jaws¹².

 

This Richard Lovat Somers had steadily refused to do. The deepest part of a man is his sense of essential truth, essential honour, essential justice. This deepest self makes him abide¹³ by his own feelings, come what may. It is not sentimentalism. It is just the male human creature, the thought-adventurer, driven to earth. Will he give in or won’t he?

 

Many men, carried on a wave of patriotism¹⁵ and true belief in democracy, entered the war. Many men were driven in out of belief that it was necessary to save their property. Vast numbers of men were just bullied¹⁶ into the{239} army. A few remained. Of these, many became conscientious¹⁷ objectors.

 

Somers tiresomely¹⁸ belonged to no group. He would not enter the army, because his profoundest instinct was against it. Yet he had no conscientious objection to war. It was the whole spirit of the war, the vast mob-spirit, which he could never acquiesce¹⁹ in. The terrible, terrible war, made so fearful because in every country practically every man lost his head, and lost his own centrality, his own manly²⁰ isolation²¹ in his own integrity, which alone keeps life real. Practically every man being caught away from himself, as in some horrible flood, and swept away with the ghastly masses of other men, utterly²² unable to speak, or feel for himself, or to stand on his own feet, delivered over and swirling²³ in the current, suffocated²⁴ for the time being. Some of them to die for ever. Most to come back home victorious²⁵ in circumstance, but with their inner pride gone: inwardly lost. To come back home, many of them, to wives who had egged them on to this downfall in themselves: black bitterness. Others to return to a bewildered wife who had in vain tried to keep her man true to himself, tried and tried, only to see him at last swept away. And oh, when he was swept away, how she loved him. But when he came back, when he crawled out like a dog out of a dirty stream, a stream that had suddenly gone slack and turbid²⁶: when he came back covered with outward glory and inward shame, then there was the price to pay.

 

And there is this bitter and sordid²⁷ after-war price to pay because men lost their heads, and worse, lost their inward, individual integrity. And when a man loses his inward, isolated²⁹, manly integrity, it is a bad day for that man’s true wife. A true man should not lose his head. The greater the crisis, the more intense should be his isolated reckoning with his own soul. And then let him act, of his own whole self. Not fling himself away: or much worse, let himself be dragged away, bit by bit.

 

Awful years—’16, ’17, ’18, ’19—the years when the damage was done. The years when the world lost its real manhood. Not for lack of courage to face death. Plenty of superb courage to face death. But no courage in any{240} man to face his own isolated soul, and abide by its decision. Easier to sacrifice oneself. So much easier!

 

Richard Lovat was one of those utterly unsatisfactory creatures who just would not. He had no conscientious objections. He knew that men must fight, some time in some way or other. He was no Quaker, to believe in perpetual peace. He had been in Germany times enough to know how much he detested³⁰ the German military creatures: mechanical bullies they were. They had once threatened to arrest him as a spy, and had insulted him more than once. Oh, he would never forgive them, in his inward soul. But then the industrialism and commercialism of England, with which patriotism and democracy became identified: did not these insult a man and hit him pleasantly across the mouth? How much humiliation³¹ had Richard suffered, trying to earn his living! How had they tried, with their beastly industrial self-righteousness, to humiliate³² him as a separate, single man? They wanted to bring him to heel even more than the German militarist did. And if a man is to be brought to any heel, better a spurred heel than the heel of a Jewish financier. So Richard decided³³ later, when the years let him think things over, and see where he was.

 

Therefore when the war came, his instinct was against it. When the Asquith government so softly foundered³⁴, he began to suffer agonies. But when the Asquith government went right under, and in its place came that John Bull government of ’16, ’17, ’18, then agonies gave way to tortures. He was summoned to join the army: and went. Spent a night in barracks with forty other men, and not one of these other men but felt like a criminal condemned³⁵, bitter in dejection and humiliation. Was medically examined in the morning by two doctors, both gentlemen, who knew the sacredness of another naked man: and was rejected.

 

So, that was over. He went back home. And he made up his mind what he would do. He would never voluntarily make a martyr³⁶ of himself. His feeling was private to himself, he didn’t want to force it on any other man. He would just act alone. For the moment, he was rejected as medically unfit. If he was called up again, he would go again. But he would never serve.{241}

 

“Once,” he said to Harriet, “that they have really conscripted me, I will never obey another order, if they kill me.”

 

Poor Harriet felt scared, and didn’t know what else to say.

 

“If ever,” he said, looking up from his own knees in their old grey flannel³⁸ trousers, as he sat by the fire, “if ever I see my legs in khaki, I shall die. But they shall never put my legs into khaki.”

 

That first time, at the barracks in the country town in the west, they had treated him with that instinctive³⁹ regard and gentleness which he usually got from men who were not German militarist bullies, or worse, British commercial bullies. For instance, in the morning in that prison barracks room, these unexamined recruits were ordered to make their beds and sweep the room. In obedience⁴⁰, so far, Richard Lovat took one of the heavy brooms. He was pale, silent, isolated: a queer figure, a young man with a beard. The other soldiers—or must-be soldiers—had looked at him as a queer fish, but that he was used to.

 

“Say, Dad,” said a fattish young fellow older than himself, the only blatherer, a loose fellow who had come from Canada to join up and was already cursing: he was a good deal older than Somers.

 

“Say, Dad,” said this fellow, as they sat in the train coming up, “all that’ll come off to-morrow—Qck, Qck!”—and he made two noises, and gave two long swipes with his finger round his chin, to intimate that Richard’s beard would be cut off to-morrow.

 

“We’ll see,” said Richard, smiling with pale lips.

 

He said in his heart, the day his beard was shaven he was beaten, lost. He identified it with his isolate²⁸ manhood. He never forgot that journey up to Bodmin, with the other men who were called up. They were all bitterly, desperately⁴¹ miserable⁴², but still manly: mostly very quiet, yet neither sloppy⁴³ nor frightened. Only the fat, loose fellow who had given up a damned good job in Canada to come and serve this bloody⁴⁴ country, etc., etc., was a ranter and a bragger⁴⁵. Somers saw him afterwards naked: strange, fat, soft, like a woman. But in another carriage the men sang all the time, or howled like dogs in the night:{242}

 

“I’ll be your sweetheart, if you will be mine,

All my life I’ll be you-o-o-ur Valentine.

Bluebells⁴⁷ I’ll gather, take them and be true,

When I’m a man, my plan will be to marry you.”

Wailing⁴⁹ down the lost corridors of hell, surely, those ghastly melancholy⁵⁰ notes—

 

“All my li-i-i-ife—I’ll be you-u-r Valentine.”

Somers could never recall it without writhing⁵¹. It is not death that matters, but the loss of the integral soul. And these men howled as if they were going to their doom⁵², helplessly, ghastly. It was not the death in front. It was the surrender of all their old beliefs, and all their sacred liberty.

 

Those bluebells! They were worse than the earlier songs. In 1915, autumn, Hampstead Heath, leaves burning in heaps, in the blue air, London still almost pre-war London: but by the pond on the Spaniards Road, blue soldiers, wounded soldiers in their bright hospital blue and red, always there: and earth-coloured recruits with pale faces drilling near Parliament Hill. The pre-war world still lingering, and some vivid strangeness, glamour⁵³ thrown in. At night all the great beams of the searchlights, in great straight bars, feeling across the London sky, feeling the clouds, feeling the body of the dark overhead. And then Zeppelin raids: the awful noise and the excitement. Somers was never afraid then. One evening he and Harriet walked from Platts Lane to the Spaniards Road, across the Heath: and there, in the sky, like some god vision, a Zeppelin, and the searchlights catching⁵⁴ it, so that it gleamed like a manifestation⁵⁵ in the heavens, then losing it, so that only the strange drumming came down out of the sky where the searchlights tangled⁵⁶ their feelers. There it was again, high, high, high, tiny, pale, as one might imagine the Holy Ghost, far, far above. And the crashes of guns, and the awful hoarseness⁵⁷ of shells bursting in the city. Then gradually, quiet. And from Parliament Hill, a great red glare below, near St Paul’s. Something ablaze⁵⁸ in the city. Harriet was horribly afraid. Yet as she looked up at the far-off Zeppelin she said to Somers:{243}

 

“Think, some of the boys I played with when I was a child are probably in it.”

 

And he looked up at the far, luminous⁵⁹ thing, like a moon. Were there men in it? Just men, with two vulnerable legs and warm mouths. The imagination could not go so far.

 

Those days, that autumn ... people carried about chrysanthemums⁶⁰, yellow and brown chrysanthemums: and the smell of burning leaves: and the wounded, bright blue soldiers with their red cotton neckties, sitting together like macaws on the seats, pale and different from other people. And the star Jupiter very bright at nights over the cup hollow of the Vale, on Hampstead Heath. And the war news always coming, the war horror drifting in, drifting in, prices rising, excitement growing, people going mad about the Zeppelin raids. And always the one song:

 

“Keep the home fires burning,

Though your hearts be yearning⁶¹.”

It was in 1915 the old world ended. In the winter 1915-1916 the spirit of the old London collapsed⁶²; the city, in some way, perished, perished from being a heart of the world, and became a vortex of broken passions, lusts⁶⁴, hopes, fears, and horrors. The integrity of London collapsed, and the genuine debasement began, the unspeakable baseness of the press and the public voice, the reign of that bloated ignominy, John Bull.

 

No man who has really consciously lived through this can believe again absolutely in democracy. No man who has heard reiterated⁶⁶ in thousands of tones from all the common people, during the crucial years of the war: “I believe in John Bull. Give me John Bull,” can ever believe that in any crisis a people can govern itself, or is ever fit to govern itself. During the crucial years of the war, the people chose, and chose Bottomleyism. Bottom enough.

 

The well-bred, really cultured classes were on the whole passive resisters. They shirked their duty. It is the business of people who really know better to fight tooth and nail to keep up a standard, to hold control of authority. Laisser-aller is as guilty as the actual, stinking⁶⁸ mongrelism it gives place to.{244}

 

It was in mid-winter 1915 that Somers and Harriet went down to Cornwall. The spirit of the war—the spirit of collapse⁶³ and of human ignominy, had not travelled so far yet. It came in advancing waves.

 

We hear so much of the bravery and horrors at the front. Brave the men were, all honour to them. It was at home the world was lost. We hear too little of the collapse of the proud human spirit at home, the triumph of sordid, rampant⁶⁹, raging meanness. “The bite of a jackal is blood-poisoning and mortification⁷⁰.” And at home stayed all the jackals, middle-aged⁷¹, male and female jackals. And they bit us all. And blood-poisoning and mortification set in.

 

We should never have let the jackals loose, and patted them on the head. They were feeding on our death all the while.

 

Away in the west Richard and Harriet lived alone in their cottage by the savage⁷² Atlantic. He hardly wrote at all, and never any propaganda. But he hated the war, and said so to the few Cornish people around. He laughed at the palpable lies of the press, bitterly. And because of his isolation and his absolute separateness, he was marked out as a spy.

 

“I am not a spy,” he said, “I leave it to dirtier people. I am myself, and I won’t have popular lies.”

 

So, there began the visits from the policeman. A large, blue, helmeted figure at the door.

 

“Excuse me, sir, I have just a few enquiries to make.”

 

The police-sergeant⁷³ always a decent, kindly⁷⁴ fellow, driven by the military.

 

Somers and Harriet lived now with that suspense⁷⁵ about them in the very air they breathed. They were suspects.

 

“Then let them suspect,” said he. “I do nothing to them, so what can they do to me.”

 

He still believed in the constitutional liberty of an Englishman.

 

“You know,” said Harriet, “you do say things to these Cornish people.”

 

“I only say, when they tell me newspaper lies, that they are lies.”

 

But now the two began to be hated, hated far more than they knew.{245}

 

“You want to be careful,” warned one of the Cornish friends. “I’ve heard that the coast-watchers have got orders to keep very strict watch on you.”

 

“Let them, they’ll see nothing.”

 

But it was not till afterwards that he learned that the watchers had lain behind the stone fence, to hear what he and Harriet talked about.

 

So, he was called up the first time and went. He was summoned to Penzance, and drove over with Harriet, expecting to return for the time at least. But he was ordered to proceed the same afternoon to Bodmin, along with sixteen or seventeen other fellows, farm hands and working men. He said good-bye to Harriet, who was to be driven back alone across the moors⁷⁷, to their lonely cottage on the other side.

 

“I shall be back to-morrow,” he said.

 

England was still England, and he was not finally afraid.

 

The train-journey from Penzance to Bodmin with the other men: the fat, bragging⁷⁸ other man: the tall man who felt as Somers did: the change at the roadside station, with the porters chaffing the men that the handcuffs were on them. Indeed, it was like being one of a gang of convicts. The great, prison-like barracks—the disgusting evening meal of which he could eat nothing—the little terrier-like sergeant of the regulars, who made them a little encouraging speech: not a bad chap. The lounging about that barracks yard, prisoners, till bed time: the other men crowding to the canteen, himself mostly alone. The brief talks with men who were for a moment curious as to who and what he was. For a moment only. They were most of them miserable and bitter.

 

Gaol⁷⁹! It was like gaol. He thought of Oscar Wilde in prison. Night came, and the beds to be made.

 

“They’re good beds, clean beds, you’ll sleep quite comfortable in them,” said the elderly little sergeant with a white moustache. Nine o’clock lights out. Somers had brought no night clothes, nothing. He slept in his woollen pants, and was ashamed because they had patches on the knees, for he and Harriet were very poor these years. In the next bed was a youth, a queer fellow, in a sloppy suit of black broadcloth, and down-at-heel boots. He had{246} a degenerate⁸⁰ sort of handsomeness too. He had never spoken a word. His face was long and rather fine, but like an Apache, his straight black hair came in a lock over his forehead. And there was an Apache sort of sheepishness, stupidity, in everything he did. He was a long time getting undressed. Then there he stood, and his white cotton day-shirt was long below his knees, like a woman’s nightgown. A restless, bitter night, with one man cough, cough, coughing, a hysterical⁸² cough, and others talking, making noises in their sleep. Bugle⁸³ at six, and a scramble⁸⁴ to wash themselves at the zinc⁸⁵ trough in the wash house. Somers could not crowd in, did not get in till towards the end. Then he had to borrow soap, and afterwards a piece of comb. The men were all quiet and entirely⁸⁶ inoffensive, common, but gentle, by nature decent. A sickening breakfast, then wash-up and sweep the floors. Somers took one of the heavy brooms, as ordered, and began. He swept his own floors nearly every day. But this was heavier work. The sergeant stopped him. “Don’t you do that. You go and help to wipe the pots, if you like. Here, you boy, you—take that sweeping⁸⁷ brush.”

 

And Somers relinquished⁸⁸ his broom to a bigger man.

 

They were kindly, and, in the essential sense, gentlemen, the little terrier of a sergeant too. Englishmen, his own people.

 

When it came to Somers’ turn to be examined, and he took off his clothes and sat in his shirt in the cold lobby: the fat fellow pointed⁸⁹ to his thin, delicate legs with a jeer⁹⁰. But Somers looked at him, and he was quiet again. The queer, soft, pale-bodied fellow, against Somers’ thin delicate whiteness. The little sergeant kept saying:

 

“Don’t you catch cold, you chaps.”

 

In the warm room behind a screen, Richard took off his shirt and was examined. The doctor asked him where he lived—where was his home—asked as a gentleman asks, treated him with that gentle consideration Somers usually met with, save from business people or official people.

 

“We shall reject you, leave you free,” said the doctor, after consulting with the more elderly, officious little man, “but we leave it to you to do what you can for your country.”

 

“Thank you,” said Richard, looking at him.{247}

 

“Every man must do what he can,” put in the other doctor, who was elderly and officious, but a gentleman. “The country needs the help of every man, and though we leave you free, we expect you to apply yourself to some service.”

 

“Yes,” said Somers, looking at him, and speaking in an absolutely neutral voice. Things said like that to him were never real to him: more like the noise of a cart passing, just a noise.

 

The two doctors looked from his face down his thin nakedness again.

 

“Put your shirt on,” said the younger one.

 

And Somers could hear the mental comment, “Rum sort of a fellow,” as he did so.

 

There was still a wait for the card. It was one of those cards: A—Called up for military service. B—Called up for service at the front, but not in the lines. C—Called up for non-military service. R—Rejected. A, B, and C were ruled out in red ink, leaving the Rejected. He still had to go to another office for his pay—two shillings and fourpence, or something like that. He signed for this and was free. Free—with two shillings and fourpence, and pass for a railway ticket—and God’s air. The moment he stepped out with his card, he realised that it was Saturday morning, that the sun was shining, filling the big stone yard of the barracks, from which he could look to the station and the hill with its grass, beyond. That hill beyond—he had seemed to look at it through darkened glass, before. Till now, the morning had been a timeless greyness. Indeed, it had rained at seven o’clock, as they stood lounging miserably⁹¹ about in the barracks yard with its high wall, cold and bitter. And the tall man had talked to him bitterly.

 

But now the sun shone, the dark-green, Cornish hill, hard-looking, was just a near hill. He walked through the great gates. Ah God, he was out, he was free. The road with trees went down-hill to the town. He hastened down, a free human being, on Saturday morning, the grey glaze⁹² gone from his eyes.

 

He telegraphed the ignominious⁹³ word Rejected, and the time of his arrival, to Harriet. Then he went and had dinner. Some of the other men came in. They were{248} reserved now—there was a distance between him and them—he was not of their social class.

 

“What are you?” they asked him.

 

“Rejected,” he said.

 

And they looked at him grudgingly⁹⁴, thinking it was because he was not a working man he had got special favour. He knew what they thought, and he tried not to look so glad. But glad he was, and in some mysterious way, triumphant⁹⁵.

 

It was a wonderful journey on the Saturday afternoon home—sunny, busy, lovely. He changed at Truro and went into town. On the road he met some of the other fellows, who were called up, but not summoned for service immediately. They had some weeks, or months, of torment⁹⁶ and suspense before them. They looked at Somers, and grinned rather jeeringly⁹⁸ at him. They envied him—no wonder. And already he was a stranger, in another walk of life.

 

Rejected as unfit. One of the unfit. What did he care? The Cornish are always horrified⁹⁹ of any ailment¹⁰⁰ or physical disablement. “What’s amiss then?” they would ask. They would say that you might as well be shot outright¹⁰¹ as labelled unfit. But most of them tried hard to find constitutional weaknesses in themselves, that would get them rejected also, notwithstanding. And at the same time they felt they must be horribly ashamed of their physical ignominy if they were labelled unfit.

 

Somers did not care. Let them label me unfit, he said to himself. I know my own body is fragile, in its way, but also it is very strong, and it’s the only body that would carry my particular self. Let the fools peer at it and put me down undeveloped chest and what they like, so long as they leave me to my own way.

 

Then the kindly doctor’s exhortation¹⁰³ that he should find some way for himself of serving his country. He thought about that many times. But always, as he came near to the fact of committing himself, he knew that he simply could not commit himself to any service whatsoever¹⁰⁴. In no shape or form could he serve the war, either indirectly¹⁰⁵ or directly. Yet it would have been so easy. He had quite enough influential¹⁰⁶ friends in London to put him into some job, even some quite congenial, literary job, with a{249} sufficient salary. They would be only too glad to do it, for there in his remoteness, writing occasionally an essay that only bothered them, he was a thorn in their flesh. And men and women with sons, brothers, husbands away fighting, it was small pleasure for them to read Mr Somers and his pronunciation. “This trench¹⁰⁷ and machine warfare¹⁰⁸ is a blasphemy¹⁰⁹ against life itself, a blasphemy which we are all committing.” All very well, they said, but we are in for a war, and what are we to do? We hate it as much as he does. But we can’t all sit safely in Cornwall.

 

That was true too, and he knew it, and he felt the most a dreary¹¹⁰ misery¹¹¹, knowing how many brave, generous men were being put through this slaughter-machine of human devilishness. They were doing their best, and there was nothing else to do. But even that was no reason why he should go and do likewise.

 

If men had kept their souls firm and integral through the years, the war would never have come on. If, in the beginning, there had been enough strong, proud souls in England to concentrate the English feeling into stern, fierce, honourable¹¹² fighting, the war would never have gone as it went. But England slopped and wobbled, and the tide of horror accumulated.

 

And now, if circumstances had roped nearly all men into the horror, and it was a case of adding horror to horror, or dying well, on the other hand, the irremediable circumstance of his own separate soul made Richard Lovat’s inevitable¹¹³ standing¹⁰² out. If there is outward, circumstantial unreason and fatality¹¹⁴, there is inward unreason and inward fate. He would have to dare to follow his inward fate. He must remain alone, outside of everything, everything, conscious of what was going on, conscious of what he was doing and not doing. Conscious he must be, and consciously he must stick to it. To be forced into nothing.

 

For, above all things, man is a land animal and a thought-adventurer. Once the human consciousness really sinks and is swamped under the tide of events—as the best English consciousness was swamped, pacifist and patriotic¹¹⁵ alike—then the adventure is doomed¹¹⁶. The English soul went under in the war, and, as a conscious, proud, adventurous¹¹⁷, self-responsible soul, it was lost. We all lost the war: perhaps Germany least. Lost all the lot. The{250} adventure is always lost when the human conscious soul gives way under the stress, fails to keep control, and is submerged. Then out swarm¹¹⁸ the rats and the Bottomleys and crew, and the ship of human adventure is a horrible piratic affair, a dirty sort of freebooting.

 

Richard Lovat had nothing to hang on to but his own soul. So he hung on to it, and tried to keep his wits. If no man was with him, he was hardly aware of it, he had to grip on so desperately, like a man on a plank¹¹⁹ in a shipwreck¹²⁰. The plank was his own individual self.

 

Followed that period of suspense which changed his life for ever. If the postman was coming plunging¹²¹ downhill through the bushes over the moor⁷⁶, the first thought was: What is he bringing now? The postman was over military age, and had a chuckle¹²² of pleasure in handing out those accursed On His Majesty’s Service envelopes which meant that a man was summoned for torture. The postman was a great Wesleyan and a chapel¹²³ preacher, and the thought of hell for other men was sweet in him: he had a religious zest¹²⁴ added to his natural Cornish zest in other people’s disasters.

 

Again, if there was the glint of a bicycle on the moor road, and if it turned down the bypath towards the cottage, then Somers strained his eyes to see if the rider were fat and blue, or tall and blue. Was it the police sergeant, or the police constable¹²⁵, coming for more identification proofs.

 

“We want your birth certificate,” said the sergeant. “They’ve written from Bodmin asking you to produce your birth certificate.”

 

“Then tell them to get it. No, I haven’t got it. You’ve had my marriage certificate. You know who I am and where I was born and all the rest. Now let them get the birth certificate themselves.”

 

Richard Lovat was at the end of all patience. They persisted he was a foreigner—poor Somers, just because he had a beard. One of the most intensely English little men England ever produced, with a passion for his country, even if it were often a passion of hatred¹²⁶. But no, they persisted he was a foreigner. Pah!

 

He and Harriet did all their own work, their own shopping. One wintry afternoon they were coming home with a knapsack, along the field path above the sea, when{251} two khaki individuals, officers of some sort, strode after them.

 

“Excuse me,” said one, in a damnatory officious voice. “What have you got in that sack?”

 

“A few groceries,” said Lovat.

 

“I would like to look.”

 

Somers put the sack down on the path. The tall and lofty officer stooped and groped nobly among a pound of rice and a piece of soap and a dozen candles.

 

“Ha!” he cried, exultant¹²⁷. “What’s this? A camera!”

 

Richard peeped in the bag at the groping red military hands. For a moment he almost believed that a camera had spirited itself in among his few goods, the implication of his guilt⁶⁷ was so powerful. He saw a block in brown paper.

 

“A penn’orth of salt,” he said quietly, though pale to the lips with anger and insult.

 

But the gentlemanly officer—a Captain—tore open the paper. Yes, a common block of salt. He pushed the bag aside.

 

“We have to be careful,” said the other, lesser¹²⁸ man.

 

“Of course,” said Richard, tying up his bag.

 

“Good afternoon!” said Harriet.

 

The fellows half saluted¹²⁹, and turned hastening away. Richard and Harriet had the advantage of sauntering behind them and looking at their noble backs. Oh, they were gentlemen, true English gentlemen: perhaps Cornish.

 

Harriet gave a pouf of laughter.

 

“The poor innocent salt!” she exclaimed.

 

And no doubt that also was chalked up against her.

 

It was Christmas time, and two friends came down to stay at the cottage with the Somers. Those were the days before America joined the Allies. The man friend arrived with a whole parcel of American dainties, buckwheat meal and sweet potatoes and maple¹³⁰ sugar: the woman friend brought a good basket of fruit. They were to have a Christmas in the lonely cottage in spite of everything.

 

It was Christmas Eve, and a pouring black wet night outside. Nowhere can it be so black as on the edge of a Cornish moor, above the western sea, near the rocks where the ancient worshippers used to sacrifice. The darkness{252} of menhirs. The American woman friend was crouching¹³¹ at the fire making fudge, the man was away in his room, when a thundering knock at the door. Ah Lord!

 

The burly police-sergeant, and his bicycle.

 

“Sorry to trouble you, sir, but is an American, a Mr Monsell, stopping here with you? He is. Can I have a word with him?”

 

“Yes. Won’t you come in?”

 

Into the cosy¹³² cottage room, with the American girl at the fire, her face flushed with the fudge-making, entered the big, burly ruddy police-sergeant, his black mackintosh-cape streaming wet.

 

“We give you a terrible lot of trouble, I’m sorry to say,” said Harriet ironically. “What an awful night for you to have to come all these miles. I’m sure it isn’t our doing.”

 

“No, ma’m, I know that. It’s the doing of people who like to meddle¹³³. These military orders, they take some keeping pace with.”

 

“I’m sure they do.”

 

Harriet was all sympathy. So he, too, was goaded¹³⁴ by these military canaille.

 

Somers fetched the American friend, and he was asked to produce papers, and give information. He gave it, being an honourable citizen and a well-bred American, with complete sang froid. At that moment Somers would have given a lot to be American too, and not English. But wait—those were early days, when America was still being jeered¹³⁵ at for standing out and filling her pockets. She was not yet the intensely loved Ally. The police-sergeant was pleasant as ever. He apologised again, and went out into the black and pouring night. So much for Christmas Eve.

 

“But that’s not the end of the horrid¹³⁶ affair,” as the song says. When Monsell got back to London he was arrested, and conveyed to Scotland Yard: there examined, stripped naked, his clothes taken away. Then he was kept for a night in a cell—next evening liberated¹³⁷ and advised to return to America.

 

Poor Monsell, and he was so very anti-German, so very pro-British. It was a blow for him. He did not leave off being anti-German, but he was much less pro-British. And after all, it was war-time, when these things must happen,{253} we are told. Such a war-time that let loose the foulest¹³⁸ feelings of a mob, particularly of “gentlemen,” to torture any single, independent man as a mob always tortures the isolated and independent.

 

In despair, Somers thought he would go to America. He had passports, he was Rejected. They had no use for him, and he had no use for them. So he posted his passports to the Foreign Office, for the military permit to depart.

 

It was January, and there was a thin film of half-melted snow, like silver, on the fields and the path. A white, static, arrested morning, away there in the west of Cornwall, with the moors looking primeval, and the huge granite¹⁴⁰ boulders¹⁴¹ bulging¹⁴² out of the earth like presences. So easy to realise men worshipping stones. It is not the stone. It is the mystery of the powerful, pre-human earth, showing its might. And all, this morning, static, arrested in a cold, milky¹⁴³ whiteness, like death, the west lost in the sea.

 

A man culminates¹⁴⁴ in intense moments. This was one of Somers’ white, deathlike moments, as he walked home from the tiny post-office in the hamlet, on the wintry morning, after he had posted his passports asking for visas to go to New York. It was like walking in death: a strange, arrested land of death. Never had he known that feeling before: as if he were a ghost in the after-death, walking a strange, pale, static, cold world. It almost frightened him. “Have I done wrong?” he asked himself. “Am I wrong, to leave my country and go to America?”

 

It was then as if he had left his country: and that was like death, a still, static, corporate¹⁴⁵ death. America was the death of his own country in him, he realised that.

 

But he need not have bothered. The Foreign Office kept his passports, and did not so much as answer him. He waited in vain.

 

Spring came—and one morning the news that Asquith was out of the government, that Lloyd George was in. And this was another of Somers’ crises. He felt he must go away from the house, away from everywhere. And as he walked, clear as a voice out of the moors, came a voice saying: “It is the end of England. It is the end{254} of the old England. It is finished. England will never be England any more.”

 

Cornwall is a country that makes a man psyche. The longer he stayed, the more intensely it had that effect on Somers. It was as if he were developing second sight, and second hearing. He would go out into the blackness of night and listen to the blackness, and call, call softly, for the spirits, the presences he felt coming downhill from the moors in the night. “Tuatha De Danaan!” he would call softly. “Tuatha De Danaan! Be with me. Be with me.” And it was as if he felt them come.

 

And so this morning the voice struck into his consciousness. “It is the end of England.” So he walked along blindly, up the valley and on the moors. He loved the country intensely. It seemed to answer him. But his consciousness was all confused. In his mind, he did not at all see why it should be the end of England. Mr Asquith was called Old Wait-and-See. And truly, English Liberalism had proved a slobbery affair, all sad sympathy with everybody, and no iron backbone¹⁴⁶, these years. Repulsively¹⁴⁷ humble¹⁴⁸, too, on its own account. It was no time for Christian⁴ humility¹⁴⁹. And yet, it was true to its great creed¹⁵⁰.

 

Whereas Lloyd George! Somers knew nothing about Lloyd George. A little Welsh lawyer, not an Englishman at all. He had no real significance in Richard Lovat’s soul. Only, Somers gradually came to believe that all Jews, and all Celts, even whilst they espoused¹⁵¹ the cause of England, subtly lived to bring about the last humiliation of the great old England. They could never do so if England would not be humiliated¹⁵². But with an England fairly offering herself to ignominy, where was the help? Let the Celts work out their subtlety¹⁵³. If England wanted to be betrayed, in the deeper issues. Perhaps Jesus wanted to be betrayed. He did. He chose Judas.

 

Well, the story could have no other ending.

 

The war-wave had broken right over England, now: right over Cornwall. Probably throughout the ages Cornwall had not been finally swept, submerged by any English spirit. Now it happened—the accursed later war spirit. Now the tales began to go round full-tilt against Somers. A chimney of his house was tarred to keep out the damp:{255} that was a signal to the Germans. He and his wife carried food to supply German submarines. They had secret stores of petrol in the cliff. They were watched and listened to, spied on, by men lying behind the low stone fences. It is a job the Cornish loved. They didn’t even mind being caught at it: lying behind a fence with field-glasses, watching through a hole in the drystone wall a man with a lass, on the edge of the moors. Perhaps they were proud of it. If a man wanted to hear what was said about him—or anything—he lay behind a wall at the field-corners, where the youths talked before they parted and went indoors, late of a Saturday night. A whole intense life of spying going on all the time.

 

Harriet could not hang out a towel on a bush, or carry out the slops, in the empty landscape of moors and sea, without her every movement being followed by invisible eyes. And at evening, when the doors were shut, valiant¹⁵⁴ men lay under the windows to listen to the conversation in the cosy little room. And bitter enough were the things they said: and damnatory, the two Somers. Richard did not hold himself in. And he talked too with the men on the farm: openly. For they had exactly the same anti-military feeling as himself, and they simply loathed¹⁵⁵ the thought of being compelled to serve. Most men in the west, Somers thought, would have committed murder to escape, if murder would have helped them. It wouldn’t. He loved the people at the farm, and the men kindled¹⁵⁶ their rage together. And again Somers’ farmer friend warned him, how he was being watched. But Somers would not heed¹⁵⁷. “What can they do to me!” he said. “I am not a spy in any way whatsoever. There is nothing they can do to me. I make no public appearance at all. I am just by myself. What can they do to me? Let them go to hell.”

 

He refused to be watchful¹⁵⁸, guarded, furtive¹⁵⁹, like the people around, saying double things as occasion arose, and hiding their secret thoughts and secret malignancy. He still believed in the freedom of the individual.—Yes, freedom of the individual!

 

He was aware of the mass of secret feeling against him. Yet the people he came into daily contact with liked him—almost loved him. So he kept on defying the rest, and went along blithe¹⁶⁰ and open as ever, saying what he really felt,{256} or holding his tongue. Enemies! How could he have any personal enemies? He had never done harm to any of these people, had never even felt any harm. He did not believe in personal enemies. It was just the military.

 

Enemies he had, however, people he didn’t know and hadn’t even spoken to. Enemies who hated him like poison. They hated him because he was free, because of his different, unafraid face. They hated him because he wasn’t cowed, as they were all cowed. They hated him for his intimacy¹⁶¹ at the farm, in the hamlet. For each farm was bitter jealous of each other.

 

Yet he never believed he had any personal enemies. And he had all the west hating him like poison. He realised once, when two men came down the moorland by-road—officers in khaki—on a motor-bicycle, and went trying the door of the next cottage, which was shut up. Somers went to the door, in all simplicity¹⁶².

 

“Did you want me?” he asked.

 

“No, we didn’t want you,” replied one of the fellows, in a genteel voice and a tone like a slap in the face. Somers spoken to as if he were the lowest of the low. He shut his cottage door. Was it so? Had they wilfully¹⁶³ spoken to him like that? He would not believe it.

 

But inwardly, he knew it was so. That was what they intended to convey to him: that he was the lowest of the low. He began even to feel guilty, under this mass of poisonous condemnation¹⁶⁴. And he realised that they had come, on their own, to get into the other cottage and see if there were some wireless¹⁶⁵ installation or something else criminal. But it was fastened tight, and apparently¹⁶⁶ they gave up their design of breaking in, for they turned the motor-cycle and went away.

 

Day followed day in this tension of suspense. Submarines were off the coast; Harriet saw a ship sunk, away to sea. Horrible excitement, and the postman asking sly questions to try to catch Somers out. Increased rigour of coast watching, and no light must be shown. Yet along the highroad on the hillside above, plainer than any house-light, danced the lights of a cart, moving, or slowly sped the light of a bicycle, on the blackness. Then a Spanish coal-vessel, three thousand tons, ran on the rocks in a fog, straight under the cottage. She was completely wrecked¹⁶⁷. Somers{257} watched the waves break over her. Her coal washed ashore¹⁶⁸, and the farmers carried it up the cliffs in sacks.

 

There was to be a calling-up now and a re-examination of every man—Somers felt the crisis approaching. The ordeal¹⁶⁹ was to go through, once more. The first rejection¹⁷⁰ meant nothing. There were certain reservations. He had himself examined again by a doctor. The strain told on his heart as well as his breathing. He sent in this note to the authorities. A reply: “You must present yourself for examination, as ordered.”

 

He knew that if he was really ever summoned to any service, and finally violated, he would be broken, and die. But patience. In the meanwhile he went to see his people: the long journey up the west, changing at Plymouth and Bristol and Birmingham, up to Derby. Glamorous¹⁷¹ west of England: if a man were free. He sat through the whole day, very still, looking at the world. Very still, gone very far inside himself, travelling through this England in spring. He loved it so much. But it was in the grip of something monstrous¹⁷², not English, and he was almost gripped too. As it was, by making himself far away inside himself, he contained himself, and was still.

 

He arrived late in Derby: Saturday night, and no train for the next ten miles. But luckily, there was a motor-bus going out to the outlying villages. Derby was very dark, like a savage town, a feeling of savagery¹⁷³. And at last the ’bus was ready: full of young miners, more or less intoxicated¹⁷⁴. The ’bus was crammed¹⁷⁵, a solid jam of men, sitting on each other’s knees, standing blocked and wedged. There was no outside accommodation. And inside were jammed eighteen more men than was allowed. It was like being pressed into one block of corned beef.

 

The ’bus ran six miles without stopping, through an absolutely dark country, Zeppelin black, and having one feeble light of its own. The roads were unmended, and very bad. But the ’bus charged on, madly, at full speed, like a dim consciousness madly charging through the night. And the mass of colliers swayed with the ’bus, intoxicated into a living block, and with high, loud, wailing voices they sang:{258}

 

“There’s a long, long trail a-winding

Into the land of my dreams—

Where the nightingales are singing and the——”

This ghastly trailing song, like death itself. The colliers seemed to tear it out of their bowels¹⁷⁶, in a long, wild chant. They, too, all loathed the war: loathed it. And this awful song! They subsided¹⁷⁷, and somebody started “Tipperary.”

 

“It’s a long, long way to Tipperary,

It’s a long way to go——”

But Tipperary was already felt as something of a Jonah: a bad-luck song, so it did not last long. The miserable songs—with their long, long ways that ended in sheer lugubriousness¹⁷⁸: real death-wails! These for battle songs. The wail⁴⁸ of a dying humanity.

 

Somebody started:

 

“Good-bye—eeee

Don’t cry—eee

Wipe the tear, baby dear, from your eye—eee—

For it’s hard to part I know.

I’ll—be—tickled-to-death to go,

Good-bye—eeee

Don’t cry—eee—”

But the others didn’t know this ragtime¹⁷⁹, and they weren’t yet in the mood. They drifted drunkenly back to the ineffable¹⁸⁰ howl of

 

“There’s a long, long trail——”

A black, wild Saturday night. These were the collier youths Somers has been to school with—approximately. As they tore their bowels with their singing, they tore his. But as he sat squashed far back among all that coated flesh, in the dimmest glim of a light, that only made darkness more substantial, he felt like some strange isolated cell in some tensely packed organism that was hurling¹⁸¹ through chaos¹⁸² into oblivion. The colliers. He was more at one with them. But they were blind, ventral. Once they broke loose heaven knows what it would be.

 

The Midlands—the theatre in Nottingham—the pretence¹⁸³ of amusement, and the feeling of murder in the dark, dread¹⁸⁴{259}ful city. In the daytime these songs—this horrible long trail, and “Good-byeeee” and “Way down in Tennessee.” They tried to keep up their spirits with this rag-time Tennessee. But there was murder in the air in the Midlands, among the colliers. In the theatre particularly, a shut-in, awful feeling of souls fit for murder.

 

London—mid-war London, nothing but war, war. Lovely sunny weather, and bombs at midday in the Strand¹⁸⁵. Summery weather. Berkshire—aeroplanes—springtime. He was as if blind; he must hurry the long journey back to Harriet and Cornwall.

 

Yes—he had his papers—he must present himself again at Bodmin barracks. He was just simply summoned as if he were already conscripted. But he knew he must be medically examined. He went—left home at seven in the morning to catch the train. Harriet watched him go across the field. She was left alone, in a strange country.

 

“I shall be back to-night,” he said.

 

It was a still morning, remote, as if one were not in the world. On the hill down to the station he lingered. “Shall I not go! Shall I not go!” he said to himself. He wanted to break away. But what good? He would only be arrested and lost. Yet he had dawdled¹⁸⁶ his time, he had to run hard to catch the train in the end.

 

This time things went much more quickly. He was only two hours in the barracks. He was examined. He could tell they knew about him and disliked him. He was put in class C 3—unfit for military service, but conscripted for light non-military duties. There were no rejections¹⁸⁷ now. Still, it was good enough. There were thousands of C men, men who wanted to have jobs as C men, so they were not very likely to fetch him up. He would only be a nuisance anyhow. That was clear all round.

 

Through the little window at the back of their ancient granite cottage, Harriet, peeping wistfully out to sea—poor Harriet, she was always frightened now—saw Richard coming across the fields, home, walking fast, and with that intent look about him that she half feared. She ran out in a sort of fear, then waited. She would wait.

 

He saw her face very bright with fear and joy at seeing him back: very beautiful in his eyes. The only real thing, perhaps, left in his world.{260}

 

“Here you are! So early!” she cried. “I didn’t expect you. The dinner isn’t ready yet. Well?”

 

“C 3,” he replied. “It’s all right.”

 

“I knew it would be,” she cried, seizing his arm and hugging it to her. They went in to the cottage to finish cooking the evening meal. And immediately one of the farm girls came running up to see what it was.

 

“Oh, C 3—so you’re all right, Mr Somers. Glad, I’m glad.”

 

Harriet never forgot the straight, intent bee-line for home which he was making when she peeped out of that little window unaware¹⁸⁸.

 

So, another respite¹⁸⁹. They were not going to touch him. They knew he would be a firebrand in their army, a dangerous man to put with any group of men. They would leave him alone. C 3.

 

He had almost entirely left off writing now, and spent most of his days working on the farm. Again the neighbours were jealous.

 

“Buryan gets his labour cheap. He’d never have got his hay in but for Mr Somers,” they said. And that was another reason for wishing to remove Richard Lovat. Work went like steam when he was on Trendrinnan farm, and he was too thick with the Buryans. Much too thick. And John Thomas Buryan rather bragged¹⁹⁰ of Mr Somers at market, and how he, Richard Lovat, wasn’t afraid of any of them, etc., etc.—that he wasn’t going to serve anybody, etc.—and that nobody could make him—etc., etc.

 

But Richard drifted away this summer, on to the land, into the weather, into Cornwall. He worked out of doors all the time—he ceased to care inwardly—he began to drift away from himself. He was very thick with John Thomas, and nearly always at the farm. Harriet was a great deal alone. And he seemed to be drifting away, drifting back to the common people, becoming a working man, of the lower classes. It had its charm for Harriet, this aspect of him—careless, rather reckless, in old clothes and an old battered¹⁹¹ hat. He kept his sharp wits, but his spirit became careless, lost its concentration.

 

“I declare!” said John Thomas, as Somers appeared in the cornfield, “you look more like one of us every day.” And he looked with a bright Cornish eye at Somers’ care{261}less, belted figure and old jacket. The speech struck Richard: it sounded half triumphant, half mocking. “He thinks I’m coming down in the world—it is half a rebuke,” thought Somers to himself. But he was half pleased: and half he was rebuked¹⁹².

 

Corn harvest lasted long, and was a happy time for them all. It went well, well. Also from London occasionally a young man came down and stayed at the inn in the church town, some young friend of Somers who hated the army and the Government and was generally discontented, and so fitfully came as an adherent¹⁹³ to Richard Lovat. One of these was James Sharpe, a young Edinburgh man with a moderate income of his own, interested in music. Sharpe was hardly more than a lad—but he was the type of lowland Scotsman who is half an artist, not more, and so can never get on in the ordinary respectable life, rebels against it all the time, and yet can never get away from it or free himself from its dictates¹⁹⁴.

 

Sharpe had taken a house further along the coast, brought his piano down from London and sufficient furniture and a housekeeper¹⁹⁵, and insisted, like a morose¹⁹⁶ bird, that he wanted to be alone. But he wasn’t really morose, and he didn’t want really to be alone. His old house, rather ramshackle, stood back a little way from the cliffs, where the moor came down savagely¹⁹⁷ to the sea, past a deserted¹⁹⁸ tin mine. It was lonely, wild, and in a savage way, poetic¹⁹⁹ enough. Here Sharpe installed himself for the moment: to be alone with his music and his general discontent.

 

Of course he excited the wildest comments. He had window-curtains of different colours, so of course, here was plain signalling to the German submarines. Spies, the lot of them. When still another young man of the same set came and took a bungalow²⁰⁰ on the moors, West Cornwall decided that it was being delivered straight into German hands. Not that West Cornwall would really have minded that so terribly. No; it wasn’t that it feared the Germans. It was that it hated the sight of these recalcitrant²⁰¹ young men. And Somers the instigator²⁰², the arch-spy, the responsible little swine with his beard.

 

Somers, meanwhile, began to chuckle a bit to himself. After all he was getting the better of the military canaille.{262} Canaille! Canaglia! Schweinerei! He loathed them in all the languages he could lay his tongue to.

 

So Somers and Harriet went to stay a week-end with Sharpe at Trevenna, as the house was called. Sharpe was a C 2 man, on perpetual tenterhooks²⁰³. He had decided that if ever he were summoned to serve, he would just disappear. The Somers drove over, only three or four miles, on the Saturday afternoon, and the three wandered on the moor and down the cliff. No one was in sight. But how many pairs of eyes were watching, who knows? Sharpe lighting²⁰⁴ a cigarette for Harriet was an indication of untold²⁰⁵ immorality²⁰⁶.

 

Evening came, the lamps were lit, and the incriminating curtains carefully drawn²⁰⁷. The three sat before the fire in the long music room, and tried to be cosy and jolly. But there was something wrong with the mood. After dinner it was even worse. Harriet curled herself up on the sofa with a cigarette, Sharpe spread himself in profound melancholy in his big chair, Somers sat back, nearer the window. They talked in occasional snatches, in mockery of the enemy that surrounded them. Then Somers sang to himself, in an irritating way, one German folksong after another, not in a songful, but in a defiant²⁰⁸ way.

 

“Annchen von Tharau”—“Schatz, mein Schatz, reite nicht so weit von mir.” “Zu Strasburg auf der Schanz, da fiel mein Unglück ein.” This went on till Sharpe asked him to stop.

 

And in the silence, the tense and irritable²⁰⁹ silence that followed, came a loud bang. All got up in alarm, and followed Sharpe through the dining-room to the small entrance-room, where a dim light was burning. A lieutenant²¹⁰ and three sordid men in the dark behind him, one with a lantern.

 

“Mr Sharpe?”—the authoritative²¹¹ and absolutely-in-the-right voice of the puppy lieutenant.

 

Sharpe took his pipe from his mouth and said laconically²¹², “Yes.”

 

“You’ve a light burning in your window facing the sea.”

 

“I think not. There is only one window, and that’s on the passage where I never go, upstairs.”

 

“A light was showing from that window ten minutes ago.”

 

“I don’t think it can have been.”

 

“It was.” And the stern, puppy lieutenant turned to his followers²¹³, who clustered there in the dark.

 

“Yes, there was a light there ten minutes since,” chimed the followers.

 

“I don’t see how it’s possible,” persisted Sharpe.

 

“Oh, well—there is sufficient evidence that it was. What other persons have you in the house—” and this officer and gentleman stepped into the room, followed by his three Cornish weeds, one of whom had fallen into a ditch in his assiduous serving of his country, and was a sorry sight. Of course Harriet saw chiefly him, and had to laugh.

 

“There’s Mrs Waugh, the housekeeper—but she’s in bed.”

 

The party now stood and eyed one another—the lieutenant with his three sorry braves on one hand, Sharpe, Somers, and Harriet in an old dress of soft silk on the other.

 

“Well, Mr Sharpe, the light was seen.”

 

“I don’t see how it was possible. We’ve none of us been upstairs, and Mrs Waugh has been in bed for half an hour.”

 

“Is there a curtain to the passage window?” put in Somers quietly. He had helped Sharpe in setting up house.

 

“I don’t believe there is,” said Sharpe. “I forgot all about it, as it wasn’t in a room, and I never go to that side of the house. Even Mrs Waugh is supposed to go up the kitchen stairs, and so she doesn’t have to pass it.”

 

“She must have gone across with a candle as she went to bed,” said Somers.

 

But the lieutenant didn’t like being pushed into unimportance while these young men so quietly and naturally spoke⁸¹ together, excluding him as if he were an inferior: which they meant to do.

 

“You have an uncurtained window overlooking the sea, Mr Sharpe?” he said, in his military counter-jumper voice.

 

“You’ll have to put a curtain to it to-morrow,” said Somers to Sharpe.

 

“What is your name?” chimed the lieutenant.

 

“Somers—I wasn’t speaking to you,” said Richard coldly. And then to Sharpe, with a note of contempt: “That’s what it is. Mrs Waugh must just have passed with a candle.”

 

There was a silence. The wonderful watchers did not contradict.

 

“Yes, I suppose that’s it,” said Sharpe, fretfully.

 

“We’ll put a curtain up to-morrow,” said Somers.

 

The lieutenant would have liked to search the house. He would have liked to destroy its privacy. He glanced down to the music room. But Harriet, so obviously a lady, even if a hateful one; and Somers with his pale look of derision; and Sharpe so impassive with his pipe; and the weedy watchers in the background, knowing just how it all was, and almost ready to take sides with the “gentleman” against the officer: they were too much for the lieutenant.

 

“Well, the light was there, Mr Sharpe. Distinctly visible from the sea,” and he turned to his followers for confirmation²¹⁴.

 

“Oh, yes, a light plain enough,” said the one who had fallen into a ditch, and wanted a bit of his own back.

 

“A candle!” said Sharpe, with his queer, musical note of derision and fretfulness. “A candle just passing—”

 

“You have an uncurtained window to the sea, and lights were showing. I shall have to report this to headquarters. Perhaps if you write and apologise to Major Caerlyon it may be passed over, if nothing of the like occurs again—”

 

So they departed, and the three went back to their room, fuming²¹⁵ with rage and mockery. They mocked the appearance and voice of the lieutenant, the appearance of the weeds, and Harriet rejoiced over the one who had fallen into a ditch. This regardless of the fact that they knew now that some of the watchers were lying listening in the gorse bushes under the windows, and had been lying there all the evening.

 

“Shall you write and apologise?” said Somers.

 

“Apologise! no!” replied Sharpe, with peevish²¹⁶ contempt.

 

Harriet and Somers went back home on the Monday. On the Tuesday appeared Sharpe, the police had been and left him a summons to appear at the market town, charged under the Defence of the Realm Act.

 

“I suppose you’ll have to go,” said Somers.

 

“Oh, I shall go,” said he.

 

They waited for the day. In the afternoon Sharpe came with a white face and tears of rage and mortification in his eyes. The magistrate²¹⁷ had told him he ought to be serving his country, and not causing mischief²¹⁸ and skulking²¹⁹ in an out-of-the-way corner. And had fined him twenty pounds.

 

“I shan’t pay it,” cried Sharpe.

 

“Your mother will,” said Somers.

 

And so it was. What was the good of putting oneself in their power in any way, if it could be avoided?

 

So the lower fields were cleared of corn, and they started on the two big fields above on the moors. Sharpe cycled over to say a farmer had asked him to go and help at Westyr; and for once he had gone; but he felt spiteful to Somers for letting him in for this.

 

But Somers was very fond of the family at Buryan farm, and he loved working with John Thomas and the girls. John Thomas was a year or two older than Somers, and at this time his dearest friend. And so he loved working all day among the corn beyond the high-road, with the savage moors all round, and the hill with its pre-christian granite rocks rising like a great dark pyramid on the left, the sea in front. Sometimes a great airship hung over the sea, watching for submarines. The work stopped in the field, and the men watched. Then it went on again, and the wagon²²⁰ rocked slowly down the wild, granite road, rocked like a ship past Harriet’s sunken cottage. But Somers stayed above all day, loading or picking, or resting, talking in the intervals²²¹ with John Thomas, who loved a half-philosophical, mystical talking about the sun, and the moon, the mysterious powers of the moon at night, and the mysterious change in man with the change of season, and the mysterious effects of sex on a man. So they talked, lying in the bracken or on the heather as they waited for a wain. Or one of the girls came with dinner in a huge basket, and they ate all together, so happy with the moors and sky and touch of autumn. Somers loved these people. He loved the sensitiveness of their intelligence. They were not educated. But they had an endless curiosity about the world, and an endless interest in what was right.

 

“Now do you think it’s right, Mr Somers?” The times that Somers heard that question, from the girls, from Arthur, from John Thomas. They spoke in the quick Cornish way, with the West Cornish accent. Sometimes it was:

 

“Now do’ee think it right?”

 

And with their black eyes they watched the ethical²²³ issue in his face. Queer it was. Right and wrong was not fixed²²⁴ for them as for the English. There was still a mystery for them in what was right and what was wrong. Only one thing was wrong—any sort of physical compulsion or hurt. That they were sure of. But as for the rest of behaviour—it was all a flux²²⁵. They had none of the ethics²²⁶ of chivalry²²⁷ or of love.

 

Sometimes Harriet came also to tea: but not often. They loved her to come: and yet they were a little uneasy when she was there. Harriet was so definitely a lady. She liked them all. But it was a bit noli me tangere, with her. Somers was so very intimate with them. She couldn’t be. And the girls said: “Mrs Somers don’t mix in wi’ the likes o’ we like Mr Somers do.” Yet they were always very pleased when Harriet came.

 

Poor Harriet spent many lonely days in the cottage. Richard was not interested in her now. He was only interested in John Thomas and the farm people, and he was growing more like a labourer every day. And the farm people didn’t mind how long she was left alone, at night too, in that lonely little cottage, and with all the tension of fear upon her. Because she felt that it was she whom these authorities, these English, hated, even more than Somers. Because she made them feel she despised them. And as they were really rather despicable, they hated her at sight, her beauty, her reckless pride, her touch of derision. But Richard—even he neglected her and hated her. She was driven back on herself like a fury. And many a bitter fight they had, he and she.

 

The days grew shorter before the corn was all down from the moors. Sometimes Somers alone lay on the sheaves, waiting for the last wain to come to be loaded, while the others were down milking. And then the Cornish night would gradually come down upon the dark, shaggy moors, that were like the fur of some beast, and upon the pale-grey granite masses, so ancient and Druidical, suggesting blood-sacrifice. And as Somers sat there on the sheaves in the underdark, seeing the light swim above the sea, he felt he was over the border, in another world. Over the border, in that twilight²²⁸, awesome²²⁹ world of the previous Celts. The{spirit of the ancient, pre-Christian world, which lingers still in the truly Celtic places, he could feel it invade him in the savage dusk, making him savage too, and at the same time, strangely sensitive and subtle, understanding the mystery of blood-sacrifice: to sacrifice one’s victim, and let the blood run to the fire, there beyond the gorse upon the old grey granite: and at the same time to understand most sensitively the dark flicker²³⁰ of animal life about him, even in a bat, even in the writhing of a maggot in a dead rabbit. Writhe²³¹ then, Life, he seemed to say to the things—and he no longer saw its sickeningness.

 

The old Celtic countries have never had our Latin-Teutonic consciousness, never will have. They have never been Christian, in the blue-eyed, or even in the truly Roman, Latin sense of the word. But they have been overlaid by our consciousness and our civilisation²³², smouldering underneath²³³ in a slow, eternal fire, that you can never put out till it burns itself out.

 

And this autumn Richard Lovat seemed to drift back. He had a passion, a profound nostalgia²³⁴ for the place. He could feel himself metamorphosing. He no longer wanted to struggle consciously along, a thought adventurer. He preferred to drift into a sort of blood-darkness, to take up in his veins²³⁵ again the savage vibrations²³⁶ that still lingered round the secret rocks, the place of the pre-Christian human sacrifice. Human sacrifice! he could feel his dark, blood-consciousness tingle²³⁸ to it again, the desire of it, the mystery of it. Old presences, old awful presences round the black moor-edge, in the thick dusk, as the sky of light was pushed pulsing upwards²³⁹, away. Then an owl⁴⁶ would fly and hoot²⁴⁰, and Richard lay with his soul departed back, back into the blood-sacrificial pre-world, and the sun-mystery, and the moon-power, and the mistletoe on the tree, away from his own white world, his own white, conscious day. Away from the burden of intensive mental consciousness. Back, back into semi-dark, the half-conscious, the clair-obscur, where consciousness pulsed as a passional vibration²³⁷, not as mind-knowledge.

 

Then would come John Thomas with the wain, and the two men would linger putting up the sheaves, linger, talking, till the dark, talking of the half-mystical things with which they both were filled. John Thomas, with his nervous ways and his quick brown eyes, was full of fear: fear of the unseen, fear of the unknown malevolencies, above all, fear of death. So they would talk of death, and the powers of death. And the farmer, in a non-mental way, understood, understood even more than Somers.

 

And then in the first dark they went down the hill with the wain, to part at the cottage door. And to Harriet, with her pure Teutonic consciousness, John Thomas’ greeting would sound like a jeer, as he called to her. And Somers seemed to come home like an enemy, like an enemy, with that look on his face, and that pregnant malevolency of Cornwall investing him. It was a bitter time, to Harriet. Yet glamorous too.

 

Autumn drew on, corn-harvest was over, it was October. John Thomas drove every Thursday over the moors to market—a two hours’ drive. To-day Somers would go with him—and Ann the sister also, to do some shopping. It was a lovely October morning. They passed the stony²⁴¹ little huddle²⁴² of the church-town, and on up the hill, where the great granite boulders shoved out of the land, and the barrenness was ancient and inviolable. They could see the gulls²⁴³ under the big cliffs beyond—and there was a buzzard circling over the marshy²⁴⁴ place below church-town. A Cornish, magic morning. John Thomas and Somers were walking up the hill, leaving the reins²⁴⁵ to Ann, seated high in the trap.

 

“One day, when the war ends, before long,” said Somers as they climbed behind the trap in the sun, past the still-flickering gorse-bushes, “we will go far across the sea—to Mexico, to Australia—and try living there. You must come too, and we will have a farm.”

 

“Me!” said John Thomas. “Why however should I come?”

 

“Why not?”

 

But the Cornishman smiled with that peculiar²⁴⁶ sceptical smile.

 

They reached town at length, over the moors and down the long hill. John Thomas was always late. Somers went about doing his shopping—and then met Ann at an eating house. John Thomas was to have been there too. But he failed them. Somers walked about the Cornish seaport—he knew it now—and by sight he too was known, and execrated²⁴⁷. Yet the tradespeople were always so pleasant and courteous²⁴⁸ to him. And it was such a sunny day.

 

The town was buzzing with a story. Two German submarine officers had come into the town, dressed in clothes they had taken from an English ship they had sunk. They had stayed a night at the Mounts Bay Hotel. And two days later they had told the story to some fisherman whose fishing boat they stopped. They had shown the incredulous fisherman the hotel bill. Then they had sunk the fishing boat, sending the three fishermen ashore in the row-boat.

 

John Thomas, the chatterbox, should have been at the stables at five. He was an endless gossip, never by any chance punctual. Somers and Ann waited till six—all the farmers drove out home, theirs was the last trap.

 

“Buryan’s trap—always the last,” said the ostler.

 

It became dark—the shops were all closing—it was night. And now the town, so busy at noon and all the afternoon, seemed cold, stony, deserted, with the wind blowing down its steep street. Nearly seven, and still no John Thomas. Ann was furious, but she knew him. Somers was more quiet: but he knew that this was a sort of deliberate insult on John Thomas’ part, and that he must never trust him again.

 

It was well after seven when the fellow came—smiling with subtle malevolence²⁴⁹ and excusing himself so easily.

 

“I shall never come with you again,” said Somers, quietly.

 

“I should think not, Mr Somers,” cried Ann.

 

It was a two hours’ drive home—a long climb to the dark stretch of the moors—then across the moors in the cold of the night, to the steep, cliff-like descent on the north, where church-town lay, and the sea beyond. As they drew near to the north descent, the home face, and the darkness was below them, Somers suddenly said:

 

“I don’t think I shall ever drive this way again.”

 

“Don’t you? Why, what makes you say that?” cried the facile John Thomas.

 

Past nine o’clock as they came down the rocky road and saw the yellow curtain of the cottage glowing. Poor Harriet. Somers was stiff with cold as he rose to jump down.

 

“I’ll come down for my parcels later,” he said. Easier to take them out at the farm, and he must fetch the milk.

 

Harriet opened the door.

 

“At last you’ve come,” she said. “Something has happened, Lovat!” One of John Thomas’ sisters came out too—she had come up with Mrs Somers out of sympathy.

 

“What?” he said. And up came all the fear.

 

It was evident Harriet had had a bad shock. She had walked in the afternoon across to Sharpe’s place, three miles away: and had got back just at nightfall, expecting Somers home by seven. She had left the doors unlocked, as they usually did. The moment she came in, in the dusk, she knew something had happened. She made a light, and looked round. Things were disturbed. She looked in her little treasure boxes—everything there, but moved. She looked in the drawers—everything turned upside down. The whole house ransacked²⁵⁰, searched.

 

A terrible fear came over her. She knew she was antagonistic²⁵¹ to the government people: in her soul she hated the fixed society with its barrenness and its barren laws. She had always been afraid—always shrunk from the sight of a policeman, as if she were guilty of heaven knows what. And now the horror had happened: all the black animosity of authority was encompassing²⁵² her. The unknown of it: and the horror.

 

She fled down to the farm. Yes, three men had come, asking for Mr and Mrs Somers. They had told the one who came to the farm that Mr Somers had driven to town, and Mrs Somers they had seen going across the fields to church-town. Then the men had gone up to the cottage again, and gone inside.

 

“And they’ve searched everything—everything,” said Harriet, shocked right through with awful fear.

 

“Well, there was nothing to find. They must have been disappointed,” said Richard.

 

But it was a shock to him also: great consternation²⁵³ at the farm.

 

“It must have been something connected with Sharpe—it must have been that,” said Somers, trying to reassure²⁵⁴ himself.

 

“Thank goodness the house was so clean and tidy,” said Harriet. But it was a last blow to her.

 

What had they taken? They had not touched Somers’ papers. But they had been through his pockets—they had taken the few loose letters from the pocket of his day-jacket—they had taken a book—and a sort of note-book with scraps²⁵⁶ of notes for essays in it—and his address book—yes, a few things like that.

 

“But it’ll be nothing. It’ll be something to do with Sharpe’s bother.”

 

But he felt sick and sullen²⁵⁷, and wouldn’t get up early in the morning. Harriet was more prepared. She was down, dressed and tidy, making the breakfast. It was eight o’clock in the morning. Suddenly Somers heard her call:

 

“Lovat, they’re here. Get up.”

 

He heard the dread in her voice, and sprang into his clothes and came downstairs: a young officer, the burly police-sergeant, and two other loutish²⁵⁸ looking men. Somers came down without a collar.

 

“I have here a warrant to search your house,” said the young officer.

 

“But you searched it yesterday, didn’t you,” cried Harriet.

 

The young officer looked at her coldly, without replying. He read the search-warrant, and the two lout²⁵⁹-detectives, in civilian²⁶⁰ clothes, began to nose round.

 

“And the police-sergeant will read this order to you.”

 

Somers, white, and very still, spoke no word, but waited. Then the police-sergeant, in rather stumbling fashion, began to read an order from the military authorities that Richard Lovat Somers, and Harriet Emma Marianna Johanna Somers, of Trevetham Cottage, etc., should leave the county of Cornwall within the space of three days. And further, within the space of twenty-four hours of their arrival in any place they must report themselves at the police station of the said place, giving their address. And they were forbidden to enter any part of the area of Cornwall, etc., etc., etc.

 

Somers listened in silence.

 

“But why?” cried Harriet. “Why. What have we done?”

 

“I can’t say what you have done,” said the young officer in a cold tone, “but it must be something sufficiently²⁶¹ serious. They don’t send out these orders for nothing.”

 

“But what it is then? What is it? I don’t know what we’ve done. Have we no right to know what you accuse us of?”

 

“No, you have no right to know anything further than what is said in the order.” And he folded up the said official foolscap, and handed it officially to Somers. Richard silently took it and read it again.

 

“But it’s monstrous! What have they against us? We live here simply—we do nothing at all that they can charge us with. What have we done?” cried Harriet.

 

“I don’t know what you’ve done. But we can take no risks in these times—and evidently there is a risk in leaving you here.”

 

“But I should like to know what?” cried Harriet.

 

“That I cannot tell you.”

 

“But do you know?” woman-like, she persisted.

 

“No, I don’t even know,” he replied coldly.

 

Harriet broke into a few tears of fright, fear, and chagrin²⁶².

 

“Have we no rights at all?” she cried, furious.

 

“Be quiet,” said Richard to her.

 

“Yes. It is your duty to serve your country, if it is your country, by every means in your power. If you choose to put yourself under suspicion——”

 

“Suspicion of what?”

 

“I tell you, I do not know, and could not tell you even if I did know.”

 

The foul¹³⁹, loutish detectives meanwhile were fumbling²⁶³ around, taking the books off the shelves and looking inside the clock. Somers watched them with a cold eye.

 

“Is this yours?” said one of the louts, producing a book with queer diagrams.

 

“Yes, it’s a botany notebook,” said Somers coldly.

 

The man secured it.

 

“He can learn the structure of moulds and parasites,” said Richard bitterly to Harriet.

 

“The house is all open, the men can search everything?” asked the officer coldly.

 

“You know it is,” said Somers. “You tried yesterday while we were out.” Then he asked: “Who is responsible for this? Whom can I write to?”

 

“You can write to Major Witham, Headquarters Southern Division, Salisbury, if it will do any good,” was the answer.

 

There was a pause. Somers wrote it down: not in his address book because that was gone.

 

“And one is treated like this, for nothing,” cried Harriet, again in tears. “For nothing, but just because I wasn’t born English. Yet one has married an Englishman, and they won’t let one live anywhere but in England.”

 

“It is more than that. It is more than the fact that you are not English born,” said the officer.

 

“Then what? What?” she cried.

 

He refused to answer this time. The police-sergeant looked on with troubled blue eyes.

 

“Nothing. It’s nothing but that, because it can’t be,” wept Harriet. “It can’t be anything else, because we’ve never done anything else. Just because one wasn’t born in England—as if one could help that. And to be persecuted²⁶⁴ like this, for nothing, for nothing else. And not even openly accused! Not even that.” She wiped her tears, half enjoying it now. The police-sergeant looked into the road. One of the louts clumped²⁶⁵ downstairs and began to look once more among the books.

 

“That’ll do here!” said the officer quietly, to the detective lout. But the detective lout wasn’t going to be ordered, and persisted.

 

“This your sketch-book, Mr Somers?” said the lout.

 

“No, those are Lady Hermione Rogers’ sketches,” said Somers, with derision. And the lout stuffed the book back.

 

“And why don’t they let us go away?” cried Harriet. “Why don’t they let us go to America? We don’t want to be here if we are a nuisance. We want to go right away. Why won’t they even let us do that!” She was all tear-marked now.

 

“They must have their reasons,” said the young officer, who was getting more and more uncomfortable. He again tried to hurry up the detective lout. But they were enjoying nosing round among other people’s privacies.

 

“And what’ll happen to us if we don’t go, if we just stay?” said Harriet, being altogether a female.

 

“You’d better not try,” said the young man, grimly, so utterly confident in the absoluteness of the powers and the rightness he represented. And Somers would have liked to hit him across the mouth for that.

 

“Hold your tongue, Harriet,” he said, turning on her fiercely. “You’ve said enough now. Be still, and let them do what they like, since they’ve the power to do it.”

 

And Harriet was silent. And in the silence only the louts rummaging²⁶⁶ among the linen²⁶⁷, and one looking into the bread-tin and into the tea-caddy. Somers watched them with a cold eye, and that queer slight lifting of his nose, rather like a dog when it shows disgust. And the officer again tried to hurry the louts, in his low tone of command, which had so little effect.

 

“Where do you intend to go?” said the officer to Somers.

 

“Oh, just to London,” said Somers, who did not feel communicative.

 

“I suppose they will send the things back that they take?” he said, indicating the louts.

 

“I should think so—anything that is not evidence.”

 

The louts were drawing to an end: it was nearly over.

 

“Of course this has nothing to do with me: I have to obey orders, no matter what they are,” said the young officer, half apologising.

 

Somers just looked at him, but did not answer. His face was pale and still and distant, unconscious that the other people were real human beings. To him they were not: they were just things, obeying orders. And his eyes showed that. The young officer wanted to get out.

 

At last it was over: the louts had collected a very few trifles. The officer saw them on to the road, bade them good-morning, and got out of the house as quick as he could.

 

“Good-morning, sir! Good-morning, mam!” said the police-sergeant in tones of sympathy.

 

Yes, it was over. Harriet and Lovat looked at one another in silent consternation.

 

“Well, we must just go,” she said.

 

“Oh, yes,” he replied.

 

And she studied the insolent²⁶⁸ notice to quit the area of Cornwall. In her heart of hearts she was not sorry to quit it. It had become too painful.

 

In a minute up came one of the farm girls to hear the news: then later Somers went down. Arthur, the boy, had heard the officer say to the police-sergeant as he went up the hill:

 

“Well, that’s a job I’d rather not have had to do.”

 

Harriet was alternately bitter and mocking: but badly shocked. Somers had had in his pocket the words of one of the Hebridean folk songs which Sharpe had brought down, and which they all thought so wonderful. On a bit of paper in his jacket-pocket, the words which have no meaning in any language apparently, but are just vocal²⁶⁹, almost animal sounds: the Seal Woman’s Song—this they had taken.

 

“Ver mi hiu—ravo na la vo—

Ver mi hiu—ravo hovo i—

Ver mi hiu—ravo na la vo—an catal—

Traum—san jechar—”

What would the investigation²⁷⁰ make of this? What, oh, what? Harriet loved to think of it. Somers really expected to be examined under torture, to make him confess. The only obvious word—Traum—pure German.

 

The day was Friday: they must leave on Monday by the Great Western express. Started a bitter rush of packing. Somers, so sick of things, had a great fire of all his old manuscripts. They decided to leave the house as it was, the books on the shelves, to take only their personal belongings²⁷¹. For Somers was determined²⁷² to come back. Until he had made up his mind to this, he felt paralysed. He loved the place so much. Ever since the conscription suspense began he had said to himself, when he walked up the wild, little road from his cottage to the moor: shall I see the foxgloves come out? If only I can stay till the foxgloves come. And he had seen the foxgloves come. Then it was the heather—would he see the heather? And then the primroses²⁷³ in the hollow down to the sea: the tufts and tufts of primroses, where the fox stood and looked at him.

 

Lately, however, he had begun to feel secure, as if he had sunk some of himself into the earth there, and were rooted for ever. His very soul seemed to have sunk into that Cornwall, that wild place under the moors. And now he must tear himself out. He was quite paralysed, could scarcely move. And at the farm they all looked at him with blank faces. He went back to the cottage to burn more manuscripts and pack up.

 

And then, like a revelation, he decided he would come back. He would use all his strength, put himself against all the authorities, and in a month or two he would come back. Before the snow-drops came in the farm garden.

 

“I shall be back in a month or two—three months,” he said to everybody, and they looked at him.

 

But John Thomas said to him:

 

“You remember you said you would never drive to town again. Eh?” And in the black, bright eyes Somers saw that it was so. Yet he persisted.

 

“It only meant not yet awhile.”

 

On the Monday morning he went down to say good-bye at the farm. It was a bitter moment, he was so much attached to them. And they to him. He could not bear to go. Only one was not there—the Uncle James. Many a time Somers wondered why Uncle James had gone down the fields, so as not to say good-bye.

 

John Thomas was driving them down in the trap—Arthur had taken the big luggage in the cart. The family at the farm did everything they could. Somers never forgot that while he and Harriet were slaving, on the Sunday, to get things packed, John Thomas came up with their dinners, from the farm Sunday dinner.

 

It was a lovely, lovely morning as they drove across the hill-slopes above the sea: Harriet and Somers and John Thomas. In spite of themselves they felt cheerful. It seemed like an adventure.

 

“I don’t know,” said John Thomas, “but I feel in myself as if it was all going to turn out for the best.” And he smiled in his bright, wondering way.

 

“So do I,” cried Harriet. “As if we were going to be more free.”

 

“As if we were setting out on a long adventure,” said Somers.

 

They drove through the town, where, of course, they were marked people. But it was curious how little they cared, how indifferent they felt to everybody.

 

At the station Somers bade good-bye to John Thomas, with whom he had been such friends.

 

“Well, I wonder when we shall see each other again,” said the young farmer.

 

“Soon. We will make it soon,” said Somers. “We will make it soon. And you can come to London to see us.”

 

“Well—if I can manage it—there’s nothing would please me better,” replied the other. But even as he said it, Somers was thinking of the evening in town, when he and Ann had been kept waiting so long. And he knew he would not see John Thomas again soon.

 

During the long journey up to London Somers sat facing Harriet, quite still. The train was full: soldiers and sailors from Plymouth. One naval²⁷⁴ man talked to Harriet: bitter like all the rest. As soon as a man began to talk seriously, it was in bitterness. But many were beginning to make a mock of their own feelings even. Songs like “Good-byeeee” had taken the pace of “Bluebells,” and marked the change.

 

But Somers sat there feeling he had been killed: perfectly²⁷⁵ still, and pale, in a kind of after death, feeling he had been killed. He had always believed so in everything—society, love, friends. This was one of his serious deaths in belief. So he sat with his immobile face of a crucified Christ who makes no complaint, only broods silently and alone, remote. This face distressed²⁷⁶ Harriet horribly. It made her feel lost and shipwrecked, as if her heart was destined²⁷⁷ to break also. And she was in rather good spirits really. Her horror had been that she would be interned²⁷⁸ in one of the horrible camps, away from Somers. She had far less belief than he in the goodness of mankind. And she was rather relieved to get out of Cornwall. She had felt herself under a pressure there, long suffering. That very pressure he had loved so much. And so, while his still, fixed, crucified face distressed her horribly, at the same time it made her angry. What did he want to look like that for? Why didn’t he show fight?

 

They came to London, and he tried taxi after taxi before he could get one to take them up to Hampstead. He had written to a staunch friend, and asked her to wire if she would receive them for a day or two. She wired that she would. So they went to her house. She was a little delicate lady who reminded Somers of his mother, though she was younger than his mother would have been. She and her husband had been friends of William Morris in those busy days of incipient²⁷⁹ Fabianism. Now her husband was sick, and she lived with him and a nurse and her grown-up daughter in a little old house in Hampstead.

 

Mrs Redburn was frightened, receiving the tainted²⁸¹ Somers. But she had pluck. Everybody in London was frightened at this time, everybody who was not a rabid and disgusting so-called patriot¹⁴. It was a reign of terror. Mrs Redburn was a staunch little soul, but she was bewildered: and she was frightened. They did such horrible things to you, the authorities. Poor tiny Hattie, with her cameo face, like a wise child, and her grey, bobbed hair. Such a frail²⁸² little thing to have gone sailing these seas of ideas, and to suffer the awful breakdown²⁸³ of her husband. A tiny little woman with grey, bobbed hair, and wide, unyielding eyes. She had three great children. It all seemed a joke and a tragedy mixed, to her. And now the war. She was just bewildered, and would not live long. Poor, frail, tiny Hattie, receiving the Somers into her still, tiny old house. Both Richard and Harriet loved her. He had pledged himself, in some queer way, to keep a place in his heart for her forever, even when she was dead. Which he did.

 

But he suffered from London. It was cold, heavy, foggy weather, and he pined for his cottage, the granite strewn, gorse-grown slope from the moors to the sea. He could not bear Hampstead Heath now. In his eyes he saw the farm below—grey, naked, stony, with the big, pale-roofed new barn—and the network of dark green fields with the pale-grey walls—and the gorse and the sea. Torture of nostalgia. He craved²⁸⁴ to be back, his soul was there. He wrote passionately²⁸⁵ to John Thomas.

 

Richard and Harriet went to a police-station for the first time in their lives. They went and reported themselves. The police at the station knew nothing about them and said they needn’t have come. But next day a great policeman thumping²⁸⁶ at Hattie’s door, and were some people called Somers staying there? It was explained to the policeman that they had already reported—but he knew nothing of it.

 

Somers wanted as quickly as possible to find rooms, to take the burden from Hattie. The American wife of an English friend, a poet serving in the army, offered her rooms in Mecklenburgh Square, and the third day after their arrival in London Somers and Harriet moved there: very grateful indeed to the American girl. They had no money. But the young woman tossed the rooms to them, and food and fuel, with a wild free hand. She was beautiful, reckless, one of the poetesses whose poetry Richard feared and wondered over.

 

Started a new life: anguish²⁸⁷ of nostalgia for Cornwall, from Somers. Wandering in the King’s Cross Road or Theobald’s Road, seeing his cottage and the road going up to the moors. He wrote twice to the headquarters at Salisbury insisting on being allowed to return. Came a reply, this could not be permitted. Then one day a man called and left a book and the little bundle of papers—a handful only—which the detectives had confiscated²⁸⁸. A poor little show. Even the scrap²⁵⁵ of paper with Ver mi hiu. Again Somers wrote—but to no effect. Came a letter from John Thomas describing events in the west—the last Somers ever had from his friend.

 

Then Sharpe came up to London: it was too lonely down there. And they had some gay evenings. Many people came to see Somers. But Sharpe said to him:

 

“They’re watching you still. There were two policemen near the door watching who came in.”

 

There was an atmosphere of terror all through London, as under the Czar when no man dared open his mouth. Only this time it was the lowest orders of mankind spying on the upper orders, to drag them down.

 

One evening there was a gorgeous commotion²⁸⁹ in Somers’ rooms: four poets and three non-poets, all fighting out poetry: a splendid time. Somers ran down the stairs in the black dark—no lights in the hall—to open the door. He opened quickly—three policemen in the porch. They slipped out before they could be spoken to.

 

Harriet and Somers had reported at Bow Street—wonderful how little heed the police took of them. Somers could tell how the civil police loathed being under the military orders.

 

But watched and followed he knew he was. After two months the American friend needed her rooms. The Somers transferred to Kensington, to a flat belonging to Sharpe’s mother. Again many friends came. One evening Sharpe was called out from the drawing-room: detectives in the hall enquiring²⁹⁰ about Somers, where he got his money from, etc., etc., such clowns, louts, mongrels of detectives. Even Sharpe laughed in their faces: such canaille. At the same time detectives inquiring for them at the old address: though they had reported the change. Such a confusion in the official mind!

 

It was becoming impossible. Somers wrote bitterly to friends who had been all-influential till lately, but whom the canaille were now trying to taint²⁸⁰ also. And then he and Harriet moved to a little cottage he rented from his dear Hattie, in Oxfordshire. Once more they reported to the police in the market-town: once more the police sympathetic.

 

“I will report no more,” said Somers.

 

But still he knew he was being watched all the time. Strange men questioning the cottage woman next door, as to all his doings. He began to feel a criminal. A sense of guilt, of self-horror began to grow up in him. He saw himself set apart from mankind, a Cain, or worse. Though of course he had committed no murder. But what might he not have done? A leper, a criminal! The foul, dense²⁹¹, carrion-eating mob were trying to set their teeth in him. Which meant mortification and death.

 

It was Christmas—winter—very cold. He and Harriet were very poor. Then he became ill. He lay in the tiny bedroom looking at the wintry sky and the deep, thatched roof of the cottage beyond. Sick. But then his soul revived. “No,” he said to himself. “No. Whatever I do or have done, I am not wrong. Even if I commit what they call a crime, why should I accept their condemnation or verdict. Whatever I do, I do of my own responsible self. I refuse their imputations. I despise them. They are canaille, carrion-eating, filthy-mouthed canaille, like dead-men-devouring jackals. I wish to God I could kill them. I wish I had power to blight²⁹³ them, to slay²⁹⁴ them with a blight, slay them in thousands and thousands. I wish to God I could kill them off, the masses of canaille. Would they make me feel in the wrong? Would they? They shall not. Never. I will watch that they never set their unclean teeth in me, for a bite is blood-poisoning. But fear them! Feel in the wrong because of them? Never. Not if I were Cain several times over, and had killed several brothers and sisters as well. Not if I had committed all the crimes in their calendar. I will not be put in the wrong by them, God knows I will not. And I will report myself no more at their police-stations.”

 

So, whenever the feeling of terror came over him, the feeling of being marked-out, branded, a criminal marked out by society, marked out for annihilation, he pulled himself together, saying to himself:

 

“I am letting them make me feel in the wrong. I am degrading myself by feeling guilty, marked-out, and I have convulsions of fear. But I am not wrong. I have done no wrong, whatever I have done. That is, no wrong that society has to do with. Whatever wrongs I have done are my own, and private between myself and the other person. One may be wrong, yes, one is often wrong. But not for them to judge. For my own soul only to judge. Let me know them for human filth²⁹², all these pullers-down, and let me watch them, as I would watch a reeking²⁹⁵ hyæna, but never fear them. Let me watch them, to keep them at bay. But let me never admit for one single moment that they may be my judges. That, never. I have judged them: they are canaille. I am a man, and I abide by my own soul. Never shall they have a chance of judging me.”

 

So he discovered the great secret: to stand alone as his own judge of himself, absolutely. He took his stand absolutely on his own judgment²⁹⁶ of himself. Then, the mongrel-mouthed world would say and do what it liked. This is the greatest secret of behaviour: to stand alone, and judge oneself from the deeps of one’s own soul. And then, to know, to hear what the others say and think: to refer their judgment to the touchstone of one’s own soul-judgment. To fear one’s own inward soul, and never to fear the outside world, nay²⁹⁷, not even one single person, nor even fifty million persons.

 

To learn to be afraid of nothing but one’s own deepest soul: but to keep a sharp eye on the millions of the others. Somers would say to himself: “There are fifty million people in Great Britain, and they would nearly all be against me. Let them.”

 

So a period of quiet followed. Somers got no answers to his letters to John Thomas: it was like the evening when he had been kept waiting. The man was scared. It was an end.

 

And the authorities still would allow of no return to Cornwall. So let that be an end too. He wrote for his books and household linen to be sent up, the rest could be sold.

 

Bitter, in Oxfordshire, to unpack²⁹⁸ the things he had loved so dearly in Cornwall. Life would never be quite the same again. Then let it be otherwise. He hardened his heart and his soul.

 

It was a lovely spring: and here, in the heart of England—Shakespeare’s England—there was a sweetness and a humanness that he had never known before. The people were friendly and unsuspicious, though they knew all about the trouble. The police too were delicate and kindly. It was a human world once more, human and lovely: though the gangs of wood-men were cutting down the trees, baring the beautiful spring woods, making logs for trench-props.

 

And there was always the suspense of being once more called up for military service. “But surely,” thought Somers, “if I am so vile²⁹⁹ they will be glad to leave me alone.”

 

Spring passed on. Somers’ sisters were alone, their husbands at the war. His younger sister took a cottage for him in their own bleak³⁰⁰ Derbyshire. And so he returned, after six years, to his own country. A bitter stranger too, he felt. It was northern, and the industrial spirit was permeated³⁰¹ through everything: the alien spirit of coal and iron. People living for coal and iron, nothing else. What good was it all?

 

This time he would not go to the police-station to report. So one day a police-inspector called. But he was a kindly man, and a little bitter too. Strange that among the civil police, everyone that Somers met was kindly and understanding. But the so-called, brand-new military, they were insolent jackanapes, especially the stay-at-home military who had all the authority in England.

 

In September, on his birthday, came the third summons: On His Majesty’s Service. His Majesty’s Service, God help us! Somers was bidden present himself at Derby on a certain date, to join the colours. He replied: “If I am turned out of my home, and forbidden to enter the area of Cornwall: if I am forced to report myself to the police wherever I go, and am treated like a criminal, you surely cannot wish me to present myself to join the colours.”

 

There was an interval²²²: much correspondence with Bodmin, where they seemed to have forgotten him again. Then he received a notice that he was to present himself as ordered.

 

What else was there to do? But he was growing devilish inside himself. However, he went: and Harriet accompanied him to the town. The recruiting place was a sort of big Sunday School—you went down a little flight of steps from the road. In a smallish ante-room like a basement he sat on a form and waited while all his papers were filed. Beside him sat a big collier, about as old as himself. And the man’s face was a study of anger and devilishness growing under humiliation. After an hour’s waiting Somers was called. He stripped as usual, but this time was told to put on his jacket over his complete nakedness.

 

And so—he was shown into a high, long schoolroom, with various sections down one side—bits of screens where various doctor-fellows were performing—and opposite, a long writing table where clerks and old military buffers³⁰³ in uniform sat in power: the clerks dutifully scribbling³⁰⁴, glad to be in a safe job, no doubt, the old military buffers staring about. Near this Judgment-Day table a fire was burning, and there was a bench where two naked men sat ignominiously³⁰⁵ waiting, trying to cover their nakedness a little with their jackets, but too much upset to care really.

 

“Good God!” thought Somers. “Naked civilised men in their Sunday jackets and nothing else make the most heaven-forsaken sight I have ever seen.”

 

The big stark³⁰⁶-naked collier was being measured: a big, gaunt, naked figure, with a gruesome sort of nudity. “Oh God, oh God,” thought Somers, “why do the animals none of them look like this? It doesn’t look like life, like a living creature’s figure. It is gruesome, with no life-meaning.”

 

In another section a youth of about twenty-five, stark naked too, was throwing out his chest while a chit of a doctor-fellow felt him between the legs. This naked young fellow evidently thought himself an athlete, and that he must make a good impression, so he threw his head up in a would-be noble attitude, and coughed bravely when the doctor-buffoon said cough! Like a piece of furniture waiting to be sat on, the athletic³⁰⁷ young man looked.

 

Across the room the military buffers looked on at the operette; occasionally a joke, incomprehensible, at the expense of the naked, was called across from the military papas to the fellows who may have been doctors. The place was full of an indescribable tone of jeering⁹⁷, gibing³⁰⁸ shamelessness. Somers stood in his street jacket and thin legs and beard—a sight enough for any gods—and waited his turn. Then he took off the jacket and was cleanly naked, and stood to be measured and weighed—being moved about like a block of meat, in the atmosphere of corrosive³⁰⁹ derision.

 

Then he was sent to the next section for eye-tests, and jokes were called across the room. Then after a time to the next section, where he was made to hop⁶⁵ on one foot—then on the other foot—bend over—and so on: apparently to see if he had any physical deformity.

 

In due course to the next section where a fool of a little fellow, surely no doctor, eyed him up and down and said:

 

“Anything to complain of?”

 

“Yes,” said Somers. “I’ve had pneumonia³¹⁰ three times and been threatened with consumption.”

 

“Oh. Go over there then.”

 

So in his stalky, ignominious nakedness he was sent over to another section, where an elderly fool turned his back on him for ten minutes, before looking round and saying:

 

“Yes. What have you to say?”

 

Somers repeated.

 

“When did you have pneumonia?”

 

Somers answered—he could hardly speak, he was in such a fury of rage and humiliation.

 

“What doctor said you were threatened with consumption? Give his name.” This in a tone of sneering³¹² scepticism.

 

The whole room was watching and listening. Somers knew his appearance had been anticipated, and they wanted to count him out. But he kept his head. The elderly fellow then proceeded to listen to his heart and lungs with a stethoscope, jabbing the end of the instrument against the flesh as if he wished to make a pattern on it. Somers kept a set face. He knew what he was out against, and he just hated and despised them all.

 

The fellow at length threw the stethoscope aside as if he were throwing Somers aside, and went to write. Somers stood still, with a set face, and waited.

 

Then he was sent to the next section, and the stethoscoping doctor strolled over to the great judgment table. In the final section was a young puppy, like a chemist’s assistant, who made most of the jokes. Jokes were all the time passing across the room—but Somers had the faculty³¹³ of becoming quite deaf to anything that might disturb his equanimity³¹⁴.

 

The chemist-assistant puppy looked him up and down with a small grin as if to say, “Law-lummy, what a sight of a human scare-crow!” Somers looked him back again, under lowered lids, and the puppy left off joking for the moment. He told Somers to take up other attitudes. Then he came forward close to him, right till their bodies almost touched, the one in a navy blue serge, holding back a little as if from the contagion³¹⁵ of the naked one. He put his hand between Somers’ legs, and pressed it upwards, under the genitals. Somers felt his eyes going black.

 

“Cough,” said the puppy. He coughed.

 

“Again,” said the puppy. He made a noise in his throat, then turned aside in disgust.

 

“Turn round,” said the puppy. “Face the other way.”

 

Somers turned and faced the shameful³¹⁶ monkey-faces at the long table. So, he had his back to the tall window: and the puppy stood plumb³¹⁷ behind him.

 

“Put your feet apart.”

 

He put his feet apart.

 

“Bend forward—further—further—”

 

Somers bent³¹⁸ forward, lower, and realised that the puppy was standing aloof³¹⁹ behind him to look into his anus. And that this was the source of the wonderful jesting that went on all the time.

 

“That will do. Get your jacket and go over there.”

 

Somers put on his jacket and went and sat on the form that was placed endwise at the side of the fire, facing the side of the judgment table. The big, gaunt collier was still being fooled. He apparently was not very intelligent, and didn’t know what they meant when they told him to bend forward. Instead of bending with stiff knees—not knowing at all what they wanted—he crouched³²⁰ down, squatting³²¹ on his heels as colliers do. And the doctor puppy, amid the hugest amusement, had to start him over again. So the game went on, and Somers watched them all.

 

The collier was terrible to him. He had a sort of Irish face with a short nose and a thin black head. This snub-nose face had gone quite blank with a ghastly voidness, void of intelligence, bewildered and blind. It was as if the big, ugly, powerful body could not obey words any more. Oh God, such an ugly body—not as if it belonged to a living creature.

 

Somers kept himself hard and in command, face set, eyes watchful. He felt his cup had been filled now. He watched these buffoons³²² in this great room, as he sat there naked save for his jacket, and he felt that from his heart, from his spine³²³ went out vibrations that should annihilate³²⁴ them—blot them out, the canaille, stamp them into the mud they belonged to.

 

He was called at length to the table.

 

“What is your name?” asked one of the old parties. Somers looked at him.

 

“Somers,” he said, in a very low tone.

 

“Somers—Richard Lovat?” with an indescribable sneer³¹¹.

 

Richard Lovat realised that they had got their knife into him. So! He had his knife in them, and it would strike deeper at last.

 

“You describe yourself as a writer.”

 

He did not answer.

 

“A writer of what?”—with a perfect sneer.

 

“Books—essays.”

 

The old buffer³⁰² went on writing. Oh, yes, they intended to make him feel they had got their knife into him. They would have his beard off, too! But would they! He stood there with his ridiculous thin legs, in his ridiculous jacket, but he did not feel a fool. Oh, God, no. The white composure of his face, the slight lifting of his nose, like a dog’s disgust, the heavy, unshakeable watchfulness³²⁵ of his eyes brought even the judgment-table to silence: even the puppy doctors. It was not till he was walking out of the room, with his jacket about his thin legs, and his beard in front of him, that they lifted their heads for a final jeer.

 

He dressed and waited for his card. It was Saturday morning, and he was almost the last man to be examined. He wondered what instructions they had had about him. Oh, foul dogs. But they were very close on him now, very close. They were grinning very close behind him, like hyænas just going to bite. Yes, they were running him to earth. They had exposed all his nakedness to gibes³²⁶. And they were pining, almost whimpering to give the last grab at him, and haul him to earth, a victim. Finished!

 

But not yet! Oh, no, not yet. Not yet, not now, nor ever. Not while life was life, should they lay hold of him. Never again. Never would he be touched again. And because they had handled his private parts, and looked into them, their eyes should burst and their hands should wither³²⁷ and their hearts should rot. So he cursed them in his blood, with an unremitting curse, as he waited.

 

They gave him his card: C 2. Fit for non-military service. He knew what they would like to make him do. They would like to seize him and compel him to empty latrines in some camp. They had that in mind for him. But he had other things in mind.

 

He went out into accursed Derby, to Harriet. She was reassured³²⁸ again. But he was not. He hated the Midlands now, he hated the North. They were viler³²⁹ than the South, even than Cornwall. They had a universal desire to take life and down it: these horrible machine people, these iron and coal people. They wanted to set their foot absolutely on life, grind it down, and be master. Masters, as they were of their foul machines. Masters of life, as they were masters of steam-power and electric-power and above all, of money-power. Masters of money-power, with an obscene hatred of life, true spontaneous life.

 

Another flight. He was determined not to stop in the Derby Military Area. He would move one stage out of their grip, at least. So he and Harriet prepared to go back with their trunks to the Oxfordshire cottage, which they loved. He would not report, nor give any sign of himself. Fortunately in the village everybody was slack and friendly.

 

Derby had been a crisis. He would obey no more: not one more stride. If they summoned him he would disappear: or find some means of fighting them. But no more obedience: no more presenting himself when called up. By God, no! Never while he lived, again, would he be at the disposal of society.

 

So they moved south—to be one step removed. They had been living in this remote cottage in the Derbyshire hills: and they must leave at half-past seven in the morning, to complete their journey in a day. It was a black morning, with a slow dawn. Somers had the trunks ready. He stood looking at the dark gulf³³⁰ of the valley below. Meanwhile heavy clouds sank over the bare, Derbyshire hills, and the dawn was blotted³³¹ out before it came. Then broke a terrific thunderstorm, and hail lashed³³² down with a noise like insanity³³³. He stood at the big window over the valley, and watched. Come hail, come rain, he would go: forever.

 

This was his home district—but from the deepest soul he now hated it, mistrusted it even more than he hated it. As far as life went, he mistrusted it utterly, with a black soul. Mistrusted it and hated it, with its smoke and its money-power and its squirming millions who aren’t human any more.

 

Ah, how lovely the South-west seemed, after it all. There was hardly any food, but neither he nor Harriet minded. They could pick up and be wonderfully happy again, gathering³³⁴ the little chestnuts³³⁵ in the woods, and the few last bilberries. Men were working harder than ever felling trees for trench-timber, denuding³³⁶ the land. But their brush fires were burning in the woods, and when they had gone, in the cold dusk, Somers went with a sack to pick up the unburnt faggots and the great chips of wood the axes had left golden against the felled logs. Flakes³³⁷ of sweet, pale gold oak. He gathered them in the dusk, in a sack, along with the other poor villagers. For he was poorer even than they. Still, it made him very happy to do these things—to see a big, glowing pile of wood-flakes in his shed—and to dig the garden, and set the rubbish burning in the late, wistful autumn—or to wander through the hazel copses, away to the real old English hamlets, that are still like Shakespeare—and like Hardy’s Woodlanders.

 

Then, in November, the Armistice³³⁸. It was almost too much to believe. The war was over! It was too much to believe. He and Harriet sat and sang German songs, in the cottage, that strange night of the Armistice, away there in the country: and she cried—and he wondered what now, now the walls would come no nearer. It had been like Edgar Allen Poe’s story of the Pit and the Pendulum—where the walls come in, in, in, till the prisoner is almost squeezed. So the black walls of the war—and he had been trapped, and very nearly squeezed into the pit where the rats were. So nearly! So very nearly. And now the black walls had stopped, and he was not pushed into the pit, and the rats. And he knew it in his soul. What next then?

 

He insisted on going back to Derbyshire. Harriet, who hated him for the move, refused to go. So he went alone: back to his sisters, and to finish the year in the house which they had paid for him. Harriet refused to go. She stayed with Hattie in London.

 

At St. Pancras, as Somers left the taxi and went across the pavement to the station, he fell down: fell smack³³⁹ down on the pavement. He did not hurt himself. But he got up rather dazed, saying to himself, “Is that a bad omen³⁷? Ought I not to be going back?” But again he thought of Scipio Africanus, and went on.

 

The cold, black December days, alone in the cottage on the cold hills—Adam Bede country, Snowfields, Dinah Morris’ home. Such heavy, cold, savage, frustrated³⁴⁰ blackness. He had known it when he was a boy. Then Harriet came—and they spent Christmas with his sister. And when January came he fell ill with the influenza³⁴¹, and was ill for a long time. In March the snow was up to the window-sills of their house.

 

“Will the winter never end?” he asked his soul.

 

May brought the year’s house-rent of the Derbyshire cottage to an end: and back they went to Oxfordshire. But now the place seemed weary to him, tame, after the black iron of the North. The walls had gone—and now he felt nowhere.

 

So they applied for passports—Harriet to go to Germany, himself to Italy. A lovely summer went by, a lovely autumn came. But the meaning had gone out of everything for him. He had lost his meaning. England had lost its meaning for him. The free England had died, this England of the peace was like a corpse³⁴². It was the corpse of a country to him.

 

In October came the passports. He saw Harriet off to Germany—said good-bye at the Great Eastern Station, while she sat in the Harwich-Hook of Holland express. She had a look of almost vindictive³⁴³ triumph, and almost malignant³⁴⁴ love, as the train drew out. So he went back to his meaninglessness at the cottage.

 

Then, finding the meaninglessness too much, he gathered his few pounds together and in November left for Italy. Left England, England which he had loved so bitterly, bitterly—and now was leaving, alone, and with a feeling of expressionlessness in his soul. It was a cold day. There was snow on the Downs like a shroud³⁴⁵. And as he looked back from the boat, when they had left Folkestone behind and only England was there, England looked like a grey, dreary-grey coffin³⁴⁶ sinking in the sea behind, with her dead grey cliffs and the white, worn-out cloth of snow above.

 

Memory of all this came on him so violently, now in the Australian night, that he trembled helplessly under the shock of it. He ought to have gone up to Jack’s place for the night. But no, he could not speak to anybody. Of all the black throng³⁴⁷ in the dark Sydney streets, he was the most remote. He strayed round in a torture of fear, and then at last suddenly went to the Carlton Hotel, got a room, and went to bed, to be alone and think.

 

Detail for detail he thought out his experiences with the authorities, during the war, lying perfectly still and tense. Till now, he had always kept the memory at bay, afraid of it. Now it all came back, in a rush. It was like a volcanic³⁴⁸ eruption³⁴⁹ in his consciousness. For some weeks he had felt the great uneasiness in his unconscious. For some time he had known spasms³⁵⁰ of that same fear that he had known during the war: the fear of the base and malignant power of the mob-like authorities. Since he had been in Italy the fear had left him entirely. He had not even remembered it, in India. Only in the quiet of Coo-ee, strangely enough, it had come back in spasms: the dread, almost the horror, of democratic society, the mob. Harriet had been feeling it too. Why? Why, in this free Australia? Why? Why should they both have been feeling this same terror and pressure that they had known during the war, why should it have come on again in Mullumbimby? Perhaps in Mullumbimby they were suspect again, two strangers, so much alone. Perhaps the secret service was making investigations³⁵¹ about them. Ah, canaille!

 

Richard faced out all his memories like a nightmare in the night, and cut clear. He felt broken off from his fellow-men. He felt broken off from the England he had belonged to. The ties were gone. He was loose like a single timber of some wrecked ship, drifting over the face of the earth. Without a people, without a land. So be it. He was broken apart, apart he would remain.

1 hovering   

鸟( hover的现在分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫

参考例句：

• The helicopter was hovering about 100 metres above the pad. 直升机在离发射台一百米的上空盘旋。
• I'm hovering between the concert and the play tonight. 我犹豫不决今晚是听音乐会还是看戏。

2 usurping   

篡夺，霸占( usurp的现在分词 )； 盗用； 篡夺，篡权

参考例句：

• Earlier the Ukrainian President dissolved Parliament because it claimed it was usurping power. 之前乌克兰总统解散国会因为国会声称要夺权。

3 psyche   

n.精神；灵魂

参考例句：

• His exploration of the myth brings insight into the American psyche.他对这个神话的探讨揭示了美国人的心理。
• She spent her life plumbing the mysteries of the human psyche.她毕生探索人类心灵的奥秘。

4 Christian   

adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒

参考例句：

• They always addressed each other by their Christian name.他们总是以教名互相称呼。
• His mother is a sincere Christian.他母亲是个虔诚的基督教徒。

5 vengeance   

n.报复，报仇，复仇

参考例句：

• He swore vengeance against the men who murdered his father.他发誓要向那些杀害他父亲的人报仇。
• For years he brooded vengeance.多年来他一直在盘算报仇。

6 bullies   

n.欺凌弱小者, 开球 vt.恐吓, 威胁, 欺负

参考例句：

• Standing up to bullies takes plenty of backbone. 勇敢地对付暴徒需有大无畏精神。
• Bullies can make your life hell. 恃强欺弱者能让你的日子像活地狱。

7 lust   

n.性(淫)欲；渴(欲)望；vi.对…有强烈的欲望

参考例句：

• He was filled with lust for power.他内心充满了对权力的渴望。
• Sensing the explorer's lust for gold, the chief wisely presented gold ornaments as gifts.酋长觉察出探险者们垂涎黄金的欲念，就聪明地把金饰品作为礼物赠送给他们。

8 possessed   

adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的

参考例句：

• He flew out of the room like a man possessed.他像着了魔似地猛然冲出房门。
• He behaved like someone possessed.他行为举止像是魔怔了。

9 reign   

n.统治时期，统治，支配，盛行；v.占优势

参考例句：

• The reign of Queen Elizabeth lapped over into the seventeenth century.伊丽莎白王朝延至17世纪。
• The reign of Zhu Yuanzhang lasted about 31 years.朱元璋统治了大约三十一年。

10 steadily   

adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地

参考例句：

• The scope of man's use of natural resources will steadily grow.人类利用自然资源的广度将日益扩大。
• Our educational reform was steadily led onto the correct path.我们的教学改革慢慢上轨道了。

11 applied   

adj.应用的；v.应用，适用

参考例句：

• She plans to take a course in applied linguistics.她打算学习应用语言学课程。
• This cream is best applied to the face at night.这种乳霜最好晚上擦脸用。

12 jaws   

n.口部；嘴

参考例句：

• The antelope could not escape the crocodile's gaping jaws. 那只羚羊无法从鱷鱼张开的大口中逃脱。
• The scored jaws of a vise help it bite the work. 台钳上有刻痕的虎钳牙帮助它紧咬住工件。

13 abide   

vi.遵守；坚持；vt.忍受

参考例句：

• You must abide by the results of your mistakes.你必须承担你的错误所造成的后果。
• If you join the club,you have to abide by its rules.如果你参加俱乐部，你就得遵守它的规章。

14 patriot   

n.爱国者，爱国主义者

参考例句：

• He avowed himself a patriot.他自称自己是爱国者。
• He is a patriot who has won the admiration of the French already.他是一个已经赢得法国人敬仰的爱国者。

15 patriotism   

n.爱国精神，爱国心，爱国主义

参考例句：

• His new book is a demonstration of his patriotism.他写的新书是他的爱国精神的证明。
• They obtained money under the false pretenses of patriotism.他们以虚伪的爱国主义为借口获得金钱。

16 bullied   

adj.被欺负了v.恐吓，威逼( bully的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• My son is being bullied at school. 我儿子在学校里受欺负。
• The boy bullied the small girl into giving him all her money. 那男孩威逼那个小女孩把所有的钱都给他。 来自《简明英汉词典》

17 conscientious   

adj.审慎正直的，认真的，本着良心的

参考例句：

• He is a conscientious man and knows his job.他很认真负责，也很懂行。
• He is very conscientious in the performance of his duties.他非常认真地履行职责。

18 tiresomely   

adj. 令人厌倦的，讨厌的

参考例句：

• The excitement over her arrival was tiresomely predictable –like flashing a shiny object at a child. 她的到来会使人们兴奋，这是稍微可以预见的——就像在一个孩子面前放一个闪闪发光的东西。
• British chancellors tiresomely wont to lecture finance ministers in mainland Europe about their superior policies. 英国的财政大臣也常常向欧洲大陆的财政部长们演讲他们的优越政策。

19 acquiesce   

vi.默许，顺从，同意

参考例句：

• Her parents will never acquiesce in such an unsuitable marriage.她的父母决不会答应这门不相宜的婚事。
• He is so independent that he will never acquiesce.他很有主见，所以绝不会顺从。

20 manly   

adj.有男子气概的；adv.男子般地，果断地

参考例句：

• The boy walked with a confident manly stride.这男孩以自信的男人步伐行走。
• He set himself manly tasks and expected others to follow his example.他给自己定下了男子汉的任务，并希望别人效之。

21 isolation   

n.隔离，孤立，分解，分离

参考例句：

• The millionaire lived in complete isolation from the outside world.这位富翁过着与世隔绝的生活。
• He retired and lived in relative isolation.他退休后，生活比较孤寂。

22 utterly   

adv.完全地，绝对地

参考例句：

• Utterly devoted to the people,he gave his life in saving his patients.他忠于人民，把毕生精力用于挽救患者的生命。
• I was utterly ravished by the way she smiled.她的微笑使我完全陶醉了。

23 swirling   

v.旋转，打旋( swirl的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• Snowflakes were swirling in the air. 天空飘洒着雪花。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• She smiled, swirling the wine in her glass. 她微笑着，旋动着杯子里的葡萄酒。 来自辞典例句

24 suffocated   

（使某人）窒息而死( suffocate的过去式和过去分词 )； （将某人）闷死； 让人感觉闷热； 憋气

参考例句：

• Many dogs have suffocated in hot cars. 许多狗在热烘烘的汽车里给闷死了。
• I nearly suffocated when the pipe of my breathing apparatus came adrift. 呼吸器上的管子脱落时，我差点给憋死。

25 victorious   

adj.胜利的，得胜的

参考例句：

• We are certain to be victorious.我们定会胜利。
• The victorious army returned in triumph.获胜的部队凯旋而归。

26 turbid   

adj.混浊的，泥水的，浓的

参考例句：

• He found himself content to watch idly the sluggish flow of the turbid stream.他心安理得地懒洋洋地望着混浊的河水缓缓流着。
• The lake's water is turbid.这个湖里的水混浊。

27 sordid   

adj.肮脏的，不干净的，卑鄙的，暗淡的

参考例句：

• He depicts the sordid and vulgar sides of life exclusively.他只描写人生肮脏和庸俗的一面。
• They lived in a sordid apartment.他们住在肮脏的公寓房子里。

28 isolate   

vt.使孤立，隔离

参考例句：

• Do not isolate yourself from others.不要把自己孤立起来。
• We should never isolate ourselves from the masses.我们永远不能脱离群众。

29 isolated   

adj.与世隔绝的

参考例句：

• His bad behaviour was just an isolated incident. 他的不良行为只是个别事件。
• Patients with the disease should be isolated. 这种病的患者应予以隔离。

30 detested   

v.憎恶，嫌恶，痛恨( detest的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• They detested each other on sight. 他们互相看着就不顺眼。
• The freethinker hated the formalist; the lover of liberty detested the disciplinarian. 自由思想者总是不喜欢拘泥形式者，爱好自由者总是憎恶清规戒律者。 来自辞典例句

31 humiliation   

n.羞辱

参考例句：

• He suffered the humiliation of being forced to ask for his cards.他蒙受了被迫要求辞职的羞辱。
• He will wish to revenge his humiliation in last Season's Final.他会为在上个季度的决赛中所受的耻辱而报复的。

32 humiliate   

v.使羞辱，使丢脸[同]disgrace

参考例句：

• What right had they to bully and humiliate people like this?凭什么把人欺侮到这个地步呢？
• They pay me empty compliments which only humiliate me.他们虚情假意地恭维我，这只能使我感到羞辱。

33 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

34 foundered   

v.创始人( founder的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Three ships foundered in heavy seas. 三艘船在波涛汹涌的海面上沉没了。 来自辞典例句
• The project foundered as a result of lack of finance. 该项目因缺乏资金而告吹。 来自辞典例句

35 condemned   

adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• He condemned the hypocrisy of those politicians who do one thing and say another. 他谴责了那些说一套做一套的政客的虚伪。
• The policy has been condemned as a regressive step. 这项政策被认为是一种倒退而受到谴责。

36 martyr   

n.烈士，殉难者；vt.杀害，折磨，牺牲

参考例句：

• The martyr laid down his life for the cause of national independence.这位烈士是为了民族独立的事业而献身的。
• The newspaper carried the martyr's photo framed in black.报上登载了框有黑边的烈士遗像。

37 omen   

n.征兆，预兆；vt.预示

参考例句：

• The superstitious regard it as a bad omen.迷信的人认为那是一种恶兆。
• Could this at last be a good omen for peace?这是否终于可以视作和平的吉兆了？

38 flannel   

n.法兰绒；法兰绒衣服

参考例句：

• She always wears a grey flannel trousers.她总是穿一条灰色法兰绒长裤。
• She was looking luscious in a flannel shirt.她穿着法兰绒裙子，看上去楚楚动人。

39 instinctive   

adj.(出于)本能的；直觉的；(出于)天性的

参考例句：

• He tried to conceal his instinctive revulsion at the idea.他试图饰盖自己对这一想法本能的厌恶。
• Animals have an instinctive fear of fire.动物本能地怕火。

40 obedience   

n.服从，顺从

参考例句：

• Society has a right to expect obedience of the law.社会有权要求人人遵守法律。
• Soldiers act in obedience to the orders of their superior officers.士兵们遵照上级军官的命令行动。

41 desperately   

adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地

参考例句：

• He was desperately seeking a way to see her again.他正拼命想办法再见她一面。
• He longed desperately to be back at home.他非常渴望回家。

42 miserable   

adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的

参考例句：

• It was miserable of you to make fun of him.你取笑他，这是可耻的。
• Her past life was miserable.她过去的生活很苦。

43 sloppy   

adj.邋遢的，不整洁的

参考例句：

• If you do such sloppy work again,I promise I'll fail you.要是下次作业你再马马虎虎，我话说在头里，可要给你打不及格了。
• Mother constantly picked at him for being sloppy.母亲不断地批评他懒散。

44 bloody   

adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染

参考例句：

• He got a bloody nose in the fight.他在打斗中被打得鼻子流血。
• He is a bloody fool.他是一个十足的笨蛋。

45 bragger   

n.吹牛

参考例句：

• He'd still think you hopeless, but would put you down as a and a bragger too. 他还是会觉得你没有希望，而且会把你当成一个讨厌鬼、一个吹牛大王。 来自互联网

46 owl   

n.猫头鹰，枭

参考例句：

• Her new glasses make her look like an owl.她的新眼镜让她看上去像只猫头鹰。
• I'm a night owl and seldom go to bed until after midnight.我睡得很晚，经常半夜后才睡觉。

47 bluebells   

n.圆叶风铃草( bluebell的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• He pressed her down upon the grass, among the fallen bluebells. 他把她压倒在草地上，压倒在掉落满地的风信子花上。 来自英汉文学
• The bluebells had cascaded on to the ground. 风信子掉到了地上。 来自辞典例句

48 wail   

vt./vi.大声哀号，恸哭；呼啸，尖啸

参考例句：

• Somewhere in the audience an old woman's voice began plaintive wail.观众席里，一位老太太伤心地哭起来。
• One of the small children began to wail with terror.小孩中的一个吓得大哭起来。

49 wailing   

v.哭叫，哀号( wail的现在分词 )；沱

参考例句：

• A police car raced past with its siren wailing. 一辆警车鸣着警报器飞驰而过。
• The little girl was wailing miserably. 那小女孩难过得号啕大哭。

50 melancholy   

n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的

参考例句：

• All at once he fell into a state of profound melancholy.他立即陷入无尽的忧思之中。
• He felt melancholy after he failed the exam.这次考试没通过，他感到很郁闷。

51 writhing   

（因极度痛苦而）扭动或翻滚( writhe的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• She was writhing around on the floor in agony. 她痛得在地板上直打滚。
• He was writhing on the ground in agony. 他痛苦地在地上打滚。

52 doom   

n.厄运，劫数；v.注定，命定

参考例句：

• The report on our economic situation is full of doom and gloom.这份关于我们经济状况的报告充满了令人绝望和沮丧的调子。
• The dictator met his doom after ten years of rule.独裁者统治了十年终于完蛋了。

53 glamour   

n.魔力，魅力；vt.迷住

参考例句：

• Foreign travel has lost its glamour for her.到国外旅行对她已失去吸引力了。
• The moonlight cast a glamour over the scene.月光给景色增添了魅力。

54 catching   

adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住

参考例句：

• There are those who think eczema is catching.有人就是认为湿疹会传染。
• Enthusiasm is very catching.热情非常富有感染力。

55 manifestation   

n.表现形式；表明；现象

参考例句：

• Her smile is a manifestation of joy.她的微笑是她快乐的表现。
• What we call mass is only another manifestation of energy.我们称之为质量的东西只是能量的另一种表现形态。

56 tangled   

adj. 纠缠的，紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• Your hair's so tangled that I can't comb it. 你的头发太乱了，我梳不动。
• A movement caught his eye in the tangled undergrowth. 乱灌木丛里的晃动引起了他的注意。

57 hoarseness   

n.嘶哑， 刺耳

参考例句：

• His hoarseness and coughing showed that he had contracted a cold. 他嗓音嘶哑又咳嗽，这表明他患了感冒。
• Occasionally, recurrent laryngeal nerve involvement causes hoarseness. 有时，喉返神经受累引起声音嘶哑。

58 ablaze   

adj.着火的，燃烧的；闪耀的，灯火辉煌的

参考例句：

• The main street was ablaze with lights in the evening.晚上，那条主要街道灯火辉煌。
• Forests are sometimes set ablaze by lightning.森林有时因雷击而起火。

59 luminous   

adj.发光的，发亮的；光明的；明白易懂的；有启发的

参考例句：

• There are luminous knobs on all the doors in my house.我家所有门上都安有夜光把手。
• Most clocks and watches in this shop are in luminous paint.这家商店出售的大多数钟表都涂了发光漆。

60 chrysanthemums   

n.菊花( chrysanthemum的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The cold weather had most deleterious consequences among the chrysanthemums. 寒冷的天气对菊花产生了极有害的影响。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The chrysanthemums are in bloom; some are red and some yellow. 菊花开了， 有红的，有黄的。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

61 yearning   

a.渴望的；向往的；怀念的

参考例句：

• a yearning for a quiet life 对宁静生活的向往
• He felt a great yearning after his old job. 他对过去的工作有一种强烈的渴想。

62 collapsed   

adj.倒塌的

参考例句：

• Jack collapsed in agony on the floor. 杰克十分痛苦地瘫倒在地板上。
• The roof collapsed under the weight of snow. 房顶在雪的重压下突然坍塌下来。

63 collapse   

vi.累倒；昏倒；倒塌；塌陷

参考例句：

• The country's economy is on the verge of collapse.国家的经济已到了崩溃的边缘。
• The engineer made a complete diagnosis of the bridge's collapse.工程师对桥的倒塌做了一次彻底的调查分析。

64 lusts   

贪求（lust的第三人称单数形式）

参考例句：

• A miser lusts for gold. 守财奴贪财。
• Palmer Kirby had wakened late blooming lusts in her. 巴穆·柯比在她心中煽动起一片迟暮的情欲。

65 hop   

n.单脚跳，跳跃；vi.单脚跳，跳跃；着手做某事；vt.跳跃，跃过

参考例句：

• The children had a competition to see who could hop the fastest.孩子们举行比赛，看谁单足跳跃最快。
• How long can you hop on your right foot?你用右脚能跳多远？

66 reiterated   

反复地说，重申( reiterate的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• "Well, I want to know about it,'she reiterated. “嗯，我一定要知道你的休假日期，"她重复说。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹
• Some twenty-two years later President Polk reiterated and elaborated upon these principles. 大约二十二年之后，波尔克总统重申这些原则并且刻意阐释一番。

67 guilt   

n.犯罪；内疚；过失，罪责

参考例句：

• She tried to cover up her guilt by lying.她企图用谎言掩饰自己的罪行。
• Don't lay a guilt trip on your child about schoolwork.别因为功课责备孩子而使他觉得很内疚。

68 stinking   

adj.臭的，烂醉的，讨厌的v.散发出恶臭( stink的现在分词 )；发臭味；名声臭；糟透

参考例句：

• I was pushed into a filthy, stinking room. 我被推进一间又脏又臭的屋子里。
• Those lousy, stinking ships. It was them that destroyed us. 是的！就是那些该死的蠢猪似的臭飞船！是它们毁了我们。 来自英汉非文学 - 科幻

69 rampant   

adj.(植物)蔓生的；狂暴的，无约束的

参考例句：

• Sickness was rampant in the area.该地区疾病蔓延。
• You cannot allow children to rampant through the museum.你不能任由小孩子在博物馆里乱跑。

70 mortification   

n.耻辱，屈辱

参考例句：

• To my mortification, my manuscript was rejected. 使我感到失面子的是：我的稿件被退了回来。
• The chairman tried to disguise his mortification. 主席试图掩饰自己的窘迫。

71 middle-aged   

adj.中年的

参考例句：

• I noticed two middle-aged passengers.我注意到两个中年乘客。
• The new skin balm was welcome by middle-aged women.这种新护肤香膏受到了中年妇女的欢迎。

72 savage   

adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人

参考例句：

• The poor man received a savage beating from the thugs.那可怜的人遭到暴徒的痛打。
• He has a savage temper.他脾气粗暴。

73 sergeant   

n.警官，中士

参考例句：

• His elder brother is a sergeant.他哥哥是个警官。
• How many stripes are there on the sleeve of a sergeant?陆军中士的袖子上有多少条纹？

74 kindly   

adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地

参考例句：

• Her neighbours spoke of her as kindly and hospitable.她的邻居都说她和蔼可亲、热情好客。
• A shadow passed over the kindly face of the old woman.一道阴影掠过老太太慈祥的面孔。

75 suspense   

n.（对可能发生的事）紧张感，担心，挂虑

参考例句：

• The suspense was unbearable.这样提心吊胆的状况实在叫人受不了。
• The director used ingenious devices to keep the audience in suspense.导演用巧妙手法引起观众的悬念。

76 moor   

n.荒野，沼泽；vt.(使)停泊；vi.停泊

参考例句：

• I decided to moor near some tourist boats.我决定在一些观光船附近停泊。
• There were hundreds of the old huts on the moor.沼地上有成百上千的古老的石屋。

77 moors   

v.停泊，系泊（船只）( moor的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• the North York moors 北约克郡的漠泽
• They're shooting grouse up on the moors. 他们在荒野射猎松鸡。 来自《简明英汉词典》

78 bragging   

v.自夸，吹嘘( brag的现在分词 )；大话

参考例句：

• He's always bragging about his prowess as a cricketer. 他总是吹嘘自己板球水平高超。 来自辞典例句
• Now you're bragging, darling. You know you don't need to brag. 这就是夸口，亲爱的。你明知道你不必吹。 来自辞典例句

79 gaol   

n.(jail)监狱；(不加冠词)监禁；vt.使…坐牢

参考例句：

• He was released from the gaol.他被释放出狱。
• The man spent several years in gaol for robbery.这男人因犯抢劫罪而坐了几年牢。

80 degenerate   

v.退步，堕落；adj.退步的，堕落的；n.堕落者

参考例句：

• He didn't let riches and luxury make him degenerate.他不因财富和奢华而自甘堕落。
• Will too much freedom make them degenerate?太多的自由会令他们堕落吗？

81 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：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

82 hysterical   

adj.情绪异常激动的，歇斯底里般的

参考例句：

• He is hysterical at the sight of the photo.他一看到那张照片就异常激动。
• His hysterical laughter made everybody stunned.他那歇斯底里的笑声使所有的人不知所措。

83 bugle   

n.军号，号角，喇叭；v.吹号，吹号召集

参考例句：

• When he heard the bugle call, he caught up his gun and dashed out.他一听到军号声就抓起枪冲了出去。
• As the bugle sounded we ran to the sports ground and fell in.军号一响，我们就跑到运动场集合站队。

84 scramble   

v.爬行，攀爬，杂乱蔓延，碎片，片段，废料

参考例句：

• He broke his leg in his scramble down the wall.他爬墙摔断了腿。
• It was a long scramble to the top of the hill.到山顶须要爬登一段长路。

85 zinc   

n.锌；vt.在...上镀锌

参考例句：

• Brass is formed by the fusion of copper and zinc.黄铜是通过铜和锌的熔合而成的。
• Zinc is used to protect other metals from corrosion.锌被用来保护其他金属不受腐蚀。

86 entirely   

ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The fire was entirely caused by their neglect of duty. 那场火灾完全是由于他们失职而引起的。
• His life was entirely given up to the educational work. 他的一生统统献给了教育工作。

87 sweeping   

adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的

参考例句：

• The citizens voted for sweeping reforms.公民投票支持全面的改革。
• Can you hear the wind sweeping through the branches?你能听到风掠过树枝的声音吗？

88 relinquished   

交出，让给( relinquish的过去式和过去分词 )； 放弃

参考例句：

• She has relinquished the post to her cousin, Sir Edward. 她把职位让给了表弟爱德华爵士。
• The small dog relinquished his bone to the big dog. 小狗把它的骨头让给那只大狗。

89 pointed   

adj.尖的，直截了当的

参考例句：

• He gave me a very sharp pointed pencil.他给我一支削得非常尖的铅笔。
• She wished to show Mrs.John Dashwood by this pointed invitation to her brother.她想通过对达茨伍德夫人提出直截了当的邀请向她的哥哥表示出来。

90 jeer   

vi.嘲弄，揶揄；vt.奚落；n.嘲笑，讥评

参考例句：

• Do not jeer at the mistakes or misfortunes of others.不要嘲笑别人的错误或不幸。
• The children liked to jeer at the awkward students.孩子们喜欢嘲笑笨拙的学生。

91 miserably   

adv.痛苦地；悲惨地；糟糕地；极度地

参考例句：

• The little girl was wailing miserably. 那小女孩难过得号啕大哭。
• It was drizzling, and miserably cold and damp. 外面下着毛毛细雨，天气又冷又湿，令人难受。 来自《简明英汉词典》

92 glaze   

v.因疲倦、疲劳等指眼睛变得呆滞，毫无表情

参考例句：

• Brush the glaze over the top and sides of the hot cake.在热蛋糕的顶上和周围刷上一层蛋浆。
• Tang three-color glaze horses are famous for their perfect design and realism.唐三彩上釉马以其造型精美和形态生动而著名。

93 ignominious   

adj.可鄙的，不光彩的，耻辱的

参考例句：

• The marriage was considered especially ignominious since she was of royal descent.由于她出身王族，这门婚事被认为是奇耻大辱。
• Many thought that he was doomed to ignominious failure.许多人认为他注定会极不光彩地失败。

94 grudgingly   

参考例句：

• He grudgingly acknowledged having made a mistake. 他勉强承认他做错了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Their parents unwillingly [grudgingly] consented to the marriage. 他们的父母无可奈何地应允了这门亲事。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

95 triumphant   

adj.胜利的，成功的；狂欢的，喜悦的

参考例句：

• The army made a triumphant entry into the enemy's capital.部队胜利地进入了敌方首都。
• There was a positively triumphant note in her voice.她的声音里带有一种极为得意的语气。

96 torment   

n.折磨；令人痛苦的东西(人)；vt.折磨；纠缠

参考例句：

• He has never suffered the torment of rejection.他从未经受过遭人拒绝的痛苦。
• Now nothing aggravates me more than when people torment each other.没有什么东西比人们的互相折磨更使我愤怒。

97 jeering   

adj.嘲弄的，揶揄的v.嘲笑( jeer的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• Hecklers interrupted her speech with jeering. 捣乱分子以嘲笑打断了她的讲话。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He interrupted my speech with jeering. 他以嘲笑打断了我的讲话。 来自《简明英汉词典》

98 jeeringly   

adv.嘲弄地

参考例句：

• But Twain, Howells, and James were jeeringly described by Mencken as "draft-dodgers". 不过吐温、豪威尔斯和詹姆斯都是被门肯讥诮地叫做“逃避兵役的人。” 来自辞典例句

99 horrified   

a.(表现出)恐惧的

参考例句：

• The whole country was horrified by the killings. 全国都对这些凶杀案感到大为震惊。
• We were horrified at the conditions prevailing in local prisons. 地方监狱的普遍状况让我们震惊。

100 ailment   

n.疾病，小病

参考例句：

• I don't have even the slightest ailment.我什么毛病也没有。
• He got timely treatment for his ailment.他的病得到了及时治疗。

101 outright   

adv.坦率地；彻底地；立即；adj.无疑的；彻底的

参考例句：

• If you have a complaint you should tell me outright.如果你有不满意的事，你应该直率地对我说。
• You should persuade her to marry you outright.你应该彻底劝服她嫁给你。

102 standing   

n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的

参考例句：

• After the earthquake only a few houses were left standing.地震过后只有几幢房屋还立着。
• They're standing out against any change in the law.他们坚决反对对法律做任何修改。

103 exhortation   

n.劝告，规劝

参考例句：

• After repeated exhortation by his comrades,he finally straightened out his thinking.经过同志们再三劝导，他终于想通了。
• Foreign funds alone are clearly not enough,nor are exhortations to reform.光有外资显然不够，只是劝告人们进行改革也不行。

104 whatsoever   

adv.（用于否定句中以加强语气）任何；pron.无论什么

参考例句：

• There's no reason whatsoever to turn down this suggestion.没有任何理由拒绝这个建议。
• All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you,do ye even so to them.你想别人对你怎样，你就怎样对人。

105 indirectly   

adv.间接地，不直接了当地

参考例句：

• I heard the news indirectly.这消息我是间接听来的。
• They were approached indirectly through an intermediary.通过一位中间人，他们进行了间接接触。

106 influential   

adj.有影响的，有权势的

参考例句：

• He always tries to get in with the most influential people.他总是试图巴结最有影响的人物。
• He is a very influential man in the government.他在政府中是个很有影响的人物。

107 trench   

n./v.(挖)沟，(挖)战壕

参考例句：

• The soldiers recaptured their trench.兵士夺回了战壕。
• The troops received orders to trench the outpost.部队接到命令在前哨周围筑壕加强防卫。

108 warfare   

n.战争(状态)；斗争；冲突

参考例句：

• He addressed the audience on the subject of atomic warfare.他向听众演讲有关原子战争的问题。
• Their struggle consists mainly in peasant guerrilla warfare.他们的斗争主要是农民游击战。

109 blasphemy   

n.亵渎，渎神

参考例句：

• His writings were branded as obscene and a blasphemy against God.他的著作被定为淫秽作品，是对上帝的亵渎。
• You have just heard his blasphemy!你刚刚听到他那番亵渎上帝的话了！

110 dreary   

adj.令人沮丧的，沉闷的，单调乏味的

参考例句：

• They live such dreary lives.他们的生活如此乏味。
• She was tired of hearing the same dreary tale of drunkenness and violence.她听够了那些关于酗酒和暴力的乏味故事。

111 misery   

n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦

参考例句：

• Business depression usually causes misery among the working class.商业不景气常使工薪阶层受苦。
• He has rescued me from the mire of misery.他把我从苦海里救了出来。

112 honourable   

adj.可敬的；荣誉的，光荣的

参考例句：

• I don't think I am worthy of such an honourable title.这样的光荣称号，我可担当不起。
• I hope to find an honourable way of settling difficulties.我希望设法找到一个体面的办法以摆脱困境。

113 inevitable   

adj.不可避免的，必然发生的

参考例句：

• Mary was wearing her inevitable large hat.玛丽戴着她总是戴的那顶大帽子。
• The defeat had inevitable consequences for British policy.战败对英国政策不可避免地产生了影响。

114 fatality   

n.不幸，灾祸，天命

参考例句：

• She struggle against fatality in vain.她徒然奋斗反抗宿命。
• He began to have a growing sense of fatality.他开始有一种越来越强烈的宿命感。

115 patriotic   

adj.爱国的，有爱国心的

参考例句：

• His speech was full of patriotic sentiments.他的演说充满了爱国之情。
• The old man is a patriotic overseas Chinese.这位老人是一位爱国华侨。

116 doomed   

命定的

参考例句：

• The court doomed the accused to a long term of imprisonment. 法庭判处被告长期监禁。
• A country ruled by an iron hand is doomed to suffer. 被铁腕人物统治的国家定会遭受不幸的。

117 adventurous   

adj.爱冒险的；惊心动魄的，惊险的，刺激的　

参考例句：

• I was filled with envy at their adventurous lifestyle.我很羨慕他们敢于冒险的生活方式。
• He was predestined to lead an adventurous life.他注定要过冒险的生活。

118 swarm   

n.(昆虫)等一大群；vi.成群飞舞；蜂拥而入

参考例句：

• There is a swarm of bees in the tree.这树上有一窝蜜蜂。
• A swarm of ants are moving busily.一群蚂蚁正在忙碌地搬家。

119 plank   

n.板条，木板，政策要点，政纲条目

参考例句：

• The plank was set against the wall.木板靠着墙壁。
• They intend to win the next election on the plank of developing trade.他们想以发展贸易的纲领来赢得下次选举。

120 shipwreck   

n.船舶失事，海难

参考例句：

• He walked away from the shipwreck.他船难中平安地脱险了。
• The shipwreck was a harrowing experience.那次船难是一个惨痛的经历。

121 plunging   

adj.跳进的，突进的v.颠簸( plunge的现在分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降

参考例句：

• War broke out again, plunging the people into misery and suffering. 战祸复发，生灵涂炭。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• He is plunging into an abyss of despair. 他陷入了绝望的深渊。 来自《简明英汉词典》

122 chuckle   

vi.／n.轻声笑，咯咯笑

参考例句：

• He shook his head with a soft chuckle.他轻轻地笑着摇了摇头。
• I couldn't suppress a soft chuckle at the thought of it.想到这个，我忍不住轻轻地笑起来。

123 chapel   

n.小教堂，殡仪馆

参考例句：

• The nimble hero,skipped into a chapel that stood near.敏捷的英雄跳进近旁的一座小教堂里。
• She was on the peak that Sunday afternoon when she played in chapel.那个星期天的下午，她在小教堂的演出，可以说是登峰造极。

124 zest   

n.乐趣；滋味，风味；兴趣

参考例句：

• He dived into his new job with great zest.他充满热情地投入了新的工作。
• He wrote his novel about his trip to Asia with zest.他兴趣浓厚的写了一本关于他亚洲之行的小说。

125 constable   

n.(英国)警察，警官

参考例句：

• The constable conducted the suspect to the police station.警官把嫌疑犯带到派出所。
• The constable kept his temper,and would not be provoked.那警察压制着自己的怒气，不肯冒起火来。

126 hatred   

n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨

参考例句：

• He looked at me with hatred in his eyes.他以憎恨的眼光望着我。
• The old man was seized with burning hatred for the fascists.老人对法西斯主义者充满了仇恨。

127 exultant   

adj.欢腾的，狂欢的，大喜的

参考例句：

• The exultant crowds were dancing in the streets.欢欣的人群在大街上跳起了舞。
• He was exultant that she was still so much in his power.他仍然能轻而易举地摆布她，对此他欣喜若狂。

128 lesser   

adj.次要的，较小的；adv.较小地，较少地

参考例句：

• Kept some of the lesser players out.不让那些次要的球员参加联赛。
• She has also been affected,but to a lesser degree.她也受到波及，但程度较轻。

129 saluted   

v.欢迎，致敬( salute的过去式和过去分词 )；赞扬，赞颂

参考例句：

• The sergeant stood to attention and saluted. 中士立正敬礼。
• He saluted his friends with a wave of the hand. 他挥手向他的朋友致意。 来自《简明英汉词典》

130 maple   

n.槭树，枫树，槭木

参考例句：

• Maple sugar is made from the sap of maple trees.枫糖是由枫树的树液制成的。
• The maple leaves are tinge with autumn red.枫叶染上了秋天的红色。

131 crouching   

v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• a hulking figure crouching in the darkness 黑暗中蹲伏着的一个庞大身影
• A young man was crouching by the table, busily searching for something. 一个年轻人正蹲在桌边翻看什么。 来自汉英文学 - 散文英译

132 cosy   

adj.温暖而舒适的，安逸的

参考例句：

• We spent a cosy evening chatting by the fire.我们在炉火旁聊天度过了一个舒适的晚上。
• It was so warm and cosy in bed that Simon didn't want to get out.床上温暖而又舒适，西蒙简直不想下床了。

133 meddle   

v.干预，干涉，插手

参考例句：

• I hope he doesn't try to meddle in my affairs.我希望他不来干预我的事情。
• Do not meddle in things that do not concern you.别参与和自己无关的事。

134 goaded   

v.刺激( goad的过去式和过去分词 )；激励；（用尖棒）驱赶；驱使（或怂恿、刺激）某人

参考例句：

• Goaded beyond endurance, she turned on him and hit out. 她被气得忍无可忍，于是转身向他猛击。
• The boxers were goaded on by the shrieking crowd. 拳击运动员听见观众的喊叫就来劲儿了。 来自《简明英汉词典》

135 jeered   

v.嘲笑( jeer的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The police were jeered at by the waiting crowd. 警察受到在等待的人群的嘲弄。
• The crowd jeered when the boxer was knocked down. 当那个拳击手被打倒时，人们开始嘲笑他。 来自《简明英汉词典》

136 horrid   

adj.可怕的；令人惊恐的；恐怖的；极讨厌的

参考例句：

• I'm not going to the horrid dinner party.我不打算去参加这次讨厌的宴会。
• The medicine is horrid and she couldn't get it down.这种药很难吃，她咽不下去。

137 liberated   

a.无拘束的，放纵的

参考例句：

• The city was liberated by the advancing army. 军队向前挺进，解放了那座城市。
• The heat brings about a chemical reaction, and oxygen is liberated. 热量引起化学反应，释放出氧气。

138 foulest   

adj.恶劣的( foul的最高级 )；邪恶的；难闻的；下流的

参考例句：

• Most of the foremen abused the workmen in the foulest languages. 大多数的工头用极其污秽的语言辱骂工人。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Of all men the drunkard is the foulest. 男人中最讨人厌的是酒鬼。 来自辞典例句

139 foul   

adj.污秽的；邪恶的；v.弄脏；妨害；犯规；n.犯规

参考例句：

• Take off those foul clothes and let me wash them.脱下那些脏衣服让我洗一洗。
• What a foul day it is!多么恶劣的天气！

140 granite   

adj.花岗岩，花岗石

参考例句：

• They squared a block of granite.他们把一块花岗岩加工成四方形。
• The granite overlies the older rocks.花岗岩躺在磨损的岩石上面。

141 boulders   

n.卵石( boulder的名词复数 )；巨砾；（受水或天气侵蚀而成的）巨石；漂砾

参考例句：

• Seals basked on boulders in a flat calm. 海面风平浪静，海豹在巨石上晒太阳。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The river takes a headlong plunge into a maelstrom of rocks and boulders. 河水急流而下，入一个漂砾的漩涡中。 来自《简明英汉词典》

142 bulging   

膨胀； 凸出（部）； 打气； 折皱

参考例句：

• Her pockets were bulging with presents. 她的口袋里装满了礼物。
• Conscious of the bulging red folder, Nim told her,"Ask if it's important." 尼姆想到那个鼓鼓囊囊的红色文件夹便告诉她：“问问是不是重要的事。”

143 milky   

adj.牛奶的，多奶的；乳白色的

参考例句：

• Alexander always has milky coffee at lunchtime.亚历山大总是在午餐时喝掺奶的咖啡。
• I like a hot milky drink at bedtime.我喜欢睡前喝杯热奶饮料。

144 culminates   

v.达到极点( culminate的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• Each civilization is born, it culminates, and it decay. 各种文明都要历经诞生，鼎盛和衰落。 来自《用法词典》
• The tower culminates in a 40-foot spire. 这塔的顶端是一个40英尺高的塔尖。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

145 corporate   

adj.共同的，全体的；公司的，企业的

参考例句：

• This is our corporate responsibility.这是我们共同的责任。
• His corporate's life will be as short as a rabbit's tail.他的公司的寿命是兔子尾巴长不了。

146 backbone   

n.脊骨，脊柱，骨干；刚毅，骨气

参考例句：

• The Chinese people have backbone.中国人民有骨气。
• The backbone is an articulate structure.脊椎骨是一种关节相连的结构。

147 repulsively   

adv.冷淡地

参考例句：

148 humble   

adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低

参考例句：

• In my humble opinion,he will win the election.依我拙见，他将在选举中获胜。
• Defeat and failure make people humble.挫折与失败会使人谦卑。

149 humility   

n.谦逊，谦恭

参考例句：

• Humility often gains more than pride.谦逊往往比骄傲收益更多。
• His voice was still soft and filled with specious humility.他的声音还是那么温和，甚至有点谦卑。

150 creed   

n.信条；信念，纲领

参考例句：

• They offended against every article of his creed.他们触犯了他的每一条戒律。
• Our creed has always been that business is business.我们的信条一直是公私分明。

151 espoused   

v.（决定）支持，拥护（目标、主张等）( espouse的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• They espoused the notion of equal opportunity for all in education. 他们赞同在教育方面人人机会均等的观念。
• The ideas she espoused were incomprehensible to me. 她所支持的意见令我难以理解。 来自《简明英汉词典》

152 humiliated   

感到羞愧的

参考例句：

• Parents are humiliated if their children behave badly when guests are present. 子女在客人面前举止失当，父母也失体面。
• He was ashamed and bitterly humiliated. 他感到羞耻，丢尽了面子。

153 subtlety   

n.微妙，敏锐，精巧；微妙之处，细微的区别

参考例句：

• He has shown enormous strength,great intelligence and great subtlety.他表现出充沛的精力、极大的智慧和高度的灵活性。
• The subtlety of his remarks was unnoticed by most of his audience.大多数听众都没有觉察到他讲话的微妙之处。

154 valiant   

adj.勇敢的，英勇的；n.勇士，勇敢的人

参考例句：

• He had the fame of being very valiant.他的勇敢是出名的。
• Despite valiant efforts by the finance minister,inflation rose to 36%.尽管财政部部长采取了一系列果决措施，通货膨胀率还是涨到了36%。

155 loathed   

v.憎恨，厌恶( loathe的过去式和过去分词 )；极不喜欢

参考例句：

• Baker loathed going to this red-haired young pup for supplies. 面包师傅不喜欢去这个红头发的自负的傻小子那里拿原料。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Therefore, above all things else, he loathed his miserable self! 因此，他厌恶不幸的自我尤胜其它！ 来自英汉文学 - 红字

156 kindled   

（使某物）燃烧，着火( kindle的过去式和过去分词 )； 激起（感情等）； 发亮，放光

参考例句：

• We watched as the fire slowly kindled. 我们看着火慢慢地燃烧起来。
• The teacher's praise kindled a spark of hope inside her. 老师的赞扬激起了她内心的希望。

157 heed   

v.注意，留意；n.注意，留心

参考例句：

• You must take heed of what he has told.你要注意他所告诉的事。
• For the first time he had to pay heed to his appearance.这是他第一次非得注意自己的外表不可了。

158 watchful   

adj.注意的，警惕的

参考例句：

• The children played under the watchful eye of their father.孩子们在父亲的小心照看下玩耍。
• It is important that health organizations remain watchful.卫生组织保持警惕是极为重要的。

159 furtive   

adj.鬼鬼崇崇的，偷偷摸摸的

参考例句：

• The teacher was suspicious of the student's furtive behaviour during the exam.老师怀疑这个学生在考试时有偷偷摸摸的行为。
• His furtive behaviour aroused our suspicion.他鬼鬼祟祟的行为引起了我们的怀疑。

160 blithe   

adj.快乐的，无忧无虑的

参考例句：

• Tonight,however,she was even in a blithe mood than usual.但是，今天晚上她比往常还要高兴。
• He showed a blithe indifference to her feelings.他显得毫不顾及她的感情。

161 intimacy   

n.熟悉，亲密，密切关系，亲昵的言行

参考例句：

• His claims to an intimacy with the President are somewhat exaggerated.他声称自己与总统关系密切，这有点言过其实。
• I wish there were a rule book for intimacy.我希望能有个关于亲密的规则。

162 simplicity   

n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯

参考例句：

• She dressed with elegant simplicity.她穿着朴素高雅。
• The beauty of this plan is its simplicity.简明扼要是这个计划的一大特点。

163 wilfully   

adv.任性固执地；蓄意地

参考例句：

• Don't wilfully cling to your reckless course. 不要一意孤行。 来自辞典例句
• These missionaries even wilfully extended the extraterritoriality to Chinese converts and interfered in Chinese judicial authority. 这些传教士还肆意将"治外法权"延伸至中国信徒，干涉司法。 来自汉英非文学 - 白皮书

164 condemnation   

n.谴责; 定罪

参考例句：

• There was widespread condemnation of the invasion. 那次侵略遭到了人们普遍的谴责。
• The jury's condemnation was a shock to the suspect. 陪审团宣告有罪使嫌疑犯大为震惊。

165 wireless   

adj.无线的；n.无线电

参考例句：

• There are a lot of wireless links in a radio.收音机里有许多无线电线路。
• Wireless messages tell us that the ship was sinking.无线电报告知我们那艘船正在下沉。

166 apparently   

adv.显然地；表面上，似乎

参考例句：

• An apparently blind alley leads suddenly into an open space.山穷水尽，豁然开朗。
• He was apparently much surprised at the news.他对那个消息显然感到十分惊异。

167 wrecked   

adj.失事的，遇难的

参考例句：

• the hulk of a wrecked ship 遇难轮船的残骸
• the salvage of the wrecked tanker 对失事油轮的打捞

168 ashore   

adv.在(向)岸上，上岸

参考例句：

• The children got ashore before the tide came in.涨潮前，孩子们就上岸了。
• He laid hold of the rope and pulled the boat ashore.他抓住绳子拉船靠岸。

169 ordeal   

n.苦难经历，（尤指对品格、耐力的）严峻考验

参考例句：

• She managed to keep her sanity throughout the ordeal.在那场磨难中她始终保持神志正常。
• Being lost in the wilderness for a week was an ordeal for me.在荒野里迷路一星期对我来说真是一场磨难。

170 rejection   

n.拒绝，被拒，抛弃，被弃

参考例句：

• He decided not to approach her for fear of rejection.他因怕遭拒绝决定不再去找她。
• The rejection plunged her into the dark depths of despair.遭到拒绝使她陷入了绝望的深渊。

171 glamorous   

adj.富有魅力的；美丽动人的；令人向往的

参考例句：

• The south coast is less glamorous but full of clean and attractive hotels.南海岸魅力稍逊，但却有很多干净漂亮的宾馆。
• It is hard work and not a glamorous job as portrayed by the media.这是份苦差，并非像媒体描绘的那般令人向往。

172 monstrous   

adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的

参考例句：

• The smoke began to whirl and grew into a monstrous column.浓烟开始盘旋上升，形成了一个巨大的烟柱。
• Your behaviour in class is monstrous!你在课堂上的行为真是丢人！

173 savagery   

n.野性

参考例句：

• The police were shocked by the savagery of the attacks.警察对这些惨无人道的袭击感到震惊。
• They threw away their advantage by their savagery to the black population.他们因为野蛮对待黑人居民而丧失了自己的有利地位。

174 intoxicated   

喝醉的，极其兴奋的

参考例句：

• She was intoxicated with success. 她为成功所陶醉。
• They became deeply intoxicated and totally disoriented. 他们酩酊大醉，东南西北全然不辨。

175 crammed   

adj.塞满的，挤满的；大口地吃；快速贪婪地吃v.把…塞满；填入；临时抱佛脚( cram的过去式)

参考例句：

• He crammed eight people into his car. 他往他的车里硬塞进八个人。
• All the shelves were crammed with books. 所有的架子上都堆满了书。

176 bowels   

n.肠，内脏，内部；肠( bowel的名词复数 )；内部，最深处

参考例句：

• Salts is a medicine that causes movements of the bowels. 泻盐是一种促使肠子运动的药物。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The cabins are in the bowels of the ship. 舱房设在船腹内。 来自《简明英汉词典》

177 subsided   

v.（土地）下陷（因在地下采矿）( subside的过去式和过去分词 )；减弱；下降至较低或正常水平；一下子坐在椅子等上

参考例句：

• After the heavy rains part of the road subsided. 大雨过后，部分公路塌陷了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• By evening the storm had subsided and all was quiet again. 傍晚， 暴风雨已经过去，四周开始沉寂下来。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

178 lugubriousness   

参考例句：

179 ragtime   

n.拉格泰姆音乐

参考例句：

• The most popular music back then was called ragtime.那时最流行的音乐叫拉格泰姆音乐。
• African-American piano player Scott Joplin wrote many ragtime songs.非裔美国钢琴家ScottJoplin写了许多拉格泰姆歌曲。

180 ineffable   

adj.无法表达的，不可言喻的

参考例句：

• The beauty of a sunset is ineffable.日落的美是难以形容的。
• She sighed a sigh of ineffable satisfaction,as if her cup of happiness were now full.她发出了一声说不出多么满意的叹息，仿佛她的幸福之杯已经斟满了。

181 hurling   

n.爱尔兰式曲棍球v.猛投，用力掷( hurl的现在分词 )；大声叫骂

参考例句：

• The boat rocked wildly, hurling him into the water. 这艘船剧烈地晃动，把他甩到水中。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Fancy hurling away a good chance like that, the silly girl! 想想她竟然把这样一个好机会白白丢掉了，真是个傻姑娘！ 来自《简明英汉词典》

182 chaos   

n.混乱，无秩序

参考例句：

• After the failure of electricity supply the city was in chaos.停电后，城市一片混乱。
• The typhoon left chaos behind it.台风后一片混乱。

183 pretence   

n.假装，作假；借口，口实；虚伪；虚饰

参考例句：

• The government abandoned any pretence of reform. 政府不再装模作样地进行改革。
• He made a pretence of being happy at the party.晚会上他假装很高兴。

184 dread   

vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧

参考例句：

• We all dread to think what will happen if the company closes.我们都不敢去想一旦公司关门我们该怎么办。
• Her heart was relieved of its blankest dread.她极度恐惧的心理消除了。

185 strand   

vt.使（船）搁浅，使（某人）困于（某地）

参考例句：

• She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ears.她把一缕散发夹到了耳后。
• The climbers had been stranded by a storm.登山者被暴风雨困住了。

186 dawdled   

v.混（时间）( dawdle的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Billy dawdled behind her all morning. 比利整个上午都跟在她后面闲混。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He dawdled away his time. 他在混日子。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

187 rejections   

拒绝( rejection的名词复数 )； 摒弃； 剔除物； 排斥

参考例句：

• Most writers endure a number of rejections before being published. 大部分作家经历无数次的退稿才守得云开，作品得到发表。
• Supervise workers and monitors production quality to minimize rejections. 管理工人，监控生产质量，减少退货。

188 unaware   

a.不知道的，未意识到的

参考例句：

• They were unaware that war was near. 他们不知道战争即将爆发。
• I was unaware of the man's presence. 我没有察觉到那人在场。

189 respite   

n.休息，中止，暂缓

参考例句：

• She was interrogated without respite for twenty-four hours.她被不间断地审问了二十四小时。
• Devaluation would only give the economy a brief respite.贬值只能让经济得到暂时的缓解。

190 bragged   

v.自夸，吹嘘( brag的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He bragged to his friends about the crime. 他向朋友炫耀他的罪行。
• Mary bragged that she could run faster than Jack. 玛丽夸口说她比杰克跑得快。 来自《简明英汉词典》

191 battered   

adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损

参考例句：

• He drove up in a battered old car.他开着一辆又老又破的旧车。
• The world was brutally battered but it survived.这个世界遭受了惨重的创伤,但它还是生存下来了。

192 rebuked   

责难或指责( rebuke的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The company was publicly rebuked for having neglected safety procedures. 公司因忽略了安全规程而受到公开批评。
• The teacher rebuked the boy for throwing paper on the floor. 老师指责这个男孩将纸丢在地板上。

193 adherent   

n.信徒，追随者，拥护者

参考例句：

• He was most liberal where money would bring him a powerful or necessary political adherent.在金钱能够收买一个干练的或者必需的政治拥护者的地方，他是最不惜花钱的。
• He's a pious adherent of Buddhism.他是一位虔诚的佛教徒。

194 dictates   

n.命令，规定，要求( dictate的名词复数 )v.大声讲或读( dictate的第三人称单数 )；口授；支配；摆布

参考例句：

• Convention dictates that a minister should resign in such a situation. 依照常规部长在这种情况下应该辞职。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He always follows the dictates of common sense. 他总是按常识行事。 来自《简明英汉词典》

195 housekeeper   

n.管理家务的主妇，女管家

参考例句：

• A spotless stove told us that his mother is a diligent housekeeper.炉子清洁无瑕就表明他母亲是个勤劳的主妇。
• She is an economical housekeeper and feeds her family cheaply.她节约持家，一家人吃得很省。

196 morose   

adj.脾气坏的，不高兴的

参考例句：

• He was silent and morose.他沉默寡言、郁郁寡欢。
• The publicity didn't make him morose or unhappy?公开以后，没有让他郁闷或者不开心吗？

197 savagely   

adv. 野蛮地，残酷地

参考例句：

• The roses had been pruned back savagely. 玫瑰被狠狠地修剪了一番。
• He snarled savagely at her. 他向她狂吼起来。

198 deserted   

adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的

参考例句：

• The deserted village was filled with a deathly silence.这个荒废的村庄死一般的寂静。
• The enemy chieftain was opposed and deserted by his followers.敌人头目众叛亲离。

199 poetic   

adj.富有诗意的，有诗人气质的，善于抒情的

参考例句：

• His poetic idiom is stamped with expressions describing group feeling and thought.他的诗中的措辞往往带有描写群体感情和思想的印记。
• His poetic novels have gone through three different historical stages.他的诗情小说创作经历了三个不同的历史阶段。

200 bungalow   

n.平房，周围有阳台的木造小平房

参考例句：

• A bungalow does not have an upstairs.平房没有上层。
• The old couple sold that large house and moved into a small bungalow.老两口卖掉了那幢大房子，搬进了小平房。

201 recalcitrant   

adj.倔强的

参考例句：

• The University suspended the most recalcitrant demonstraters.这所大学把几个反抗性最强的示威者开除了。
• Donkeys are reputed to be the most recalcitrant animals.驴被认为是最倔强的牲畜。

202 instigator   

n.煽动者

参考例句：

• It is not a and differs from instigator in nature. 在刑法理论中，通常将教唆犯作为共犯的一种类型加以探究。 来自互联网
• If we are really the instigator, we are awaiting punishment. 如果我们真的是煽动者，那我们愿意接受惩罚。 来自互联网

203 tenterhooks   

n.坐立不安

参考例句：

• The students are on tenterhooks to hear the result of the examination.学生们烦躁不安地听考试结果。
• The mother was on tenterhooks until her little Laura came back.当小珞拉回来后，她母亲才放下心来。

204 lighting   

n.照明，光线的明暗，舞台灯光

参考例句：

• The gas lamp gradually lost ground to electric lighting.煤气灯逐渐为电灯所代替。
• The lighting in that restaurant is soft and romantic.那个餐馆照明柔和而且浪漫。

205 untold   

adj.数不清的，无数的

参考例句：

• She has done untold damage to our chances.她给我们的机遇造成了不可估量的损害。
• They suffered untold terrors in the dark and huddled together for comfort.他们遭受着黑暗中的难以言传的种种恐怖，因而只好挤在一堆互相壮胆。

206 immorality   

n. 不道德, 无道义

参考例句：

• All the churchmen have preached against immorality. 所有牧师都讲道反对不道德的行为。
• Where the European sees immorality and lawlessness, strict law rules in reality. 在欧洲人视为不道德和无规则的地方，事实上都盛行着一种严格的规则。 来自英汉非文学 - 家庭、私有制和国家的起源

207 drawn   

v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的

参考例句：

• All the characters in the story are drawn from life.故事中的所有人物都取材于生活。
• Her gaze was drawn irresistibly to the scene outside.她的目光禁不住被外面的风景所吸引。

208 defiant   

adj.无礼的，挑战的

参考例句：

• With a last defiant gesture,they sang a revolutionary song as they were led away to prison.他们被带走投入监狱时，仍以最后的反抗姿态唱起了一支革命歌曲。
• He assumed a defiant attitude toward his employer.他对雇主采取挑衅的态度。

209 irritable   

adj.急躁的；过敏的；易怒的

参考例句：

• He gets irritable when he's got toothache.他牙一疼就很容易发脾气。
• Our teacher is an irritable old lady.She gets angry easily.我们的老师是位脾气急躁的老太太。她很容易生气。

210 lieutenant   

n.陆军中尉，海军上尉；代理官员，副职官员

参考例句：

• He was promoted to be a lieutenant in the army.他被提升为陆军中尉。
• He prevailed on the lieutenant to send in a short note.他说动那个副官，递上了一张简短的便条进去。

211 authoritative   

adj.有权威的，可相信的；命令式的；官方的

参考例句：

• David speaks in an authoritative tone.大卫以命令的口吻说话。
• Her smile was warm but authoritative.她的笑容很和蔼，同时又透着威严。

212 laconically   

adv.简短地，简洁地

参考例句：

• "I have a key,'said Rhett laconically, and his eyes met Melanie's evenly. "我有钥匙，"瑞德直截了当说。他和媚兰的眼光正好相遇。 来自飘（部分）
• 'says he's sick,'said Johnnie laconically. "他说他有玻"约翰尼要理不理的说。 来自飘（部分）

213 followers   

追随者( follower的名词复数 )； 用户； 契据的附面； 从动件

参考例句：

• the followers of Mahatma Gandhi 圣雄甘地的拥护者
• The reformer soon gathered a band of followers round him. 改革者很快就获得一群追随者支持他。

214 confirmation   

n.证实，确认，批准

参考例句：

• We are waiting for confirmation of the news.我们正在等待证实那个消息。
• We need confirmation in writing before we can send your order out.给你们发送订购的货物之前，我们需要书面确认。

215 fuming   

愤怒( fume的现在分词 )； 大怒； 发怒； 冒烟

参考例句：

• She sat in the car, silently fuming at the traffic jam. 她坐在汽车里，心中对交通堵塞感到十分恼火。
• I was fuming at their inefficiency. 我正因为他们效率低而发火。

216 peevish   

adj.易怒的，坏脾气的

参考例句：

• A peevish child is unhappy and makes others unhappy.一个脾气暴躁的孩子自己不高兴也使别人不高兴。
• She glared down at me with a peevish expression on her face.她低头瞪着我，一脸怒气。

217 magistrate   

n.地方行政官，地方法官，治安官

参考例句：

• The magistrate committed him to prison for a month.法官判处他一个月监禁。
• John was fined 1000 dollars by the magistrate.约翰被地方法官罚款1000美元。

218 mischief   

n.损害，伤害，危害；恶作剧，捣蛋，胡闹

参考例句：

• Nobody took notice of the mischief of the matter. 没有人注意到这件事情所带来的危害。
• He seems to intend mischief.看来他想捣蛋。

219 skulking   

v.潜伏，偷偷摸摸地走动，鬼鬼祟祟地活动( skulk的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• There was someone skulking behind the bushes. 有人藏在灌木后面。
• There were half a dozen foxes skulking in the undergrowth. 在林下灌丛中潜伏着五六只狐狸。 来自辞典例句

220 wagon   

n.四轮马车，手推车，面包车；无盖运货列车

参考例句：

• We have to fork the hay into the wagon.我们得把干草用叉子挑进马车里去。
• The muddy road bemired the wagon.马车陷入了泥泞的道路。

221 intervals   

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

参考例句：

• The forecast said there would be sunny intervals and showers. 预报间晴，有阵雨。
• Meetings take place at fortnightly intervals. 每两周开一次会。

222 interval   

n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息

参考例句：

• The interval between the two trees measures 40 feet.这两棵树的间隔是40英尺。
• There was a long interval before he anwsered the telephone.隔了好久他才回了电话。

223 ethical   

adj.伦理的，道德的，合乎道德的

参考例句：

• It is necessary to get the youth to have a high ethical concept.必须使青年具有高度的道德观念。
• It was a debate which aroused fervent ethical arguments.那是一场引发强烈的伦理道德争论的辩论。

224 fixed   

adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的

参考例句：

• Have you two fixed on a date for the wedding yet?你们俩选定婚期了吗？
• Once the aim is fixed,we should not change it arbitrarily.目标一旦确定，我们就不应该随意改变。

225 flux   

n.流动；不断的改变

参考例句：

• The market is in a constant state of flux.市场行情在不断变化。
• In most reactors,there is a significant flux of fast neutrons.在大部分反应堆中都有一定强度的快中子流。

226 ethics   

n.伦理学；伦理观，道德标准

参考例句：

• The ethics of his profession don't permit him to do that.他的职业道德不允许他那样做。
• Personal ethics and professional ethics sometimes conflict.个人道德和职业道德有时会相互抵触。

227 chivalry   

n.骑士气概，侠义；（男人）对女人彬彬有礼，献殷勤

参考例句：

• The Middle Ages were also the great age of chivalry.中世纪也是骑士制度盛行的时代。
• He looked up at them with great chivalry.他非常有礼貌地抬头瞧她们。

228 twilight   

n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期

参考例句：

• Twilight merged into darkness.夕阳的光辉融于黑暗中。
• Twilight was sweet with the smell of lilac and freshly turned earth.薄暮充满紫丁香和新翻耕的泥土的香味。

229 awesome   

adj.令人惊叹的，难得吓人的，很好的

参考例句：

• The church in Ireland has always exercised an awesome power.爱尔兰的教堂一直掌握着令人敬畏的权力。
• That new white convertible is totally awesome.那辆新的白色折篷汽车简直棒极了.

230 flicker   

vi./n.闪烁，摇曳，闪现

参考例句：

• There was a flicker of lights coming from the abandoned house.这所废弃的房屋中有灯光闪烁。
• At first,the flame may be a small flicker,barely shining.开始时，光辉可能是微弱地忽隐忽现，几乎并不灿烂。

231 writhe   

vt.挣扎，痛苦地扭曲；vi.扭曲，翻腾，受苦；n.翻腾，苦恼

参考例句：

• They surely writhe under this pressure.他们肯定对这种压力感到苦恼。
• Her words made him writhe with shame.她的话使他惭愧地感到浑身不自在。

232 civilisation   

n.文明，文化，开化，教化

参考例句：

• Energy and ideas are the twin bases of our civilisation.能源和思想是我们文明的两大基石。
• This opera is one of the cultural totems of Western civilisation.这部歌剧是西方文明的文化标志物之一。

233 underneath   

adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面

参考例句：

• Working underneath the car is always a messy job.在汽车底下工作是件脏活。
• She wore a coat with a dress underneath.她穿着一件大衣，里面套着一条连衣裙。

234 nostalgia   

n.怀乡病，留恋过去，怀旧

参考例句：

• He might be influenced by nostalgia for his happy youth.也许是对年轻时幸福时光的怀恋影响了他。
• I was filled with nostalgia by hearing my favourite old song.我听到这首喜爱的旧歌，心中充满了怀旧之情。

235 veins   

n.纹理；矿脉( vein的名词复数 )；静脉；叶脉；纹理

参考例句：

• The blood flows from the capillaries back into the veins. 血从毛细血管流回静脉。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• I felt a pleasant glow in all my veins from the wine. 喝过酒后我浑身的血都热烘烘的，感到很舒服。 来自《简明英汉词典》

236 vibrations   

n.摆动( vibration的名词复数 )；震动；感受；（偏离平衡位置的）一次性往复振动

参考例句：

• We could feel the vibrations from the trucks passing outside. 我们可以感到外面卡车经过时的颤动。
• I am drawn to that girl; I get good vibrations from her. 我被那女孩吸引住了，她使我产生良好的感觉。 来自《简明英汉词典》

237 vibration   

n.颤动，振动；摆动

参考例句：

• There is so much vibration on a ship that one cannot write.船上的震动大得使人无法书写。
• The vibration of the window woke me up.窗子的震动把我惊醒了。

238 tingle   

vi.感到刺痛，感到激动；n.刺痛，激动

参考例句：

• The music made my blood tingle.那音乐使我热血沸腾。
• The cold caused a tingle in my fingers.严寒使我的手指有刺痛感。

239 upwards   

adv.向上，在更高处...以上

参考例句：

• The trend of prices is still upwards.物价的趋向是仍在上涨。
• The smoke rose straight upwards.烟一直向上升。

240 hoot   

n.鸟叫声，汽车的喇叭声； v.使汽车鸣喇叭

参考例句：

• The sudden hoot of a whistle broke into my thoughts.突然响起的汽笛声打断了我的思路。
• In a string of shrill hoot of the horn sound,he quickly ran to her.在一串尖声鸣叫的喇叭声中，他快速地跑向她。

241 stony   

adj.石头的，多石头的，冷酷的，无情的

参考例句：

• The ground is too dry and stony.这块地太干，而且布满了石头。
• He listened to her story with a stony expression.他带着冷漠的表情听她讲经历。

242 huddle   

vi.挤作一团；蜷缩；vt.聚集；n.挤在一起的人

参考例句：

• They like living in a huddle.他们喜欢杂居在一起。
• The cold wind made the boy huddle inside his coat.寒风使这个男孩卷缩在他的外衣里。

243 gulls   

n.鸥( gull的名词复数 )v.欺骗某人( gull的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• A flock of sea gulls are hovering over the deck. 一群海鸥在甲板上空飞翔。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• The gulls which haunted the outlying rocks in a prodigious number. 数不清的海鸥在遥远的岩石上栖息。 来自辞典例句

244 marshy   

adj.沼泽的

参考例句：

• In August 1935,we began our march across the marshy grassland. 1935年8月，我们开始过草地。
• The surrounding land is low and marshy. 周围的地低洼而多沼泽。

245 reins   

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

参考例句：

• She pulled gently on the reins. 她轻轻地拉着缰绳。
• The government has imposed strict reins on the import of luxury goods. 政府对奢侈品的进口有严格的控制手段。

246 peculiar   

adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的

参考例句：

• He walks in a peculiar fashion.他走路的样子很奇特。
• He looked at me with a very peculiar expression.他用一种很奇怪的表情看着我。

247 execrated   

v.憎恶( execrate的过去式和过去分词 )；厌恶；诅咒；咒骂

参考例句：

• He felt execrated by all. 他觉得所有人都在诅咒他。 来自辞典例句
• It was Soapy's design to assume the role of the despicable and execrated 'masher'. 索比的计划是装扮成一个下流、讨厌的“捣蛋鬼”。 来自英汉文学 - 欧亨利

248 courteous   

adj.彬彬有礼的，客气的

参考例句：

• Although she often disagreed with me,she was always courteous.尽管她常常和我意见不一，但她总是很谦恭有礼。
• He was a kind and courteous man.他为人友善，而且彬彬有礼。

249 malevolence   

n.恶意，狠毒

参考例句：

• I had always been aware of a frame of malevolence under his urbanity. 我常常觉察到，在他温文尔雅的下面掩藏着一种恶意。 来自辞典例句

250 ransacked   

v.彻底搜查( ransack的过去式和过去分词 )；抢劫，掠夺

参考例句：

• The house had been ransacked by burglars. 这房子遭到了盗贼的洗劫。
• The house had been ransacked of all that was worth anything. 屋子里所有值钱的东西都被抢去了。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

251 antagonistic   

adj.敌对的

参考例句：

• He is always antagonistic towards new ideas.他对新思想总是持反对态度。
• They merely stirred in a nervous and wholly antagonistic way.他们只是神经质地，带着完全敌对情绪地骚动了一下。

252 encompassing   

v.围绕( encompass的现在分词 )；包围；包含；包括

参考例句：

• Being too large and all-encompassing is a common defect among state-owned enterprises. 过分追求大而全，是国企的一大通病。 来自互联网
• Our services are: all-encompassing, love justice and high quality. 我们的服务目标是：全方位、真情义、高质量。 来自互联网

253 consternation   

n.大为吃惊，惊骇

参考例句：

• He was filled with consternation to hear that his friend was so ill.他听说朋友病得那么厉害，感到非常震惊。
• Sam stared at him in consternation.萨姆惊恐不安地注视着他。

254 reassure   

v.使放心，使消除疑虑

参考例句：

• This seemed to reassure him and he continued more confidently.这似乎使他放心一点，于是他更有信心地继续说了下去。
• The airline tried to reassure the customers that the planes were safe.航空公司尽力让乘客相信飞机是安全的。

255 scrap   

n.碎片；废料；v.废弃，报废

参考例句：

• A man comes round regularly collecting scrap.有个男人定时来收废品。
• Sell that car for scrap.把那辆汽车当残品卖了吧。

256 scraps   

油渣

参考例句：

• Don't litter up the floor with scraps of paper. 不要在地板上乱扔纸屑。
• A patchwork quilt is a good way of using up scraps of material. 做杂拼花布棉被是利用零碎布料的好办法。

257 sullen   

adj.愠怒的，闷闷不乐的，(天气等)阴沉的

参考例句：

• He looked up at the sullen sky.他抬头看了一眼阴沉的天空。
• Susan was sullen in the morning because she hadn't slept well.苏珊今天早上郁闷不乐，因为昨晚没睡好。

258 loutish   

adj.粗鲁的

参考例句：

• He was not as loutish as his manner suggested.他举止粗野，但人不是那样的。
• I was appalled by the loutish behaviour.这种粗野行为令我大为震惊。

259 lout   

n.粗鄙的人；举止粗鲁的人

参考例句：

• He's just an ill-bred lout.他是个缺乏教养的乡巴佬。
• He had no training, no skills and he was just a big, bungling,useless lout!什么也不行，什么也不会，自己只是个傻大黑粗的废物！

260 civilian   

adj.平民的，民用的，民众的

参考例句：

• There is no reliable information about civilian casualties.关于平民的伤亡还没有确凿的信息。
• He resigned his commission to take up a civilian job.他辞去军职而从事平民工作。

261 sufficiently   

adv.足够地，充分地

参考例句：

• It turned out he had not insured the house sufficiently.原来他没有给房屋投足保险。
• The new policy was sufficiently elastic to accommodate both views.新政策充分灵活地适用两种观点。

262 chagrin   

n.懊恼；气愤；委屈

参考例句：

• His increasingly visible chagrin sets up a vicious circle.他的明显的不满引起了一种恶性循环。
• Much to his chagrin,he did not win the race.使他大为懊恼的是他赛跑没获胜。

263 fumbling   

n. 摸索,漏接 v. 摸索,摸弄,笨拙的处理

参考例句：

• If he actually managed to the ball instead of fumbling it with an off-balance shot. 如果他实际上设法拿好球而不是fumbling它。50-balance射击笨拙地和迅速地会开始他的岗位移动，经常这样结束。
• If he actually managed to secure the ball instead of fumbling it awkwardly an off-balance shot. 如果他实际上设法拿好球而不是fumbling它。50-50提议有时。他从off-balance射击笨拙地和迅速地会开始他的岗位移动，经常这样结束。

264 persecuted   

（尤指宗教或政治信仰的）迫害(~sb. for sth.)( persecute的过去式和过去分词 )； 烦扰，困扰或骚扰某人

参考例句：

• Throughout history, people have been persecuted for their religious beliefs. 人们因宗教信仰而受迫害的情况贯穿了整个历史。
• Members of these sects are ruthlessly persecuted and suppressed. 这些教派的成员遭到了残酷的迫害和镇压。

265 clumped   

adj.[医]成群的v.（树、灌木、植物等的）丛、簇( clump的过去式和过去分词 )；（土、泥等）团；块；笨重的脚步声

参考例句：

• The bacteria clumped together. 细菌凝集一团。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• He clumped after her, up the stairs, into his barren office. 他拖着沉重的步伐跟在她的后面上楼了，走进了他那个空荡荡的诊所。 来自辞典例句

266 rummaging   

翻找，搜寻( rummage的现在分词 )； 海关检查

参考例句：

• She was rummaging around in her bag for her keys. 她在自己的包里翻来翻去找钥匙。
• Who's been rummaging through my papers? 谁乱翻我的文件来着？

267 linen   

n.亚麻布，亚麻线，亚麻制品；adj.亚麻布制的，亚麻的

参考例句：

• The worker is starching the linen.这名工人正在给亚麻布上浆。
• Fine linen and cotton fabrics were known as well as wool.精细的亚麻织品和棉织品像羊毛一样闻名遐迩。

268 insolent   

adj.傲慢的，无理的

参考例句：

• His insolent manner really got my blood up.他那傲慢的态度把我的肺都气炸了。
• It was insolent of them to demand special treatment.他们要求给予特殊待遇，脸皮真厚。

269 vocal   

adj.直言不讳的；嗓音的；n.[pl.]声乐节目

参考例句：

• The tongue is a vocal organ.舌头是一个发音器官。
• Public opinion at last became vocal.终于舆论哗然。

270 investigation   

n.调查，调查研究

参考例句：

• In an investigation,a new fact became known, which told against him.在调查中新发现了一件对他不利的事实。
• He drew the conclusion by building on his own investigation.他根据自己的调查研究作出结论。

271 belongings   

n.私人物品，私人财物

参考例句：

• I put a few personal belongings in a bag.我把几件私人物品装进包中。
• Your personal belongings are not dutiable.个人物品不用纳税。

272 determined   

adj.坚定的；有决心的

参考例句：

• I have determined on going to Tibet after graduation.我已决定毕业后去西藏。
• He determined to view the rooms behind the office.他决定查看一下办公室后面的房间。

273 primroses   

n.报春花( primrose的名词复数 )；淡黄色；追求享乐（招至恶果）

参考例句：

• Wild flowers such as orchids and primroses are becoming rare. 兰花和报春花这类野花越来越稀少了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The primroses were bollming; spring was in evidence. 迎春花开了，春天显然已经到了。 来自互联网

274 naval   

adj.海军的，军舰的，船的

参考例句：

• He took part in a great naval battle.他参加了一次大海战。
• The harbour is an important naval base.该港是一个重要的海军基地。

275 perfectly   

adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The witnesses were each perfectly certain of what they said.证人们个个对自己所说的话十分肯定。
• Everything that we're doing is all perfectly above board.我们做的每件事情都是光明正大的。

276 distressed   

痛苦的

参考例句：

• He was too distressed and confused to answer their questions. 他非常苦恼而困惑，无法回答他们的问题。
• The news of his death distressed us greatly. 他逝世的消息使我们极为悲痛。

277 destined   

adj.命中注定的；(for)以…为目的地的

参考例句：

• It was destined that they would marry.他们结婚是缘分。
• The shipment is destined for America.这批货物将运往美国。

278 interned   

v.拘留，关押( intern的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He was interned but,as he was in no way implicated in war crimes,was released. 他曾被拘留过，但因未曾涉嫌战争罪行而被释放了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• These soldiers were interned in a neutral country until the war was over. 这些士兵被拘留在一个中立国，直到战争结束。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

279 incipient   

adj.起初的，发端的，初期的

参考例句：

• The anxiety has been sharpened by the incipient mining boom.采矿业初期的蓬勃发展加剧了这种担忧。
• What we see then is an incipient global inflation.因此，我们看到的是初期阶段的全球通胀.

280 taint   

n.污点；感染；腐坏；v.使感染；污染

参考例句：

• Everything possible should be done to free them from the economic taint.应尽可能把他们从经济的腐蚀中解脱出来。
• Moral taint has spread among young people.道德的败坏在年轻人之间蔓延。

281 tainted   

adj.腐坏的；污染的；沾污的；感染的v.使变质( taint的过去式和过去分词 )；使污染；败坏；被污染，腐坏，败坏

参考例句：

• The administration was tainted with scandal. 丑闻使得政府声名狼藉。
• He was considered tainted by association with the corrupt regime. 他因与腐败政府有牵连而名誉受损。 来自《简明英汉词典》

282 frail   

adj.身体虚弱的；易损坏的

参考例句：

• Mrs. Warner is already 96 and too frail to live by herself.华纳太太已经九十六岁了，身体虚弱，不便独居。
• She lay in bed looking particularly frail.她躺在床上，看上去特别虚弱。

283 breakdown   

n.垮，衰竭；损坏，故障，倒塌

参考例句：

• She suffered a nervous breakdown.她患神经衰弱。
• The plane had a breakdown in the air,but it was fortunately removed by the ace pilot.飞机在空中发生了故障，但幸运的是被王牌驾驶员排除了。

284 craved   

渴望，热望( crave的过去式 )； 恳求，请求

参考例句：

• She has always craved excitement. 她总渴望刺激。
• A spicy, sharp-tasting radish was exactly what her stomach craved. 她正馋着想吃一个香甜可口的红萝卜呢。

285 passionately   

ad.热烈地，激烈地

参考例句：

• She could hate as passionately as she could love. 她能恨得咬牙切齿，也能爱得一往情深。
• He was passionately addicted to pop music. 他酷爱流行音乐。

286 thumping   

adj.重大的，巨大的；重击的；尺码大的；极好的adv.极端地；非常地v.重击(thump的现在分词)；狠打；怦怦地跳；全力支持

参考例句：

• Her heart was thumping with emotion. 她激动得心怦怦直跳。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• He was thumping the keys of the piano. 他用力弹钢琴。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

287 anguish   

n.(尤指心灵上的)极度痛苦，烦恼

参考例句：

• She cried out for anguish at parting.分手时，她由于痛苦而失声大哭。
• The unspeakable anguish wrung his heart.难言的痛苦折磨着他的心。

288 confiscated   

没收，充公( confiscate的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Their land was confiscated after the war. 他们的土地在战后被没收。
• The customs officer confiscated the smuggled goods. 海关官员没收了走私品。

289 commotion   

n.骚动，动乱

参考例句：

• They made a commotion by yelling at each other in the theatre.他们在剧院里相互争吵，引起了一阵骚乱。
• Suddenly the whole street was in commotion.突然间，整条街道变得一片混乱。

290 enquiring   

a.爱打听的，显得好奇的

参考例句：

• a child with an enquiring mind 有好奇心的孩子
• Paul darted at her sharp enquiring glances. 她的目光敏锐好奇，保罗飞快地朝她瞥了一眼。

291 dense   

a.密集的，稠密的，浓密的；密度大的

参考例句：

• The general ambushed his troops in the dense woods. 将军把部队埋伏在浓密的树林里。
• The path was completely covered by the dense foliage. 小路被树叶厚厚地盖了一层。

292 filth   

n.肮脏，污物，污秽；淫猥

参考例句：

• I don't know how you can read such filth.我不明白你怎么会去读这种淫秽下流的东西。
• The dialogue was all filth and innuendo.这段对话全是下流的言辞和影射。

293 blight   

n.枯萎病；造成破坏的因素；vt.破坏，摧残

参考例句：

• The apple crop was wiped out by blight.枯萎病使苹果全无收成。
• There is a blight on all his efforts.他的一切努力都遭到挫折。

294 slay   

v.杀死，宰杀，杀戮

参考例句：

• He intended to slay his father's murderer.他意图杀死杀父仇人。
• She has ordered me to slay you.她命令我把你杀了。

295 reeking   

v.发出浓烈的臭气( reek的现在分词 )；散发臭气；发出难闻的气味 (of sth)；明显带有（令人不快或生疑的跡象）

参考例句：

• I won't have you reeking with sweat in my bed! 我就不许你混身臭汗，臭烘烘的上我的炕！ 来自汉英文学 - 骆驼祥子
• This is a novel reeking with sentimentalism. 这是一本充满着感伤主义的小说。 来自辞典例句

296 judgment   

n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见

参考例句：

• The chairman flatters himself on his judgment of people.主席自认为他审视人比别人高明。
• He's a man of excellent judgment.他眼力过人。

297 nay   

adv.不；n.反对票，投反对票者

参考例句：

• He was grateful for and proud of his son's remarkable,nay,unique performance.他为儿子出色的，不，应该是独一无二的表演心怀感激和骄傲。
• Long essays,nay,whole books have been written on this.许多长篇大论的文章，不，应该说是整部整部的书都是关于这件事的。

298 unpack   

vt.打开包裹（或行李），卸货

参考例句：

• I must unpack before dinner.我得在饭前把行李打开。
• She said she would unpack the items later.她说以后再把箱子里的东西拿出来。

299 vile   

adj.卑鄙的，可耻的，邪恶的；坏透的

参考例句：

• Who could have carried out such a vile attack?会是谁发起这么卑鄙的攻击呢？
• Her talk was full of vile curses.她的话里充满着恶毒的咒骂。

300 bleak   

adj.(天气)阴冷的；凄凉的；暗淡的

参考例句：

• They showed me into a bleak waiting room.他们引我来到一间阴冷的会客室。
• The company's prospects look pretty bleak.这家公司的前景异常暗淡。

301 permeated   

弥漫( permeate的过去式和过去分词 )； 遍布； 渗入； 渗透

参考例句：

• The smell of leather permeated the room. 屋子里弥漫着皮革的气味。
• His public speeches were permeated with hatred of injustice. 在他对民众的演说里，充满了对不公正的愤慨。

302 buffer   

n.起缓冲作用的人(或物)，缓冲器；vt.缓冲

参考例句：

• A little money can be a useful buffer in time of need.在急需时，很少一点钱就能解燃眉之急。
• Romantic love will buffer you against life's hardships.浪漫的爱会减轻生活的艰辛。

303 buffers   

起缓冲作用的人（或物）( buffer的名词复数 )； 缓冲器； 减震器； 愚蠢老头

参考例句：

• To allocate and schedule the use of buffers. 分配和计划缓冲器的使用。
• Number of times the stream has paused due to insufficient stream buffers. 由于流缓冲区不足导致流程暂停的次数。

304 scribbling   

n.乱涂[写]胡[乱]写的文章[作品]v.潦草的书写( scribble的现在分词 )；乱画；草草地写；匆匆记下

参考例句：

• Once the money got into the book, all that remained were some scribbling. 折子上的钱只是几个字！ 来自汉英文学 - 骆驼祥子
• McMug loves scribbling. Mama then sent him to the Kindergarten. 麦唛很喜欢写字，妈妈看在眼里，就替他报读了幼稚园。 来自互联网

305 ignominiously   

adv.耻辱地，屈辱地，丢脸地

参考例句：

• Their attempt failed ignominiously. 他们的企图可耻地失败了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• She would be scolded, abused, ignominiously discharged. 他们会说她，骂她，解雇她，让她丢尽脸面的。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹

306 stark   

adj.荒凉的；严酷的；完全的；adv.完全地

参考例句：

• The young man is faced with a stark choice.这位年轻人面临严峻的抉择。
• He gave a stark denial to the rumor.他对谣言加以完全的否认。

307 athletic   

adj.擅长运动的，强健的；活跃的，体格健壮的

参考例句：

• This area has been marked off for athletic practice.这块地方被划出来供体育训练之用。
• He is an athletic star.他是一个运动明星。

308 gibing   

adj.讥刺的，嘲弄的v.嘲笑，嘲弄( gibe的现在分词 )

参考例句：

309 corrosive   

adj.腐蚀性的；有害的；恶毒的

参考例句：

• Many highly corrosive substances are used in the nuclear industry.核工业使用许多腐蚀性很强的物质。
• Many highly corrosive substances are used in the nuclear industry.核工业使用许多腐蚀性很强的物质。

310 pneumonia   

n.肺炎

参考例句：

• Cage was struck with pneumonia in her youth.凯奇年轻时得过肺炎。
• Pneumonia carried him off last week.肺炎上星期夺去了他的生命。

311 sneer   

v.轻蔑；嘲笑；n.嘲笑，讥讽的言语

参考例句：

• He said with a sneer.他的话中带有嘲笑之意。
• You may sneer,but a lot of people like this kind of music.你可以嗤之以鼻，但很多人喜欢这种音乐。

312 sneering   

嘲笑的，轻蔑的

参考例句：

• "What are you sneering at?" “你冷笑什么？” 来自子夜部分
• The old sorceress slunk in with a sneering smile. 老女巫鬼鬼崇崇地走进来，冷冷一笑。

313 faculty   

n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员

参考例句：

• He has a great faculty for learning foreign languages.他有学习外语的天赋。
• He has the faculty of saying the right thing at the right time.他有在恰当的时候说恰当的话的才智。

314 equanimity   

n.沉着，镇定

参考例句：

• She went again,and in so doing temporarily recovered her equanimity.她又去看了戏，而且这样一来又暂时恢复了她的平静。
• The defeat was taken with equanimity by the leadership.领导层坦然地接受了失败。

315 contagion   

n.(通过接触的疾病)传染；蔓延

参考例句：

• A contagion of fear swept through the crowd.一种恐惧感在人群中迅速蔓延开。
• The product contagion effect has numerous implications for marketing managers and retailers.产品传染效应对市场营销管理者和零售商都有很多的启示。

316 shameful   

adj.可耻的，不道德的

参考例句：

• It is very shameful of him to show off.他向人炫耀自己，真不害臊。
• We must expose this shameful activity to the newspapers.我们一定要向报社揭露这一无耻行径。

317 plumb   

adv.精确地，完全地；v.了解意义，测水深

参考例句：

• No one could plumb the mystery.没人能看破这秘密。
• It was unprofitable to plumb that sort of thing.这种事弄个水落石出没有什么好处。

318 bent   

n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的

参考例句：

• He was fully bent upon the project.他一心扑在这项计划上。
• We bent over backward to help them.我们尽了最大努力帮助他们。

319 aloof   

adj.远离的；冷淡的，漠不关心的

参考例句：

• Never stand aloof from the masses.千万不可脱离群众。
• On the evening the girl kept herself timidly aloof from the crowd.这小女孩在晚会上一直胆怯地远离人群。

320 crouched   

v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He crouched down beside her. 他在她的旁边蹲了下来。
• The lion crouched ready to pounce. 狮子蹲下身，准备猛扑。

321 squatting   

v.像动物一样蹲下( squat的现在分词 )；非法擅自占用（土地或房屋）；为获得其所有权；而占用某片公共用地。

参考例句：

• They ended up squatting in the empty houses on Oxford Road. 他们落得在牛津路偷住空房的境地。
• They've been squatting in an apartment for the past two years. 他们过去两年来一直擅自占用一套公寓。 来自《简明英汉词典》

322 buffoons   

n.愚蠢的人( buffoon的名词复数 )；傻瓜；逗乐小丑；滑稽的人

参考例句：

323 spine   

n.脊柱，脊椎；(动植物的)刺；书脊

参考例句：

• He broke his spine in a fall from a horse.他从马上跌下摔断了脊梁骨。
• His spine developed a slight curve.他的脊柱有点弯曲。

324 annihilate   

v.使无效；毁灭；取消

参考例句：

• Archer crumpled up the yellow sheet as if the gesture could annihilate the news it contained.阿切尔把这张黄纸揉皱，好象用这个动作就会抹掉里面的消息似的。
• We should bear in mind that we have to annihilate the enemy.我们要把歼敌的重任时刻记在心上。

325 watchfulness   

警惕，留心； 警觉（性）

参考例句：

• The escort and the universal watchfulness had completely isolated him. 护送和普遍一致的监视曾经使他完全孤立。
• A due watchfulness on the movements of the enemy was maintained. 他们对敌人的行动还是相当警惕的。

326 gibes   

vi.嘲笑，嘲弄（gibe的第三人称单数形式）

参考例句：

• He smarted under the gibes of his fellows. 他因受同伴的嘲笑而苦恼。 来自辞典例句
• Don' t make gibes about her behavior. 别嘲笑她的行为。 来自辞典例句

327 wither   

vt.使凋谢，使衰退，(用眼神气势等)使畏缩；vi.枯萎，衰退，消亡

参考例句：

• She grows as a flower does-she will wither without sun.她象鲜花一样成长--没有太阳就会凋谢。
• In autumn the leaves wither and fall off the trees.秋天，树叶枯萎并从树上落下来。

328 reassured   

adj.使消除疑虑的；使放心的v.再保证，恢复信心( reassure的过去式和过去分词)

参考例句：

• The captain's confidence during the storm reassured the passengers. 在风暴中船长的信念使旅客们恢复了信心。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• The doctor reassured the old lady. 医生叫那位老妇人放心。 来自《简明英汉词典》

329 viler   

adj.卑鄙的( vile的比较级 )；可耻的；极坏的；非常讨厌的

参考例句：

• Ever viler screamsshot forth, cutting through my head like cold, sharp blades. 是那尖啸，像冰冷的，锋利的刀一样穿过我的头脑。 来自互联网

330 gulf   

n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂

参考例句：

• The gulf between the two leaders cannot be bridged.两位领导人之间的鸿沟难以跨越。
• There is a gulf between the two cities.这两座城市间有个海湾。

331 blotted   

涂污( blot的过去式和过去分词 )； （用吸墨纸）吸干

参考例句：

• She blotted water off the table with a towel. 她用毛巾擦干桌上的水。
• The blizzard blotted out the sky and the land. 暴风雪铺天盖地而来。

332 lashed   

adj.具睫毛的v.鞭打( lash的过去式和过去分词 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥

参考例句：

• The rain lashed at the windows. 雨点猛烈地打在窗户上。
• The cleverly designed speech lashed the audience into a frenzy. 这篇精心设计的演说煽动听众使他们发狂。 来自《简明英汉词典》

333 insanity   

n.疯狂，精神错乱；极端的愚蠢，荒唐

参考例句：

• In his defense he alleged temporary insanity.他伪称一时精神错乱，为自己辩解。
• He remained in his cell,and this visit only increased the belief in his insanity.他依旧还是住在他的地牢里，这次视察只是更加使人相信他是个疯子了。

334 gathering   

n.集会，聚会，聚集

参考例句：

• He called on Mr. White to speak at the gathering.他请怀特先生在集会上讲话。
• He is on the wing gathering material for his novels.他正忙于为他的小说收集资料。

335 chestnuts   

n.栗子( chestnut的名词复数 )；栗色；栗树；栗色马

参考例句：

• A man in the street was selling bags of hot chestnuts. 街上有个男人在卖一包包热栗子。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Talk of chestnuts loosened the tongue of this inarticulate young man. 因为栗子，正苦无话可说的年青人，得到同情他的人了。 来自汉英文学 - 中国现代小说

336 denuding   

v.使赤裸( denude的现在分词 )；剥光覆盖物

参考例句：

• A weathering-denuding surface separates the lacustrine strata and layer of the loess in the Tuoketuo mesa. 野外观察表明托克托台地的湖相层与上覆的黄土之间存在风化剥蚀面。 来自互联网
• Mineral pyroelectricity can be used tothe denuding levels of deposits and to assess the mineralized district. 因此用矿物的热电性质可以对矿床的侵蚀面水平和矿化地段的远景作出评价。 来自互联网

337 flakes   

小薄片( flake的名词复数 )； （尤指）碎片； 雪花； 古怪的人

参考例句：

• It's snowing in great flakes. 天下着鹅毛大雪。
• It is snowing in great flakes. 正值大雪纷飞。

338 armistice   

n.休战，停战协定

参考例句：

• The two nations signed an armistice.两国签署了停火协议。
• The Italian armistice is nothing but a clumsy trap.意大利的停战不过是一个笨拙的陷阱。

339 smack   

vt.拍，打，掴；咂嘴；vi.含有…意味；n.拍

参考例句：

• She gave him a smack on the face.她打了他一个嘴巴。
• I gave the fly a smack with the magazine.我用杂志拍了一下苍蝇。

340 frustrated   

adj.挫败的，失意的，泄气的v.使不成功( frustrate的过去式和过去分词 )；挫败；使受挫折；令人沮丧

参考例句：

• It's very easy to get frustrated in this job. 这个工作很容易令人懊恼。
• The bad weather frustrated all our hopes of going out. 恶劣的天气破坏了我们出行的愿望。 来自《简明英汉词典》

341 influenza   

n.流行性感冒，流感

参考例句：

• They took steps to prevent the spread of influenza.他们采取措施
• Influenza is an infectious disease.流感是一种传染病。

342 corpse   

n.尸体，死尸

参考例句：

• What she saw was just an unfeeling corpse.她见到的只是一具全无感觉的尸体。
• The corpse was preserved from decay by embalming.尸体用香料涂抹以防腐烂。

343 vindictive   

adj.有报仇心的，怀恨的，惩罚的

参考例句：

• I have no vindictive feelings about it.我对此没有恶意。
• The vindictive little girl tore up her sister's papers.那个充满报复心的小女孩撕破了她姐姐的作业。

344 malignant   

adj.恶性的，致命的；恶意的，恶毒的

参考例句：

• Alexander got a malignant slander.亚历山大受到恶意的诽谤。
• He started to his feet with a malignant glance at Winston.他爬了起来，不高兴地看了温斯顿一眼。

345 shroud   

n.裹尸布，寿衣；罩，幕；vt.覆盖，隐藏

参考例句：

• His past was enveloped in a shroud of mystery.他的过去被裹上一层神秘色彩。
• How can I do under shroud of a dark sky?在黑暗的天空的笼罩下，我该怎么做呢？

346 coffin   

n.棺材，灵柩

参考例句：

• When one's coffin is covered,all discussion about him can be settled.盖棺论定。
• The coffin was placed in the grave.那口棺材已安放到坟墓里去了。

347 throng   

n.人群，群众；v.拥挤，群集

参考例句：

• A patient throng was waiting in silence.一大群耐心的人在静静地等着。
• The crowds thronged into the mall.人群涌进大厅。

348 volcanic   

adj.火山的；象火山的；由火山引起的

参考例句：

• There have been several volcanic eruptions this year.今年火山爆发了好几次。
• Volcanic activity has created thermal springs and boiling mud pools.火山活动产生了温泉和沸腾的泥浆池。

349 eruption   

n.火山爆发；（战争等）爆发；（疾病等）发作

参考例句：

• The temple was destroyed in the violent eruption of 1470 BC.庙宇在公元前1470年猛烈的火山爆发中摧毁了。
• The eruption of a volcano is spontaneous.火山的爆发是自发的。

350 spasms   

n.痉挛( spasm的名词复数 )；抽搐；（能量、行为等的）突发；发作

参考例句：

• After the patient received acupuncture treatment,his spasms eased off somewhat. 病人接受针刺治疗后，痉挛稍微减轻了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The smile died, squeezed out by spasms of anticipation and anxiety. 一阵阵预测和焦虑把她脸上的微笑挤掉了。 来自辞典例句

351 investigations   

（正式的）调查( investigation的名词复数 )； 侦查； 科学研究； 学术研究

参考例句：

• His investigations were intensive and thorough but revealed nothing. 他进行了深入彻底的调查，但没有发现什么。
• He often sent them out to make investigations. 他常常派他们出去作调查。