And even now he felt that he was afflicted3 physically4 rather than mentally, that some protective padding of nerve-sheath or brain-case had worn thin and weak, and left him a prey5 to strange disturbances7, rather than that any new process of thought was eating into his mind. These doubts in his mind were still not really doubts; they were rather alien and, for the first time, uncontrolled movements of his intelligence. He had had a sheltered upbringing; he was the well-connected son of a comfortable rectory, the only son and sole survivor8 of a family of three; he had been carefully instructed and he had been a willing learner; it had been easy and natural to take many things for granted. It had been very easy and pleasant for him to take the world as he found it and God as he found Him. Indeed for all his years up to manhood he had been able to take life exactly as in his infancy11 he took his carefully warmed and prepared bottle—unquestioningly and beneficially.
It is a busy continuous process that turns boys into bishops, and it will stand few jars or discords13. The student of ecclesiastical biography will find that an early vocation14 has in every age been almost universal among them; few are there among these lives that do not display the incipient15 bishop from the tenderest years. Bishop How of Wakefield composed hymns16 before he was eleven, and Archbishop Benson when scarcely older possessed17 a little oratory18 in which he conducted services and—a pleasant touch of the more secular19 boy—which he protected from a too inquisitive20 sister by means of a booby trap. It is rare that those marked for episcopal dignities go so far into the outer world as Archbishop Lang of York, who began as a barrister. This early predestination has always been the common episcopal experience. Archbishop Benson's early attempts at religious services remind one both of St. Thomas a Becket, the “boy bishop,” and those early ceremonies of St. Athanasius which were observed and inquired upon by the good bishop Alexander. (For though still a tender infant, St. Athanasius with perfect correctness and validity was baptizing a number of his innocent playmates, and the bishop who “had paused to contemplate21 the sports of the child remained to confirm the zeal22 of the missionary23.”) And as with the bishop of the past, so with the bishop of the future; the Rev24. H. J. Campbell, in his story of his soul's pilgrimage, has given us a pleasant picture of himself as a child stealing out into the woods to build himself a little altar.
Such minds as these, settled as it were from the outset, are either incapable26 of real scepticism or become sceptical only after catastrophic changes. They understand the sceptical mind with difficulty, and their beliefs are regarded by the sceptical mind with incredulity. They have determined27 their forms of belief before their years of discretion28, and once those forms are determined they are not very easily changed. Within the shell it has adopted the intelligence may be active and lively enough, may indeed be extraordinarily29 active and lively, but only within the shell.
There is an entire difference in the mental quality of those who are converts to a faith and those who are brought up in it. The former know it from outside as well as from within. They know not only that it is, but also that it is not. The latter have a confidence in their creed30 that is one with their apprehension31 of sky or air or gravitation. It is a primary mental structure, and they not only do not doubt but they doubt the good faith of those who do. They think that the Atheist32 and Agnostic really believe but are impelled33 by a mysterious obstinacy34 to deny. So it had been with the Bishop of Princhester; not of cunning or design but in simple good faith he had accepted all the inherited assurances of his native rectory, and held by Church, Crown, Empire, decorum, respectability, solvency—and compulsory35 Greek at the Little Go—as his father had done before him. If in his undergraduate days he had said a thing or two in the modern vein36, affected37 the socialism of William Morris and learnt some Swinburne by heart, it was out of a conscious wildness. He did not wish to be a prig. He had taken a far more genuine interest in the artistry of ritual.
Through all the time of his incumbency38 of the church of the Holy Innocents, St. John's Wood, and of his career as the bishop suffragan of Pinner, he had never faltered39 from his profound confidence in those standards of his home. He had been kind, popular, and endlessly active. His undergraduate socialism had expanded simply and sincerely into a theory of administrative40 philanthropy. He knew the Webbs. He was as successful with working-class audiences as with fashionable congregations. His home life with Lady Ella (she was the daughter of the fifth Earl of Birkenholme) and his five little girls was simple, beautiful, and happy as few homes are in these days of confusion. Until he became Bishop of Princhester—he followed Hood10, the first bishop, as the reign41 of his Majesty42 King Edward the Peacemaker drew to its close—no anticipation43 of his coming distress44 fell across his path.
(2)
He came to Princhester an innocent and trustful man. The home life at the old rectory of Otteringham was still his standard of truth and reality. London had not disillusioned45 him. It was a strange waste of people, it made him feel like a missionary in infidel parts, but it was a kindly46 waste. It was neither antagonistic48 nor malicious49. He had always felt there that if he searched his Londoner to the bottom, he would find the completest recognition of the old rectory and all its data and implications.
But Princhester was different.
Princhester made one think that recently there had been a second and much more serious Fall.
Princhester was industrial and unashamed. It was a countryside savagely50 invaded by forges and mine shafts51 and gaunt black things. It was scarred and impeded52 and discoloured. Even before that invasion, when the heather was not in flower it must have been a black country. Its people were dour53 uncandid individuals, who slanted54 their heads and knitted their brows to look at you. Occasionally one saw woods brown and blistered55 by the gases from chemical works. Here and there remained old rectories, closely reminiscent of the dear old home at Otteringham, jostled and elbowed and overshadowed by horrible iron cylinders56 belching57 smoke and flame. The fine old abbey church of Princhester, which was the cathedral of the new diocese, looked when first he saw it like a lady Abbess who had taken to drink and slept in a coal truck. She minced58 apologetically upon the market-place; the parvenu59 Town Hall patronized and protected her as if she were a poor relation....
The old aristocracy of the countryside was unpicturesquely decayed. The branch of the Walshinghams, Lady Ella's cousins, who lived near Pringle, was poor, proud and ignoble61. And extremely unpopular. The rich people of the country were self-made and inclined to nonconformity, the working-people were not strictly62 speaking a “poor,” they were highly paid, badly housed, and deeply resentful. They went in vast droves to football matches, and did not care a rap if it rained. The prevailing63 wind was sarcastic64. To come here from London was to come from atmospheric65 blue-greys to ashen-greys, from smoke and soft smut to grime and black grimness.
The bishop had been charmed by the historical associations of Princhester when first the see was put before his mind. His realization66 of his diocese was a profound shock.
Only one hint had he had of what was coming. He had met during his season of congratulations Lord Gatling dining unusually at the Athenaeum. Lord Gatling and he did not talk frequently, but on this occasion the great racing67 peer came over to him. “You will feel like a cherub68 in a stokehole,” Lord Gatling had said....
“In London a bishop's a lord and a lark70 and nobody minds him,” said Lord Gatling, “but Princhester is different. It isn't used to bishops.... Well,—I hope you'll get to like 'em.”
(3)
Trouble began with a fearful row about the position of the bishop's palace. Hood had always evaded72 this question, and a number of strong-willed self-made men of wealth and influence, full of local patriotism73 and that competitive spirit which has made England what it is, already intensely irritated by Hood's prevarications, were resolved to pin his successor to an immediate74 decision. Of this the new bishop was unaware75. Mindful of a bishop's constant need to travel, he was disposed to seek a home within easy reach of Pringle Junction76, from which nearly every point in the diocese could be simply and easily reached. This fell in with Lady Ella's liking77 for the rare rural quiet of the Kibe valley and the neighbourhood of her cousins the Walshinghams. Unhappily it did not fall in with the inflexible78 resolution of each and every one of the six leading towns of the see to put up, own, obtrude79, boast, and swagger about the biggest and showiest thing in episcopal palaces in all industrial England, and the new bishop had already taken a short lease and gone some way towards the acquisition of Ganford House, two miles from Pringle, before he realized the strength and fury of these local ambitions.
At first the magnates and influences seemed to be fighting only among themselves, and he was so ill-advised as to broach80 the Ganford House project as a compromise that would glorify81 no one unfairly, and leave the erection of an episcopal palace for some future date when he perhaps would have the good fortune to have passed to “where beyond these voices there is peace,” forgetting altogether among other oversights82 the importance of architects and builders in local affairs. His proposal seemed for a time to concentrate the rich passions of the whole countryside upon himself and his wife.
Because they did not leave Lady Ella alone. The Walshinghams were already unpopular in their county on account of a poverty and shyness that made them seem “stuck up” to successful captains of industry only too ready with the hand of friendship, the iron grip indeed of friendship, consciously hospitable83 and eager for admission and endorsements84. And Princhester in particular was under the sway of that enterprising weekly, The White Blackbird, which was illustrated85 by, which indeed monopolized86 the gifts of, that brilliant young caricaturist “The Snicker.”
It had seemed natural for Lady Ella to acquiesce87 in the proposals of the leading Princhester photographer. She had always helped where she could in her husband's public work, and she had been popular upon her own merits in Wealdstone. The portrait was abominable88 enough in itself; it dwelt on her chin, doubled her age, and denied her gentleness, but it was a mere89 starting-point for the subtle extravagance of The Snicker's poisonous gift.... The thing came upon the bishop suddenly from the book-stall at Pringle Junction.
He kept it carefully from Lady Ella.... It was only later that he found that a copy of The White Blackbird had been sent to her, and that she was keeping the horror from him. It was in her vein that she should reproach herself for being a vulnerable side to him.
Even when the bishop capitulated in favour of Princhester, that decision only opened a fresh trouble for him. Princhester wanted the palace to be a palace; it wanted to combine all the best points of Lambeth and Fulham with the marble splendours of a good modern bank. The bishop's architectural tastes, on the other hand, were rationalistic. He was all for building a useful palace in undertones, with a green slate90 roof and long horizontal lines. What he wanted more than anything else was a quite remote wing with a lot of bright little bedrooms and a sitting-room91 and so on, complete in itself, examination hall and everything, with a long intricate connecting passage and several doors, to prevent the ordination92 candidates straying all over the place and getting into the talk and the tea. But the diocese wanted a proud archway—and turrets93, and did not care a rap if the ordination candidates slept about on the carpets in the bishop's bedroom. Ordination candidates were quite outside the sphere of its imagination.
And he disappointed Princhester with his equipage. Princhester had a feeling that it deserved more for coming over to the church from nonconformity as it was doing. It wanted a bishop in a mitre and a gilt94 coach. It wanted a pastoral crook95. It wanted something to go with its mace96 and its mayor. And (obsessed by The Snicker) it wanted less of Lady Ella. The cruelty and unreason of these attacks upon his wife distressed97 the bishop beyond measure, and baffled him hopelessly. He could not see any means of checking them nor of defending or justifying98 her against them.
The palace was awaiting its tenant99, but the controversies100 and bitternesses were still swinging and swaying and developing when King George was being crowned. Close upon that event came a wave of social discontent, the great railway strike, a curious sense of social and political instability, and the first beginnings of the bishop's ill health.
(4)
The industrial trouble was a very real distress to the bishop. He had a firm belief that it is a function of the church to act as mediator102 between employer and employed. It was a common saying of his that the aim of socialism—the right sort of socialism—was to Christianize employment. Regardless of suspicion on either hand, regardless of very distinct hints that he should “mind his own business,” he exerted himself in a search for methods of reconciliation103. He sought out every one who seemed likely to be influential104 on either side, and did his utmost to discover the conditions of a settlement. As far as possible and with the help of a not very efficient chaplain he tried to combine such interviews with his more normal visiting.
At times, and this was particularly the case on this day, he seemed to be discovering nothing but the incurable105 perversity106 and militancy107 of human nature. It was a day under an east wind, when a steely-blue sky full of colourless light filled a stiff-necked world with whitish high lights and inky shadows. These bright harsh days of barometric108 high pressure in England rouse and thwart109 every expectation of the happiness of spring. And as the bishop drove through the afternoon in a hired fly along a rutted road of slag between fields that were bitterly wired against the Sunday trespasser110, he fell into a despondent111 meditation112 upon the political and social outlook.
His thoughts were of a sort not uncommon113 in those days. The world was strangely restless. Since the passing of Victoria the Great there had been an accumulating uneasiness in the national life. It was as if some compact and dignified114 paper-weight had been lifted from people's ideas, and as if at once they had begun to blow about anyhow. Not that Queen Victoria had really been a paper-weight or any weight at all, but it happened that she died as an epoch115 closed, an epoch of tremendous stabilities. Her son, already elderly, had followed as the selvedge follows the piece, he had passed and left the new age stripped bare. In nearly every department of economic and social life now there was upheaval116, and it was an upheaval very different in character from the radicalism117 and liberalism of the Victorian days. There were not only doubt and denial, but now there were also impatience118 and unreason. People argued less and acted quicker. There was a pride in rebellion for its own sake, an indiscipline and disposition119 to sporadic120 violence that made it extremely hard to negotiate any reconciliations121 or compromises. Behind every extremist it seemed stood a further extremist prepared to go one better....
The bishop had spent most of the morning with one of the big employers, a tall dark man, lean and nervous, and obviously tired and worried by the struggle. He did not conceal122 his opinion that the church was meddling123 with matters quite outside its sphere. Never had it been conveyed to the bishop before how remote a rich and established Englishman could consider the church from reality.
“You've got no hold on them,” he said. “It isn't your sphere.”
And again: “They'll listen to you—if you speak well. But they don't believe you know anything about it, and they don't trust your good intentions. They won't mind a bit what you say unless you drop something they can use against us.”
The bishop tried a few phrases. He thought there might be something in co-operation, in profit-sharing, in some more permanent relationship between the business and the employee.
“There isn't,” said the employer compactly. “It's just the malice124 of being inferior against the man in control. It's just the spirit of insubordination and boredom125 with duty. This trouble's as old as the Devil.”
“But that is exactly the business of the church,” said the bishop brightly, “to reconcile men to their duty.”
“By chanting the Athanasian creed at 'em, I suppose,” said the big employer, betraying the sneer126 he had been hiding hitherto.
“This thing is a fight,” said the big employer, carrying on before the bishop could reply. “Religion had better get out of the streets until this thing is over. The men won't listen to reason. They don't mean to. They're bit by Syndicalism. They're setting out, I tell you, to be unreasonable127 and impossible. It isn't an argument; it's a fight. They don't want to make friends with the employer. They want to make an end to the employer. Whatever we give them they'll take and press us for more. Directly we make terms with the leaders the men go behind it.... It's a raid on the whole system. They don't mean to work the system—anyhow. I'm the capitalist, and the capitalist has to go. I'm to be bundled out of my works, and some—some “—he seemed to be rejecting unsuitable words—“confounded politician put in. Much good it would do them. But before that happens I'm going to fight. You would.”
The bishop walked to the window and stood staring at the brilliant spring bulbs in the big employer's garden, and at a long vista128 of newly-mown lawn under great shapely trees just budding into green.
“I can't admit,” he said, “that these troubles lie outside the sphere of the church.”
The employer came and stood beside him. He felt he was being a little hard on the bishop, but he could not see any way of making things easier.
“We've got to mend things or end things,” continued the big employer. “Nothing goes on for ever. Things can't last as they are going on now....”
“Of course just at present the church may do a confounded lot of harm. Some of you clerical gentlemen are rather too fond of talking socialism and even preaching socialism. Don't think I want to be overcritical. I admit there's no end of things to be said for a proper sort of socialism, Ruskin, and all that. We're all Socialists131 nowadays. Ideals—excellent. But—it gets misunderstood. It gives the men a sense of moral support. It makes them fancy that they are It. Encourages them to forget duties and set up preposterous133 claims. Class war and all that sort of thing. You gentlemen of the clergy134 don't quite realize that socialism may begin with Ruskin and end with Karl Marx. And that from the Class War to the Commune is just one step.”
(5)
From this conversation the bishop had made his way to the vicarage of Mogham Banks. The vicar of Mogham Banks was a sacerdotal socialist132 of the most advanced type, with the reputation of being closely in touch with the labour extremists. He was a man addicted135 to banners, prohibited ornaments136, special services at unusual hours, and processions in the streets. His taste in chasubles was loud, he gardened in a cassock and, it was said, he slept in his biretta; he certainly slept in a hair shirt, and he littered his church with flowers, candles, side altars, confessional boxes, requests for prayers for the departed, and the like. There had already been two Kensitite demonstrations137 at his services, and altogether he was a source of considerable anxiety to the bishop. The bishop did his best not to know too exactly what was going on at Mogham Banks. Sooner or later he felt he would be forced to do something—and the longer he could put that off the better. But the Rev. Morrice Deans had promised to get together three or four prominent labour leaders for tea and a frank talk, and the opportunity was one not to be missed. So the bishop, after a hasty and not too digestible lunch in the refreshment138 room at Pringle, was now in a fly that smelt139 of straw and suggested infectious hospital patients, on his way through the industry-scarred countryside to this second conversation.
The countryside had never seemed so scarred to him as it did that day.
It was probably the bright hard spring sunshine that emphasized the contrast between that dear England of hedges and homes and the south-west wind in which his imagination lived, and the crude presences of a mechanical age. Never before had the cuttings and heapings, the smashing down of trees, the obtrusion140 of corrugated141 iron and tar25, the belchings of smoke and the haste, seemed so harsh and disregardful of all the bishop's world. Across the fields a line of gaunt iron standards, abominably142 designed, carried an electric cable to some unknown end. The curve of the hill made them seem a little out of the straight, as if they hurried and bent143 forward furtively144.
“Where are they going?” asked the bishop, leaning forward to look out of the window of the fly, and then: “Where is it all going?”
And presently the road was under repair, and was being done at a great pace with a huge steam-roller, mechanically smashed granite145, and kettles of stinking146 stuff, asphalt or something of that sort, that looked and smelt like Milton's hell. Beyond, a gaunt hoarding147 advertised extensively the Princhester Music Hall, a mean beastly place that corrupted148 boys and girls; and also it clamoured of tyres and potted meats....
The afternoon's conference gave him no reassuring149 answer to his question, “Where is it all going?”
The afternoon's conference did no more than intensify150 the new and strange sense of alienation151 from the world that the morning's talk had evoked152.
The three labour extremists that Morrice Deans had assembled obviously liked the bishop and found him picturesque60, and were not above a certain snobbish153 gratification at the purple-trimmed company they were in, but it was clear that they regarded his intervention154 in the great dispute as if it were a feeble waving from the bank across the waters of a great river.
“There's an incurable misunderstanding between the modern employer and the modern employed,” the chief labour spokesman said, speaking in a broad accent that completely hid from him and the bishop and every one the fact that he was by far the best-read man of the party. “Disraeli called them the Two Nations, but that was long ago. Now it's a case of two species. Machinery157 has made them into different species. The employer lives away from his work-people, marries a wife foreign, out of a county family or suchlike, trains his children from their very birth in a different manner. Why, the growth curve is different for the two species. They haven't even a common speech between them. One looks east and the other looks west. How can you expect them to agree? Of course they won't agree. We've got to fight it out. They say we're their slaves for ever. Have you ever read Lady Bell's 'At the Works'? A well-intentioned woman, but she gives the whole thing away. We say, No! It's our sort and not your sort. We'll do without you. We'll get a little more education and then we'll do without you. We're pressing for all we can get, and when we've got that we'll take breath and press for more. We're the Morlocks. Coming up. It isn't our fault that we've differentiated158.”
“But you haven't understood the drift of Christianity,” said the bishop. “It's just to assert that men are One community and not two.”
“There's not much of that in the Creeds,” said a second labour leader who was a rationalist. “There's not much of that in the services of the church.”
The vicar spoke156 before his bishop, and indeed he had plenty of time to speak before his bishop. “Because you will not set yourselves to understand the symbolism of her ritual,” he said.
“If the church chooses to speak in riddles,” said the rationalist.
“Symbols,” said Morrice Deans, “need not be riddles,” and for a time the talk eddied159 about this minor160 issue and the chief labour spokesman and the bishop looked at one another. The vicar instanced and explained certain apparently161 insignificant162 observances, his antagonist47 was contemptuously polite to these explanations. “That's all very pratty,” he said....
The bishop wished that fine points of ceremonial might have been left out of the discussion.
Something much bigger than that was laying hold of his intelligence, the realization of a world extravagantly163 out of hand. The sky, the wind, the telegraph poles, had been jabbing in the harsh lesson of these men's voices, that the church, as people say, “wasn't in it.” And that at the same time the church held the one remedy for all this ugliness and contention164 in its teaching of the universal fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood165 of men. Only for some reason he hadn't the phrases and he hadn't the voice to assert this over their wrangling166 and their stiff resolution. He wanted to think the whole business out thoroughly167, for the moment he had nothing to say, and there was the labour leader opposite waiting smilingly to hear what he had to say so soon as the bout71 between the vicar and the rationalist was over.
(6)
That morning in the long galleries of the bishop's imagination a fresh painting had been added. It was a big wall painting rather in the manner of Puvis de Chavannes. And the central figure had been the bishop of Princhester himself. He had been standing155 upon the steps of the great door of the cathedral that looks upon the marketplace where the tram-lines meet, and he had been dressed very magnificently and rather after the older use. He had been wearing a tunicle and dalmatic under a chasuble, a pectoral cross, purple gloves, sandals and buskins, a mitre and his presentation ring. In his hand he had borne his pastoral staff. And the clustering pillars and arches of the great doorway168 were painted with a loving flat particularity that omitted nothing but the sooty tinge169 of the later discolourations.
On his right hand had stood a group of employers very richly dressed in the fashion of the fifteenth century, and on the left a rather more numerous group of less decorative170 artisans. With them their wives and children had been shown, all greatly impressed by the canonicals. Every one had been extremely respectful.
He had been reconciling the people and blessing171 them and calling them his “sheep” and his “little children.”
But all this was so different.
Neither party resembled sheep or little children in the least degree. .
The labour leader became impatient with the ritualistic controversy172; he set his tea-cup aside out of danger and leant across the corner of the table to the bishop and spoke in a sawing undertone. “You see,” he said, “the church does not talk our language. I doubt if it understands our language. I doubt if we understand clearly where we are ourselves. These things have to be fought out and hammered out. It's a big dusty dirty noisy job. It may be a bloody173 job before it's through. You can't suddenly call a halt in the middle of the scrap and have a sort of millennium174 just because you want it....
“Of course if the church had a plan,” he said, “if it had a proposal to make, if it had anything more than a few pious175 palliatives to suggest, that might be different. But has it?”
The bishop had a bankrupt feeling. On the spur of the moment he could say no more than: “It offers its mediation176.”
(7)
Full as he was with the preoccupation of these things and so a little slow and inattentive in his movements, the bishop had his usual luck at Pringle Junction and just missed the 7.27 for Princhester. He might perhaps have got it by running through the subway and pushing past people, but bishops must not run through subways and push past people. His mind swore at the mischance, even if his lips refrained.
He was hungry and, tired; he would not get to the palace now until long after nine; dinner would be over and Lady Ella would naturally suppose he had dined early with the Rev. Morrice Deans. Very probably there would be nothing ready for him at all.
He tried to think he was exercising self-control, but indeed all his sub-conscious self was busy in a manner that would not have disgraced Tertullian with the eternal welfare of those city fathers whose obstinacy had fixed178 the palace at Princhester. He walked up and down the platform, gripping his hands very tightly behind him, and maintaining a serene179 upcast countenance180 by a steadfast181 effort. It seemed a small matter to him that the placards of the local evening papers should proclaim “Lloyd George's Reconciliation Meeting at Wombash Broken up by Suffragettes.” For a year now he had observed a strict rule against buying the products of the local press, and he saw no reason for varying this protective regulation.
His mind was full of angry helplessness.
Was he to blame, was the church to blame, for its powerlessness in these social disputes? Could an abler man with a readier eloquence183 have done more?
He envied the cleverness of Cardinal184 Manning. Manning would have got right into the front of this affair. He would have accumulated credit for his church and himself....
But would he have done much?...
The bishop wandered along the platform to its end, and stood contemplating185 the convergent186 ways that gather together beyond the station and plunge188 into the hillside and the wilderness189 of sidings and trucks, signal-boxes, huts, coal-pits, electric standards, goods sheds, turntables, and engine-houses, that ends in a bluish bricked-up cliff against the hill. A train rushed with a roar and clatter190 into the throat of the great tunnel and was immediately silenced; its rear lights twinkled and vanished, and then out of that huge black throat came wisps of white steam and curled slowly upward like lazy snakes until they caught the slanting191 sunshine. For the first time the day betrayed a softness and touched this scene of black energy to gold. All late afternoons are beautiful, whatever the day has been—if only there is a gleam of sun. And now a kind of mechanical greatness took the place of mere black disorder192 in the bishop's perception of his see. It was harsh, it was vast and strong, it was no lamb he had to rule but a dragon. Would it ever be given to him to overcome his dragon, to lead it home, and bless it?
He stood at the very end of the platform, with his gaitered legs wide apart and his hands folded behind him, staring beyond all visible things.
Should he do something very bold and striking? Should he invite both men and masters to the cathedral, and preach tremendous sermons to them upon these living issues?
Short sermons, of course.
He had a vision of the great aisle194 strangely full and alive and astir. The organ notes still echoed in the fretted195 vaulting196, as the preacher made his way from the chancel to the pulpit. The congregation was tense with expectation, and for some reason his mind dwelt for a long time upon the figure of the preacher ascending197 the steps of the pulpit. Outside the day was dark and stormy, so that the stained-glass windows looked absolutely dead. For a little while the preacher prayed. Then in the attentive177 silence the tenor198 of the preacher would begin, a thin jet of sound, a ray of light in the darkness, speaking to all these men as they had never been spoken to before....
Surely so one might call a halt to all these harsh conflicts. So one might lay hands afresh upon these stubborn minds, one might win them round to look at Christ the Master and Servant....
That, he thought, would be a good phrase: “Christ the Master and Servant.”....
“Members of one Body,” that should be his text.... At last it was finished. The big congregation, which had kept so still, sighed and stirred. The task of reconciliation was as good as done. “And now to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost....”
Outside the day had become suddenly bright, the threatening storm had drifted away, and great shafts of coloured light from the pictured windows were smiting199 like arrows amidst his hearers....
This idea of a great sermon upon capital and labour did so powerfully grip the bishop's imagination that he came near to losing the 8.27 train also.
He discovered it when it was already in the station. He had to walk down the platform very quickly. He did not run, but his gaiters, he felt, twinkled more than a bishop's should.
(8)
Directly he met his wife he realized that he had to hear something important and unpleasant.
She stood waiting for him in the inner hall, looking very grave and still. The light fell upon her pale face and her dark hair and her long white silken dress, making her seem more delicate and unworldly than usual and making the bishop feel grimy and sordid200.
“I must have a wash,” he said, though before he had thought of nothing but food. “I have had nothing to eat since tea-time—and that was mostly talk.”
Lady Ella considered. “There are cold things.... You shall have a tray in the study. Not in the dining-room. Eleanor is there. I want to tell you something. But go upstairs first and wash your poor tired face.”
“Nothing serious, I hope?” he asked, struck by an unusual quality in her voice.
“I will tell you,” she evaded, and after a moment of mutual201 scrutiny202 he went past her upstairs.
Since they had come to Princhester Lady Ella had changed very markedly. She seemed to her husband to have gained in dignity; she was stiller and more restrained; a certain faint arrogance203, a touch of the “ruling class” manner had dwindled204 almost to the vanishing point. There had been a time when she had inclined to an authoritative205 hauteur206, when she had seemed likely to develop into one of those aggressive and interfering207 old ladies who play so overwhelming a part in British public affairs. She had been known to initiate208 adverse209 judgments210, to exercise the snub, to cut and humiliate211. Princhester had done much to purge212 her of such tendencies. Princhester had made her think abundantly, and had put a new and subtler quality into her beauty. It had taken away the least little disposition to rustle213 as she moved, and it had softened214 her voice.
Now, when presently she stood in the study, she showed a new circumspection215 in her treatment of her husband. She surveyed the tray before him.
“You ought not to drink that Burgundy,” she said. “I can see you are dog-tired. It was uncorked yesterday, and anyhow it is not very digestible. This cold meat is bad enough. You ought to have one of those quarter bottles of champagne216 you got for my last convalescence217. There's more than a dozen left over.”
The bishop felt that this was a pretty return of his own kindly thoughts “after many days,” and soon Dunk, his valet-butler, was pouring out the precious and refreshing218 glassful....
“And now, dear?” said the bishop, feeling already much better.
Lady Ella had come round to the marble fireplace. The mantel-piece was a handsome work by a Princhester artist in the Gill style—with contemplative ascetics219 as supporters.
“I am worried about Eleanor,” said Lady Ella.
“She is in the dining-room now,” she said, “having some dinner. She came in about a quarter past eight, half way through dinner.”
“Where had she been?” asked the bishop.
“My dear!”
“Her face—Grubby! And she had been crying.”
“But, my dear, what had happened to her? You don't mean—?”
Husband and wife stared at one another aghast. Neither of them said the horrid221 word that flamed between them.
“Merciful heaven!” said the bishop, and assumed an attitude of despair.
“I didn't know she knew any of them. But it seems it is the second Walshingham girl—Phoebe. It's impossible to trace a girl's thoughts and friends. She persuaded her to go.”
“But did she understand?”
“That's the serious thing,” said Lady Ella.
She seemed to consider whether he could bear the blow.
“She understands all sorts of things. She argues.... I am quite unable to argue with her.”
“About this vote business?”
“About all sorts of things. Things I didn't imagine she had heard of. I knew she had been reading books. But I never imagined that she could have understood....”
The bishop laid down his knife and fork.
Lady Ella tried to entertain this comforting thought. “It isn't like that,” she said at last. “She talks like a grown-up person. This—this escapade is just an accident. But things have gone further than that. She seems to think—that she is not being educated properly here, that she ought to go to a College. As if we were keeping things from her....”
The bishop reconsidered his plate.
“But what things?” he said.
“She says we get all round her,” said Lady Ella, and left the implications of that phrase to unfold.
(9)
For a time the bishop said very little.
Lady Ella had found it necessary to make her first announcement standing behind him upon the hearthrug, but now she sat upon the arm of the great armchair as close to him as possible, and spoke in a more familiar tone.
The thing, she said, had come to her as a complete surprise. Everything had seemed so safe. Eleanor had been thoughtful, it was true, but it had never occurred to her mother that she had really been thinking—about such things as she had been thinking about. She had ranged in the library, and displayed a disposition to read the weekly papers and the monthly reviews. But never a sign of discontent.
“But I don't understand,” said the bishop. “Why is she discontented? What is there that she wants different?”
“Exactly,” said Lady Ella.
“She has got this idea that life here is secluded222 in some way,” she expanded. “She used words like 'secluded' and 'artificial' and—what was it?—'cloistered.' And she said—”
Lady Ella paused with an effect of exact retrospection.
“'Out there,' she said, 'things are alive. Real things are happening.' It is almost as if she did not fully believe—”
Lady Ella paused again.
The bishop sat with his arm over the back of his chair, and his face downcast.
Lady Ella did not know. She could have thought a school like St. Aubyns would have been safe, but nowadays nothing was safe. It was clear the girls who went there talked as girls a generation ago did not talk. Their people at home encouraged them to talk and profess224 opinions about everything. It seemed that Phoebe Walshingham and Lady Kitty Kingdom were the leaders in these premature225 mental excursions. Phoebe aired religious doubts.
“But little Phoebe!” said the bishop.
“Kitty,” said Lady Ella, “has written a novel.”
“Already!”
“With elopements in it—and all sorts of things. She's had it typed. You'd think Mary Crosshampton would know better than to let her daughter go flourishing the family imagination about in that way.”
“Eleanor told you?”
“By way of showing that they think of—things in general.”
The bishop reflected. “She wants to go to College.”
“They want to go in a set.”
“I wonder if college can be much worse than school.... She's eighteen—? But I will talk to her....”
(10)
All our children are changelings. They are perpetually fresh strangers. Every day they vanish and a new person masquerades as yesterday's child until some unexpected development betrays the cheat.
The bishop had still to learn this perennial226 newness of the young. He learnt it in half an hour at the end of a fatiguing227 day.
He went into the dining-room. He went in as carelessly as possible and smoking a cigarette. He had an honourable228 dread229 of being portentous230 in his family; almost ostentatiously he laid the bishop aside. Eleanor had finished her meal, and was sitting in the arm-chair by the fire with one hand holding her sprained wrist.
“Well,” he said, and strolled to the hearthrug. He had had an odd idea that he would find her still dirty, torn, and tearful, as her mother had described her, a little girl in a scrape. But she had changed into her best white evening frock and put up her hair, and became in the firelight more of a lady, a very young lady but still a lady, than she had ever been to him before. She was dark like her mother, but not of the same willowy type; she had more of her father's sturdy build, and she had developed her shoulders at hockey and tennis. The firelight brought out the gracious reposeful231 lines of a body that ripened232 in adolescence. And though there was a vibration233 of resolution in her voice she spoke like one who is under her own control.
“Mother has told you that I have disgraced myself,” she began.
“No,” said the bishop, weighing it. “No. But you seem to have been indiscreet, little Norah.”
“I got excited,” she said. “They began turning out the other women—roughly. I was indignant.”
“You didn't go to interrupt?” he asked.
She considered. “No,” she said. “But I went.”
He liked her disposition to get it right. “On that side,” he assisted.
“It isn't the same thing as really meaning, Daddy,” she said.
“And then things happened?”
“Yes,” she said to the fire.
A pause followed. If they had been in a law-court, her barrister would have said, “That is my case, my lord.” The bishop prepared to open the next stage in the proceedings234.
“I think, Norah, you shouldn't have been there at all,” he said.
“Mother says that.”
“A man in my position is apt to be judged by his family. You commit more than yourself when you commit an indiscretion. Apart from that, it wasn't the place for a girl to be at. You are not a child now. We give you freedom—more freedom than most girls get—because we think you will use it wisely. You knew—enough to know that there was likely to be trouble.”
The girl looked into the fire and spoke very carefully. “I don't think that I oughtn't to know the things that are going on.”
The bishop studied her face for an instant. It struck him that they had reached something very fundamental as between parent and child. His modernity showed itself in the temperance of his reply.
“Don't you think, my dear, that on the whole your mother and I, who have lived longer and know more, are more likely to know when it is best that you should begin to know—this or that?”
The girl knitted her brows and seemed to be reading her answer out of the depths of the coals. She was on the verge187 of speaking, altered her mind and tried a different beginning.
“I think that every one must do their thinking—his thinking—for—oneself,” she said awkwardly.
“You mean you can't trust—?”
“It isn't trusting. But one knows best for oneself when one is hungry.”
“And you find yourself hungry?”
“I want to find out for myself what all this trouble about votes and things means.”
“And we starve you—intellectually?”
“You know I don't think that. But you are busy....”
“Aren't you being perhaps a little impatient, Eleanor? After all—you are barely eighteen.... We have given you all sorts of liberties.”
Her silence admitted it. “But still,” she said after a long pause, “there are other girls, younger than I am, in these things. They talk about—oh, all sorts of things. Freely....”
“You've been awfully235 good to me,” she said irrelevantly236. “And of course this meeting was all pure accident.”
Father and daughter remained silent for awhile, seeking a better grip.
“What exactly do you want, Eleanor?” he asked.
She looked up at him. “Generally?” she asked.
“Your mother has the impression that you are discontented.”
“Discontented is a horrid word.”
“Well—unsatisfied.”
She remained still for a time. She felt the moment had come to make her demand.
“I would like to go to Newnham or Somerville—and work. I feel—so horribly ignorant. Of all sorts of things. If I were a son I should go—”
“Ye—es,” said the bishop and reflected.
He had gone rather far in the direction of the Woman Suffrage182 people; he had advocated equality of standard in all sorts of matters, and the memory of these utterances237 hampered238 him.
“You could read here,” he tried.
“If I were a son, you wouldn't say that.”
His reply was vague. “But in this home,” he said, “we have a certain atmosphere.”
Her hesitation240 marked the full gravity of her reply. “It's just that,” she said. “One feels—” She considered it further. “As if we were living in a kind of magic world—not really real. Out there—” she glanced over her shoulder at the drawn241 blind that hid the night. “One meets with different sorts of minds and different—atmospheres. All this is very beautiful. I've had the most wonderful home. But there's a sort of feeling as though it couldn't really go on, as though all these strikes and doubts and questionings—”
She stopped short at questionings, for the thing was said.
“The church of Christ, little Norah, is built upon a rock.”
She made no answer. She moved her head very slightly so that he could not see her face, and remained sitting rather stiffly and awkwardly with her eyes upon the fire.
Her silence was the third and greatest blow the bishop received that day....
It seemed very long indeed before either of them spoke. At last he said: “We must talk about these things again, Norah, when we are less tired and have more time.... You have been reading books.... When Caxton set up his printing-press he thrust a new power between church and disciple243 and father and child.... And I am tired. We must talk it over a little later.”
The girl stood up. She took her father's hands. “Dear, dear Daddy,” she said, “I am so sorry to be a bother. I am so sorry I went to that meeting.... You look tired out.”
“We must talk—properly,” said the bishop, patting one hand, then discovering from her wincing244 face that it was the sprained one. “Your poor wrist,” he said.
“It's so hard to talk, but I want to talk to you, Daddy. It isn't that I have hidden things....”
She kissed him, and the bishop had the odd fancy that she kissed him as though she was sorry for him....
It occurred to him that really there could be no time like the present for discussing these “questionings” of hers, and then his fatigue and shyness had the better of him again.
(11)
The papers got hold of Eleanor's share in the suffragette disturbance6. The White Blackbird said things about her.
It did not attack her. It did worse. It admired her ...impudently245.
It spoke of her once as “Norah,” and once as “the Scrope Flapper.”
Its headline proclaimed: “Plucky Flappers Hold Up L. G.”
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收听单词发音
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1
bishop
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| n.主教，（国际象棋）象 | |
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2
adolescence
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| n.青春期，青少年 | |
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afflicted
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| 使受痛苦，折磨( afflict的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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physically
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| adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律 | |
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prey
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| n.被掠食者，牺牲者，掠食；v.捕食，掠夺，折磨 | |
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disturbance
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| n.动乱，骚动；打扰，干扰；(身心)失调 | |
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disturbances
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| n.骚乱( disturbance的名词复数 )；打扰；困扰；障碍 | |
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8
survivor
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| n.生存者，残存者，幸存者 | |
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9
fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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hood
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| n.头巾，兜帽，覆盖；v.罩上，以头巾覆盖 | |
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infancy
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| n.婴儿期；幼年期；初期 | |
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12
bishops
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| （基督教某些教派管辖大教区的）主教( bishop的名词复数 )； （国际象棋的）象 | |
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13
discords
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| 不和（discord的复数形式） | |
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14
vocation
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| n.职业，行业 | |
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incipient
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| adj.起初的，发端的，初期的 | |
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16
hymns
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| n.赞美诗，圣歌，颂歌( hymn的名词复数 ) | |
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17
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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18
oratory
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| n.演讲术；词藻华丽的言辞 | |
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secular
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| n.牧师，凡人；adj.世俗的，现世的，不朽的 | |
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inquisitive
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| adj.求知欲强的，好奇的，好寻根究底的 | |
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21
contemplate
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| vt.盘算，计议；周密考虑；注视，凝视 | |
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22
zeal
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| n.热心，热情，热忱 | |
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23
missionary
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| adj.教会的，传教(士)的；n.传教士 | |
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rev
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| v.发动机旋转，加快速度 | |
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tar
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| n.柏油，焦油；vt.涂或浇柏油/焦油于 | |
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26
incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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28
discretion
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| n.谨慎；随意处理 | |
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29
extraordinarily
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| adv.格外地；极端地 | |
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30
creed
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| n.信条；信念，纲领 | |
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31
apprehension
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| n.理解，领悟；逮捕，拘捕；忧虑 | |
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32
atheist
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| n.无神论者 | |
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33
impelled
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| v.推动、推进或敦促某人做某事( impel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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34
obstinacy
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| n.顽固；（病痛等）难治 | |
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35
compulsory
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| n.强制的，必修的；规定的，义务的 | |
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vein
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| n.血管，静脉；叶脉，纹理；情绪；vt.使成脉络 | |
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affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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incumbency
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| n.职责，义务 | |
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faltered
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| （嗓音）颤抖( falter的过去式和过去分词 )； 支吾其词； 蹒跚； 摇晃 | |
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40
administrative
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| adj.行政的，管理的 | |
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41
reign
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| n.统治时期，统治，支配，盛行；v.占优势 | |
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42
majesty
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| n.雄伟，壮丽，庄严，威严；最高权威，王权 | |
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43
anticipation
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| n.预期，预料，期望 | |
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44
distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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45
disillusioned
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| a.不再抱幻想的，大失所望的，幻想破灭的 | |
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46
kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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antagonist
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| n.敌人，对抗者，对手 | |
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48
antagonistic
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| adj.敌对的 | |
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49
malicious
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| adj.有恶意的，心怀恶意的 | |
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50
savagely
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| adv. 野蛮地，残酷地 | |
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51
shafts
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| n.轴( shaft的名词复数 )；（箭、高尔夫球棒等的）杆；通风井；一阵（疼痛、害怕等） | |
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impeded
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| 阻碍，妨碍，阻止( impede的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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53
dour
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| adj.冷酷的，严厉的；（岩石）嶙峋的；顽强不屈 | |
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54
slanted
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| 有偏见的； 倾斜的 | |
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blistered
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| adj.水疮状的，泡状的v.（使）起水泡( blister的过去式和过去分词 )；（使表皮等）涨破，爆裂 | |
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56
cylinders
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| n.圆筒( cylinder的名词复数 )；圆柱；汽缸；（尤指用作容器的）圆筒状物 | |
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57
belching
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| n. 喷出，打嗝 动词belch的现在分词形式 | |
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58
minced
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| v.切碎( mince的过去式和过去分词 )；剁碎；绞碎；用绞肉机绞（食物，尤指肉） | |
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59
parvenu
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| n.暴发户，新贵 | |
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60
picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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61
ignoble
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| adj.不光彩的，卑鄙的；可耻的 | |
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strictly
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| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
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prevailing
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| adj.盛行的；占优势的；主要的 | |
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64
sarcastic
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| adj.讥讽的，讽刺的，嘲弄的 | |
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atmospheric
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| adj.大气的，空气的；大气层的；大气所引起的 | |
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66
realization
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| n.实现；认识到，深刻了解 | |
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67
racing
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| n.竞赛，赛马；adj.竞赛用的，赛马用的 | |
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cherub
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| n.小天使，胖娃娃 | |
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69
slag
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| n.熔渣，铁屑，矿渣；v.使变成熔渣，变熔渣 | |
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70
lark
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| n.云雀，百灵鸟；n.嬉戏，玩笑；vi.嬉戏 | |
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71
bout
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| n.侵袭，发作；一次(阵，回)；拳击等比赛 | |
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72
evaded
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| 逃避( evade的过去式和过去分词 )； 避开； 回避； 想不出 | |
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73
patriotism
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| n.爱国精神，爱国心，爱国主义 | |
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74
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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unaware
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| a.不知道的，未意识到的 | |
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76
junction
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| n.连接，接合；交叉点，接合处，枢纽站 | |
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77
liking
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| n.爱好；嗜好；喜欢 | |
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78
inflexible
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| adj.不可改变的，不受影响的，不屈服的 | |
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79
obtrude
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| v.闯入；侵入；打扰 | |
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80
broach
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| v.开瓶，提出(题目) | |
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81
glorify
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| vt.颂扬，赞美，使增光，美化 | |
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82
oversights
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| n.疏忽( oversight的名词复数 )；忽略；失察；负责 | |
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83
hospitable
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| adj.好客的；宽容的；有利的，适宜的 | |
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84
endorsements
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| n.背书( endorsement的名词复数 )；（驾驶执照上的）违章记录；（公开的）赞同；（通常为名人在广告中对某一产品的）宣传 | |
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85
illustrated
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| adj. 有插图的，列举的 动词illustrate的过去式和过去分词 | |
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86
monopolized
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| v.垄断( monopolize的过去式和过去分词 )；独占；专卖；专营 | |
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87
acquiesce
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| vi.默许，顺从，同意 | |
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88
abominable
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| adj.可厌的，令人憎恶的 | |
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89
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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90
slate
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| n.板岩，石板，石片，石板色，候选人名单；adj.暗蓝灰色的，含板岩的；vt.用石板覆盖，痛打，提名，预订 | |
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91
sitting-room
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| n.（BrE）客厅，起居室 | |
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92
ordination
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| n.授任圣职 | |
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93
turrets
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| （六角）转台( turret的名词复数 )； （战舰和坦克等上的）转动炮塔； （摄影机等上的）镜头转台； （旧时攻城用的）塔车 | |
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94
gilt
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| adj.镀金的；n.金边证券 | |
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95
crook
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| v.使弯曲；n.小偷，骗子，贼；弯曲(处) | |
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96
mace
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| n.狼牙棒，豆蔻干皮 | |
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97
distressed
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| 痛苦的 | |
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98
justifying
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| 证明…有理( justify的现在分词 )； 为…辩护； 对…作出解释； 为…辩解（或辩护） | |
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99
tenant
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| n.承租人；房客；佃户；v.租借，租用 | |
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100
controversies
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| 争论 | |
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101
fatigue
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| n.疲劳，劳累 | |
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102
mediator
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| n.调解人，中介人 | |
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103
reconciliation
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| n.和解，和谐，一致 | |
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104
influential
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| adj.有影响的，有权势的 | |
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105
incurable
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| adj.不能医治的，不能矫正的，无救的；n.不治的病人，无救的人 | |
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106
perversity
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| n.任性；刚愎自用 | |
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107
militancy
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| n.warlike behavior or tendency | |
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108
barometric
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| 大气压力 | |
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109
thwart
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| v.阻挠，妨碍，反对；adj.横(断的) | |
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110
trespasser
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| n.侵犯者；违反者 | |
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111
despondent
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| adj.失望的，沮丧的，泄气的 | |
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112
meditation
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| n.熟虑，（尤指宗教的）默想，沉思，（pl.）冥想录 | |
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113
uncommon
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| adj.罕见的，非凡的，不平常的 | |
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114
dignified
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| a.可敬的，高贵的 | |
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115
epoch
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| n.(新)时代；历元 | |
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116
upheaval
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| n.胀起，(地壳)的隆起；剧变，动乱 | |
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117
radicalism
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| n. 急进主义, 根本的改革主义 | |
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118
impatience
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| n.不耐烦，急躁 | |
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119
disposition
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| n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署 | |
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120
sporadic
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| adj.偶尔发生的 [反]regular；分散的 | |
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121
reconciliations
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| 和解( reconciliation的名词复数 )； 一致； 勉强接受； （争吵等的）止息 | |
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122
conceal
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽 | |
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123
meddling
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| v.干涉，干预（他人事务）( meddle的现在分词 ) | |
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124
malice
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| n.恶意，怨恨，蓄意；[律]预谋 | |
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125
boredom
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| n.厌烦，厌倦，乏味，无聊 | |
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126
sneer
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| v.轻蔑；嘲笑；n.嘲笑，讥讽的言语 | |
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127
unreasonable
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| adj.不讲道理的，不合情理的，过度的 | |
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128
vista
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| n.远景，深景，展望，回想 | |
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129
scrap
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| n.碎片；废料；v.废弃，报废 | |
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130
abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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131
socialists
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| 社会主义者( socialist的名词复数 ) | |
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132
socialist
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| n.社会主义者；adj.社会主义的 | |
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133
preposterous
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| adj.荒谬的，可笑的 | |
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134
clergy
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| n.[总称]牧师，神职人员 | |
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135
addicted
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| adj.沉溺于....的，对...上瘾的 | |
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136
ornaments
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| n.装饰( ornament的名词复数 )；点缀；装饰品；首饰v.装饰，点缀，美化( ornament的第三人称单数 ) | |
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137
demonstrations
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| 证明( demonstration的名词复数 )； 表明； 表达； 游行示威 | |
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138
refreshment
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| n.恢复，精神爽快，提神之事物；（复数）refreshments:点心，茶点 | |
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139
smelt
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| v.熔解，熔炼；n.银白鱼，胡瓜鱼 | |
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140
obtrusion
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| n.强制，莽撞 | |
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141
corrugated
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| adj.波纹的；缩成皱纹的；波纹面的；波纹状的v.（使某物）起皱褶(corrugate的过去式和过去分词) | |
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142
abominably
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| adv. 可恶地，可恨地，恶劣地 | |
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143
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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144
furtively
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| adv. 偷偷地, 暗中地 | |
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145
granite
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| adj.花岗岩，花岗石 | |
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146
stinking
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| 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 | |
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147
hoarding
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| n.贮藏；积蓄；临时围墙；囤积v.积蓄并储藏（某物）( hoard的现在分词 ) | |
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148
corrupted
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| （使）败坏( corrupt的过去式和过去分词 )； （使）腐化； 引起（计算机文件等的）错误； 破坏 | |
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149
reassuring
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| a.使人消除恐惧和疑虑的，使人放心的 | |
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150
intensify
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| vt.加强；变强；加剧 | |
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151
alienation
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| n.疏远；离间；异化 | |
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152
evoked
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| [医]诱发的 | |
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153
snobbish
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| adj.势利的，谄上欺下的 | |
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154
intervention
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| n.介入，干涉，干预 | |
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155
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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156
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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157
machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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158
differentiated
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| 区分，区别，辨别( differentiate的过去式和过去分词 )； 区别对待； 表明…间的差别，构成…间差别的特征 | |
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159
eddied
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| 起漩涡，旋转( eddy的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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160
minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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161
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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162
insignificant
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| adj.无关紧要的，可忽略的，无意义的 | |
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163
extravagantly
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| adv.挥霍无度地 | |
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164
contention
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| n.争论，争辩，论战；论点，主张 | |
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165
brotherhood
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| n.兄弟般的关系，手中情谊 | |
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166
wrangling
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| v.争吵，争论，口角( wrangle的现在分词 ) | |
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167
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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168
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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169
tinge
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| vt.(较淡)着色于，染色；使带有…气息；n.淡淡色彩，些微的气息 | |
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170
decorative
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| adj.装饰的，可作装饰的 | |
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171
blessing
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| n.祈神赐福；祷告；祝福，祝愿 | |
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172
controversy
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| n.争论，辩论，争吵 | |
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173
bloody
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| adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染 | |
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174
millennium
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| n.一千年，千禧年；太平盛世 | |
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175
pious
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| adj.虔诚的；道貌岸然的 | |
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176
mediation
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| n.调解 | |
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177
attentive
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| adj.注意的，专心的；关心(别人)的，殷勤的 | |
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178
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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179
serene
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| adj. 安详的，宁静的，平静的 | |
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180
countenance
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| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
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181
steadfast
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| adj.固定的，不变的，不动摇的；忠实的；坚贞不移的 | |
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182
suffrage
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| n.投票，选举权，参政权 | |
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183
eloquence
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| n.雄辩；口才，修辞 | |
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184
cardinal
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| n.(天主教的)红衣主教；adj.首要的，基本的 | |
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185
contemplating
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| 深思，细想，仔细考虑( contemplate的现在分词 )； 注视，凝视； 考虑接受（发生某事的可能性）； 深思熟虑，沉思，苦思冥想 | |
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186
convergent
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| adj.会聚的 | |
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187
verge
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| n.边，边缘；v.接近，濒临 | |
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188
plunge
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| v.跳入，(使)投入，(使)陷入；猛冲 | |
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189
wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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190
clatter
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| v./n.(使)发出连续而清脆的撞击声 | |
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191
slanting
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| 倾斜的，歪斜的 | |
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192
disorder
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| n.紊乱，混乱；骚动，骚乱；疾病，失调 | |
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193
vigour
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| （=vigor）n.智力，体力，精力 | |
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194
aisle
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| n.（教堂、教室、戏院等里的）过道，通道 | |
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195
fretted
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| 焦躁的，附有弦马的，腐蚀的 | |
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196
vaulting
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| n.（天花板或屋顶的）拱形结构 | |
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197
ascending
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| adj.上升的，向上的 | |
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198
tenor
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| n.男高音（歌手），次中音（乐器），要旨，大意 | |
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199
smiting
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| v.猛打，重击，打击( smite的现在分词 ) | |
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200
sordid
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| adj.肮脏的，不干净的，卑鄙的，暗淡的 | |
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201
mutual
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| adj.相互的，彼此的；共同的，共有的 | |
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202
scrutiny
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| n.详细检查，仔细观察 | |
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203
arrogance
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| n.傲慢，自大 | |
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204
dwindled
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| v.逐渐变少或变小( dwindle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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205
authoritative
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| adj.有权威的，可相信的；命令式的；官方的 | |
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206
hauteur
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| n.傲慢 | |
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207
interfering
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| adj. 妨碍的 动词interfere的现在分词 | |
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208
initiate
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| vt.开始，创始，发动；启蒙，使入门；引入 | |
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adverse
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| adj.不利的；有害的；敌对的，不友好的 | |
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judgments
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| 判断( judgment的名词复数 )； 鉴定； 评价； 审判 | |
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211
humiliate
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| v.使羞辱，使丢脸[同]disgrace | |
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212
purge
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| n.整肃，清除，泻药，净化；vt.净化，清除，摆脱；vi.清除，通便，腹泻，变得清洁 | |
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213
rustle
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| v.沙沙作响；偷盗(牛、马等)；n.沙沙声声 | |
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214
softened
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| （使）变软( soften的过去式和过去分词 )； 缓解打击； 缓和； 安慰 | |
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215
circumspection
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| n.细心，慎重 | |
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216
champagne
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| n.香槟酒；微黄色 | |
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217
convalescence
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| n.病后康复期 | |
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218
refreshing
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| adj.使精神振作的，使人清爽的，使人喜欢的 | |
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219
ascetics
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| n.苦行者，禁欲者，禁欲主义者( ascetic的名词复数 ) | |
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220
sprained
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| v.&n. 扭伤 | |
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221
horrid
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| adj.可怕的；令人惊恐的；恐怖的；极讨厌的 | |
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222
secluded
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| adj.与世隔绝的；隐退的；偏僻的v.使隔开，使隐退( seclude的过去式和过去分词) | |
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223
ferment
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| vt.使发酵；n./vt.（使）激动，（使）动乱 | |
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224
profess
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| v.声称，冒称，以...为业，正式接受入教，表明信仰 | |
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225
premature
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| adj.比预期时间早的；不成熟的，仓促的 | |
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226
perennial
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| adj.终年的；长久的 | |
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227
fatiguing
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| a.使人劳累的 | |
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228
honourable
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| adj.可敬的；荣誉的，光荣的 | |
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229
dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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230
portentous
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| adj.不祥的，可怕的，装腔作势的 | |
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231
reposeful
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| adj.平稳的，沉着的 | |
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232
ripened
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| v.成熟，使熟( ripen的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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233
vibration
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| n.颤动，振动；摆动 | |
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234
proceedings
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| n.进程，过程，议程；诉讼(程序)；公报 | |
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235
awfully
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| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
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236
irrelevantly
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| adv.不恰当地，不合适地；不相关地 | |
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237
utterances
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| n.发声( utterance的名词复数 )；说话方式；语调；言论 | |
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238
hampered
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| 妨碍，束缚，限制( hamper的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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239
hardier
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| 能吃苦耐劳的，坚强的( hardy的比较级 )； （植物等）耐寒的 | |
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240
hesitation
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| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
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241
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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242
gallantly
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| adv. 漂亮地，勇敢地，献殷勤地 | |
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243
disciple
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| n.信徒，门徒，追随者 | |
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244
wincing
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| 赶紧避开，畏缩( wince的现在分词 ) | |
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245
impudently
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