CHAPTER IX PERPLEXITIES

 What had he done?

 

Ignorant why his simple question should have had such strange results, that piercing look made Adrian feel the veriest culprit, and he hastened to leave the room and the cabin. Hurrying to the beach he appropriated Margot’s little canvas canoe and pushed out upon the lake. From her and Pierre he had learned to handle the light craft with considerable skill and he now worked off his excitement by swift paddling, so that there was soon a wide distance between him and the island.

 

Then he paused and looked around him, upon as fair a scene as could be found in any land. Unbroken forests bounded this hidden Lake Profundis, out of whose placid¹ waters [Pg 97]rose that mountain-crowned, verdure-clad Island of Peace, with its picturesque² home, and its cultured owner, who had brought into this best of the wilderness³ the best of civilization.

 

“What is this mystery? How am I concerned in it? For I am, and mystery there is. It is like that mist over the island, which I can see and feel but cannot touch. Pshaw! I’m getting sentimental⁴, when I ought to be turning detective. Yet I couldn’t do that—pry into the private affairs of a man who’s treated me so generously. What shall I do? How can I go back there? But where else can I go?”

 

At thought that he might never return to the roof he had quitted, a curious homesickness seized him.

 

“Who’ll hunt what game they need? Who’ll catch their fish? Who’ll keep the garden growing? Where can I study the forest and its furry⁵ people, at first hand, as in the Hollow? And I was doing well. Not as I hope to do, but getting on. Margot was a [Pg 98]merciless critic, but even she admitted that my last picture had the look, the spirit of the woods. That’s what I want to do, what Mr. Dutton, also, approved; to bring glimpses of these solitudes⁶ back to the cities and the thousands who can never see them in any other way. Well—let it go. I can’t stay and be a torment⁷ to anybody, and some time, in some other place, maybe—— Ah!”

 

What he had mistaken for the laughter of a loon⁸ was Pierre’s halloo. He was coming back, then, from the mainland where he had been absent these past days. Adrian was thankful. There was nothing mysterious or perplexing about Pierre, whose rule of life was extremely simple.

 

“Pierre first, second, and forever. After Pierre, if there was anything left, then—anybody, the nearest at hand;” would have expressed the situation; but his honest, unblushing selfishness was sometimes a relief.

 

“One always knows just where to find Pierre,” Margot had said.

 

[Pg 99]

 

So Adrian’s answering halloo was prompt, and turning about he watched the birch leaving the shadow of the forest and heading for himself. It was soon alongside and Ricord’s excited voice was shouting his good news:

 

“Run him up to seven hundred and fifty!”

 

“But I thought there wasn’t money enough anywhere to buy him!”

 

Pierre cocked his dark head on one side and winked⁹.

 

“Madoc sick and Madoc well are different.”

 

“Oh! you wretch¹⁰. Would you sell a sick moose and cheat the buyer?”

 

“Would I lose such a pile of money for foolishness? I guess not.”

 

“But suppose, after you parted with him, he got well?”

 

Again the woodlander grinned and winked.

 

“Could you drive the king?”

 

“No.”

 

“Well, that’s all right. I buy him back, [Pg 100]what you call trade. One do that many times, good enough. If——”

 

Pierre was silent for some moments, during which Adrian had steadily¹¹ paddled backward to the island, keeping time with the other boat, and without thinking what he was doing. But when he did remember, he turned to Pierre and asked:

 

“Will you take me across the lake again?”

 

“What for?”

 

“No matter. I’ll just leave Margot’s canoe and you do it. There’s time enough.”

 

“What’ll you give me?”

 

“Pshaw! What can I give you? Nothing.”

 

“That’s all right. My mother, she wants the salt,” and he kicked the sack of that valuable article, lying at his feet. “There. She’s on the bank now and it’s not she will let me out of sight again, this long time.”

 

“You’d go fast enough, for money.”

 

“Maybe not. When one has Angelique Ricord for mére—— Umm.”

 

[Pg 101]

 

But it was less for Pierre than for Adrian that Angelique was waiting, and her expression was kinder than common.

1 placid   

adj.安静的，平和的

参考例句：

• He had been leading a placid life for the past eight years.八年来他一直过着平静的生活。
• You should be in a placid mood and have a heart-to- heart talk with her.你应该心平气和的好好和她谈谈心。

2 picturesque   

adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的

参考例句：

• You can see the picturesque shores beside the river.在河边你可以看到景色如画的两岸。
• That was a picturesque phrase.那是一个形象化的说法。

3 wilderness   

n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠

参考例句：

• She drove the herd of cattle through the wilderness.她赶着牛群穿过荒野。
• Education in the wilderness is not a matter of monetary means.荒凉地区的教育不是钱财问题。

4 sentimental   

adj.多愁善感的，感伤的

参考例句：

• She's a sentimental woman who believes marriage comes by destiny.她是多愁善感的人，她相信姻缘命中注定。
• We were deeply touched by the sentimental movie.我们深深被那感伤的电影所感动。

5 furry   

adj.毛皮的；似毛皮的；毛皮制的

参考例句：

• This furry material will make a warm coat for the winter.这件毛皮料在冬天会是一件保暖的大衣。
• Mugsy is a big furry brown dog,who wiggles when she is happy.马格斯是一只棕色大长毛狗，当她高兴得时候她会摇尾巴。

6 solitudes   

n.独居( solitude的名词复数 )；孤独；荒僻的地方；人迹罕至的地方

参考例句：

• Africa is going at last to give up the secret of its vast solitudes. 非洲无边无际的荒野的秘密就要被揭穿了。 来自辞典例句
• The scientist has spent six months in the solitudes of the Antarctic. 这位科学家已经在人迹罕至的南极待了六个月了。 来自互联网

7 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。

8 loon   

n.狂人

参考例句：

• That guy's a real loon.那个人是个真正的疯子。
• Everyone thought he was a loon.每个人都骂他神经。

9 winked   

v.使眼色( wink的过去式和过去分词 )；递眼色（表示友好或高兴等）；（指光）闪烁；闪亮

参考例句：

• He winked at her and she knew he was thinking the same thing that she was. 他冲她眨了眨眼，她便知道他的想法和她一样。
• He winked his eyes at her and left the classroom. 他向她眨巴一下眼睛走出了教室。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

10 wretch   

n.可怜的人，不幸的人；卑鄙的人

参考例句：

• You are really an ungrateful wretch to complain instead of thanking him.你不但不谢他，还埋怨他，真不知好歹。
• The dead husband is not the dishonoured wretch they fancied him.死去的丈夫不是他们所想象的不光彩的坏蛋。

11 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。