THE PLAY—for which Briony had designed the posters, programs and tickets, constructed the sales booth out of a folding screen tipped on its side, and lined the collection box in red crêpe paper—was written by her in a two-day tempest of composition, causing her to miss a breakfast and a lunch. When the preparations were complete, she had nothing to do but contemplate1 her finished draft and wait for the appearance of her cousins from the distant north. There would be time for only one day of rehearsal2 before her brother arrived. At some moments chilling, at others desperately3 sad, the play told a tale of the heart whose message, conveyed in a rhyming prologue4, was that love which did not build a foundation on good sense was doomed5. The reckless passion of the heroine, Arabella, for a wicked foreign count is punished by ill fortune when she contracts cholera6 during an impetuous dash toward a seaside town with her intended. Deserted7 by him and nearly everybody else, bed-bound in a garret, she discovers in herself a sense of humor. Fortune presents her a second chance in the form of an impoverished8 doctor—in fact, a prince in disguise who has elected to work among the needy9. Healed by him, Arabella chooses judiciously10 this time, and is rewarded by reconciliation11 with her family and a wedding with the medical prince on “a windy sunlit day in spring.”
Mrs. Tallis read the seven pages of The Trials of Arabella in her bedroom, at her dressing12 table, with the author’s arm around her shoulder the whole while. Briony studied her mother’s face for every trace of shifting emotion, and Emily Tallis obliged with looks of alarm, snickers of glee and, at the end, grateful smiles and wise, affirming nods. She took her daughter in her arms, onto her lap—ah, that hot smooth little body she remembered from its infancy14, and still not gone from her, not quite yet—and said that the play was “stupendous,” and agreed instantly, murmuring into the tight whorl of the girl’s ear, that this word could be quoted on the poster which was to be on an easel in the entrance hall by the ticket booth.
Briony was hardly to know it then, but this was the project’s highest point of fulfillment. Nothing came near it for satisfaction, all else was dreams and frustration15. There were moments in the summer dusk after her light was out, when she burrowed16 in the delicious gloom of her canopy17 bed, and made her heart thud with luminous18, yearning19 fantasies, little playlets in themselves, every one of which featured Leon. In one, his big, good-natured face buckled20 in grief as Arabella sank in loneliness and despair. In another, there he was, cocktail21 in hand at some fashionable city watering hole, overheard boasting to a group of friends: Yes, my younger sister, Briony Tallis the writer, you must surely have heard of her. In a third, he punched the air in exultation22 as the final curtain fell, although there was no curtain, there was no possibility of a curtain. Her play was not for her cousins, it was for her brother, to celebrate his return, provoke his admiration23 and guide him away from his careless succession of girlfriends, toward the right form of wife, the one who would persuade him to return to the countryside, the one who would sweetly request Briony’s services as a bridesmaid.
She was one of those children possessed24 by a desire to have the world just so. Whereas her big sister’s room was a stew25 of unclosed books, unfolded clothes, unmade bed, unemptied ashtrays26, Briony’s was a shrine27 to her controlling demon28: the model farm spread across a deep window ledge29 consisted of the usual animals, but all facing one way—toward their owner—as if about to break into song, and even the farmyard hens were neatly31 corralled. In fact, Briony’s was the only tidy upstairs room in the house. Her straight-backed dolls in their many-roomed mansion32 appeared to be under strict instructions not to touch the walls; the various thumb-sized figures to be found standing33 about her dressing table—cowboys, deep-sea divers34, humanoid mice—suggested by their even ranks and spacing a citizen’s army awaiting orders.
A taste for the miniature was one aspect of an orderly spirit. Another was a passion for secrets: in a prized varnished35 cabinet, a secret drawer was opened by pushing against the grain of a cleverly turned dovetail joint36, and here she kept a diary locked by a clasp, and a notebook written in a code of her own invention. In a toy safe opened by six secret numbers she stored letters and postcards. An old tin petty cash box was hidden under a removable floorboard beneath her bed. In the box were treasures that dated back four years, to her ninth birthday when she began collecting: a mutant double acorn37, fool’s gold, a rainmaking spell bought at a funfair, a squirrel’s skull38 as light as a leaf.
But hidden drawers, lockable diaries and cryptographic systems could not conceal39 from Briony the simple truth: she had no secrets. Her wish for a harmonious40, organized world denied her the reckless possibilities of wrongdoing. Mayhem and destruction were too chaotic41 for her tastes, and she did not have it in her to be cruel. Her effective status as an only child, as well as the relative isolation42 of the Tallis house, kept her, at least during the long summer holidays, from girlish intrigues43 with friends. Nothing in her life was sufficiently44 interesting or shameful45 to merit hiding; no one knew about the squirrel’s skull beneath her bed, but no one wanted to know. None of this was particularly an affliction; or rather, it appeared so only in retrospect46, once a solution had been found.
At the age of eleven she wrote her first story—a foolish affair, imitative of half a dozen folktales and lacking, she realized later, that vital knowingness about the ways of the world which compels a reader’s respect. But this first clumsy attempt showed her that the imagination itself was a source of secrets: once she had begun a story, no one could be told. Pretending in words was too tentative, too vulnerable, too embarrassing to let anyone know. Even writing out the she saids, the and thens, made her wince47, and she felt foolish, appearing to know about the emotions of an imaginary being. Self-exposure was inevitable48 the moment she described a character’s weakness; the reader was bound to speculate that she was describing herself. What other authority could she have? Only when a story was finished, all fates resolved and the whole matter sealed off at both ends so it resembled, at least in this one respect, every other finished story in the world, could she feel immune, and ready to punch holes in the margins49, bind50 the chapters with pieces of string, paint or draw the cover, and take the finished work to show to her mother, or her father, when he was home.
Her efforts received encouragement. In fact, they were welcomed as the Tallises began to understand that the baby of the family possessed a strange mind and a facility with words. The long afternoons she spent browsing51 through dictionary and thesaurus made for constructions that were inept52, but hauntingly so: the coins a villain53 concealed54 in his pocket were “esoteric,” a hoodlum caught stealing a car wept in “shameless auto-exculpation,” the heroine on her thoroughbred stallion made a “cursory” journey through the night, the king’s furrowed55 brow was the “hieroglyph56” of his displeasure. Briony was encouraged to read her stories aloud in the library and it surprised her parents and older sister to hear their quiet girl perform so boldly, making big gestures with her free arm, arching her eyebrows57 as she did the voices, and looking up from the page for seconds at a time as she read in order to gaze into one face after the other, unapologetically demanding her family’s total attention as she cast her narrative58 spell.
Even without their attention and praise and obvious pleasure, Briony could not have been held back from her writing. In any case, she was discovering, as had many writers before her, that not all recognition is helpful. Cecilia’s enthusiasm, for example, seemed a little overstated, tainted59 with condescension60 perhaps, and intrusive61 too; her big sister wanted each bound story catalogued and placed on the library shelves, between Rabindranath Tagore and Quintus Tertullian. If this was supposed to be a joke, Briony ignored it. She was on course now, and had found satisfaction on other levels; writing stories not only involved secrecy62, it also gave her all the pleasures of miniaturization. A world could be made in five pages, and one that was more pleasing than a model farm. The childhood of a spoiled prince could be framed within half a page, a moonlit dash through sleepy villages was one rhythmically63 emphatic64 sentence, falling in love could be achieved in a single word—a glance. The pages of a recently finished story seemed to vibrate in her hand with all the life they contained. Her passion for tidiness was also satisfied, for an unruly world could be made just so. A crisis in a heroine’s life could be made to coincide with hailstones, gales65 and thunder, whereas nuptials66 were generally blessed with good light and soft breezes. A love of order also shaped the principles of justice, with death and marriage the main engines of housekeeping, the former being set aside exclusively for the morally dubious67, the latter a reward withheld68 until the final page.
The play she had written for Leon’s homecoming was her first excursion into drama, and she had found the transition quite effortless. It was a relief not to be writing out the she saids, or describing the weather or the onset69 of spring or her heroine’s face—beauty, she had discovered, occupied a narrow band. Ugliness, on the other hand, had infinite variation. A universe reduced to what was said in it was tidiness indeed, almost to the point of nullity, and to compensate70, every utterance71 was delivered at the extremity72 of some feeling or other, in the service of which the exclamation73 mark was indispensable. The Trials of Arabella may have been a melodrama74, but its author had yet to hear the term. The piece was intended to inspire not laughter, but terror, relief and instruction, in that order, and the innocent intensity75 with which Briony set about the project—the posters, tickets, sales booth—made her particularly vulnerable to failure. She could easily have welcomed Leon with another of her stories, but it was the news that her cousins from the north were coming to stay that had prompted this leap into a new form.
That Lola, who was fifteen, and the nine-year-old twins, Jackson and Pierrot, were refugees from a bitter domestic civil war should have mattered more to Briony. She had heard her mother criticize the impulsive76 behavior of her younger sister Hermione, and lament77 the situation of the three children, and denounce her meek78, evasive brother-in-law Cecil who had fled to the safety of All Souls College, Oxford79. Briony had heard her mother and sister analyze80 the latest twists and outrages81, charges and countercharges, and she knew her cousins’ visit was an open-ended one, and might even extend into term time. She had heard it said that the house could easily absorb three children, and that the Quinceys could stay as long as they liked, provided the parents, if they ever visited simultaneously82, kept their quarrels away from the Tallis household. Two rooms near Briony’s had been dusted down, new curtains had been hung and furniture carried in from other rooms. Normally, she would have been involved in these preparations, but they happened to coincide with her two-day writing bout30 and the beginnings of the front-of-house construction. She vaguely83 knew that divorce was an affliction, but she did not regard it as a proper subject, and gave it no thought. It was a mundane84 unraveling that could not be reversed, and therefore offered no opportunities to the storyteller: it belonged in the realm of disorder85. Marriage was the thing, or rather, a wedding was, with its formal neatness of virtue86 rewarded, the thrill of its pageantry and banqueting, and dizzy promise of lifelong union. A good wedding was an unacknowledged representation of the as yet unthinkable—sexual bliss87. In the aisles88 of country churches and grand city cathedrals, witnessed by a whole society of approving family and friends, her heroines and heroes reached their innocent climaxes89 and needed to go no further.
If divorce had presented itself as the dastardly antithesis90 of all this, it could easily have been cast onto the other pan of the scales, along with betrayal, illness, thieving, assault and mendacity. Instead it showed an unglamorous face of dull complexity91 and incessant92 wrangling93. Like rearmament and the Abyssinia Question and gardening, it was simply not a subject, and when, after a long Saturday morning wait, Briony heard at last the sound of wheels on the gravel94 below her bedroom window, and snatched up her pages and ran down the stairs, across the hallway and out into the blinding light of midday, it was not insensitivity so much as a highly focused artistic95 ambition that caused her to shout to the dazed young visitors huddled96 together by the trap with their luggage, “I’ve got your parts, all written out. First performance tomorrow! Rehearsals97 start in five minutes!”
Immediately, her mother and sister were there to interpose a blander98 timetable. The visitors—all three were ginger-haired and freckled99—were shown their rooms, their cases were carried up by Hardman’s son Danny, there was cordial in the kitchen, a tour of the house, a swim in the pool and lunch in the south garden, under the shade of the vines. All the while, Emily and Cecilia Tallis maintained a patter that surely robbed the guests of the ease it was supposed to confer. Briony knew that if she had traveled two hundred miles to a strange house, bright questions and jokey asides, and being told in a hundred different ways that she was free to choose, would have oppressed her. It was not generally realized that what children mostly wanted was to be left alone. However, the Quinceys worked hard at pretending to be amused or liberated100, and this boded101 well for The Trials of Arabella: this trio clearly had the knack102 of being what they were not, even though they barely resembled the characters they were to play. Before lunch Briony slipped away to the empty rehearsal room—the nursery—and walked up and down on the painted floorboards, considering her casting options.
On the face of it, Arabella, whose hair was as dark as Briony’s, was unlikely to be descended103 from freckled parents, or elope with a foreign freckled count, rent a garret room from a freckled innkeeper, lose her heart to a freckled prince and be married by a freckled vicar before a freckled congregation. But all this was to be so. Her cousins’ coloring was too vivid—virtually fluorescent104!—to be concealed. The best that could be said was that Arabella’s lack of freckles105 was the sign—the hieroglyph, Briony might have written—of her distinction. Her purity of spirit would never be in doubt, though she moved through a blemished106 world. There was a further problem with the twins, who could not be told apart by a stranger. Was it right that the wicked count should so completely resemble the handsome prince, or that both should resemble Arabella’s father and the vicar? What if Lola were cast as the prince? Jackson and Pierrot seemed typical eager little boys who would probably do as they were told. But would their sister play a man? She had green eyes and sharp bones in her face, and hollow cheeks, and there was something brittle107 in her reticence108 that suggested strong will and a temper easily lost. Merely floating the possibility of the role to Lola might provoke a crisis, and could Briony really hold hands with her before the altar, while Jackson intoned from the Book of Common Prayer?
It was not until five o’clock that afternoon that she was able to assemble her cast in the nursery. She had arranged three stools in a row, while she herself jammed her rump into an ancient baby’s high chair—a bohemian touch that gave her a tennis umpire’s advantage of height. The twins had come with reluctance109 from the pool where they had been for three hours without a break. They were barefoot and wore singlets over trunks that dripped onto the floorboards. Water also ran down their necks from their matted hair, and both boys were shivering and jiggled their knees to keep warm. The long immersion110 had puckered111 and bleached112 their skin, so that in the relatively113 low light of the nursery their freckles appeared black. Their sister, who sat between them, with left leg balanced on right knee, was, by contrast, perfectly114 composed, having liberally applied115 perfume and changed into a green gingham frock to offset116 her coloring. Her sandals revealed an ankle bracelet117 and toenails painted vermilion. The sight of these nails gave Briony a constricting118 sensation around her sternum, and she knew at once that she could not ask Lola to play the prince.
Everyone was settled and the playwright119 was about to begin her little speech summarizing the plot and evoking120 the excitement of performing before an adult audience tomorrow evening in the library. But it was Pierrot who spoke121 first.
“I hate plays and all that sort of thing.”
“I hate them too, and dressing up,” Jackson said.
It had been explained at lunch that the twins were to be distinguished122 by the fact that Pierrot was missing a triangle of flesh from his left earlobe on account of a dog he had tormented123 when he was three.
Lola looked away. Briony said reasonably, “How can you hate plays?”
“It’s just showing off.” Pierrot shrugged125 as he delivered this self-evident truth.
Briony knew he had a point. This was precisely126 why she loved plays, or hers at least; everyone would adore her. Looking at the boys, under whose chairs water was pooling before spilling between the floorboard cracks, she knew they could never understand her ambition. Forgiveness softened127 her tone.
“Do you think Shakespeare was just showing off?”
Pierrot glanced across his sister’s lap toward Jackson. This warlike name was faintly familiar, with its whiff of school and adult certainty, but the twins found their courage in each other.
“Everyone knows he was.”
“Definitely.”
When Lola spoke, she turned first to Pierrot and halfway128 through her sentence swung round to finish on Jackson. In Briony’s family, Mrs. Tallis never had anything to impart that needed saying simultaneously to both daughters. Now Briony saw how it was done.
“You’ll be in this play, or you’ll get a clout129, and then I’ll speak to The Parents.”
“If you clout us, we’ll speak to The Parents.”
“You’ll be in this play or I’ll speak to The Parents.”
That the threat had been negotiated neatly downward did not appear to diminish its power. Pierrot sucked on his lower lip.
“Why do we have to?” Everything was conceded in the question, and Lola tried to ruffle130 his sticky hair.
“Remember what The Parents said? We’re guests in this house and we make ourselves—what do we make ourselves? Come on. What do we make ourselves?”
“A-menable,” the twins chorused in misery131, barely stumbling over the unusual word.
Lola turned to Briony and smiled. “Please tell us about your play.”
The Parents. Whatever institutionalized strength was locked in this plural132 was about to fly apart, or had already done so, but for now it could not be acknowledged, and bravery was demanded of even the youngest. Briony felt suddenly ashamed at what she had selfishly begun, for it had never occurred to her that her cousins would not want to play their parts in The Trials of Arabella. But they had trials, a catastrophe133 of their own, and now, as guests in her house, they believed themselves under an obligation. What was worse, Lola had made it clear that she too would be acting134 on sufferance. The vulnerable Quinceys were being coerced135. And yet, Briony struggled to grasp the difficult thought, wasn’t there manipulation here, wasn’t Lola using the twins to express something on her behalf, something hostile or destructive? Briony felt the disadvantage of being two years younger than the other girl, of having a full two years’ refinement136 weigh against her, and now her play seemed a miserable137, embarrassing thing.
Avoiding Lola’s gaze the whole while, she proceeded to outline the plot, even as its stupidity began to overwhelm her. She no longer had the heart to invent for her cousins the thrill of the first night.
As soon as she was finished Pierrot said, “I want to be the count. I want to be a bad person.”
Jackson said simply, “I’m a prince. I’m always a prince.”
She could have drawn138 them to her and kissed their little faces, but she said, “That’s all right then.”
Lola uncrossed her legs, smoothed her dress and stood, as though about to leave. She spoke through a sigh of sadness or resignation. “I suppose that because you’re the one who wrote it, you’ll be Arabella . . .”
“Oh no,” Briony said. “No. Not at all.”
She said no, but she meant yes. Of course she was taking the part of Arabella. What she was objecting to was Lola’s “because.” She was not playing Arabella because she wrote the play, she was taking the part because no other possibility had crossed her mind, because that was how Leon was to see her, because she was Arabella.
But she had said no, and now Lola was saying sweetly, “In that case, do you mind if I play her? I think I could do it very well. In fact, of the two of us . . .”
She let that hang, and Briony stared at her, unable to keep the horror from her expression, and unable to speak. It was slipping away from her, she knew, but there was nothing that she could think of to say that would bring it back. Into Briony’s silence, Lola pressed her advantage.
“I had a long illness last year, so I could do that part of it well too.”
Too? Briony could not keep up with the older girl. The misery of the inevitable was clouding her thoughts.
One of the twins said proudly, “And you were in the school play.”
How could she tell them that Arabella was not a freckled person? Her skin was pale and her hair was black and her thoughts were Briony’s thoughts. But how could she refuse a cousin so far from home whose family life was in ruins? Lola was reading her mind because she now played her final card, the unrefusable ace13.
“Do say yes. It would be the only good thing that’s happened to me in months.”
Yes. Unable to push her tongue against the word, Briony could only nod, and felt as she did so a sulky thrill of self-annihilating compliance139 spreading across her skin and ballooning outward from it, darkening the room in throbs140. She wanted to leave, she wanted to lie alone, facedown on her bed and savor141 the vile142 piquancy143 of the moment, and go back down the lines of branching consequences to the point before the destruction began. She needed to contemplate with eyes closed the full richness of what she had lost, what she had given away, and to anticipate the new regime. Not only Leon to consider, but what of the antique peach and cream satin dress that her mother was looking out for her, for Arabella’s wedding? That would now be given to Lola. How could her mother reject the daughter who had loved her all these years? As she saw the dress make its perfect, clinging fit around her cousin and witnessed her mother’s heartless smile, Briony knew her only reasonable choice then would be to run away, to live under hedges, eat berries and speak to no one, and be found by a bearded woodsman one winter’s dawn, curled up at the base of a giant oak, beautiful and dead, and barefoot, or perhaps wearing the ballet pumps with the pink ribbon straps144 . . .
Self-pity needed her full attention, and only in solitude145 could she breathe life into the lacerating details, but at the instant of her assent—how the tilt146 of a skull could change a life!—Lola had picked up the bundle of Briony’s manuscript from the floor, and the twins had slipped from their chairs to follow their sister into the space in the center of the nursery that Briony had cleared the day before. Did she dare leave now? Lola was pacing the floorboards, one hand to her brow as she skimmed through the first pages of the play, muttering the lines from the prologue. She announced that nothing was to be lost by beginning at the beginning, and now she was casting her brothers as Arabella’s parents and describing the opening to them, seeming to know all there was to know about the scene. The advance of Lola’s dominion147 was merciless and made self-pity irrelevant148. Or would it be all the more annihilatingly delicious?—for Briony had not even been cast as Arabella’s mother, and now was surely the time to sidle from the room and tumble into facedown darkness on the bed. But it was Lola’s briskness149, her obliviousness150 to anything beyond her own business, and Briony’s certainty that her own feelings would not even register, still less provoke guilt151, which gave her the strength to resist.
In a generally pleasant and well-protected life, she had never really confronted anyone before. Now she saw: it was like diving into the swimming pool in early June; you simply had to make yourself do it. As she squeezed out of the high chair and walked over to where her cousin stood her heart thudded inconveniently152 and her breath was short.
She took the play from Lola and said in a voice that was constricted153 and more high-pitched than usual, “If you’re Arabella, then I’ll be the director, thank you very much, and I’ll read the prologue.”
Lola put her speckled hand to her mouth. “Sor-reeee!” she hooted154. “I was just trying to get things started.”
Briony was unsure how to respond, so she turned to Pierrot and said, “You don’t look much like Arabella’s mother.”
The countermanding155 of Lola’s casting decision, and the laughter in the boys it provoked, made for a shift in the balance of power. Lola made an exaggerated shrug124 of her bony shoulders and went to stare out of the window. Perhaps she herself was struggling with the temptation to flounce from the room.
Though the twins began a wrestling match, and their sister suspected the onset of a headache, somehow the rehearsal began. The silence into which Briony read the prologue was tense.
This is the tale of spontaneous Arabella
Who ran off with an extrinsic156 fellow.
It grieved her parents to see their firstborn
Evanesce from her home to go to Eastbourne
Without permission . . .
His wife at his side, Arabella’s father stood at the wrought-iron gates of his estate, first pleading with his daughter to reconsider her decision, then in desperation ordering her not to go. Facing him was the sad but stubborn heroine with the count beside her, and their horses, tethered to a nearby oak, were neighing and pawing the ground, impatient to be off. The father’s tenderest feelings were supposed to make his voice quaver as he said,
My darling one, you are young and lovely,
But inexperienced, and though you think
The world is at your feet,
It can rise up and tread on you.
Briony positioned her cast; she herself clutched Jackson’s arm, Lola and Pierrot stood several feet away, hand in hand. When the boys met each other’s eye they had a giggling157 fit which the girls shushed at. There had been trouble enough already, but Briony began to understand the chasm158 that lay between an idea and its execution only when Jackson began to read from his sheet in a stricken monotone, as though each word was a name on a list of dead people, and was unable to pronounce “inexperienced” even though it was said for him many times, and left out the last two words of his lines—“It can rise up and tread.” As for Lola, she spoke her lines correctly but casually159, and sometimes smiled inappropriately at some private thought, determined160 to demonstrate that her nearly adult mind was elsewhere.
And so they went on, the cousins from the north, for a full half an hour, steadily161 wrecking162 Briony’s creation, and it was a mercy, therefore, when her big sister came to fetch the twins for their bath.
收听单词发音 |
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contemplate
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| vt.盘算，计议；周密考虑；注视，凝视 | |
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rehearsal
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| n.排练，排演；练习 | |
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desperately
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| adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地 | |
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prologue
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| n.开场白，序言；开端，序幕 | |
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doomed
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| 命定的 | |
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cholera
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| n.霍乱 | |
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deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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impoverished
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| adj.穷困的，无力的，用尽了的v.使（某人）贫穷( impoverish的过去式和过去分词 )；使（某物）贫瘠或恶化 | |
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needy
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| adj.贫穷的，贫困的，生活艰苦的 | |
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judiciously
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| adv.明断地，明智而审慎地 | |
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reconciliation
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| n.和解，和谐，一致 | |
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dressing
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| n.(食物)调料；包扎伤口的用品，敷料 | |
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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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infancy
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| n.婴儿期；幼年期；初期 | |
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frustration
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| n.挫折，失败，失效，落空 | |
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burrowed
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| v.挖掘（洞穴），挖洞( burrow的过去式和过去分词 )；翻寻 | |
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canopy
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| n.天篷，遮篷 | |
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luminous
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| adj.发光的，发亮的；光明的；明白易懂的；有启发的 | |
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yearning
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| a.渴望的；向往的；怀念的 | |
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buckled
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| a. 有带扣的 | |
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cocktail
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| n.鸡尾酒；餐前开胃小吃；混合物 | |
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exultation
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| n.狂喜，得意 | |
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admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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stew
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| n.炖汤，焖，烦恼；v.炖汤，焖，忧虑 | |
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26
ashtrays
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| 烟灰缸( ashtray的名词复数 ) | |
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27
shrine
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| n.圣地，神龛，庙；v.将...置于神龛内，把...奉为神圣 | |
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28
demon
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| n.魔鬼，恶魔 | |
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29
ledge
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| n.壁架，架状突出物；岩架，岩礁 | |
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30
bout
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| n.侵袭，发作；一次(阵，回)；拳击等比赛 | |
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31
neatly
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| adv.整洁地，干净地，灵巧地，熟练地 | |
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32
mansion
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| n.大厦，大楼；宅第 | |
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33
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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34
divers
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| adj.不同的；种种的 | |
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35
varnished
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| 浸渍过的，涂漆的 | |
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36
joint
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| adj.联合的，共同的；n.关节，接合处；v.连接，贴合 | |
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37
acorn
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| n.橡实，橡子 | |
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38
skull
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| n.头骨；颅骨 | |
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39
conceal
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽 | |
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40
harmonious
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| adj.和睦的，调和的，和谐的，协调的 | |
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41
chaotic
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| adj.混沌的，一片混乱的，一团糟的 | |
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42
isolation
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| n.隔离，孤立，分解，分离 | |
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43
intrigues
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| n.密谋策划( intrigue的名词复数 )；神秘气氛；引人入胜的复杂情节v.搞阴谋诡计( intrigue的第三人称单数 )；激起…的好奇心 | |
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44
sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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45
shameful
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| adj.可耻的，不道德的 | |
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46
retrospect
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|
| n.回顾，追溯；v.回顾，回想，追溯 | |
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47
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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48
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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49
margins
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| 边( margin的名词复数 )； 利润； 页边空白； 差数 | |
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50
bind
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|
| vt.捆，包扎；装订；约束；使凝固；vi.变硬 | |
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51
browsing
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| v.吃草( browse的现在分词 )；随意翻阅；（在商店里）随便看看；（在计算机上）浏览信息 | |
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52
inept
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| adj.不恰当的，荒谬的，拙劣的 | |
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53
villain
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| n.反派演员，反面人物；恶棍；问题的起因 | |
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54
concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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55
furrowed
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| v.犁田，开沟( furrow的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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56
hieroglyph
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| n.象形文字， 图画文字 | |
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57
eyebrows
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| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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58
narrative
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| n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的 | |
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59
tainted
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|
| adj.腐坏的；污染的；沾污的；感染的v.使变质( taint的过去式和过去分词 )；使污染；败坏；被污染，腐坏，败坏 | |
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60
condescension
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|
| n.自以为高人一等，贬低(别人) | |
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61
intrusive
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| adj.打搅的；侵扰的 | |
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62
secrecy
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|
| n.秘密，保密，隐蔽 | |
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63
rhythmically
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| adv.有节奏地 | |
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64
emphatic
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| adj.强调的，着重的；无可置疑的，明显的 | |
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65
gales
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| 龙猫 | |
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66
nuptials
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| n.婚礼；婚礼( nuptial的名词复数 ) | |
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67
dubious
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| adj.怀疑的，无把握的；有问题的，靠不住的 | |
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68
withheld
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| withhold过去式及过去分词 | |
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69
onset
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| n.进攻，袭击，开始，突然开始 | |
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70
compensate
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| vt.补偿，赔偿；酬报 vi.弥补；补偿；抵消 | |
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71
utterance
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| n.用言语表达，话语，言语 | |
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72
extremity
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| n.末端，尽头；尽力；终极；极度 | |
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73
exclamation
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| n.感叹号，惊呼，惊叹词 | |
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74
melodrama
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| n.音乐剧；情节剧 | |
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75
intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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76
impulsive
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| adj.冲动的，刺激的；有推动力的 | |
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77
lament
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| n.悲叹，悔恨，恸哭；v.哀悼，悔恨，悲叹 | |
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78
meek
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| adj.温顺的，逆来顺受的 | |
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79
Oxford
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| n.牛津（英国城市） | |
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80
analyze
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|
| vt.分析，解析 (=analyse) | |
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81
outrages
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|
| 引起…的义愤，激怒( outrage的第三人称单数 ) | |
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82
simultaneously
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|
| adv.同时发生地，同时进行地 | |
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83
vaguely
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|
| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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84
mundane
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|
| adj.平凡的；尘世的；宇宙的 | |
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85
disorder
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| n.紊乱，混乱；骚动，骚乱；疾病，失调 | |
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86
virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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87
bliss
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| n.狂喜，福佑，天赐的福 | |
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88
aisles
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| n. (席位间的)通道, 侧廊 | |
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89
climaxes
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| n.顶点( climax的名词复数 )；极点；高潮；性高潮 | |
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90
antithesis
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| n.对立；相对 | |
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91
complexity
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| n.复杂(性)，复杂的事物 | |
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92
incessant
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| adj.不停的，连续的 | |
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93
wrangling
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|
| v.争吵，争论，口角( wrangle的现在分词 ) | |
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94
gravel
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|
| n.砂跞；砂砾层；结石 | |
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95
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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96
huddled
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| 挤在一起（huddle的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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97
rehearsals
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| n.练习( rehearsal的名词复数 )；排练；复述；重复 | |
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98
blander
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| adj.（食物）淡而无味的( bland的比较级 )；平和的；温和的；无动于衷的 | |
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99
freckled
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|
| adj.雀斑；斑点；晒斑；（使）生雀斑v.雀斑，斑点( freckle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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100
liberated
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| a.无拘束的，放纵的 | |
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101
boded
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| v.预示，预告，预言( bode的过去式和过去分词 )；等待，停留( bide的过去分词 )；居住；（过去式用bided）等待 | |
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102
knack
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| n.诀窍，做事情的灵巧的，便利的方法 | |
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103
descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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104
fluorescent
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| adj.荧光的，发出荧光的 | |
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105
freckles
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| n.雀斑，斑点( freckle的名词复数 ) | |
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106
blemished
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|
| v.有损…的完美，玷污( blemish的过去式 ) | |
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107
brittle
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|
| adj.易碎的；脆弱的；冷淡的；(声音)尖利的 | |
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108
reticence
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| n.沉默，含蓄 | |
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109
reluctance
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| n.厌恶，讨厌，勉强，不情愿 | |
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110
immersion
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| n.沉浸；专心 | |
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111
puckered
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| v.（使某物）起褶子或皱纹( pucker的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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112
bleached
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| 漂白的，晒白的，颜色变浅的 | |
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113
relatively
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| adv.比较...地，相对地 | |
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114
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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115
applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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116
offset
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| n.分支，补偿；v.抵消，补偿 | |
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117
bracelet
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| n.手镯，臂镯 | |
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118
constricting
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| 压缩，压紧，使收缩( constrict的现在分词 ) | |
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119
playwright
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| n.剧作家，编写剧本的人 | |
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120
evoking
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| 产生，引起，唤起( evoke的现在分词 ) | |
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121
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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122
distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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123
tormented
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| 饱受折磨的 | |
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124
shrug
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| v.耸肩(表示怀疑、冷漠、不知等) | |
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125
shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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126
precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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127
softened
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| （使）变软( soften的过去式和过去分词 )； 缓解打击； 缓和； 安慰 | |
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128
halfway
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| adj.中途的，不彻底的，部分的；adv.半路地，在中途，在半途 | |
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129
clout
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| n.用手猛击；权力，影响力 | |
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130
ruffle
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| v.弄皱，弄乱；激怒，扰乱；n.褶裥饰边 | |
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131
misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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132
plural
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|
| n.复数；复数形式；adj.复数的 | |
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133
catastrophe
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| n.大灾难，大祸 | |
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134
acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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135
coerced
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|
| v.迫使做( coerce的过去式和过去分词 )；强迫；（以武力、惩罚、威胁等手段）控制；支配 | |
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136
refinement
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|
| n.文雅；高尚；精美；精制；精炼 | |
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137
miserable
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|
| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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138
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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139
compliance
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| n.顺从；服从；附和；屈从 | |
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140
throbs
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| 体内的跳动( throb的名词复数 ) | |
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141
savor
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| vt.品尝，欣赏；n.味道，风味；情趣，趣味 | |
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142
vile
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| adj.卑鄙的，可耻的，邪恶的；坏透的 | |
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143
piquancy
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| n.辛辣，辣味，痛快 | |
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144
straps
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|
| n.带子( strap的名词复数 )；挎带；肩带；背带v.用皮带捆扎( strap的第三人称单数 )；用皮带抽打；包扎；给…打绷带 | |
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145
solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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146
tilt
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| v.(使)倾侧；(使)倾斜；n.倾侧；倾斜 | |
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147
dominion
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| n.统治，管辖，支配权；领土，版图 | |
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148
irrelevant
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| adj.不恰当的，无关系的，不相干的 | |
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149
briskness
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| n.敏捷，活泼 | |
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150
obliviousness
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151
guilt
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| n.犯罪；内疚；过失，罪责 | |
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152
inconveniently
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| ad.不方便地 | |
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153
constricted
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| adj.抑制的，约束的 | |
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154
hooted
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| （使）作汽笛声响，作汽车喇叭声( hoot的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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155
countermanding
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| v.取消（命令），撤回( countermand的现在分词 ) | |
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156
extrinsic
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| adj.外部的；不紧要的 | |
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157
giggling
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| v.咯咯地笑( giggle的现在分词 ) | |
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158
chasm
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| n.深坑，断层，裂口，大分岐，利害冲突 | |
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159
casually
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| adv.漠不关心地，无动于衷地，不负责任地 | |
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160
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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161
steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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162
wrecking
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| 破坏 | |
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