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(单词翻译:双击或拖选)
"There is a wild beast in your woods," said the artist Cunningham, as he was being driven to the station. It was the only remark he had made during the drive, but as Van Cheele had talked incessantly1 his companion's silence had not been noticeable.
"A stray fox or two and some resident weasels. Nothing more formidable," said Van Cheele. The artist said nothing.
"What did you mean about a wild beast?" said Van Cheele later, when they were on the platform.
"Nothing. My imagination. Here is the train," said Cunningham.
That afternoon Van Cheele went for one of his frequent rambles2 through his woodland property. He had a stuffed bittern in his study, and knew the names of quite a number of wild flowers, so his aunt had possibly some justification3 in describing him as a great naturalist4. At any rate, he was a great walker. It was his custom to take mental notes of everything he saw during his walks, not so much for the purpose of assisting contemporary science as to provide topics for conversation afterwards. When the bluebells5 began to show themselves in flower he made a point of informing every one of the fact; the season of the year might have warned his hearers of the likelihood of such an occurrence, but at least they felt that he was being absolutely frank with them.
What Van Cheele saw on this particular afternoon was, however, something far removed from his ordinary range of experience. On a shelf of smooth stone overhanging a deep pool in the hollow of an oak coppice a boy of about sixteen lay asprawl, drying his wet brown limbs luxuriously6 in the sun. His wet hair, parted by a recent dive, lay close to his head, and his light-brown eyes, so light that there was an almost tigerish gleam in them, were turned towards Van Cheele with a certain lazy watchfulness7. It was an unexpected apparition8, and Van Cheele found himself engaged in the novel process of thinking before he spoke9. Where on earth could this wild-looking boy hail from? The miller's wife had lost a child some two months ago, supposed to have been swept away by the mill-race, but that had been a mere10 baby, not a half-grown lad.
"What are you doing there?" he demanded.
"Obviously, sunning myself," replied the boy.
"Where do you live?"
"Here, in these woods."
"You can't live in the woods," said Van Cheele.
"But where do you sleep at night?"
"I don't sleep at night; that's my busiest time."
Van Cheele began to have an irritated feeling that he was grappling with a problem that was eluding12 him.
"What do you feed on?" he asked.
"Flesh! What Flesh?"
"Since it interests you, rabbits, wild-fowl, hares, poultry14, lambs in their season, children when I can get any; they're usually too well locked in at night, when I do most of my hunting. It's quite two months since I tasted child-flesh."
Ignoring the chaffing nature of the last remark Van Cheele tried to draw the boy on the subject of possible poaching operations.
"You're talking rather through your hat when you speak of feeding on hares." (Considering the nature of the boy's toilet the simile15 was hardly an apt one.) "Our hillside hares aren't easily caught."
"I suppose you mean that you hunt with a dog?" hazarded Van Cheele.
The boy rolled slowly over on to his back, and laughed a weird17 low laugh, that was pleasantly like a chuckle18 and disagreeably like a snarl19.
"I don't fancy any dog would be very anxious for my company, especially at night."
Van Cheele began to feel that there was something positively20 uncanny about the strange-eyed, strange-tongued youngster.
"I can't have you staying in these woods," he declared authoritatively21.
"I fancy you'd rather have me here than in your house," said the boy.
The prospect22 of this wild, nude23 animal in Van Cheele's primly24 ordered house was certainly an alarming one.
"If you don't go. I shall have to make you," said Van Cheele.
The boy turned like a flash, plunged26 into the pool, and in a moment had flung his wet and glistening27 body half-way up the bank where Van Cheele was standing28. In an otter29 the movement would not have been remarkable30; in a boy Van Cheele found it sufficiently31 startling. His foot slipped as he made an involuntarily backward movement, and he found himself almost prostrate32 on the slippery weed-grown bank, with those tigerish yellow eyes not very far from his own. Almost instinctively33 he half raised his hand to his throat. They boy laughed again, a laugh in which the snarl had nearly driven out the chuckle, and then, with another of his astonishing lightning movements, plunged out of view into a yielding tangle34 of weed and fern.
"What an extraordinary wild animal!" said Van Cheele as he picked himself up. And then he recalled Cunningham's remark "There is a wild beast in your woods."
Walking slowly homeward, Van Cheele began to turn over in his mind various local occurrences which might be traceable to the existence of this astonishing young savage35.
Something had been thinning the game in the woods lately, poultry had been missing from the farms, hares were growing unaccountably scarcer, and complaints had reached him of lambs being carried off bodily from the hills. Was it possible that this wild boy was really hunting the countryside in company with some clever poacher dogs? He had spoken of hunting "four-footed" by night, but then, again, he had hinted strangely at no dog caring to come near him, "especially at night." It was certainly puzzling. And then, as Van Cheele ran his mind over the various depredations36 that had been committed during the last month or two, he came suddenly to a dead stop, alike in his walk and his speculations37. The child missing from the mill two months ago--the accepted theory was that it had tumbled into the mill-race and been swept away; but the mother had always declared she had heard a shriek38 on the hill side of the house, in the opposite direction from the water. It was unthinkable, of course, but he wished that the boy had not made that uncanny remark about child-flesh eaten two months ago. Such dreadful things should not be said even in fun.
Van Cheele, contrary to his usual wont39, did not feel disposed to be communicative about his discovery in the wood. His position as a parish councillor and justice of the peace seemed somehow compromised by the fact that he was harbouring a personality of such doubtful repute on his property; there was even a possibility that a heavy bill of damages for raided lambs and poultry might be laid at his door. At dinner that night he was quite unusually silent.
"Where's your voice gone to?" said his aunt. "One would think you had seen a wolf."
Van Cheele, who was not familiar with the old saying, thought the remark rather foolish; if he HAD seen a wolf on his property his tongue would have been extraordinarily40 busy with the subject.
At breakfast next morning Van Cheele was conscious that his feeling of uneasiness regarding yesterday's episode had not wholly disappeared, and he resolved to go by train to the neighbouring cathedral town, hunt up Cunningham, and learn from him what he had really seen that had prompted the remark about a wild beast in the woods. With this resolution taken, his usual cheerfulness partially41 returned, and he hummed a bright little melody as he sauntered to the morning-room for his customary cigarette. As he entered the room the melody made way abruptly42 for a pious43 invocation. Gracefully44 asprawl on the ottoman, in an attitude of almost exaggerated repose45, was the boy of the woods. He was drier than when Van Cheele had last seen him, but no other alteration46 was noticeable in his toilet.
"How dare you come here?" asked Van Cheele furiously.
"You told me I was not to stay in the woods," said the boy calmly.
"But not to come here. Supposing my aunt should see you!"
And with a view to minimising that catastrophe47, Van Cheele hastily obscured as much of his unwelcome guest as possible under the folds of a Morning Post. At that moment his aunt entered the room.
"This is a poor boy who has lost his way--and lost his memory. He doesn't know who he is or where he comes from," explained Van Cheele desperately48, glancing apprehensively49 at the waif's face to see whether he was going to add inconvenient50 candour to his other savage propensities51.
Miss Van Cheele was enormously interested.
"Perhaps his underlinen is marked," she suggested.
"He seems to have lost most of that, too," said Van Cheele, making frantic52 little grabs at the Morning Post to keep it in its place.
A naked homeless child appealed to Miss Van Cheele as warmly as a stray kitten or derelict puppy would have done.
"We must do all we can for him," she decided53, and in a very short time a messenger, dispatched to the rectory, where a page-boy was kept, had returned with a suit of pantry clothes, and the necessary accessories of shirt, shoes, collar, etc. Clothed, clean, and groomed54, the boy lost none of his uncanniness in Van Cheele's eyes, but his aunt found him sweet.
"We must call him something till we know who he really is," she said. "Gabriel-Ernest, I think; those are nice suitable names."
Van Cheele agreed, but he privately55 doubted whether they were being grafted56 on to a nice suitable child. His misgivings57 were not diminished by the fact that his staid and elderly spaniel had bolted out of the house at the first incoming of the boy, and now obstinately58 remained shivering and yapping at the farther end of the orchard59, while the canary, usually as vocally60 industrious61 as Van Cheele himself, had put itself on an allowance of frightened cheeps. More than ever he was resolved to consult Cunningham without loss of time.
As he drove off to the station his aunt was arranging that Gabriel- Ernest should help her to entertain the infant members of her Sunday-school class at tea that afternoon.
Cunningham was not at first disposed to be communicative.
"My mother died of some brain trouble," he explained, "so you will understand why I am averse62 to dwelling63 on anything of an impossibly fantastic nature that I may see or think that I have seen."
"But what DID you see?" persisted Van Cheele.
"What I thought I saw was something so extraordinary that no really sane64 man could dignify65 it with the credit of having actually happened. I was standing, the last evening I was with you, half- hidden in the hedgegrowth by the orchard gate, watching the dying glow of the sunset. Suddenly I became aware of a naked boy, a bather from some neighbouring pool, I took him to be, who was standing out on the bare hillside also watching the sunset. His pose was so suggestive of some wild faun of Pagan myth that I instantly wanted to engage him as a model, and in another moment I think I should have hailed him. But just then the sun dipped out of view, and all the orange and pink slid out of the landscape, leaving it cold and grey. And at the same moment an astounding66 thing happened--the boy vanished too!"
"What! vanished away into nothing?" asked Van Cheele excitedly.
"No; that is the dreadful part of it," answered the artist; "on the open hillside where the boy had been standing a second ago, stood a large wolf, blackish in colour, with gleaming fangs67 and cruel, yellow eyes. You may think--"
But Van Cheele did not stop for anything as futile68 as thought. Already he was tearing at top speed towards the station. He dismissed the idea of a telegram. "Gabriel-Ernest is a werewolf" was a hopelessly inadequate69 effort at conveying the situation, and his aunt would think it was a code message to which he had omitted to give her the key. His one hope was that he might reach home before sundown. The cab which he chartered at the other end of the railway journey bore him with what seemed exasperating70 slowness along the country roads, which were pink and mauve with the flush of the sinking sun. His aunt was putting away some unfinished jams and cake when he arrived.
"Where is Gabriel-Ernest?" he almost screamed.
"He is taking the little Toop child home," said his aunt. "It was getting so late, I thought it wasn't safe to let it go back alone. What a lovely sunset, isn't it?"
But Van Cheele, although not oblivious71 of the glow in the western sky, did not stay to discuss its beauties. At a speed for which he was scarcely geared he raced along the narrow lane that led to the home of the Toops. On one side ran the swift current of the mill- stream, on the other rose the stretch of bare hillside. A dwindling72 rim25 of red sun showed still on the skyline, and the next turning must bring him in view of the ill-assorted couple he was pursuing. Then the colour went suddenly out of things, and a grey light settled itself with a quick shiver over the landscape. Van Cheele heard a shrill73 wail74 of fear, and stopped running.
Nothing was ever seen again of the Toop child or Gabriel-Ernest, but the latter's discarded garments were found lying in the road so it was assumed that the child had fallen into the water, and that the boy had stripped and jumped in, in a vain endeavour to save it. Van Cheele and some workmen who were near by at the time testified to having heard a child scream loudly just near the spot where the clothes were found. Mrs. Toop, who had eleven other children, was decently resigned to her bereavement75, but Miss Van Cheele sincerely mourned her lost foundling. It was on her initiative that a memorial brass76 was put up in the parish church to "Gabriel-Ernest, an unknown boy, who bravely sacrificed his life for another."
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1
incessantly
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| ad.不停地 | |
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rambles
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| （无目的地）漫游( ramble的第三人称单数 )； （喻）漫谈； 扯淡； 长篇大论 | |
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justification
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| n.正当的理由；辩解的理由 | |
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naturalist
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| n.博物学家(尤指直接观察动植物者) | |
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bluebells
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| n.圆叶风铃草( bluebell的名词复数 ) | |
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luxuriously
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| adv.奢侈地，豪华地 | |
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watchfulness
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| 警惕，留心； 警觉（性） | |
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apparition
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| n.幽灵，神奇的现象 | |
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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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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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patronage
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| n.赞助，支援，援助；光顾，捧场 | |
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eluding
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| v.（尤指机敏地）避开( elude的现在分词 )；逃避；躲避；使达不到 | |
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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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poultry
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| n.家禽，禽肉 | |
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simile
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| n.直喻，明喻 | |
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cryptic
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| adj.秘密的，神秘的，含义模糊的 | |
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weird
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| adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的 | |
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chuckle
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| vi.／n.轻声笑，咯咯笑 | |
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snarl
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| v.吼叫，怒骂，纠缠，混乱；n.混乱，缠结，咆哮 | |
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positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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authoritatively
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| 命令式地，有权威地，可信地 | |
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prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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nude
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| adj.裸体的；n.裸体者，裸体艺术品 | |
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primly
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| adv.循规蹈矩地，整洁地 | |
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rim
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| n.(圆物的)边，轮缘；边界 | |
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plunged
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| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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glistening
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| adj.闪耀的，反光的v.湿物闪耀，闪亮( glisten的现在分词 ) | |
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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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otter
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| n.水獭 | |
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remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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prostrate
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| v.拜倒，平卧，衰竭；adj.拜倒的，平卧的，衰竭的 | |
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instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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tangle
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| n.纠缠；缠结；混乱；v.(使)缠绕；变乱 | |
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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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depredations
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| n.劫掠，毁坏( depredation的名词复数 ) | |
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speculations
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| n.投机买卖( speculation的名词复数 )；思考；投机活动；推断 | |
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shriek
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| v./n.尖叫，叫喊 | |
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wont
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| adj.习惯于；v.习惯；n.习惯 | |
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extraordinarily
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| adv.格外地；极端地 | |
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partially
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| adv.部分地，从某些方面讲 | |
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abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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pious
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| adj.虔诚的；道貌岸然的 | |
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gracefully
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| ad.大大方方地；优美地 | |
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repose
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| v.(使)休息；n.安息 | |
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alteration
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| n.变更，改变；蚀变 | |
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catastrophe
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| n.大灾难，大祸 | |
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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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apprehensively
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| adv.担心地 | |
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inconvenient
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| adj.不方便的，令人感到麻烦的 | |
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propensities
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| n.倾向，习性( propensity的名词复数 ) | |
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52
frantic
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| adj.狂乱的，错乱的，激昂的 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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54
groomed
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| v.照料或梳洗（马等）( groom的过去式和过去分词 )；使做好准备；训练；（给动物）擦洗 | |
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privately
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| adv.以私人的身份，悄悄地，私下地 | |
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grafted
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| 移植( graft的过去式和过去分词 )； 嫁接； 使（思想、制度等）成为（…的一部份）； 植根 | |
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misgivings
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| n.疑虑，担忧，害怕；疑虑，担心，恐惧( misgiving的名词复数 )；疑惧 | |
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obstinately
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| ad.固执地，顽固地 | |
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orchard
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| n.果园，果园里的全部果树，(美俚)棒球场 | |
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vocally
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| adv. 用声音, 用口头, 藉著声音 | |
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industrious
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| adj.勤劳的，刻苦的，奋发的 | |
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averse
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| adj.厌恶的；反对的，不乐意的 | |
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dwelling
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| n.住宅，住所，寓所 | |
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sane
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| adj.心智健全的，神志清醒的，明智的，稳健的 | |
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65
dignify
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| vt.使有尊严；使崇高；给增光 | |
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astounding
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| adj.使人震惊的vt.使震惊，使大吃一惊astound的现在分词) | |
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67
fangs
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| n.（尤指狗和狼的）长而尖的牙( fang的名词复数 )；（蛇的）毒牙；罐座 | |
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68
futile
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| adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的 | |
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inadequate
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| adj.(for,to)不充足的，不适当的 | |
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70
exasperating
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| adj. 激怒的 动词exasperate的现在分词形式 | |
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71
oblivious
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| adj.易忘的，遗忘的，忘却的，健忘的 | |
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dwindling
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| adj.逐渐减少的v.逐渐变少或变小( dwindle的现在分词 ) | |
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shrill
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| adj.尖声的；刺耳的；v尖叫 | |
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74
wail
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| vt./vi.大声哀号，恸哭；呼啸，尖啸 | |
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75
bereavement
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| n.亲人丧亡，丧失亲人，丧亲之痛 | |
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76
brass
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| n.黄铜；黄铜器，铜管乐器 | |
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77
subscribe
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| vi.(to)订阅，订购；同意；vt.捐助，赞助 | |
参考例句： |
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