The afternoon was very hot, so hot that the breaking of the waves onthe shore sounded like the repeated sigh of some exhausted1 creature,and even on the terrace under an awning2 the bricks were hot,and the air danced perpetually over the short dry grass.
The red flowers in the stone basins were drooping3 with the heat,and the white blossoms which had been so smooth and thick only a fewweeks ago were now dry, and their edges were curled and yellow.
Only the stiff and hostile plants of the south, whose fleshy leavesseemed to be grown upon spines4, still remained standing5 uprightand defied the sun to beat them down. It was too hot to talk,and it was not easy to find any book that would withstand the powerof the sun. Many books had been tried and then let fall, and nowTerence was reading Milton aloud, because he said the words of Miltonhad substance and shape, so that it was not necessary to understandwhat he was saying; one could merely listen to his words; one couldalmost handle them.
There is a gentle nymph not far from hence,he read,That with moist curb6 sways the smooth Severn stream.
Sabrina is her name, a virgin7 pure;Whilom she was the daughter of Locrine,That had the sceptre from his father Brute8.
The words, in spite of what Terence had said, seemed to be ladenwith meaning, and perhaps it was for this reason that it was painfulto listen to them; they sounded strange; they meant different thingsfrom what they usually meant. Rachel at any rate could not keepher attention fixed9 upon them, but went off upon curious trains ofthought suggested by words such as "curb" and "Locrine" and "Brute,"which brought unpleasant sights before her eyes, independently oftheir meaning. Owing to the heat and the dancing air the gardentoo looked strange--the trees were either too near or too far,and her head almost certainly ached. She was not quite certain,and therefore she did not know, whether to tell Terence now,or to let him go on reading. She decided10 that she would wait untilhe came to the end of a stanza11, and if by that time she had turnedher head this way and that, and it ached in every position undoubtedly,she would say very calmly that her head ached.
Sabrina fair,Listen where thou art sittingUnder the glassy, cool, translucent12 wave,In twisted braids of lilies knittingThe loose train of thy amber13 dropping hair,Listen for dear honour's sake,Goddess of the silver lake,Listen and save!
But her head ached; it ached whichever way she turned it.
She sat up and said as she had determined14, "My head aches so thatI shall go indoors." He was half-way through the next verse,but he dropped the book instantly.
"Your head aches?" he repeated.
For a few moments they sat looking at one another in silence,holding each other's hands. During this time his sense of dismayand catastrophe15 were almost physically16 painful; all round him heseemed to hear the shiver of broken glass which, as it fell to earth,left him sitting in the open air. But at the end of two minutes,noticing that she was not sharing his dismay, but was only rathermore languid and heavy-eyed than usual, he recovered, fetched Helen,and asked her to tell him what they had better do, for Rachel hada headache.
Mrs. Ambrose was not discomposed, but advised that she should goto bed, and added that she must expect her head to ache if she sat upto all hours and went out in the heat, but a few hours in bed wouldcure it completely. Terence was unreasonably17 reassured18 by her words,as he had been unreasonably depressed19 the moment before. Helen's senseseemed to have much in common with the ruthless good sense of nature,which avenged20 rashness by a headache, and, like nature's good sense,might be depended upon.
Rachel went to bed; she lay in the dark, it seemed to her,for a very long time, but at length, waking from a transparentkind of sleep, she saw the windows white in front of her,and recollected21 that some time before she had gone to bed witha headache, and that Helen had said it would be gone when she woke.
She supposed, therefore, that she was now quite well again.
At the same time the wall of her room was painfully white,and curved slightly, instead of being straight and flat. Turning hereyes to the window, she was not reassured by what she saw there.
The movement of the blind as it filled with air and blew slowly out,drawing the cord with a little trailing sound along the floor, seemed toher terrifying, as if it were the movement of an animal in the room.
She shut her eyes, and the pulse in her head beat so stronglythat each thump22 seemed to tread upon a nerve, piercing her foreheadwith a little stab of pain. It might not be the same headache,but she certainly had a headache. She turned from side to side,in the hope that the coolness of the sheets would cure her, and thatwhen she next opened her eyes to look the room would be as usual.
After a considerable number of vain experiments, she resolved to putthe matter beyond a doubt. She got out of bed and stood upright,holding on to the brass23 ball at the end of the bedstead.
Ice-cold at first, it soon became as hot as the palm of her hand,and as the pains in her head and body and the instability of the floorproved that it would be far more intolerable to stand and walkthan to lie in bed, she got into bed again; but though the changewas refreshing24 at first, the discomfort25 of bed was soon as greatas the discomfort of standing up. She accepted the idea that shewould have to stay in bed all day long, and as she laid her headon the pillow, relinquished26 the happiness of the day.
When Helen came in an hour or two later, suddenly stopped hercheerful words, looked startled for a second and then unnaturally27 calm,the fact that she was ill was put beyond a doubt. It was confirmedwhen the whole household knew of it, when the song that someone was singing in the garden stopped suddenly, and when Maria,as she brought water, slipped past the bed with averted28 eyes.
There was all the morning to get through, and then all the afternoon,and at intervals30 she made an effort to cross over into the ordinary world,but she found that her heat and discomfort had put a gulf31 betweenher world and the ordinary world which she could not bridge.
At one point the door opened, and Helen came in with a littledark man who had--it was the chief thing she noticed about him--very hairy hands. She was drowsy32 and intolerably hot, and as heseemed shy and obsequious33 she scarcely troubled to answer him,although she understood that he was a doctor. At another pointthe door opened and Terence came in very gently, smiling too steadily34,as she realised, for it to be natural. He sat down and talked to her,stroking her hands until it became irksome to her to lie any morein the same position and she turned round, and when she looked upagain Helen was beside her and Terence had gone. It did not matter;she would see him to-morrow when things would be ordinary again.
Her chief occupation during the day was to try to remember how thelines went:
Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave,In twisted braids of lilies knittingThe loose train of thy amber dropping hair;and the effort worried her because the adjectives persistedin getting into the wrong places.
The second day did not differ very much from the first day,except that her bed had become very important, and the world outside,when she tried to think of it, appeared distinctly further off.
The glassy, cool, translucent wave was almost visible before her,curling up at the end of the bed, and as it was refreshingly35 coolshe tried to keep her mind fixed upon it. Helen was here, and Helenwas there all day long; sometimes she said that it was lunchtime,and sometimes that it was teatime; but by the next day all landmarkswere obliterated36, and the outer world was so far away that thedifferent sounds, such as the sounds of people moving overhead,could only be ascribed to their cause by a great effort of memory.
The recollection of what she had felt, or of what she had beendoing and thinking three days before, had faded entirely37.
On the other hand, every object in the room, and the bed itself,and her own body with its various limbs and their different sensationswere more and more important each day. She was completely cut off,and unable to communicate with the rest of the world, isolated38 alonewith her body.
Hours and hours would pass thus, without getting any further throughthe morning, or again a few minutes would lead from broad daylight tothe depths of the night. One evening when the room appeared very dim,either because it was evening or because the blinds were drawn39,Helen said to her, "Some one is going to sit here to-night. Youwon't mind?"Opening her eyes, Rachel saw not only Helen but a nurse in spectacles,whose face vaguely40 recalled something that she had once seen.
She had seen her in the chapel41. "Nurse McInnis," said Helen,and the nurse smiled steadily as they all did, and said that shedid not find many people who were frightened of her. After waitingfor a moment they both disappeared, and having turned on her pillowRachel woke to find herself in the midst of one of those interminablenights which do not end at twelve, but go on into the double figures--thirteen, fourteen, and so on until they reach the twenties,and then the thirties, and then the forties. She realised thatthere is nothing to prevent nights from doing this if they choose.
At a great distance an elderly woman sat with her head bent42 down;Rachel raised herself slightly and saw with dismay that she was playingcards by the light of a candle which stood in the hollow of a newspaper.
The sight had something inexplicably43 sinister44 about it, and shewas terrified and cried out, upon which the woman laid down hercards and came across the room, shading the candle with her hands.
Coming nearer and nearer across the great space of the room,she stood at last above Rachel's head and said, "Not asleep?
Let me make you comfortable."She put down the candle and began to arrange the bedclothes.
It struck Rachel that a woman who sat playing cards in a cavern45 allnight long would have very cold hands, and she shrunk from the touchof them.
"Why, there's a toe all the way down there!" the woman said,proceeding to tuck in the bedclothes. Rachel did not realisethat the toe was hers.
"You must try and lie still," she proceeded, "because if you lie stillyou will be less hot, and if you toss about you will make yourselfmore hot, and we don't want you to be any hotter than you are."She stood looking down upon Rachel for an enormous length of time.
"And the quieter you lie the sooner you will be well," she repeated.
Rachel kept her eyes fixed upon the peaked shadow on the ceiling,and all her energy was concentrated upon the desire that this shadowshould move. But the shadow and the woman seemed to be eternally fixedabove her. She shut her eyes. When she opened them again severalmore hours had passed, but the night still lasted interminably.
The woman was still playing cards, only she sat now in a tunnelunder a river, and the light stood in a little archway in the wallabove her. She cried "Terence!" and the peaked shadow again movedacross the ceiling, as the woman with an enormous slow movement rose,and they both stood still above her.
"It's just as difficult to keep you in bed as it was to keepMr. Forrest in bed," the woman said, "and he was such a tall gentleman."In order to get rid of this terrible stationary46 sight Rachel againshut her eyes, and found herself walking through a tunnel underthe Thames, where there were little deformed47 women sitting in archwaysplaying cards, while the bricks of which the wall was made oozedwith damp, which collected into drops and slid down the wall.
But the little old women became Helen and Nurse McInnis after a time,standing in the window together whispering, whispering incessantly48.
Meanwhile outside her room the sounds, the movements, and the lives ofthe other people in the house went on in the ordinary light of the sun,throughout the usual succession of hours. When, on the first dayof her illness, it became clear that she would not be absolutely well,for her temperature was very high, until Friday, that daybeing Tuesday, Terence was filled with resentment49, not against her,but against the force outside them which was separating them.
He counted up the number of days that would almost certainly bespoilt for them. He realised, with an odd mixture of pleasureand annoyance50, that, for the first time in his life, he was sodependent upon another person that his happiness was in her keeping.
The days were completely wasted upon trifling51, immaterial things,for after three weeks of such intimacy52 and intensity53 all the usualoccupations were unbearably54 flat and beside the point. The leastintolerable occupation was to talk to St. John about Rachel's illness,and to discuss every symptom and its meaning, and, when this subjectwas exhausted, to discuss illness of all kinds, and what caused them,and what cured them.
Twice every day he went in to sit with Rachel, and twiceevery day the same thing happened. On going into her room,which was not very dark, where the music was lying about as usual,and her books and letters, his spirits rose instantly. When hesaw her he felt completely reassured. She did not look very ill.
Sitting by her side he would tell her what he had been doing,using his natural voice to speak to her, only a few tones lowerdown than usual; but by the time he had sat there for five minuteshe was plunged55 into the deepest gloom. She was not the same;he could not bring them back to their old relationship; but althoughhe knew that it was foolish he could not prevent himself fromendeavouring to bring her back, to make her remember, and when thisfailed he was in despair. He always concluded as he left her roomthat it was worse to see her than not to see her, but by degrees,as the day wore on, the desire to see her returned and became almosttoo great to be borne.
On Thursday morning when Terence went into her room he felt the usualincrease of confidence. She turned round and made an effort to remembercertain facts from the world that was so many millions of miles away.
"You have come up from the hotel?" she asked.
"No; I'm staying here for the present," he said. "We've justhad luncheon56," he continued, "and the mail has come in.
There's a bundle of letters for you--letters from England."Instead of saying, as he meant her to say, that she wished to see them,she said nothing for some time.
"You see, there they go, rolling off the edge of the hill,"she said suddenly.
"Rolling, Rachel? What do you see rolling? There's nothing rolling.""The old woman with the knife," she replied, not speaking to Terencein particular, and looking past him. As she appeared to be lookingat a vase on the shelf opposite, he rose and took it down.
"Now they can't roll any more," he said cheerfully. Nevertheless shelay gazing at the same spot, and paid him no further attentionalthough he spoke57 to her. He became so profoundly wretched that hecould not endure to sit with her, but wandered about until hefound St. John, who was reading _The_ _Times_ in the verandah.
He laid it aside patiently, and heard all that Terence had to sayabout delirium58. He was very patient with Terence. He treated himlike a child.
By Friday it could not be denied that the illness was no longeran attack that would pass off in a day or two; it was a real illnessthat required a good deal of organisation59, and engrossed60 the attentionof at least five people, but there was no reason to be anxious.
Instead of lasting61 five days it was going to last ten days.
Rodriguez was understood to say that there were well-known varietiesof this illness. Rodriguez appeared to think that they were treatingthe illness with undue62 anxiety. His visits were always markedby the same show of confidence, and in his interviews with Terencehe always waved aside his anxious and minute questions with a kindof flourish which seemed to indicate that they were all taking itmuch too seriously. He seemed curiously63 unwilling64 to sit down.
"A high temperature," he said, looking furtively65 about the room,and appearing to be more interested in the furniture and in Helen'sembroidery than in anything else. "In this climate you mustexpect a high temperature. You need not be alarmed by that.
It is the pulse we go by" (he tapped his own hairy wrist), "andthe pulse continues excellent."Thereupon he bowed and slipped out. The interview was conductedlaboriously upon both sides in French, and this, together with the factthat he was optimistic, and that Terence respected the medicalprofession from hearsay66, made him less critical than he wouldhave been had he encountered the doctor in any other capacity.
Unconsciously he took Rodriguez' side against Helen, who seemedto have taken an unreasonable67 prejudice against him.
When Saturday came it was evident that the hours of the day mustbe more strictly68 organised than they had been. St. John offeredhis services; he said that he had nothing to do, and that he mightas well spend the day at the villa69 if he could be of use. As if theywere starting on a difficult expedition together, they parcelled outtheir duties between them, writing out an elaborate scheme of hoursupon a large sheet of paper which was pinned to the drawing-room door.
Their distance from the town, and the difficulty of procuringrare things with unknown names from the most unexpected places,made it necessary to think very carefully, and they found itunexpectedly difficult to do the simple but practical things thatwere required of them, as if they, being very tall, were askedto stoop down and arrange minute grains of sand in a pattern on the ground.
It was St. John's duty to fetch what was needed from the town,so that Terence would sit all through the long hot hours alone in thedrawing-room, near the open door, listening for any movement upstairs,or call from Helen. He always forgot to pull down the blinds,so that he sat in bright sunshine, which worried him without hisknowing what was the cause of it. The room was terribly stiffand uncomfortable. There were hats in the chairs, and medicine bottlesamong the books. He tried to read, but good books were too good,and bad books were too bad, and the only thing he could toleratewas the newspaper, which with its news of London, and the movementsof real people who were giving dinner-parties and making speeches,seemed to give a little background of reality to what was otherwisemere nightmare. Then, just as his attention was fixed on the print,a soft call would come from Helen, or Mrs. Chailey would bringin something which was wanted upstairs, and he would run upvery quietly in his socks, and put the jug70 on the little tablewhich stood crowded with jugs71 and cups outside the bedroom door;or if he could catch Helen for a moment he would ask, "How is she?""Rather restless. . . . On the whole, quieter, I think."The answer would be one or the other.
As usual she seemed to reserve something which she did not say,and Terence was conscious that they disagreed, and, without sayingit aloud, were arguing against each other. But she was too hurriedand pre-occupied to talk.
The strain of listening and the effort of making practical arrangementsand seeing that things worked smoothly72, absorbed all Terence's power.
Involved in this long dreary73 nightmare, he did not attempt to thinkwhat it amounted to. Rachel was ill; that was all; he must see thatthere was medicine and milk, and that things were ready when theywere wanted. Thought had ceased; life itself had come to a standstill.
Sunday was rather worse than Saturday had been, simply becausethe strain was a little greater every day, although nothing elsehad changed. The separate feelings of pleasure, interest, and pain,which combine to make up the ordinary day, were merged74 in one long-drawnsensation of sordid75 misery76 and profound boredom77. He had never beenso bored since he was shut up in the nursery alone as a child.
The vision of Rachel as she was now, confused and heedless,had almost obliterated the vision of her as she had been oncelong ago; he could hardly believe that they had ever been happy,or engaged to be married, for what were feelings, what was thereto be felt? Confusion covered every sight and person, and heseemed to see St. John, Ridley, and the stray people who came upnow and then from the hotel to enquire78, through a mist; the onlypeople who were not hidden in this mist were Helen and Rodriguez,because they could tell him something definite about Rachel.
Nevertheless the day followed the usual forms. At certain hoursthey went into the dining-room, and when they sat round the tablethey talked about indifferent things. St. John usually made ithis business to start the talk and to keep it from dying out.
"I've discovered the way to get Sancho past the white house,"said St. John on Sunday at luncheon. "You crackle a piece of paperin his ear, then he bolts for about a hundred yards, but he goeson quite well after that.""Yes, but he wants corn. You should see that he has corn.""I don't think much of the stuff they give him; and Angelo seemsa dirty little rascal79."There was then a long silence. Ridley murmured a few lines ofpoetry under his breath, and remarked, as if to conceal80 the factthat he had done so, "Very hot to-day.""Two degrees higher than it was yesterday," said St. John.
"I wonder where these nuts come from," he observed, taking a nutout of the plate, turning it over in his fingers, and looking atit curiously.
"London, I should think," said Terence, looking at the nut too.
"A competent man of business could make a fortune here in no time,"St. John continued. "I suppose the heat does something funny topeople's brains. Even the English go a little queer. Anyhow they'rehopeless people to deal with. They kept me three-quarters of an hourwaiting at the chemist's this morning, for no reason whatever."There was another long pause. Then Ridley enquired81, "Rodriguezseems satisfied?""Quite," said Terence with decision. "It's just got to run its course."Whereupon Ridley heaved a deep sigh. He was genuinely sorryfor every one, but at the same time he missed Helen considerably,and was a little aggrieved82 by the constant presence of the twoyoung men.
They moved back into the drawing-room.
"Look here, Hirst," said Terence, "there's nothing to be donefor two hours." He consulted the sheet pinned to the door.
"You go and lie down. I'll wait here. Chailey sits with Rachelwhile Helen has her luncheon."It was asking a good deal of Hirst to tell him to go without waitingfor a sight of Helen. These little glimpses of Helen were the onlyrespites from strain and boredom, and very often they seemed to makeup83 for the discomfort of the day, although she might not have anythingto tell them. However, as they were on an expedition together,he had made up his mind to obey.
Helen was very late in coming down. She looked like a person who hasbeen sitting for a long time in the dark. She was pale and thinner,and the expression of her eyes was harassed84 but determined.
She ate her luncheon quickly, and seemed indifferent to what shewas doing. She brushed aside Terence's enquiries, and at last,as if he had not spoken, she looked at him with a slight frownand said:
"We can't go on like this, Terence. Either you've got to findanother doctor, or you must tell Rodriguez to stop coming, and I'llmanage for myself. It's no use for him to say that Rachel's better;she's not better; she's worse."Terence suffered a terrific shock, like that which he had sufferedwhen Rachel said, "My head aches." He stilled it by reflectingthat Helen was overwrought, and he was upheld in this opinionby his obstinate85 sense that she was opposed to him in the argument.
"Do you think she's in danger?" he asked.
"No one can go on being as ill as that day after day--" Helen replied.
She looked at him, and spoke as if she felt some indignationwith somebody.
"Very well, I'll talk to Rodriguez this afternoon," he replied.
Helen went upstairs at once.
Nothing now could assuage86 Terence's anxiety. He could not read,nor could he sit still, and his sense of security was shaken, in spiteof the fact that he was determined that Helen was exaggerating,and that Rachel was not very ill. But he wanted a third personto confirm him in his belief.
Directly Rodriguez came down he demanded, "Well, how is she?
Do you think her worse?""There is no reason for anxiety, I tell you--none," Rodriguez repliedin his execrable French, smiling uneasily, and making littlemovements all the time as if to get away.
Hewet stood firmly between him and the door. He was determinedto see for himself what kind of man he was. His confidence inthe man vanished as he looked at him and saw his insignificance,his dirty appearance, his shiftiness, and his unintelligent,hairy face. It was strange that he had never seen this before.
"You won't object, of course, if we ask you to consult another doctor?"he continued.
At this the little man became openly incensed87.
"Ah!" he cried. "You have not confidence in me? You objectto my treatment? You wish me to give up the case?""Not at all," Terence replied, "but in serious illness of this kind--"Rodriguez shrugged89 his shoulders.
"It is not serious, I assure you. You are overanxious. The younglady is not seriously ill, and I am a doctor. The lady of courseis frightened," he sneered90. "I understand that perfectly91.""The name and address of the doctor is--?" Terence continued.
"There is no other doctor," Rodriguez replied sullenly92. "Every onehas confidence in me. Look! I will show you."He took out a packet of old letters and began turning them overas if in search of one that would confute Terence's suspicions.
As he searched, he began to tell a story about an English lordwho had trusted him--a great English lord, whose name he had,unfortunately, forgotten.
"There is no other doctor in the place," he concluded, still turningover the letters.
"Never mind," said Terence shortly. "I will make enquiries for myself."Rodriguez put the letters back in his pocket.
"Very well," he remarked. "I have no objection."He lifted his eyebrows93, shrugged his shoulders, as if to repeatthat they took the illness much too seriously and that there wasno other doctor, and slipped out, leaving behind him an impressionthat he was conscious that he was distrusted, and that his malicewas aroused.
After this Terence could no longer stay downstairs. He went up,knocked at Rachel's door, and asked Helen whether he might seeher for a few minutes. He had not seen her yesterday. She madeno objection, and went and sat at a table in the window.
Terence sat down by the bedside. Rachel's face was changed.
She looked as though she were entirely concentrated upon the effortof keeping alive. Her lips were drawn, and her cheeks were sunkenand flushed, though without colour. Her eyes were not entirely shut,the lower half of the white part showing, not as if she saw,but as if they remained open because she was too much exhaustedto close them. She opened them completely when he kissed her.
But she only saw an old woman slicing a man's head off with a knife.
"There it falls!" she murmured. She then turned to Terence andasked him anxiously some question about a man with mules94, which hecould not understand. "Why doesn't he come? Why doesn't he come?"she repeated. He was appalled95 to think of the dirty little man downstairsin connection with illness like this, and turning instinctivelyto Helen, but she was doing something at a table in the window,and did not seem to realise how great the shock to him must be.
He rose to go, for he could not endure to listen any longer;his heart beat quickly and painfully with anger and misery.
As he passed Helen she asked him in the same weary, unnatural,but determined voice to fetch her more ice, and to have the jugoutside filled with fresh milk.
When he had done these errands he went to find Hirst. Exhausted andvery hot, St. John had fallen asleep on a bed, but Terence wokehim without scruple97.
"Helen thinks she's worse," he said. "There's no doubt she'sfrightfully ill. Rodriguez is useless. We must get another doctor.""But there is no other doctor," said Hirst drowsily98, sitting upand rubbing his eyes.
"Don't be a damned fool!" Terence exclaimed. "Of course there'sanother doctor, and, if there isn't, you've got to find one. It oughtto have been done days ago. I'm going down to saddle the horse."He could not stay still in one place.
In less than ten minutes St. John was riding to the town in thescorching heat in search of a doctor, his orders being to findone and bring him back if he had to be fetched in a special train.
"We ought to have done it days ago," Hewet repeated angrily.
When he went back into the drawing-room he found that Mrs. Flushingwas there, standing very erect99 in the middle of the room,having arrived, as people did in these days, by the kitchenor through the garden unannounced.
"She's better?" Mrs. Flushing enquired abruptly100; they did notattempt to shake hands.
"No," said Terence. "If anything, they think she's worse."Mrs. Flushing seemed to consider for a moment or two, looking straightat Terence all the time.
"Let me tell you," she said, speaking in nervous jerks, "it's alwaysabout the seventh day one begins to get anxious. I daresay you'vebeen sittin' here worryin' by yourself. You think she's bad,but any one comin' with a fresh eye would see she was better.
Mr. Elliot's had fever; he's all right now," she threw out.
"It wasn't anythin' she caught on the expedition. What's it matter--a few days' fever? My brother had fever for twenty-six days once.
And in a week or two he was up and about. We gave him nothin' but milkand arrowroot--"Here Mrs. Chailey came in with a message.
"I'm wanted upstairs," said Terence.
"You see--she'll be better," Mrs. Flushing jerked out as heleft the room. Her anxiety to persuade Terence was very great,and when he left her without saying anything she felt dissatisfiedand restless; she did not like to stay, but she could not bear to go.
She wandered from room to room looking for some one to talk to,but all the rooms were empty.
Terence went upstairs, stood inside the door to take Helen's directions,looked over at Rachel, but did not attempt to speak to her.
She appeared vaguely conscious of his presence, but it seemed todisturb her, and she turned, so that she lay with her back to him.
For six days indeed she had been oblivious101 of the world outside,because it needed all her attention to follow the hot, red,quick sights which passed incessantly before her eyes.
She knew that it was of enormous importance that she should attendto these sights and grasp their meaning, but she was always beingjust too late to hear or see something which would explain it all.
For this reason, the faces,--Helen's face, the nurse's, Terence's,the doctor's,--which occasionally forced themselves very close to her,were worrying because they distracted her attention and she mightmiss the clue. However, on the fourth afternoon she was suddenlyunable to keep Helen's face distinct from the sights themselves;her lips widened as she bent down over the bed, and she began togabble unintelligibly102 like the rest. The sights were all concernedin some plot, some adventure, some escape. The nature of whatthey were doing changed incessantly, although there was alwaysa reason behind it, which she must endeavour to grasp. Now theywere among trees and savages103, now they were on the sea, now theywere on the tops of high towers; now they jumped; now they flew.
But just as the crisis was about to happen, something invariably slippedin her brain, so that the whole effort had to begin over again.
The heat was suffocating104. At last the faces went further away;she fell into a deep pool of sticky water, which eventually closedover her head. She saw nothing and heard nothing but a faintbooming sound, which was the sound of the sea rolling over her head.
While all her tormentors thought that she was dead, she wasnot dead, but curled up at the bottom of the sea. There she lay,sometimes seeing darkness, sometimes light, while every now and thensome one turned her over at the bottom of the sea.
After St. John had spent some hours in the heat of the sun wranglingwith evasive and very garrulous105 natives, he extracted the informationthat there was a doctor, a French doctor, who was at present awayon a holiday in the hills. It was quite impossible, so they said,to find him. With his experience of the country, St. John thought itunlikely that a telegram would either be sent or received; but havingreduced the distance of the hill town, in which he was staying,from a hundred miles to thirty miles, and having hired a carriageand horses, he started at once to fetch the doctor himself.
He succeeded in finding him, and eventually forced the unwillingman to leave his young wife and return forthwith. They reachedthe villa at midday on Tuesday.
Terence came out to receive them, and St. John was struck by the factthat he had grown perceptibly thinner in the interval29; he was white too;his eyes looked strange. But the curt106 speech and the sulky masterfulmanner of Dr. Lesage impressed them both favourably107, although atthe same time it was obvious that he was very much annoyed at thewhole affair. Coming downstairs he gave his directions emphatically,but it never occurred to him to give an opinion either because ofthe presence of Rodriguez who was now obsequious as well as malicious108,or because he took it for granted that they knew already what was to be known.
"Of course," he said with a shrug88 of his shoulders, when Terenceasked him, "Is she very ill?"They were both conscious of a certain sense of relief when Dr. Lesagewas gone, leaving explicit109 directions, and promising110 another visitin a few hours' time; but, unfortunately, the rise of their spiritsled them to talk more than usual, and in talking they quarrelled.
They quarrelled about a road, the Portsmouth Road. St. John said thatit is macadamised where it passes Hindhead, and Terence knew as wellas he knew his own name that it is not macadamised at that point.
In the course of the argument they said some very sharp thingsto each other, and the rest of the dinner was eaten in silence,save for an occasional half-stifled111 reflection from Ridley.
When it grew dark and the lamps were brought in, Terence feltunable to control his irritation112 any longer. St. John went to bedin a state of complete exhaustion113, bidding Terence good-nightwith rather more affection than usual because of their quarrel,and Ridley retired114 to his books. Left alone, Terence walked upand down the room; he stood at the open window.
The lights were coming out one after another in the town beneath,and it was very peaceful and cool in the garden, so that he steppedout on to the terrace. As he stood there in the darkness, able onlyto see the shapes of trees through the fine grey light, he was overcomeby a desire to escape, to have done with this suffering, to forgetthat Rachel was ill. He allowed himself to lapse115 into forgetfulnessof everything. As if a wind that had been raging incessantly suddenlyfell asleep, the fret116 and strain and anxiety which had been pressingon him passed away. He seemed to stand in an unvexed space of air,on a little island by himself; he was free and immune from pain.
It did not matter whether Rachel was well or ill; it did not matterwhether they were apart or together; nothing mattered--nothing mattered.
The waves beat on the shore far away, and the soft wind passedthrough the branches of the trees, seeming to encircle him withpeace and security, with dark and nothingness. Surely the worldof strife117 and fret and anxiety was not the real world, but this wasthe real world, the world that lay beneath the superficial world,so that, whatever happened, one was secure. The quiet and peaceseemed to lap his body in a fine cool sheet, soothing118 every nerve;his mind seemed once more to expand, and become natural.
But when he had stood thus for a time a noise in the house roused him;he turned instinctively96 and went into the drawing-room. Thesight of the lamp-lit room brought back so abruptly all that hehad forgotten that he stood for a moment unable to move.
He remembered everything, the hour, the minute even, what point theyhad reached, and what was to come. He cursed himself for makingbelieve for a minute that things were different from what they are.
The night was now harder to face than ever.
Unable to stay in the empty drawing-room, he wandered out and saton the stairs half-way up to Rachel's room. He longed for someone to talk to, but Hirst was asleep, and Ridley was asleep;there was no sound in Rachel's room. The only sound in the housewas the sound of Chailey moving in the kitchen. At last there was arustling on the stairs overhead, and Nurse McInnis came down fasteningthe links in her cuffs119, in preparation for the night's watch.
Terence rose and stopped her. He had scarcely spoken to her,but it was possible that she might confirm him in the belief whichstill persisted in his own mind that Rachel was not seriously ill.
He told her in a whisper that Dr. Lesage had been and what hehad said.
"Now, Nurse," he whispered, "please tell me your opinion. Do youconsider that she is very seriously ill? Is she in any danger?""The doctor has said--" she began.
"Yes, but I want your opinion. You have had experience of manycases like this?""I could not tell you more than Dr. Lesage, Mr. Hewet," she repliedcautiously, as though her words might be used against her. "The caseis serious, but you may feel quite certain that we are doing all we canfor Miss Vinrace." She spoke with some professional self-approbation.
But she realised perhaps that she did not satisfy the young man,who still blocked her way, for she shifted her feet slightly upon thestair and looked out of the window where they could see the moon over the sea.
"If you ask me," she began in a curiously stealthy tone, "I neverlike May for my patients.""May?" Terence repeated.
"It may be a fancy, but I don't like to see anybody fall ill in May,"she continued. "Things seem to go wrong in May. Perhaps it's the moon.
They say the moon affects the brain, don't they, Sir?"He looked at her but he could not answer her; like all the others,when one looked at her she seemed to shrivel beneath one's eyesand become worthless, malicious, and untrustworthy.
She slipped past him and disappeared.
Though he went to his room he was unable even to take his clothes off.
For a long time he paced up and down, and then leaning out ofthe window gazed at the earth which lay so dark against the palerblue of the sky. With a mixture of fear and loathing120 he looked atthe slim black cypress121 trees which were still visible in the garden,and heard the unfamiliar122 creaking and grating sounds which showthat the earth is still hot. All these sights and sounds appearedsinister and full of hostility123 and foreboding; together withthe natives and the nurse and the doctor and the terrible forceof the illness itself they seemed to be in conspiracy124 against him.
They seemed to join together in their effort to extract the greatestpossible amount of suffering from him. He could not get used tohis pain, it was a revelation to him. He had never realised beforethat underneath125 every action, underneath the life of every day,pain lies, quiescent126, but ready to devour127; he seemed to be ableto see suffering, as if it were a fire, curling up over the edgesof all action, eating away the lives of men and women. He thoughtfor the first time with understanding of words which had beforeseemed to him empty: the struggle of life; the hardness of life.
Now he knew for himself that life is hard and full of suffering.
He looked at the scattered128 lights in the town beneath, and thoughtof Arthur and Susan, or Evelyn and Perrott venturing out unwittingly,and by their happiness laying themselves open to suffering suchas this. How did they dare to love each other, he wondered; how hadhe himself dared to live as he had lived, rapidly and carelessly,passing from one thing to another, loving Rachel as he had loved her?
Never again would he feel secure; he would never believe in the stabilityof life, or forget what depths of pain lie beneath small happinessand feelings of content and safety. It seemed to him as he looked backthat their happiness had never been so great as his pain was now.
There had always been something imperfect in their happiness,something they had wanted and had not been able to get. It had beenfragmentary and incomplete, because they were so young and had notknown what they were doing.
The light of his candle flickered129 over the boughs130 of a treeoutside the window, and as the branch swayed in the darkness therecame before his mind a picture of all the world that lay outsidehis window; he thought of the immense river and the immense forest,the vast stretches of dry earth and the plains of the sea thatencircled the earth; from the sea the sky rose steep and enormous,and the air washed profoundly between the sky and the sea.
How vast and dark it must be tonight, lying exposed to the wind;and in all this great space it was curious to think how fewthe towns were, and how small little rings of light, or singleglow-worms he figured them, scattered here and there, among theswelling uncultivated folds of the world. And in those townswere little men and women, tiny men and women. Oh, it was absurd,when one thought of it, to sit here in a little room sufferingand caring. What did anything matter? Rachel, a tiny creature,lay ill beneath him, and here in his little room he suffered onher account. The nearness of their bodies in this vast universe,and the minuteness of their bodies, seemed to him absurd and laughable.
Nothing mattered, he repeated; they had no power, no hope.
He leant on the window-sill, thinking, until he almost forgot the timeand the place. Nevertheless, although he was convinced that itwas absurd and laughable, and that they were small and hopeless,he never lost the sense that these thoughts somehow formed partof a life which he and Rachel would live together.
Owing perhaps to the change of doctor, Rachel appeared to be ratherbetter next day. Terribly pale and worn though Helen looked,there was a slight lifting of the cloud which had hung all thesedays in her eyes.
"She talked to me," she said voluntarily. "She asked me what dayof the week it was, like herself."Then suddenly, without any warning or any apparent reason,the tears formed in her eyes and rolled steadily down her cheeks.
She cried with scarcely any attempt at movement of her features,and without any attempt to stop herself, as if she did not knowthat she was crying. In spite of the relief which her wordsgave him, Terence was dismayed by the sight; had everythinggiven way? Were there no limits to the power of this illness?
Would everything go down before it? Helen had always seemedto him strong and determined, and now she was like a child.
He took her in his arms, and she clung to him like a child,crying softly and quietly upon his shoulder. Then she roused herselfand wiped her tears away; it was silly to behave like that, she said;very silly, she repeated, when there could be no doubt that Rachelwas better. She asked Terence to forgive her for her folly131.
She stopped at the door and came back and kissed him withoutsaying anything.
On this day indeed Rachel was conscious of what went on round her.
She had come to the surface of the dark, sticky pool, and a waveseemed to bear her up and down with it; she had ceased to haveany will of her own; she lay on the top of the wave consciousof some pain, but chiefly of weakness. The wave was replaced bythe side of a mountain. Her body became a drift of melting snow,above which her knees rose in huge peaked mountains of bare bone.
It was true that she saw Helen and saw her room, but everythinghad become very pale and semi-transparent. Sometimes she could seethrough the wall in front of her. Sometimes when Helen went awayshe seemed to go so far that Rachel's eyes could hardly follow her.
The room also had an odd power of expanding, and though she pushedher voice out as far as possible until sometimes it became a birdand flew away, she thought it doubtful whether it ever reached theperson she was talking to. There were immense intervals or chasms,for things still had the power to appear visibly before her,between one moment and the next; it sometimes took an hour for Helento raise her arm, pausing long between each jerky movement, and pourout medicine. Helen's form stooping to raise her in bed appearedof gigantic size, and came down upon her like the ceiling falling.
But for long spaces of time she would merely lie conscious of her bodyfloating on the top of the bed and her mind driven to some remotecorner of her body, or escaped and gone flitting round the room.
All sights were something of an effort, but the sight of Terencewas the greatest effort, because he forced her to join mind to bodyin the desire to remember something. She did not wish to remember;it troubled her when people tried to disturb her loneliness;she wished to be alone. She wished for nothing else in the world.
Although she had cried, Terence observed Helen's greater hopefulnesswith something like triumph; in the argument between them she hadmade the first sign of admitting herself in the wrong. He waitedfor Dr. Lesage to come down that afternoon with considerable anxiety,but with the same certainty at the back of his mind that he wouldin time force them all to admit that they were in the wrong.
As usual, Dr. Lesage was sulky in his manner and very shortin his answers. To Terence's demand, "She seems to be better?"he replied, looking at him in an odd way, "She has a chance of life."The door shut and Terence walked across to the window. He leanthis forehead against the pane132.
"Rachel," he repeated to himself. "She has a chance of life. Rachel."How could they say these things of Rachel? Had any one yesterdayseriously believed that Rachel was dying? They had been engagedfor four weeks. A fortnight ago she had been perfectly well.
What could fourteen days have done to bring her from that state to this?
To realise what they meant by saying that she had a chance of lifewas beyond him, knowing as he did that they were engaged. He turned,still enveloped133 in the same dreary mist, and walked towards the door.
Suddenly he saw it all. He saw the room and the garden, and the treesmoving in the air, they could go on without her; she could die.
For the first time since she fell ill he remembered exactly whatshe looked like and the way in which they cared for each other.
The immense happiness of feeling her close to him mingled134 with a moreintense anxiety than he had felt yet. He could not let her die;he could not live without her. But after a momentary135 struggle,the curtain fell again, and he saw nothing and felt nothing clearly.
It was all going on--going on still, in the same way as before.
Save for a physical pain when his heart beat, and the fact thathis fingers were icy cold, he did not realise that he was anxiousabout anything. Within his mind he seemed to feel nothing about Rachelor about any one or anything in the world. He went on giving orders,arranging with Mrs. Chailey, writing out lists, and every now and thenhe went upstairs and put something quietly on the table outsideRachel's door. That night Dr. Lesage seemed to be less sulky than usual.
He stayed voluntarily for a few moments, and, addressing St. John andTerence equally, as if he did not remember which of them was engagedto the young lady, said, "I consider that her condition to-night isvery grave."Neither of them went to bed or suggested that the other should go to bed.
They sat in the drawing-room playing picquet with the door open.
St. John made up a bed upon the sofa, and when it was ready insistedthat Terence should lie upon it. They began to quarrel as to who shouldlie on the sofa and who should lie upon a couple of chairs coveredwith rugs. St. John forced Terence at last to lie down upon the sofa.
"Don't be a fool, Terence," he said. "You'll only get ill if youdon't sleep.""Old fellow," he began, as Terence still refused, and stopped abruptly,fearing sentimentality; he found that he was on the verge136 of tears.
He began to say what he had long been wanting to say, that he wassorry for Terence, that he cared for him, that he cared for Rachel.
Did she know how much he cared for her--had she said anything,asked perhaps? He was very anxious to say this, but he refrained,thinking that it was a selfish question after all, and whatwas the use of bothering Terence to talk about such things?
He was already half asleep. But St. John could not sleep at once.
If only, he thought to himself, as he lay in the darkness,something would happen--if only this strain would come to an end.
He did not mind what happened, so long as the succession of thesehard and dreary days was broken; he did not mind if she died.
He felt himself disloyal in not minding it, but it seemed to him thathe had no feelings left.
All night long there was no call or movement, except the openingand shutting of the bedroom door once. By degrees the lightreturned into the untidy room. At six the servants began to move;at seven they crept downstairs into the kitchen; and half an hourlater the day began again.
Nevertheless it was not the same as the days that had gone before,although it would have been hard to say in what the difference consisted.
Perhaps it was that they seemed to be waiting for something.
There were certainly fewer things to be done than usual. People driftedthrough the drawing-room--Mr. Flushing, Mr. and Mrs. Thornbury.
They spoke very apologetically in low tones, refusing to sit down,but remaining for a considerable time standing up, although the onlything they had to say was, "Is there anything we can do?" and therewas nothing they could do.
Feeling oddly detached from it all, Terence remembered how Helen had saidthat whenever anything happened to you this was how people behaved.
Was she right, or was she wrong? He was too little interestedto frame an opinion of his own. He put things away in his mind,as if one of these days he would think about them, but not now.
The mist of unreality had deepened and deepened until it hadproduced a feeling of numbness137 all over his body. Was it his body?
Were those really his own hands?
This morning also for the first time Ridley found it impossibleto sit alone in his room. He was very uncomfortable downstairs,and, as he did not know what was going on, constantly in the way;but he would not leave the drawing-room. Too restless to read,and having nothing to do, he began to pace up and down reciting poetryin an undertone. Occupied in various ways--now in undoing138 parcels,now in uncorking bottles, now in writing directions, the soundof Ridley's song and the beat of his pacing worked into the mindsof Terence and St. John all the morning as a half comprehended refrain.
They wrestled139 up, they wrestled down,They wrestled sore and still:
The fiend who blinds the eyes of men,That night he had his will.
Like stags full spent, among the bentThey dropped awhile to rest--"Oh, it's intolerable!" Hirst exclaimed, and then checked himself,as if it were a breach140 of their agreement. Again and again Terencewould creep half-way up the stairs in case he might be able to gleannews of Rachel. But the only news now was of a very fragmentary kind;she had drunk something; she had slept a little; she seemed quieter.
In the same way, Dr. Lesage confined himself to talking about details,save once when he volunteered the information that he had just beencalled in to ascertain141, by severing142 a vein143 in the wrist, that an oldlady of eighty-five was really dead. She had a horror of beingburied alive.
"It is a horror," he remarked, "that we generally find in the very old,and seldom in the young." They both expressed their interest in whathe told them; it seemed to them very strange. Another strange thingabout the day was that the luncheon was forgotten by all of them untilit was late in the afternoon, and then Mrs. Chailey waited on them,and looked strange too, because she wore a stiff print dress,and her sleeves were rolled up above her elbows. She seemedas oblivious of her appearance, however, as if she had been calledout of her bed by a midnight alarm of fire, and she had forgotten,too, her reserve and her composure; she talked to them quitefamiliarly as if she had nursed them and held them naked on her knee.
She assured them over and over again that it was their duty to eat.
The afternoon, being thus shortened, passed more quickly thanthey expected. Once Mrs. Flushing opened the door, but on seeingthem shut it again quickly; once Helen came down to fetch something,but she stopped as she left the room to look at a letter addressedto her. She stood for a moment turning it over, and the extraordinaryand mournful beauty of her attitude struck Terence in the waythings struck him now--as something to be put away in his mindand to be thought about afterwards. They scarcely spoke,the argument between them seeming to be suspended or forgotten.
Now that the afternoon sun had left the front of the house,Ridley paced up and down the terrace repeating stanzas144 of a long poem,in a subdued145 but suddenly sonorous146 voice. Fragments of the poemwere wafted147 in at the open window as he passed and repassed.
Peor and BaalimForsake their Temples dim,With that twice batter'd God of PalestineAnd mooned Astaroth--The sound of these words were strangely discomforting to both theyoung men, but they had to be borne. As the evening drew on and the redlight of the sunset glittered far away on the sea, the same senseof desperation attacked both Terence and St. John at the thoughtthat the day was nearly over, and that another night was at hand.
The appearance of one light after another in the town beneath themproduced in Hirst a repetition of his terrible and disgusting desireto break down and sob148. Then the lamps were brought in by Chailey.
She explained that Maria, in opening a bottle, had been so foolishas to cut her arm badly, but she had bound it up; it was unfortunatewhen there was so much work to be done. Chailey herself limpedbecause of the rheumatism149 in her feet, but it appeared to her merewaste of time to take any notice of the unruly flesh of servants.
The evening went on. Dr. Lesage arrived unexpectedly, and stayedupstairs a very long time. He came down once and drank a cupof coffee.
"She is very ill," he said in answer to Ridley's question.
All the annoyance had by this time left his manner, he was graveand formal, but at the same time it was full of consideration,which had not marked it before. He went upstairs again.
The three men sat together in the drawing-room. Ridley was quitequiet now, and his attention seemed to be thoroughly150 awakened151.
Save for little half-voluntary movements and exclamationsthat were stifled at once, they waited in complete silence.
It seemed as if they were at last brought together face to facewith something definite.
It was nearly eleven o'clock when Dr. Lesage again appeared in the room.
He approached them very slowly, and did not speak at once.
He looked first at St. John and then at Terence, and said to Terence,"Mr. Hewet, I think you should go upstairs now."Terence rose immediately, leaving the others seated with Dr. Lesagestanding motionless between them.
Chailey was in the passage outside, repeating over and over again,"It's wicked--it's wicked."Terence paid her no attention; he heard what she was saying,but it conveyed no meaning to his mind. All the way upstairs hekept saying to himself, "This has not happened to me. It is notpossible that this has happened to me."He looked curiously at his own hand on the banisters. The stairs werevery steep, and it seemed to take him a long time to surmount152 them.
Instead of feeling keenly, as he knew that he ought to feel,he felt nothing at all. When he opened the door he saw Helen sittingby the bedside. There were shaded lights on the table, and the room,though it seemed to be full of a great many things, was very tidy.
There was a faint and not unpleasant smell of disinfectants.
Helen rose and gave up her chair to him in silence. As they passedeach other their eyes met in a peculiar153 level glance, he wonderedat the extraordinary clearness of his eyes, and at the deep calmand sadness that dwelt in them. He sat down by the bedside,and a moment afterwards heard the door shut gently behind her.
He was alone with Rachel, and a faint reflection of the sense of reliefthat they used to feel when they were left alone possessed154 him.
He looked at her. He expected to find some terrible change in her,but there was none. She looked indeed very thin, and, as far as hecould see, very tired, but she was the same as she had always been.
Moreover, she saw him and knew him. She smiled at him and said,"Hullo, Terence."The curtain which had been drawn between them for so longvanished immediately.
"Well, Rachel," he replied in his usual voice, upon which sheopened her eyes quite widely and smiled with her familiar smile.
He kissed her and took her hand.
"It's been wretched without you," he said.
She still looked at him and smiled, but soon a slight look of fatigueor perplexity came into her eyes and she shut them again.
"But when we're together we're perfectly happy," he said.
He continued to hold her hand.
The light being dim, it was impossible to see any change in her face.
An immense feeling of peace came over Terence, so that he had nowish to move or to speak. The terrible torture and unrealityof the last days were over, and he had come out now into perfectcertainty and peace. His mind began to work naturally againand with great ease. The longer he sat there the more profoundlywas he conscious of the peace invading every corner of his soul.
Once he held his breath and listened acutely; she was still breathing;he went on thinking for some time; they seemed to be thinking together;he seemed to be Rachel as well as himself; and then he listened again;no, she had ceased to breathe. So much the better--this was death.
It was nothing; it was to cease to breathe. It was happiness,it was perfect happiness. They had now what they had always wantedto have, the union which had been impossible while they lived.
Unconscious whether he thought the words or spoke them aloud,he said, "No two people have ever been so happy as we have been.
No one has ever loved as we have loved."It seemed to him that their complete union and happiness filledthe room with rings eddying155 more and more widely. He had no wishin the world left unfulfilled. They possessed what could neverbe taken from them.
He was not conscious that any one had come into the room, but later,moments later, or hours later perhaps, he felt an arm behind him.
The arms were round him. He did not want to have arms round him,and the mysterious whispering voices annoyed him. He laid Rachel's hand,which was now cold, upon the counterpane, and rose from his chair,and walked across to the window. The windows were uncurtained,and showed the moon, and a long silver pathway upon the surface ofthe waves.
"Why," he said, in his ordinary tone of voice, "look at the moon.
There's a halo round the moon. We shall have rain to-morrow."The arms, whether they were the arms of man or of woman, were roundhim again; they were pushing him gently towards the door. He turnedof his own accord and walked steadily in advance of the arms,conscious of a little amusement at the strange way in which peoplebehaved merely because some one was dead. He would go if theywished it, but nothing they could do would disturb his happiness.
As he saw the passage outside the room, and the table with the cupsand the plates, it suddenly came over him that here was a worldin which he would never see Rachel again.
"Rachel! Rachel!" he shrieked156, trying to rush back to her.
But they prevented him, and pushed him down the passage and intoa bedroom far from her room. Downstairs they could hear the thudof his feet on the floor, as he struggled to break free; and twicethey heard him shout, "Rachel, Rachel!"
收听单词发音 |
1
exhausted
|
|
| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
awning
|
|
| n.遮阳篷；雨篷 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
drooping
|
|
| adj. 下垂的，无力的 动词droop的现在分词 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
spines
|
|
| n.脊柱( spine的名词复数 )；脊椎；（动植物的）刺；书脊 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
standing
|
|
| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
curb
|
|
| n.场外证券市场，场外交易；vt.制止，抑制 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
virgin
|
|
| n.处女，未婚女子；adj.未经使用的；未经开发的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
brute
|
|
| n.野兽，兽性 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
fixed
|
|
| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
decided
|
|
| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
stanza
|
|
| n.（诗）节，段 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
translucent
|
|
| adj.半透明的；透明的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
amber
|
|
| n.琥珀；琥珀色；adj.琥珀制的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
determined
|
|
| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
catastrophe
|
|
| n.大灾难，大祸 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
physically
|
|
| adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
unreasonably
|
|
| adv. 不合理地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
reassured
|
|
| adj.使消除疑虑的；使放心的v.再保证，恢复信心( reassure的过去式和过去分词) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
depressed
|
|
| adj.沮丧的，抑郁的，不景气的，萧条的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
avenged
|
|
| v.为…复仇，报…之仇( avenge的过去式和过去分词 )；为…报复 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
recollected
|
|
| adj.冷静的；镇定的；被回忆起的；沉思默想的v.记起，想起( recollect的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
thump
|
|
| v.重击，砰然地响；n.重击，重击声 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
brass
|
|
| n.黄铜；黄铜器，铜管乐器 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
refreshing
|
|
| adj.使精神振作的，使人清爽的，使人喜欢的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
25
discomfort
|
|
| n.不舒服，不安，难过，困难，不方便 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
26
relinquished
|
|
| 交出，让给( relinquish的过去式和过去分词 )； 放弃 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
27
unnaturally
|
|
| adv.违反习俗地；不自然地；勉强地；不近人情地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
28
averted
|
|
| 防止，避免( avert的过去式和过去分词 )； 转移 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
29
interval
|
|
| n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
30
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： |
|
|
|
|
31
gulf
|
|
| n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
32
drowsy
|
|
| adj.昏昏欲睡的，令人发困的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
33
obsequious
|
|
| adj.谄媚的，奉承的，顺从的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
34
steadily
|
|
| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
35
refreshingly
|
|
| adv.清爽地，有精神地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
36
obliterated
|
|
| v.除去( obliterate的过去式和过去分词 )；涂去；擦掉；彻底破坏或毁灭 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
37
entirely
|
|
| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
38
isolated
|
|
| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
39
drawn
|
|
| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
40
vaguely
|
|
| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
41
chapel
|
|
| n.小教堂，殡仪馆 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
42
bent
|
|
| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
43
inexplicably
|
|
| adv.无法说明地，难以理解地，令人难以理解的是 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
44
sinister
|
|
| adj.不吉利的，凶恶的，左边的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
45
cavern
|
|
| n.洞穴，大山洞 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
46
stationary
|
|
| adj.固定的，静止不动的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
47
deformed
|
|
| adj.畸形的；变形的；丑的，破相了的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
48
incessantly
|
|
| ad.不停地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
49
resentment
|
|
| n.怨愤，忿恨 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
50
annoyance
|
|
| n.恼怒，生气，烦恼 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
51
trifling
|
|
| adj.微不足道的；没什么价值的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
52
intimacy
|
|
| n.熟悉，亲密，密切关系，亲昵的言行 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
53
intensity
|
|
| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
54
unbearably
|
|
| adv.不能忍受地，无法容忍地；慌 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
55
plunged
|
|
| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
56
luncheon
|
|
| n.午宴，午餐，便宴 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
57
spoke
|
|
| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
58
delirium
|
|
| n. 神智昏迷,说胡话;极度兴奋 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
59
organisation
|
|
| n.组织，安排，团体，有机休 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
60
engrossed
|
|
| adj.全神贯注的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
61
lasting
|
|
| adj.永久的，永恒的；vbl.持续，维持 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
62
undue
|
|
| adj.过分的；不适当的；未到期的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
63
curiously
|
|
| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
64
unwilling
|
|
| adj.不情愿的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
65
furtively
|
|
| adv. 偷偷地, 暗中地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
66
hearsay
|
|
| n.谣传，风闻 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
67
unreasonable
|
|
| adj.不讲道理的，不合情理的，过度的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
68
strictly
|
|
| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
69
villa
|
|
| n.别墅，城郊小屋 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
70
jug
|
|
| n.(有柄，小口，可盛水等的)大壶，罐，盂 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
71
jugs
|
|
| （有柄及小口的）水壶( jug的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
72
smoothly
|
|
| adv.平滑地，顺利地，流利地，流畅地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
73
dreary
|
|
| adj.令人沮丧的，沉闷的，单调乏味的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
74
merged
|
|
| （使）混合( merge的过去式和过去分词 )； 相融； 融入； 渐渐消失在某物中 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
75
sordid
|
|
| adj.肮脏的，不干净的，卑鄙的，暗淡的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
76
misery
|
|
| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
77
boredom
|
|
| n.厌烦，厌倦，乏味，无聊 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
78
enquire
|
|
| v.打听，询问；调查，查问 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
79
rascal
|
|
| n.流氓；不诚实的人 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
80
conceal
|
|
| v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
81
enquired
|
|
| 打听( enquire的过去式和过去分词 )； 询问； 问问题； 查问 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
82
aggrieved
|
|
| adj.愤愤不平的，受委屈的；悲痛的；（在合法权利方面）受侵害的v.令委屈，令苦恼，侵害( aggrieve的过去式)；令委屈，令苦恼，侵害( aggrieve的过去式和过去分词) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
83
makeup
|
|
| n.组织；性格；化装品 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
84
harassed
|
|
| adj. 疲倦的，厌烦的 动词harass的过去式和过去分词 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
85
obstinate
|
|
| adj.顽固的，倔强的，不易屈服的，较难治愈的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
86
assuage
|
|
| v.缓和，减轻，镇定 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
87
incensed
|
|
| 盛怒的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
88
shrug
|
|
| v.耸肩(表示怀疑、冷漠、不知等) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
89
shrugged
|
|
| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
90
sneered
|
|
| 讥笑，冷笑( sneer的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
91
perfectly
|
|
| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
92
sullenly
|
|
| 不高兴地，绷着脸，忧郁地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
93
eyebrows
|
|
| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
94
mules
|
|
| 骡( mule的名词复数 )； 拖鞋； 顽固的人； 越境运毒者 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
95
appalled
|
|
| v.使惊骇，使充满恐惧( appall的过去式和过去分词)adj.惊骇的；丧胆的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
96
instinctively
|
|
| adv.本能地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
97
scruple
|
|
| n./v.顾忌，迟疑 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
98
drowsily
|
|
| adv.睡地，懒洋洋地，昏昏欲睡地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
99
erect
|
|
| n./v.树立，建立，使竖立；adj.直立的，垂直的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
100
abruptly
|
|
| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
101
oblivious
|
|
| adj.易忘的，遗忘的，忘却的，健忘的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
102
unintelligibly
|
|
| 难以理解地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
103
savages
|
|
| 未开化的人，野蛮人( savage的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
104
suffocating
|
|
| a.使人窒息的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
105
garrulous
|
|
| adj.唠叨的，多话的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
106
curt
|
|
| adj.简短的，草率的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
107
favourably
|
|
| adv. 善意地，赞成地 =favorably | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
108
malicious
|
|
| adj.有恶意的，心怀恶意的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
109
explicit
|
|
| adj.详述的，明确的；坦率的；显然的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
110
promising
|
|
| adj.有希望的，有前途的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
111
stifled
|
|
| （使）窒息， （使）窒闷( stifle的过去式和过去分词 )； 镇压，遏制； 堵 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
112
irritation
|
|
| n.激怒，恼怒，生气 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
113
exhaustion
|
|
| n.耗尽枯竭，疲惫，筋疲力尽，竭尽，详尽无遗的论述 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
114
retired
|
|
| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
115
lapse
|
|
| n.过失，流逝，失效，抛弃信仰，间隔；vi.堕落，停止，失效，流逝；vt.使失效 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
116
fret
|
|
| v.(使)烦恼；(使)焦急；(使)腐蚀，(使)磨损 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
117
strife
|
|
| n.争吵，冲突，倾轧，竞争 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
118
soothing
|
|
| adj.慰藉的；使人宽心的；镇静的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
119
cuffs
|
|
| n.袖口( cuff的名词复数 )v.掌打，拳打( cuff的第三人称单数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
120
loathing
|
|
| n.厌恶，憎恨v.憎恨，厌恶( loathe的现在分词)；极不喜欢 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
121
cypress
|
|
| n.柏树 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
122
unfamiliar
|
|
| adj.陌生的，不熟悉的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
123
hostility
|
|
| n.敌对，敌意；抵制［pl.］交战，战争 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
124
conspiracy
|
|
| n.阴谋，密谋，共谋 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
125
underneath
|
|
| adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
126
quiescent
|
|
| adj.静止的，不活动的，寂静的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
127
devour
|
|
| v.吞没；贪婪地注视或谛听，贪读；使着迷 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
128
scattered
|
|
| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
129
flickered
|
|
| （通常指灯光）闪烁，摇曳( flicker的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
130
boughs
|
|
| 大树枝( bough的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
131
folly
|
|
| n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
132
pane
|
|
| n.窗格玻璃，长方块 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
133
enveloped
|
|
| v.包围，笼罩，包住( envelop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
134
mingled
|
|
| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
135
momentary
|
|
| adj.片刻的，瞬息的；短暂的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
136
verge
|
|
| n.边，边缘；v.接近，濒临 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
137
numbness
|
|
| n.无感觉，麻木，惊呆 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
138
undoing
|
|
| n.毁灭的原因，祸根；破坏，毁灭 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
139
wrestled
|
|
| v.（与某人）搏斗( wrestle的过去式和过去分词 )；扭成一团；扭打；（与…）摔跤 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
140
breach
|
|
| n.违反，不履行；破裂；vt.冲破，攻破 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
141
ascertain
|
|
| vt.发现，确定，查明，弄清 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
142
severing
|
|
| v.切断，断绝( sever的现在分词 )；断，裂 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
143
vein
|
|
| n.血管，静脉；叶脉，纹理；情绪；vt.使成脉络 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
144
stanzas
|
|
| 节，段( stanza的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
145
subdued
|
|
| adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
146
sonorous
|
|
| adj.响亮的，回响的；adv.圆润低沉地；感人地；n.感人，堂皇 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
147
wafted
|
|
| v.吹送，飘送，（使）浮动( waft的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
148
sob
|
|
| n.空间轨道的轰炸机；呜咽，哭泣 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
149
rheumatism
|
|
| n.风湿病 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
150
thoroughly
|
|
| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
151
awakened
|
|
| v.（使）醒( awaken的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
152
surmount
|
|
| vt.克服；置于…顶上 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
153
peculiar
|
|
| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
154
possessed
|
|
| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
155
eddying
|
|
| 涡流，涡流的形成 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
156
shrieked
|
|
| v.尖叫( shriek的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |