With the next season he allowed her to accept the loan of her sister Carrie’s house in town; that lady having gone on a little trip to Japan. She hated the Wisbeach house, which was dark, ugly, and situated1 in the dreary2 district of Portman Square. Carrie Wisbeach, who was but little in town, and was a sportswoman renowned3 in more lands than her own, had little heed4 of all the artistic5 and graceful6 luxuries with which her younger sister had always required to be surrounded, and had left her husband’s old London house very much as his grandparents had made it.
Mouse detested8 it unspeakably, but it was roomy and a good way off Harrenden House, and she put up with it, trusting that she would be almost always out of it. For her tyrant9 favored rather than discouraged her perpetual appearance in society; it prevented people talking, and in society alone could she favor his interests social and political.
She was still altered; she had still that harassed12 apprehensive13 glance backward over her shoulder; but she was familiarized with her captivity14, and had learned to make bricks without straw for her bondmaster without too plainly betraying to others the marks of the sand and the clay in which she was forced to kneel.
Ever since her first season she had done whatever she had pleased, and amused herself in any manner she desired. But she had never got into trouble, never been compromised, never felt her position shake beneath her. A woman, young and popular, who has great connections behind her, can, if she have tact15 and skill, easily avoid being injured by scandal. If she knows how to conciliate opinion by certain concessions16, she can enjoy herself as thoroughly17 as any young cat gambolling18 about a dairy; and no one will seriously interfere19 with her. Society had certainly “talked”; but when a woman has a brother like[346] Hurstmanceaux, and a father-in-law like the good Duke of Otterbourne, and many other male relatives high-spirited and innumerable, people do not talk very incautiously or very loudly.
Now through “Billy,” for the first time, she saw her position jeopardized20. That low-bred creature, whom she had made fetch and carry, and wince21 and tremble at her whim22 and pleasure, had now the power to make her, if he chose, in the eyes of the world, that miserable23, contemptible24, and despicable creature, a femme tarée.
Sometimes, too, a more tragic25, a more sickening, fear assailed26 her, when she thought of the possibility of her tyrant telling the truth, in boastfulness or in revenge, to her brother. It was not likely, but it was always possible; for she saw that in William Massarene, at times, temper—the savage27, uncontrolled temper of the low-born man—got the better of good sense, of caution, and even of ambition. She could never be sure that it might not do so some day in her case, and that for the ruffianly relish28 of dragging the pride of the head of the House of Courcy in the dust, he might not throw to the devil all his cherished triumphs, all his hardly-bought distinctions.
Happily for her Hurstmanceaux was almost always in the country, or on the sea, and the sight of him in London streets seldom tempted29 the fiend to rise in her gaoler.
Meanwhile the London season came on and ran its course with its usual plethora30 of pleasure and politics, its interludes of Easter and Whitsuntide weeks, and its comings and goings of people, who could not live without running to Rome, flying to Biskra, shipping31 over to New York, and taking a breathless scamper32 to Thibet.
Katherine Massarene came up to town in the spring, sorely against her will, and she went through the routine which was so wearisome to her, and rejected many offers of the hands and hearts of gentlemen with whom she had exchanged half-a-dozen sentences at a dinner-party or riding down Rotten Row.
“Lord, child, what do you want that you’re so particular?” said her mother, who did not approve this incessant33 and ruthless dismissal of suitors.
“I want nothing and no one. I want to be let alone,”[347] replied her daughter. “As for the life of London, I abhor34 it, I am asphyxiated35 in it.”
Suitors who might fairly have expected her to appreciate them solicited36 her suffrage37 in vain; she did not give them a thought, she abhorred38 them—everyone. She only longed to get away from it all and have finished for ever with the pomp, the pretention, the oppressive effort which seemed to her parents the very marrow39 of life.
“Mr. Mallock calls this the best society of Europe,” she thought again. “If it be so, why does it all come to us to be fed?”
Had she possessed40 the disposal of her father’s fortune she would not have fed it. Being obliged to stand by and see it fed, in such apparent acquiescence41 as silence confers, she lost all appetite herself for the banquet of life.
Such slight cutting phrases as she permitted herself to speak were repeated with embittered42 and exaggerated emphasis in London houses until London society grew horribly afraid of her. But it concealed43 its fear and wreathed in smiles its resentment44, being sincerely desirous of obtaining the hand of the satirist45 for one of its sons.
More than once the Press announced her betrothal46 to some great personage, but on the following morning was always forced to retract47 the statement as a snail48 draws in its horns. To her mother it seemed heathenish and unnatural49 that a young woman should not wish to be “settled”; she thought the mischief50 came from the education Katherine had received, reading books that had even a different alphabet.
“You want all the hideous51 vulgarity of a fashionable wedding, my dear mother,” said Katherine. “If ever I should marry I assure you I shall wear a white cotton gown and go alone to some remote village church.”
“My dear, how can you say such things? It is quite shocking to hear you,” said the mistress of Harrenden House, infinitely52 distressed53.
“Pray set your mind at ease,” said her daughter. “I shall never marry, for the best of all reasons that no man whom I could respect would ever marry me.”
“Not respect ye! How can you say such things?[348] You’re the daughter of one of the richest men in the whole world, and he’ll be noble as well, he says, afore he goes to Kingdom Come.”
The younger woman lifted her head, like a forest-doe who hears the crack of a carter’s whip.
“To belong to the Peerage is not necessarily to belong to the nobility; and you may belong to the nobility without being included in the Peerage. Sir Edward Coke laid down that law. Surely, my dear mother, you cannot for a moment pretend that if my father be given a peerage he will become noble?”
Katherine Massarene knew that she might as well have spoken to the Clodion on the staircase, as said these reasonable things to her mother; but now and then she could not wholly keep back the expression of the scorn of her father’s ambitions which moved her—ambitions, in her eyes, so peurile and so poor.
“Well, then, I think he might have known better than to deny as his sovereign can make a gentleman of anybody if so be she choose,” said her mother doggedly57.
“You might as well say that the sovereign can cure the king’s evil!”
“Well, they say she can?”
“Oh, my dear mother! Can you live in the world and keep such superstitions58?”
“You’ve no belief in you!”
“I at least believe enough in true nobility to hold that it is a gift of race and breeding beyond purchase, and uncreatable by any formula.”
“If the Queen makes your father a lord, a lord he will be with the best of them.”
“She can make him a lord; she cannot make him either noble or gentle. His nobility will be a lie, as his armorial bearings are already.”
“That’s a cruel thing to say, Kathleen!”
“It is the truth.”
“Why do I try to reason with her?” she thought.[349] “One might as well try to persuade the stone supporters on the gateway59?”
But Margaret Massarene, although she would not allow it, did, in her own mind, think that her man was soaring too high in his aspirations60. To look up where he meant to rise to, made her feel giddy and afraid.
“They’ll never give it to ye, William,” his wife ventured timidly to say one day, by “it” meaning his peerage.
He smiled grimly.
“Why not? ’Cos I ain’t a Radical61 turncoat? ’Cause I ain’t a Birmingham sweater? ’Cause I ain’t a Hebrew broker62? They’ll give it me, old woman, or I’ll know the reason why. You’ll be ‘my Lady,’ if you live.”
He had decided64 on his title, which he intended to take from a little property that he had purchased in the Midlands, and he had already ordered a dinner-service of gold plate, with a coronet on all its pieces, which was to be a work of art, and would take some years to finish. Before it would be ready for him he would be ready for it, with his baron’s crown to put on everything, from the great gates to the foot-baths.
Any man who is very rich can become an English peer if he has kept clear of scandals and dabbled65 a little in public life. And who was richer than he? Nobody this side the herring-pond. The Conservatives were in office. The Flying Boats of the fair, to which he had once irreverently compared the two political parties, had made their see-sawing journey, and the one was temporarily up and the other temporarily down. The owner of Vale Royal was beginning to make them feel that they would lose him if they did not please him, and that they could not afford to lose him. He had a forty-horse power of making himself dangerous and disagreeable.
“A very dreadful person,” said Lord Greatrex always, when in the bosom66 of his family; but he knew that it was precisely67 this kind of person who must be conciliated and retained by a Prime Minister on the eve of the twentieth century. A chief of government has only a certain quantity of good things in his gift, and he does not waste[350] them on those who, being neglected, will not avenge68 themselves. William Massarene worried the heads of his party extremely; they were well aware that if he did not get what he wanted from them, he would rat and make terms with the enemy. Governments are accustomed to John Snob69, whom nothing will pacify70, except to become Lord Vere de Vere; but John Snob is never beloved by them.
William Massarene did not care whether they loved him or hated him. The time had long passed when a “How do?” in the Lobby from one of them could thrill him with pleasure and pride; or a careless nod in the dusk on the Terrace send him to dinner with a joyously-beating heart. He could corner the gentlemen of the Carlton as easily as he had cornered a company in other days in Dakota. You could not buy society as you bought a corporation or a department in the States; the matter required more dressing-up and glossing71 over. Still, the principle of purchase remained the same, and Massarene recuperated72 himself for what he spent so largely in Belgravia by his commercial successes and financial fame in the City.
In the freemasonry of business he had been at once recognized in the City as a Grand Master. Many a London gold broker, railway contractor73, and bank chairman felt himself a mere74 child, a mere neophyte75, when this silent, squat76, keen-eyed man from the Northwest came down into the precincts of Mincing77 Lane and Threadneedle Street.
In the City he knew his power, and made it felt. He united the American rapidity, daring, and instinct in business with the Englishman’s coldness, reserve, and prudence78. The union was irresistible79. He had quaked and crouched80 before fine ladies; but when he met the directors of the Bank of England he felt like Napoleon at Tilsit.
He was a magnate in the City, whilst he was still a neophyte in the great world. But his ambitions were of another kind than those which the City gratifies. They were social and political. He meant to die a Cabinet Minister and a Peer. He went to Walmer one Easter[351] and looked at the portraits of the Wardens82. “Guess mine’ll hang there one day,” he said to himself.
Everything in his new life was still, in reality, most uncomfortable to him; the very clothes he had to wear were tight and oppressive; he had to drink hocks and clarets, when he longed for gin and beer; he had to eat salmis and relevés when he hungered for bread and cheese and salted pork; he longed to spit on his own carpets, and dared not; he was in awe83 of his own servants; he was awkward and ill at ease in his own houses; he quailed84 before the contemptuous eye of his own secretary; and he could not read the bill of fare of his own dinners; and yet, though he pined to be once more in his shirt-sleeves, with a clay pipe in his mouth and a glass of hot grog at his elbow, he was happy in his misery85, for he “had arrived.”
Not arrived at the apex86 as yet; but in full view of it, and within an ace7 of planting his flag on the summit. And so in all probability he would have done in the opening years of the new century but for one of those small, very small, mistakes, which upset the chariot of successful life as the loose rivet87, the weak plank88, the uncovered valve destroys the stately steamship89, the colossal90 scaffolding, the rushing and thundering steam-engine.
One day in the autumn of the year the American Consul91-General in London received a letter from his “great country” which, although ill-spelt, ill-writ92, and signed by a poor workingman, startled his secretary so considerably93 by its contents that he brought the epistle direct to his chief for instructions.
This letter ran thus:—
“’Onored ’Xcellence, theer’s a-living in London town a man as is callt Willum Massarene; ’e was known in this ’ere township as Blasted Blizzard94. B. B. made a big pile an’ went ’ome, and they says as ’e’s a swell95 an’ kings an’ lords mess wi’ him. That’s neither ’ere nor theer. But theer’s a pore fellar arsts me to writ this, ’cos he hev hisself no larnin’, an’ ’e hev workt many a year on Massarene’s line—Kerosene96, Issoura, and Chicago Main Trunk—an’ he’s a platelayer an’ hev allus bin81 ’onest an’ ’ard-workin’, an’ ’ad[352] his left arm cut hoff two summers ago by a goods-train, and hev arskt for ’Elp an’ got no ’Elp ’cos ’e be a non-union man, and the Line say as how ’twas ’is own fault ’cos ’e ’ad gone to sleep on the metals. Now this ’ere man, sir—name as is Robert Airley, native o’ Haddington, N.B.—says as ’ow he ’ud be a rich un now but ’e med a mistek: ’e sold a claim to a bit ’o ground as ’ad tin in it to this ’ere Massarene when he was young an’ starving an’ ’is wife in pains o’ labor97. Robert Airley ’e say he found some sparkles sticking to roots o’ grass, an’ didn’t know wot ’twas, an’ show it to Massarene, who was thin kippen a drink and play saloon in Kerosene, and Massarene bought his claim to the land for thirty dollars and ever arterwards dared Robert to prove it, and prove he couldn’t, but says as how ’tis God Amighty’s truth as he owned the tin and sold ’is rights un-be-known as I tell ye. Bein’ allus very pore he couldn’t git away from Kerosene, and went on Main Trunk as platelayer, an’ now he arsks yer ’Onor to see Blasted Blizzard and tell ’im as ’ow ’e can work no more and ’e must be purvided for. I writt this for ’im ’cos Robert can’t writt ’isself an’ I be your ’Onor’s ’umble servant,
“George Mathers,
“Lamp-cleaner on K.I.C. Line.
“Written in engine-house.
“Native o’ Sudbury, Suffolk, England, and out in this damned country sore agen his will. Direct Robert Airley, Post Office, Kerosene City, North Dakota, U. S. A.”
The Consul-General read this letter twice through very carefully, for its spelling and its blots98 made it difficult of comprehension. It did not astonish him, for he knew a good deal about the antecedents of the owner of Harrenden House and Vale Royal. He had never alluded99 to them in English society, because if American consuls100 once began to tell what they know, society in Europe would be decimated at once.
The letter did not astonish him but it made him very uncomfortable. He was a person of amiable101 disposition102 and he felt that it would be unkind to wholly neglect so pitiful and just an appeal. Yet to address the owner of[353] Harrenden House and Vale Royal, on such a subject was an extremely unpleasant task, one which he was not disposed for a moment to accept. To tell Solomon in all his glory that he had kept a drink and play saloon, and cheated about a placer-claim, demanded a degree of audacity103 which is not required by governments from those excellent public servants who sit in consular104 offices and in chancelleries to indite105 reports which are to be pigeon-holed unread, and throw oil on the troubled waters of international commerce.
He had no doubt whatever that the statements of the letter were true; he remembered having heard it said by some members of Congress in Washington a score of years before that the Penamunic Tin Mine had been obtained by Massarene through a chance more fortunate than honest, and nothing which anyone could have told him of the past of Blasted Blizzard would have ever found him incredulous. He knew too well on what foundations the fortunes of such men are built.
“This is very dreadful,” he said to the Vice-Consul, when the latter had read the letter. “But you see the man is a native of Haddington. I cannot admit that he should apply to us. We are clearly only here to assist American subjects. If it were a matter of a kind on which I could approach Mr. Massarene as amicus curiæ, I would do so. But on such a matter as this it would be impossible to speak to him without offence. Will you be so good as to write to the man Mathers, and tell him that our office is not the channel through which his friend—er—what is his name?—Robert Airley, can apply; tell him he should address the English Consul-General in New York.”
“Poor devils!” said the Vice-Consul, who knew well what is meant by the dreary and interminable labyrinth106 of official assistance and interference.
“You know Massarene very well,” he ventured to add. “Couldn’t you suggest to him——”
“Certainly not,” said his chief decidedly. “Massarene is an English subject. So is Robert Airley. So is George Mathers. We have nothing to do with any of them. They have never been naturalized. The application is[354] entirely107 irregular. Return the letter and tell them to address the English Consul-General at New York.”
The Vice-Consul did so; and in due time a similar letter was sent to the English Consul-General at New York by George Mathers, who added to it that the wife of Robert Airley had died a week earlier of pneumonia108 brought on by want of food.
The English Consul-General returned the letter addressed to him, and informed the writer that he could not interfere between employer and employed, or in any private quarrel at any time; the matter was not within his competence109.
Then the Suffolk man, who worked in the engine-house and cleaned railway lamps, wrote direct to William Massarene, London. This address was of course sufficient. The letter found its way in due course to Harrenden House and arrived there a week after the opening of Parliament, amongst many coroneted envelopes, appeals for subscriptions110, and political pamphlets. It was candid111, simple, ingenuous112, but it was certainly not politic11, and was extremely impolite. It began abruptly:—
“William Massarene, Sir—Blasted Blizzard, as we used to call yer—you’ll remember Robert Airley, though they say you figger as a swell now in Lonnon town. We’ve wrote to Consuls and They won’t do nought113, so I write this for Robert to you. You bought Robert’s claim; you knew ’twas tin, yet ye niver giv ’im nought but thetty dollars. Robert has workd on yer Line twenty year if One, an’ ’e can work no More. ’Is wife she ded last Month, ’cos she were out o’ food, an’ ’is Son be ded too—rin over on yer Line. Ye’re Bound to give ’im enuff to kip ’is life in him. Not to speak o’ the placer-claim as ye took and found yer mine in it. Robert’s a ole servant on the Line, an’ ye be bound to kip life in ’im. Ye was allus close-fisted an’ main ’ard, and a Blackgud in all ways, but they ses as ’ow ye be a swell now, an’ it won’t Become ye to let a ole servant starve as was allus God-fearin’ an’ law-abidin’, an’ ’ave workt as ’ard as a ’oss, an’ never brott the tin claim agen ye, tho’ ye cheated so bad.”
The letter was signed as that to the Consul had been, and Massarene read it from the first line to the last.
[355]He had two secretaries at this time, young men of good family and university education, of whom he stood in perpetual awe; but he never allowed these youths to see his correspondence until it had been examined by himself. He received too many letters menacing and injurious, containing too many references to his past existence, for the bland114 and supercilious115 young gentlemen to be trusted with their perusal117. Therefore the letter from the two railway men in North Dakota came direct into his own hands as he sat in his library before a table covered with papers and blue books, and surrounded by well-filled book-shelves off which he never removed a volume. When he had read it his face was terrible to behold118. One of his footmen coming in to look at the fire was frightened at its black savage terrible scowl119. It is hard for any man to find his past always rising up like Banquo’s ghost against him; to William Massarene it was insupportable.
He had a long memory; he never forgot a face or a name. He remembered all about Robert Airley the moment his eyes fell on the letter. It was thirty years before that the Lowland Scotch120 emigrant121, who had none of the proverbial canniness122 of his race, but was a simple and trustful lad of some twenty-four years old, had come into Kerosene City, one of a wagon-full of weary folks; there were no railways then within a thousand miles. But he did not trust only to memory. He had brought with him to England all his old ledgers124, account books, folios of every kind filling many cases, and all now filed, docketed, and arranged in locked cases in a small study of which he kept the key on his watch-chain. He went to this little room now, and, with the precise and orderly recollection for which his brain was conspicuous125, went straight to the books which referred to the tenth year of his residence in Dakota. It took him some forty minutes to find the entry which he required, but he did find it.
“Paid Robert Airley the sum of one dollar for specimens126 of tin ore.” “Paid Robert Airley the sum of thirty dollars for his claim at Penamunic.” The transaction was perfectly127 legitimate128 and legal. Appended were the receipts of the said Airley and the deed which transferred the land. Twenty-nine years had gone by and the ink[356] had rusted116 and the paper grown yellow, but the record was there.
The fool had sold his bit of prairie land out and out and the tin under the soil of it. He had done it with his eyes open. Who could complain of free contract?
To Robert Airley it had seemed a poor bit of soil, good for naught129 in husbandry, and his young wife had been ailing130 and her first delivery at hand; and he had been glad to get the dollars to buy her what she wanted. Many men were in the settlement who could have told him not to sell his placer-claim for a mess of pottage, but there was no one who cared to go against Blasted Blizzard, and, in new townships where shooting-irons are arguments, men mind their own business.
William Massarene locked up the ledger123 and the case containing it, and went back to his library. He then sat down and wrote a cypher telegram to his manager in Kerosene City: “Tell platelayer Airley he won’t get a red cent from me. Accident was due to his own carelessness.”
He wrote this because he was in a towering rage at the manner in which he had been addressed. Perhaps at some other moment, or if addressed more humbly131, he might have bought off these men as he had previously132 bought off others; but this letter had come to him in an hour when he was filled with vainglory and self-satisfaction. Only the previous day he had been at a banquet given him by the Conservatives of the county he represented. His blood was still warm, his vanity still fermenting133 like yeast134, at the memory of the compliments paid to him by the great personages present; the praises of his glorious self-made position, the homage135 offered to him in the name of Great Britain. The Leader of the House had given him to understand that when there was next any vacancy136 or change he would be offered a place in the administration; the great county folks at the county banquet had heaped adulation upon him, for they wanted him to make a new short-route railway line to London; the Times newspaper had had a leader consecrated137 to himself and to his admirable promise as a future chief in the political world. And in such a moment of[357] supreme138 distinction a platelayer and a lamp-cleaner dared to write to him that he had been always a “blackgud”!
Acute as his mind was, and vast as had been the sums which he had expended139 in shipping his own and his wife’s people to Australia, so as not to be annoyed by their demands or vicinity, he should have been willing to spend the insignificant140 sum which would have pensioned and quieted Robert Airley; he should also have given something to the Suffolk lamp-cleaner and thanked him; both men would have praised him in the city where his fortune had been first made. But the wrath141 which was in him for once clouded his keen perception; he would not have given either of the poor devils a crust of bread to save their life or his own.
The survival of the strongest was the law of nature; he had heard a sociologist142 say so. Even beasts in the woods followed that rule; the bison and the opossum and the jaguar143 and the bear deferred144 to that law. How should men defy or dare to demur145 to it?
Because a weak sawney of a long-limbed emigrant had not owned brains enough to see what was under the soil which had been given him, could he blame a keener and stronger man, already on the soil, for having had the wit to know what ore was hidden under the rank grass and the juniper scrub? Clearly, no. Fortune favored those who helped themselves.
“A blackgud in all ways”!
Did a wretched railway hand dare to write this to a colossus of finance whose brain was shrewder and whose pile was bigger than those of any man on the Corporation of London? William Massarene felt as a Burmese Buddha146, hung with gold and jewels, may be supposed to feel when a Cook’s tourist pokes147 at him with the brass148 ferule of an umbrella.
On a man of breeding the insults of inferiors fall without power to wound; but to a man of low origin and enormous pretension149 they are the most intolerable of offences. For one brief moment all his greatness seemed to him as ashes in his mouth if these workingmen out in North Dakota did not bow down before his glory. It was delightful150 to be called “my dear friend” by the proud[358] Premier151 of England; it was delightful to be complimented on his stables and his dinners by royal princes; it was delightful to be consulted as a financial authority by the Governor of the Bank of England; but all these delights seemed nothing at all if a platelayer and a lamp-cleaner could refuse to acknowledge his godhead. He knew if he drove through Kerosene City next month the whole population of it would turn out in his honor; the governor of the State, the mayor of the town, the sheriff of the county, the members it sent to Congress, its senators, its solicitors152, its merchants, its manufacturers, its hotel-keepers, its white men and its black men, would all be in the streets to cheer and welcome him, to feast and flatter him, to hang out the union Jack153 and the star-spangled banner side by side in the oily, sooty, reeking154 air from the ten-storied houses and the towering factories. But in the background there would be two grimy railway hands who would shout “Blackgud!”
This passing weakness was brief; he was not a man of sentiment. The two railway hands might scream what libellous rubbish they liked. Nobody would listen to them. Curses many, loud and deep, had followed him throughout his career; but they were a chorus which attested155 the success of that career. What he heard now were the cheers of the House of Commons.
His sense of humiliation156 was momentary157; his sense of his fury was lasting158. He would have strangled the two men with his own hands if they had been in sight.
Many bones must whiten in the building of a pyramid, and William Massarene had but done what the Pharaohs did. Only their structure was of brick, and his of bullion159.
The letter had only moved him to a momentary sense of fear; it passed almost as soon as roused; but his bitter wrath remained, a fire unquenchable.
Temper is always a bad adviser160. It advised him badly now. A very small annuity161 would have quieted Robert Airley, who knew that he had no legal claim, and had not long to live, for he had a tumor162 in his stomach. But when the manager of the Main Trunk Line gave the reply of its owner to the platelayer, he, who was a gentle and[359] patient man, worn-out with hard work and sorrow, felt a devil enter into him and seize his very soul.
He said nothing, but the manager thought, “The boss might have given the poor fellow a few dollars a week. After all, the Penamunic ore was found on his claim, and he’s been on this line ever since the metals were laid.”
But the manager cared too well to keep his own post, and knew William Massarene too well to venture to express this opinion.
“My dear child, something has riled your father dreadful,” said Mrs. Massarene after luncheon163 that day; “he’s got his black cap on; oh, I always calls it his black cap when he looks thunder and lightning like, as he do to-day, and swallers his food without a word.”
“Perhaps the Prince is not coming on the tenth,” said her daughter, with that inflection of contempt which she knew was unfilial, and which they told her was disloyal.
Mrs. Massarene shook her head.
“The Prince always comes here. He don’t get better dinners nowhere; and he’s a deal o’ use for your father in many ways. ’Tisn’t that. I am afeared ’tis some of the folks out in Dakota as bothers him.”
“He must have so many who hate him!” said Katherine.
“Well, yes, my dear, no doubt,” said his wife mournfully. “Did you ever see a hogshead o’ molasses without wasps164? He have a very big fortune, has your father.”
Katherine was silent.
“Do you know, if he were to die, what he would do with it?” she said after awhile.
“Why, leave it to you, my dear. Who else should have it?”
“I hope he would not. I am sure he would not. I have displeased165 and opposed him too often. I think he will bequeath it in such a manner that it shall be a perpetual monument to himself.”
“He’ll leave it to you, my dear. Nature is nature, even in a man like your father.”
“If I thought there was any fear of that I would speak to him about it.”
[360]“Oh, good gracious me, child, don’t dream of such a thing!” said Mrs. Massarene, in trepidation167. “’Twould be firing dynamite168! In the first place, you’d never turn him—nobody ever could—his mind’s made up, you may be sure, and nothing you could say would change it; but, oh Lord! if you was to hint to him that he must die one day, he’d never forgive it; he’s one o’ them as thinks he can square Almighty169 God. ’Twouldn’t be decent either, you know. ’Twould look as if you was counting on his going and wishing for his pile.”
“If you think it would look like that I will say nothing. But I should beg him to leave me out of his will altogether.”
“He wouldn’t believe you meant it,” said her mother. “He wouldn’t believe anybody could mean it. He would think you was trying to find out how much he’s worth and how much you’ll get.”
Katherine Massarene sighed and abandoned the argument. She went to ride in the Park with a heavy and anxious spirit. The season was odious170 to her; all which to most women of her age would have been delightful was, to her, tedious and oppressive beyond description. The sense that she was always being pointed171 out as William Massarene’s daughter destroyed such pleasure as she might have taken in the music, the art, the intellectual and political life of London. The sense that she was continually on show shut up her lips and gave her that slighting contempt and coldness of manner which repelled172 both men and women. The many offers for her hand which were made were addressed to her father; no one was bold enough to address them to herself. Everybody, except a few aged10 people, thought her a most disagreeable young woman.
“Refuse every offer made to you—I do not mean to marry,” she had said once to him; and he had replied:
“You will marry when I order you to do so.”
But there was something in her regard which restrained him from ordering her, though he received various proposals which tempted him. What he wished for, however, was an English duke if a royal one was not to be had, and there was no duke in the market, they were all married or[361] minors173. So for the present he left her in peace concerning her settlement in life.
Her heart was heavy as she rode over the tan, her thoroughbred mare174 dancing airily beneath her. She was a fine rider and quite fearless; but she hated park-riding amongst a mob of other people with a staring crowd at the rails. “A circus would be better,” she thought. She passed Hurstmanceaux, who was riding a young Irish horse; he lifted his hat slightly with a very cold expression on his face.
Jack was with him, promoted to a Welsh pony175 of fourteen hands, Tom Tit having passed to the use of his brother Gerald. Jack and Boo had been sent for by their mother, who had again the loan of the Wisbeach house, her sister being this year in Nebraska for shooting.
Jack was feeling quite a man, his pretty long curls had been cut off, he had a tutor chosen by Lord Augustus, he had a hunting-watch in his pocket, and he was wondering when he should be allowed to smoke. Manhood was not all roses. He never heard anything of Harry176, and he did not see much of Boo.
Jack looked after Katherine Massarene and her beautiful mare.
“That’s the daughter of the old fat man who gives mammy such a lot of money,” he said, as he rode onward177.
“What do you mean?” said Hurstmanceaux, startled and stern.
Jack was frightened.
“What do you mean?” repeated his uncle.
“Old man is made of money,” he said evasively; his uncle, very high above him, very erect178 and severe, looking down with sternly searching eyes, was an object of fear to Jack.
“But why do you say your mother has his money? You must have some reason. Answer,” said Ronald, in a tone which did not admit of refusal.
“The—the—person who told me knew. But I can’t tell you who it was,” said Jack, with a resolute179 look on his face.
The “person” had been Boo. Hurstmanceaux placed a great effort on himself to desist from further enquiry.
[362]“You are right not to betray your friends,” he said. “But you would do better still not to repeat their falsehoods.”
Jack did not reply, but from the expression on his face it was plain that he did not think he had repeated falsehoods.
Ronald was about to say something to him about his obligation to protect his mother from such calumnies180, but it was not the time or place for lectures on duty; and he was painfully conscious that, the older Jack grew, the less esteem181 would he entertain for his mother and the more true would such statements be likely to seem to him. What the child had said was like a thorn in his own flesh. He had thought better of his sister since her surrender of the Otterbourne jewels, and he had tried to persuade himself that all her previous faults and follies182 had been due to the wrongdoing of her husband. The boy’s unfortunate speech was like a bolt in a clear sky. For it was certain that Jack could not have had such an idea himself without suggestion from others, and though it was probably the mere garbage of the servants’ hall, it was nevertheless miserably183 certain that some such story must be in circulation.
He continued his ride in great anxiety.
He knew nothing of the affair with Beaumont, but many other things rose to his memory; the sale of Vale Royal, the sale of Blair Airon, her incessant patronage184 of the Massarenes, the persuasion185 used by her to induce great and royal persons to go to their houses—all this recurred186 to him in damning confirmation187 of the suspicions raised by Jack’s words. He felt that he must not question the child further; he could not in honor put her little son in the witness-box against her; but the charge contained in Jack’s words seemed so horrible to him that as he rode past Harrenden House he was tempted to stop and enter, and take the owner of it by the throat, and force the truth out of him.
He remembered how much money she had spent that he had never been able to account for; how large her expenditure188 had been, despite the slenderness of her jointure since the death of Cocky; how obstinately189 Roxhall had[363] always refused to tell him anything whatever about the conditions of the sale of Vale Royal, alleging190 that it was a thing he was ashamed of and of which he would never speak; and Roxhall he knew had always been in love with her, and turned by her at her will round her little finger.
Something of this kind he had long ago suspected and feared, but the truth had never been visible to him in its naked venality191 before this morning ride with Jack. So long as Cocky had been alive, although it had been disgraceful enough, it had not seemed so utterly192 abominable193 as it did now to know that his sister obtained her luxuries by such expedients194. What to do he could not tell. She did not acknowledge his authority in any way, and set the law at defiance195 as far as she could, even as concerned his jurisdiction196 over her children. He could not accuse her without proof, and he had none; accusation197 also was useless—she was wholly indifferent to his opinion and censure198. Her position in the world remained intact, and it was not her brother’s place to proclaim her unworthy to occupy it. That which he longed to do—to take William Massarene by the throat and shake the truth out of him—was impossible by reason of his own habits, manners, and social sphere, in which all such brawling199 was considered only fit for cads.
“How very angry he looks!” thought Jack, and was glad when he had got away and changed his riding-clothes, and run upstairs to Boo. It was not very often now that he was allowed to scamper up to the children’s tea and daub himself with honey and marmalade, and pile sugar on hot buttered toast. The servants called him “sir,” and Boo’s governess called him “M. le Duc.” It was all deadly dull, and Jack envied the hall-boy.
“You will have a great stake in the country,” said his tutor.
“A beefsteak?” said saucy200 Jack, and was set to write out a line fifty times, which was very hard work to a little man who could only move a pen with extreme slowness and stiffness in letters an inch high, for his education had been extremely neglected.
He admired his uncle Ronald because Hurstmanceaux[364] was the kind of man whom boys always do admire; but he was afraid of him, and he sighed for his beloved Harry. There was nobody like Harry in all the wide world, and where had his idol201 gone?
“Not ever to write!” said Jack to himself, with tears in his eyes. He did not say anything about his anxiety even to Boo, for Boo was at no time sympathetic, and was at this moment delirious202 with town joys, having gone to a morning performance, some tableaux203 vivants, and a water-color exhibition all in one day, wearing a marvelous picture-hat and a new bracelet-watch.
Except by Jack, Brancepeth was wholly forgotten, consigned204 to that oblivion which society spreads like a pall205 over even the memories of the absent. His father and mother heard from him at intervals206; no one else. He was one of the many who have gone too fast, who pull up perforce, and drop off the course: such non-stayers interest no one. The men with whom he had gone out to the South Pole, and later to the Cape207, returned, and said they had left him there. That was all. He had spoken of exploration. They supposed that meant he had gone “on the make.” He had been a very popular man, but popularity is a flame which must be kept alight by the fuel of contact and of conversation: absence extinguishes it instantly.
Jack thought about a great many things, especially when he was shut up for his sins all alone, an event which occurred frequently.
The sum of his thoughts were not favorable to his mother.
“Mother has driven Harry away,” he said to himself.
Why?
Perhaps because Harry had come to an end of his money? Perhaps Harry had finished it all buying that Punch which his mother had taken from him?
“If I was sure of that, and if I knew where he was, I’d walk all the world over till I found him,” thought Jack; and wondered how he could make out where Harry was gone. No one ever even spoke54 of Harry. Who could he ask? He asked his groom208 one morning when he had halted under a tree very early in the Park.
[365]“I have no idea, sir, where Lord Brancepeth is,” said the groom, who was a miracle of discretion209.
“Couldn’t you ask?” said Jack.
“I don’t think I could, sir.”
“Wherever he is, he’s got Cuckoopint.”
“Has he indeed, sir?”
“Yes; because he promised. He always keeps a promise.”
“That’s a very good quality, sir.”
“He’s all good,” said Jack solemnly.
“I’ll give you five shillings, Philips, if you can find him and Cuckoopint,” said Jack, pulling two half-crowns out of his knickerbockers.
“I’ll make it ten,” said Jack. “But it must be next week, for I’ve spent all they give me except this.”
“Next week will do, sir,” said the groom, slipping the half-crowns in his waistcoat pocket.
Jack did not speak of this transaction to anyone, not even to Boo. He loved his sister, but he had discovered of late years that Boo, to “get in with mammy” and get taken to a garden party or a pastoral play or a picture exhibition, would not hesitate to betray him and his confidences.
“I wouldn’t ever betray you,” he said once in reproach.
“Then you’d be a silly not to, if you’d get anything by it,” said Boo, with her little chin in the air and her big eyes shut up into two slits213, which was her manner of expressing extreme derision.
“You’re so dishon’able ’cause you’re a girl,” said Jack, with more sorrow than anger.
Every day for a week Jack asked Philips breathlessly, “Well?” but Philips prudently215 would not admit any knowledge until the next week arrived, when Jack entered into his month’s allowance and produced the third and fourth half-crowns.
“If you please, your Grace,” then said this prudent214 person, “the cob as is called Cuckoopint is down at Market Harborough, in Lord Brancepeth’s box there.”
[366]“He did buy him, then?”
“Yessir.”
“And he—Harry?”
“His lordship, sir, went to the South Pole the summer before last with Lord Tenby and Sir Francis Yorke and two other gentlemen; his lordship have left the Service altogether, sir.”
“Left the Guards!”
Jack was dumbfounded. He had always been so pleased to see Harry riding down Portland Place or Kensington Road with all those beautiful horses and cuirasses and jackboots.
“Where’s the South Pole?” he asked piteously. Of the North Pole he had heard.
“I don’t know, sir,” said Philips, much bored; he had had enough of a subject which only brought him in four half-crowns.
Jack had to wait till his ride was over and he could go in the house and get down his atlas216 and look for the South Pole; he did not make the position out to his satisfaction in the atlas and he turned to the terrestrial globe; then indeed he realized how many weary leagues divided him from his friend. He leaned on the great globe and put his head down on it and cried bitterly. Oh, how he hated his mother! It was his mother who had sent Harry away!
“’Cause he’d done all his money!” he thought indignantly. But how good it was of Harry with no money to keep his word and buy Cuckoopint!
His tutor came in and found him crying; poor Jack had the penalty of position—he was never left alone.
The tutor asked in a rather dry tone what was the matter. Jack, ashamed of his grief, brushed the hot tears from his eyelashes and tried to check his sobs217.
“It is quite a personal matter,” he said with much dignity as he steadied his sobs. “It doesn’t concern anybody but me. Please don’t ask.”
The tutor, though a severe man, had some tact and judgment218; he did not ask, but took a volume from one of the shelves and went out of the room.
To his mother it was convenient and agreeable that[367] Brancepeth was out of London. She was not sensitive, but still it had been disagreeable to her to see him there when she had broken with him. Ruptures219 have always this unpleasantness, that people notice them.
But he was away at the other end of the world, where they all went when they were in trouble, and where they were as good as dead—somewhere distant and barbarous—and in being so he showed more tact than usual, for with that loveliest and most useful of all qualities he had not been gifted. When she thought of his parting words to her she wished a lion or a bison to make an end of him.
She had been fond of him certainly a good many years, but in women of her disposition a wound to self-esteem is the death of affection. Their love is rooted in their vanity, and you cannot offend the latter without killing220 that which springs from it. At times she wished that he were there that she could make him murder William Massarene; but then murder was unknown in her world, and she could not have told him what made her wish the brute221 stuck in the throat like a Pyrenean boar; and so things were best as they were.
Poor Harry; if he had remained in England, he would only have been an additional complication. He would have seen, as this horrible brute saw, that shame and disgust and terror were ageing her fast and painfully.
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1
situated
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| adj.坐落在...的，处于某种境地的 | |
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dreary
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| adj.令人沮丧的，沉闷的，单调乏味的 | |
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renowned
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| adj.著名的，有名望的，声誉鹊起的 | |
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heed
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| v.注意，留意；n.注意，留心 | |
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artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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ace
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| n.A牌；发球得分；佼佼者；adj.杰出的 | |
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detested
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| v.憎恶，嫌恶，痛恨( detest的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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tyrant
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| n.暴君，专制的君主，残暴的人 | |
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aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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politic
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| adj.有智虑的；精明的；v.从政 | |
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harassed
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| adj. 疲倦的，厌烦的 动词harass的过去式和过去分词 | |
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apprehensive
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| adj.担心的，恐惧的，善于领会的 | |
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captivity
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| n.囚禁；被俘；束缚 | |
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tact
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| n.机敏，圆滑，得体 | |
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concessions
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| n.（尤指由政府或雇主给予的）特许权( concession的名词复数 )；承认；减价；（在某地的）特许经营权 | |
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thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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18
gambolling
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| v.蹦跳，跳跃，嬉戏( gambol的现在分词 ) | |
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interfere
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| v.(in)干涉，干预；(with)妨碍，打扰 | |
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jeopardized
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| 危及，损害( jeopardize的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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21
wince
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| n.畏缩，退避，（因痛苦，苦恼等)面部肌肉抽动；v.畏缩，退缩，退避 | |
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whim
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| n.一时的兴致，突然的念头；奇想，幻想 | |
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miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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contemptible
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| adj.可鄙的，可轻视的，卑劣的 | |
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tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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assailed
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| v.攻击( assail的过去式和过去分词 )；困扰；质问；毅然应对 | |
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savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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28
relish
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| n.滋味，享受，爱好，调味品；vt.加调味料，享受，品味；vi.有滋味 | |
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29
tempted
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| v.怂恿（某人）干不正当的事；冒…的险（tempt的过去分词） | |
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30
plethora
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| n.过量，过剩 | |
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shipping
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| n.船运（发货，运输，乘船） | |
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scamper
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| v.奔跑，快跑 | |
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incessant
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| adj.不停的，连续的 | |
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abhor
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| v.憎恶；痛恨 | |
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asphyxiated
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| v.渴望的，有抱负的，追求名誉或地位的( aspirant的过去式和过去分词 )；有志向或渴望获得…的人 | |
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36
solicited
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| v.恳求( solicit的过去式和过去分词 )；（指娼妇）拉客；索求；征求 | |
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suffrage
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| n.投票，选举权，参政权 | |
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38
abhorred
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| v.憎恶( abhor的过去式和过去分词 )；（厌恶地）回避；拒绝；淘汰 | |
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marrow
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| n.骨髓；精华；活力 | |
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40
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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acquiescence
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| n.默许；顺从 | |
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42
embittered
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| v.使怨恨，激怒( embitter的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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43
concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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resentment
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| n.怨愤，忿恨 | |
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satirist
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| n.讽刺诗作者，讽刺家，爱挖苦别人的人 | |
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betrothal
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| n. 婚约, 订婚 | |
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47
retract
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| vt.缩回，撤回收回，取消 | |
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snail
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| n.蜗牛 | |
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unnatural
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| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
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mischief
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| n.损害，伤害，危害；恶作剧，捣蛋，胡闹 | |
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51
hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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infinitely
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| adv.无限地，无穷地 | |
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53
distressed
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| 痛苦的 | |
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54
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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sullenly
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| 不高兴地，绷着脸，忧郁地 | |
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exponent
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| n.倡导者，拥护者；代表人物；指数，幂 | |
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doggedly
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| adv.顽强地，固执地 | |
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superstitions
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| 迷信，迷信行为( superstition的名词复数 ) | |
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gateway
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| n.大门口，出入口，途径，方法 | |
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aspirations
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| 强烈的愿望( aspiration的名词复数 )； 志向； 发送气音； 发 h 音 | |
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radical
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| n.激进份子，原子团，根号；adj.根本的，激进的，彻底的 | |
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62
broker
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| n.中间人，经纪人；v.作为中间人来安排 | |
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devoutly
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| adv.虔诚地，虔敬地，衷心地 | |
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64
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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65
dabbled
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| v.涉猎( dabble的过去式和过去分词 )；涉足；浅尝；少量投资 | |
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66
bosom
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| n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的 | |
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67
precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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68
avenge
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| v.为...复仇，为...报仇 | |
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69
snob
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| n.势利小人，自以为高雅、有学问的人 | |
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70
pacify
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| vt.使(某人)平静(或息怒)；抚慰 | |
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71
glossing
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| v.注解( gloss的现在分词 )；掩饰（错误）；粉饰；把…搪塞过去 | |
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72
recuperated
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| v.恢复（健康、体力等），复原( recuperate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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73
contractor
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| n.订约人，承包人，收缩肌 | |
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74
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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75
neophyte
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| n.新信徒；开始者 | |
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76
squat
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| v.蹲坐，蹲下；n.蹲下；adj.矮胖的，粗矮的 | |
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77
mincing
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| adj.矫饰的；v.切碎；切碎 | |
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78
prudence
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| n.谨慎，精明，节俭 | |
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79
irresistible
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| adj.非常诱人的，无法拒绝的，无法抗拒的 | |
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80
crouched
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| v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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81
bin
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| n.箱柜；vt.放入箱内；[计算机] DOS文件名:二进制目标文件 | |
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82
wardens
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| n.看守人( warden的名词复数 )；管理员；监察员；监察官 | |
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83
awe
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| n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧 | |
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84
quailed
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| 害怕，发抖，畏缩( quail的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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85
misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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86
apex
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| n.顶点，最高点 | |
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87
rivet
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| n.铆钉；vt.铆接，铆牢；集中(目光或注意力) | |
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88
plank
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| n.板条，木板，政策要点，政纲条目 | |
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89
steamship
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| n.汽船，轮船 | |
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90
colossal
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| adj.异常的，庞大的 | |
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91
consul
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| n.领事；执政官 | |
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92
writ
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| n.命令状，书面命令 | |
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93
considerably
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| adv.极大地；相当大地；在很大程度上 | |
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94
blizzard
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| n.暴风雪 | |
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95
swell
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| vi.膨胀，肿胀；增长，增强 | |
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96
kerosene
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| n.(kerosine)煤油，火油 | |
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97
labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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98
blots
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| 污渍( blot的名词复数 )； 墨水渍； 错事； 污点 | |
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99
alluded
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| 提及，暗指( allude的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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100
consuls
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| 领事( consul的名词复数 )； （古罗马共和国时期）执政官 （古罗马共和国及其军队的最高首长，同时共有两位，每年选举一次） | |
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101
amiable
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| adj.和蔼可亲的，友善的，亲切的 | |
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102
disposition
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| n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署 | |
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103
audacity
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| n.大胆，卤莽，无礼 | |
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104
consular
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| a.领事的 | |
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105
indite
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| v.写（文章，信等）创作 | |
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106
labyrinth
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| n.迷宫；难解的事物；迷路 | |
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107
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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108
pneumonia
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| n.肺炎 | |
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109
competence
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| n.能力，胜任，称职 | |
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110
subscriptions
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| n.（报刊等的）订阅费( subscription的名词复数 )；捐款；（俱乐部的）会员费；捐助 | |
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111
candid
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| adj.公正的，正直的；坦率的 | |
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112
ingenuous
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| adj.纯朴的，单纯的；天真的；坦率的 | |
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113
nought
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| n.／adj.无，零 | |
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114
bland
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| adj.淡而无味的，温和的，无刺激性的 | |
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115
supercilious
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| adj.目中无人的，高傲的；adv.高傲地；n.高傲 | |
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116
rusted
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| v.（使）生锈( rust的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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117
perusal
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| n.细读，熟读；目测 | |
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118
behold
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| v.看，注视，看到 | |
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119
scowl
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| vi.(at)生气地皱眉，沉下脸，怒视；n.怒容 | |
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120
scotch
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| n.伤口，刻痕；苏格兰威士忌酒；v.粉碎，消灭，阻止；adj.苏格兰(人)的 | |
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121
emigrant
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| adj.移居的，移民的；n.移居外国的人，移民 | |
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122
canniness
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| 精明 | |
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123
ledger
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| n.总帐，分类帐；帐簿 | |
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124
ledgers
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| n.分类账( ledger的名词复数 ) | |
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125
conspicuous
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| adj.明眼的，惹人注目的；炫耀的，摆阔气的 | |
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126
specimens
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| n.样品( specimen的名词复数 )；范例；（化验的）抽样；某种类型的人 | |
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127
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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128
legitimate
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| adj.合法的，合理的，合乎逻辑的；v.使合法 | |
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129
naught
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| n.无，零 [=nought] | |
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130
ailing
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| v.生病 | |
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131
humbly
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| adv. 恭顺地，谦卑地 | |
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132
previously
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| adv.以前，先前（地） | |
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133
fermenting
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| v.（使）发酵( ferment的现在分词 )；（使）激动；骚动；骚扰 | |
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134
yeast
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| n.酵母；酵母片；泡沫；v.发酵；起泡沫 | |
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135
homage
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| n.尊敬，敬意，崇敬 | |
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136
vacancy
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| n.（旅馆的）空位，空房，（职务的）空缺 | |
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137
consecrated
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| adj.神圣的，被视为神圣的v.把…奉为神圣，给…祝圣( consecrate的过去式和过去分词 )；奉献 | |
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138
supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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139
expended
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| v.花费( expend的过去式和过去分词 )；使用（钱等）做某事；用光；耗尽 | |
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140
insignificant
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| adj.无关紧要的，可忽略的，无意义的 | |
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141
wrath
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| n.愤怒，愤慨，暴怒 | |
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142
sociologist
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| n.研究社会学的人，社会学家 | |
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143
jaguar
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| n.美洲虎 | |
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144
deferred
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|
| adj.延期的，缓召的v.拖延，延缓，推迟( defer的过去式和过去分词 )；服从某人的意愿，遵从 | |
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145
demur
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| v．表示异议，反对 | |
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146
Buddha
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| n.佛；佛像；佛陀 | |
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147
pokes
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| v.伸出( poke的第三人称单数 )；戳出；拨弄；与（某人）性交 | |
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148
brass
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| n.黄铜；黄铜器，铜管乐器 | |
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149
pretension
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| n.要求；自命，自称；自负 | |
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150
delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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151
premier
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| adj.首要的；n.总理，首相 | |
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152
solicitors
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| 初级律师( solicitor的名词复数 ) | |
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153
jack
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| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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154
reeking
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| v.发出浓烈的臭气( reek的现在分词 )；散发臭气；发出难闻的气味 (of sth)；明显带有（令人不快或生疑的跡象） | |
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155
attested
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| adj.经检验证明无病的，经检验证明无菌的v.证明( attest的过去式和过去分词 )；证实；声称…属实；使宣誓 | |
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156
humiliation
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| n.羞辱 | |
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157
momentary
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| adj.片刻的，瞬息的；短暂的 | |
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158
lasting
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| adj.永久的，永恒的；vbl.持续，维持 | |
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159
bullion
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| n.金条，银条 | |
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160
adviser
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| n.劝告者，顾问 | |
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161
annuity
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| n.年金；养老金 | |
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162
tumor
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| n.（肿）瘤，肿块(英)tumour | |
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163
luncheon
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| n.午宴，午餐，便宴 | |
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164
wasps
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| 黄蜂( wasp的名词复数 )； 胡蜂； 易动怒的人； 刻毒的人 | |
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165
displeased
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| a.不快的 | |
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166
shuddered
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| v.战栗( shudder的过去式和过去分词 )；发抖；（机器、车辆等）突然震动；颤动 | |
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167
trepidation
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| n.惊恐，惶恐 | |
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168
dynamite
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| n./vt.(用)炸药(爆破) | |
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169
almighty
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| adj.全能的，万能的；很大的，很强的 | |
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170
odious
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| adj.可憎的，讨厌的 | |
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171
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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172
repelled
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| v.击退( repel的过去式和过去分词 )；使厌恶；排斥；推开 | |
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173
minors
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| n.未成年人( minor的名词复数 )；副修科目；小公司；[逻辑学]小前提v.[主美国英语]副修，选修，兼修( minor的第三人称单数 ) | |
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174
mare
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| n.母马，母驴 | |
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175
pony
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| adj.小型的；n.小马 | |
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176
harry
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| vt.掠夺，蹂躏，使苦恼 | |
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177
onward
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| adj.向前的，前进的；adv.向前，前进，在先 | |
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178
erect
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| n./v.树立，建立，使竖立；adj.直立的，垂直的 | |
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179
resolute
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| adj.坚决的，果敢的 | |
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180
calumnies
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| n.诬蔑，诽谤，中伤（的话）( calumny的名词复数 ) | |
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181
esteem
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| n.尊敬，尊重；vt.尊重，敬重；把…看作 | |
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182
follies
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| 罪恶，时事讽刺剧； 愚蠢，蠢笨，愚蠢的行为、思想或做法( folly的名词复数 ) | |
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183
miserably
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| adv.痛苦地；悲惨地；糟糕地；极度地 | |
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184
patronage
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| n.赞助，支援，援助；光顾，捧场 | |
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185
persuasion
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| n.劝说；说服；持有某种信仰的宗派 | |
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186
recurred
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| 再发生，复发( recur的过去式和过去分词 )； 治愈 | |
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187
confirmation
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| n.证实，确认，批准 | |
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188
expenditure
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| n.(时间、劳力、金钱等)支出；使用，消耗 | |
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189
obstinately
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| ad.固执地，顽固地 | |
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190
alleging
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| 断言，宣称，辩解( allege的现在分词 ) | |
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191
venality
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| n.贪赃枉法，腐败 | |
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192
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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193
abominable
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| adj.可厌的，令人憎恶的 | |
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194
expedients
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| n.应急有效的，权宜之计的( expedient的名词复数 ) | |
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195
defiance
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| n.挑战，挑衅，蔑视，违抗 | |
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196
jurisdiction
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| n.司法权，审判权，管辖权，控制权 | |
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197
accusation
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| n.控告，指责，谴责 | |
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198
censure
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| v./n.责备；非难；责难 | |
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199
brawling
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| n.争吵，喧嚷 | |
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200
saucy
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| adj.无礼的；俊俏的；活泼的 | |
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201
idol
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| n.偶像，红人，宠儿 | |
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delirious
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| adj.不省人事的，神智昏迷的 | |
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203
tableaux
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| n.舞台造型，（由活人扮演的）静态画面、场面；人构成的画面或场景( tableau的名词复数 )；舞台造型；戏剧性的场面；绚丽的场景 | |
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204
consigned
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| v.把…置于（令人不快的境地）( consign的过去式和过去分词 )；把…托付给；把…托人代售；丟弃 | |
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pall
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| v.覆盖，使平淡无味；n.柩衣，棺罩；棺材；帷幕 | |
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intervals
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| 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 | |
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207
cape
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| n.海角，岬；披肩，短披风 | |
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groom
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| vt.给（马、狗等）梳毛，照料，使...整洁 | |
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discretion
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| n.谨慎；随意处理 | |
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discreet
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| adj.(言行)谨慎的；慎重的；有判断力的 | |
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smothered
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| （使）窒息， （使）透不过气( smother的过去式和过去分词 )； 覆盖； 忍住； 抑制 | |
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virtuous
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| adj.有品德的，善良的，贞洁的，有效力的 | |
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213
slits
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| n.狭长的口子，裂缝( slit的名词复数 )v.切开，撕开( slit的第三人称单数 )；在…上开狭长口子 | |
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214
prudent
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| adj.谨慎的，有远见的，精打细算的 | |
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prudently
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| adv. 谨慎地，慎重地 | |
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216
atlas
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| n.地图册，图表集 | |
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217
sobs
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| 啜泣（声），呜咽（声）( sob的名词复数 ) | |
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judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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ruptures
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| n.（体内组织等的）断裂( rupture的名词复数 )；爆裂；疝气v.（使）破裂( rupture的第三人称单数 )；（使体内组织等）断裂；使（友好关系）破裂；使绝交 | |
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220
killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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brute
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| n.野兽，兽性 | |
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