“Then you're not sorry you came, Staniford?” asked Dunham, putting his hand on his friend's knee. “He characteristically assumed the responsibility, although the voyage by sailing-vessel rather than steamer was their common whim1, and it had been Staniford's preference that decided4 them for Trieste rather than any nearer port.
“No, I'm not sorry,—if you call it come, already. I think a bit of Europe will be a very good thing for the present, or as long as I'm in this irresolute5 mood. If I understand it, Europe is the place for American irresolution6. When I've made up my mind, I'll come home again. I still think Colorado is the thing, though I haven't abandoned California altogether; it's a question of cattle-range and sheep-ranch.”
“You'll decide against both,” said Dunham.
“How would you like West Virginia? They cattle-range in West Virginia, too. They may sheep-ranch, too, for all I know,—no, that's in Old Virginia. The trouble is that the Virginias, otherwise irreproachable7, are not paying fields for such enterprises. They say that one is a sure thing in California, and the other is a sure thing in Colorado. They give you the figures.” Staniford lit another cigar.
“But why shouldn't you stay where you are, Staniford? You've money enough left, after all.”
“Yes, money enough for one. But there's something ignoble8 in living on a small stated income, unless you have some object in view besides living, and I haven't, you know. It's a duty I owe to the general frame of things to make more money.”
“If you turned your mind to any one thing, I'm sure you'd succeed where you are,” Dunham urged.
“That's just the trouble,” retorted his friend. “I can't turn my mind to any one thing,—I'm too universally gifted. I paint a little, I model a little, I play a very little indeed; I can write a book notice. The ladies praise my art, and the editors keep my literature a long time before they print it. This doesn't seem the highest aim of being. I have the noble earth-hunger; I must get upon the land. That's why I've got upon the water.” Staniford laughed again, and pulled comfortably at his cigar. “Now, you,” he added, after a pause, in which Dunham did not reply, “you have not had losses; you still have everything comfortable about you. Du hast Alles was Menschen begehr, even to the schönsten Augen of the divine Miss Hibbard.”
“Yes, Staniford, that's it. I hate your going out there all alone. Now, if you were taking some nice girl with you!” Dunham said, with a lover's fond desire that his friend should be in love, too.
“To those wilds? To a redwood shanty9 in California, or a turf hovel in Colorado? What nice girl would go? 'I will take some savage10 woman, she shall rear my dusky race.'”
“I don't like to have you take any risks of degenerating,” began Dunham.
“With what you know to be my natural tendencies? Your prophetic eye prefigures my pantaloons in the tops of my boots. Well, there is time yet to turn back from the brutality11 of a patriarchal life. You must allow that I've taken the longest way round in going West. In Italy there are many chances; and besides, you know, I like to talk.”
It seemed to be an old subject between them, and they discussed it languidly, like some abstract topic rather than a reality.
“If you only had some tie to bind12 you to the East, I should feel pretty safe about you,” said Dunham, presently.
“Well, I may form some tie in Italy. Art may fall in love with me, there. How would you like to have me settle in Florence, and set up a studio instead of a ranch,—choose between sculpture and painting, instead of cattle and sheep? After all, it does grind me to have lost that money! If I had only been swindled out of it, I shouldn't have cared; but when you go and make a bad thing of it yourself, with your eyes open, there's a reluctance15 to place the responsibility where it belongs that doesn't occur in the other case. Dunham, do you think it altogether ridiculous that I should feel there was something sacred in the money? When I remember how hard my poor old father worked to get it together, it seems wicked that I should have stupidly wasted it on the venture I did. I want to get it back; I want to make money. And so I'm going out to Italy with you, to waste more. I don't respect myself as I should if I were on a Pullman palace car, speeding westward16. I'll own I like this better.”
“Oh, it's all right, Staniford,” said his friend. “The voyage will do you good, and you'll have time to think everything over, and start fairer when you get back.”
“That girl,” observed Staniford, with characteristic abruptness17, “is a type that is commoner than we imagine in New England. We fair people fancy we are the only genuine Yankees. I guess that's a mistake. There must have been a good many dark Puritans. In fact, we always think of Puritans as dark, don't we?”
“Perhaps,” said Staniford. “At any rate, I'm so tired of the blonde type in fiction that I rather like the other thing in life. Every novelist runs a blonde heroine; I wonder why. This girl has the clear Southern pallor; she's of the olive hue19; and her eyes are black as sloes,—not that I know what sloes are. Did she remind you of anything in particular?”
“Exactly. I wish the picture were more of a picture; but I don't know that it matters. She's more of a picture.”
“'Pretty as a bird,' the captain said.”
“Bird isn't bad. But the bird is in her manner. There's something tranquilly21 alert in her manner that's like a bird; like a bird that lingers on its perch22, looking at you over its shoulder, if you come up behind. That trick of the heavily lifted, half lifted eyelids,—I wonder if it's a trick. The long lashes23 can't be; she can't make them curl up at the edges. Blood,—Lurella Blood. And she wants to know.” Staniford's voice fell thoughtful.
“She's more slender than Faed's Evangeline. Faed painted rather too fat a sufferer on that tombstone. Lurella Blood has a very pretty figure. Lurella. Why Lurella?”
“Oh, come, Staniford!” cried Dunham. “It isn't fair to call the girl by that jingle24 without some ground for it.”
“I'm sure her name's Lurella, for she wanted to know. Besides, there's as much sense in it as there is in any name. It sounds very well. Lurella. It is mere25 prejudice that condemns26 the novel collocation of syllables27.”
“You want to know, too, do you?” mocked his friend. “I'll tell you what: processions of young men so long that they are an hour getting by a given point. That's what's passing in every girl's mind—when she's thinking. It's perfectly29 right. Processsions of young girls are similarly passing in our stately and spacious30 intellects. It's the chief business of the youth of one sex to think of the youth of the other sex.”
“Oh, yes, I know,” assented Dunham; “and I believe in it, too—”
“Of course you do, you wicked wretch31, you abandoned Lovelace, you bruiser of ladies' hearts! You hope the procession is composed entirely32 of yourself. What would the divine Hibbard say to your goings-on?”
“Oh, don't, Staniford! It isn't fair,” pleaded Dunham, with the flattered laugh which the best of men give when falsely attainted of gallantry. “I was wondering whether she was feeling homesick, or strange, or—”
“I will go below and ask her,” said Staniford. “I know she will tell me the exact truth. They always do. Or if you will take a guess of mine instead of her word for it, I will hazard the surmise33 that she is not at all homesick. What has a pretty young girl to regret in such a life as she has left? It's the most arid34 and joyless existence under the sun. She has never known anything like society. In the country with us, the social side must always have been somewhat paralyzed, but there are monumental evidences of pleasures in other days that are quite extinct now. You see big dusty ball-rooms in the old taverns35: ball-rooms that have had no dancing in them for half a century, and where they give you a bed sometimes. There used to be academies, too, in the hill towns, where they furnished a rude but serviceable article of real learning, and where the local octogenarian remembers seeing something famous in the way of theatricals36 on examination-day; but neither his children nor his grandchildren have seen the like. There's a decay of the religious sentiment, and the church is no longer a social centre, with merry meetings among the tombstones between the morning and the afternoon service. Superficial humanitarianism37 of one kind or another has killed the good old orthodoxy, as the railroads have killed the turnpikes and the country taverns; and the common schools have killed the academies. Why, I don't suppose this girl ever saw anything livelier than a township cattle show, or a Sunday-school picnic, in her life. They don't pay visits in the country except at rare intervals38, and their evening parties, when they have any, are something to strike you dead with pity. They used to clear away the corn-husks and pumpkins39 on the barn floor, and dance by the light of tin lanterns. At least, that's the traditional thing. The actual thing is sitting around four sides of the room, giggling40, whispering, looking at photograph albums, and coaxing41 somebody to play on the piano. The banquet is passed in the form of apples and water. I have assisted at some rural festivals where the apples were omitted. Upon the whole, I wonder our country people don't all go mad. They do go mad, a great many of them, and manage to get a little glimpse of society in the insane asylums42.” Staniford ended his tirade43 with a laugh, in which he vented44 his humorous sense and his fundamental pity of the conditions he had caricatured.
“But how,” demanded Dunham, breaking rebelliously45 from the silence in which he had listened, “do you account for her good manner?”
“She probably was born with a genius for it. Some people are born with a genius for one thing, and some with a genius for another. I, for example, am an artistic46 genius, forced to be an amateur by the delusive47 possession of early wealth, and now burning with a creative instinct in the direction of the sheep or cattle business; you have the gift of universal optimism; Lurella Blood has the genius of good society. Give that girl a winter among nice people in Boston, and you would never know that she was not born on Beacon48 Hill.”
“Oh, I doubt that,” said Dunham.
“But you implied just now that she had no sensibility,” pursued Dunham.
“So I did!” cried Staniford, cheerfully. “Social genius and sensibility are two very different things; the cynic might contend they were incompatible50, but I won't insist so far. I dare say she may regret the natal51 spot; most of us have a dumb, brutish attachment52 to the cari luoghi; but if she knows anything, she hates its surroundings, and must be glad to get out into the world. I should like mightily53 to know how the world strikes her, as far as she's gone. But I doubt if she's one to betray her own counsel in any way. She looks deep, Lurella does.” Staniford laughed again at the pain which his insistence54 upon the name brought into Dunham's face.
点击
收听单词发音
收听单词发音 |
1
whim
|
|
| n.一时的兴致，突然的念头；奇想，幻想 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
lurking
|
|
| 潜在 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
sketch
|
|
| n.草图；梗概；素描；v.素描；概述 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
decided
|
|
| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
irresolute
|
|
| adj.无决断的，优柔寡断的，踌躇不定的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
irresolution
|
|
| n.不决断，优柔寡断，犹豫不定 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
irreproachable
|
|
| adj.不可指责的，无过失的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
ignoble
|
|
| adj.不光彩的，卑鄙的；可耻的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
shanty
|
|
| n.小屋，棚屋；船工号子 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
savage
|
|
| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
brutality
|
|
| n.野蛮的行为，残忍，野蛮 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
bind
|
|
| vt.捆，包扎；装订；约束；使凝固；vi.变硬 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
demurely
|
|
| adv.装成端庄地，认真地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
sincerity
|
|
| n.真诚，诚意；真实 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
reluctance
|
|
| n.厌恶，讨厌，勉强，不情愿 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
westward
|
|
| n.西方，西部；adj.西方的，向西的；adv.向西 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
abruptness
|
|
| n. 突然，唐突 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
assented
|
|
| 同意，赞成( assent的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
hue
|
|
| n.色度；色调；样子 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
warehouse
|
|
| n.仓库；vt.存入仓库 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
tranquilly
|
|
| adv. 宁静地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
perch
|
|
| n.栖木，高位，杆；v.栖息，就位，位于 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
lashes
|
|
| n.鞭挞( lash的名词复数 )；鞭子；突然猛烈的一击；急速挥动v.鞭打( lash的第三人称单数 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
jingle
|
|
| n.叮当声，韵律简单的诗句；v.使叮当作响，叮当响，押韵 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
25
mere
|
|
| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
26
condemns
|
|
| v.（通常因道义上的原因而）谴责( condemn的第三人称单数 )；宣判；宣布…不能使用；迫使…陷于不幸的境地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
27
syllables
|
|
| n.音节( syllable的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
28
mused
|
|
| v.沉思，冥想( muse的过去式和过去分词 )；沉思自语说（某事） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
29
perfectly
|
|
| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
30
spacious
|
|
| adj.广阔的，宽敞的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
31
wretch
|
|
| n.可怜的人，不幸的人；卑鄙的人 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
32
entirely
|
|
| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
33
surmise
|
|
| v./n.猜想，推测 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
34
arid
|
|
| adj.干旱的；(土地)贫瘠的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
35
taverns
|
|
| n.小旅馆，客栈，酒馆( tavern的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
36
theatricals
|
|
| n.（业余性的）戏剧演出，舞台表演艺术；职业演员；戏剧的( theatrical的名词复数 )；剧场的；炫耀的；戏剧性的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
37
humanitarianism
|
|
| n.博爱主义；人道主义；基督凡人论 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
38
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： |
|
|
|
|
39
pumpkins
|
|
| n.南瓜( pumpkin的名词复数 )；南瓜的果肉，南瓜囊 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
40
giggling
|
|
| v.咯咯地笑( giggle的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
41
coaxing
|
|
| v.哄，用好话劝说( coax的现在分词 )；巧言骗取；哄劝，劝诱；“锻炼”效应 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
42
asylums
|
|
| n.避难所( asylum的名词复数 )；庇护；政治避难；精神病院 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
43
tirade
|
|
| n.冗长的攻击性演说 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
44
vented
|
|
| 表达，发泄（感情，尤指愤怒）( vent的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
45
rebelliously
|
|
| adv.造反地，难以控制地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
46
artistic
|
|
| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
47
delusive
|
|
| adj.欺骗的，妄想的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
48
beacon
|
|
| n.烽火，（警告用的）闪火灯，灯塔 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
49
pessimist
|
|
| n.悲观者；悲观主义者；厌世 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
50
incompatible
|
|
| adj.不相容的，不协调的，不相配的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
51
natal
|
|
| adj.出生的，先天的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
52
attachment
|
|
| n.附属物，附件；依恋；依附 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
53
mightily
|
|
| ad.强烈地；非常地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
54
insistence
|
|
| n.坚持；强调；坚决主张 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |