-
(单词翻译:双击或拖选)
The Great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Chapter 1 - Part 3
For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I listened—then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret, like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk.
The butler came back and murmured something close to Tom’s ear, whereupon Tom frowned, pushed back his chair, and without a word went inside. As if his absence quickened something within her, Daisy leaned forward again, her voice glowing and singing.
“I love to see you at my table, Nick. You remind me of a—of a rose, an absolute rose. Doesn’t he?” She turned to Miss Baker2 for confirmation3: “An absolute rose?”
This was untrue. I am not even faintly like a rose. She was only extemporizing4, but a stirring warmth flowed from her, as if her heart was trying to come out to you concealed5 in one of those breathless, thrilling words. Then suddenly she threw her napkin on the table and excused herself and went into the house.
Miss Baker and I exchanged a short glance consciously devoid6 of meaning. I was about to speak when she sat up alertly and said “Sh!” in a warning voice. A subdued7 impassioned murmur1 was audible in the room beyond, and Miss Baker leaned forward unashamed, trying to hear. The murmur trembled on the verge8 of coherence9, sank down, mounted excitedly, and then ceased altogether.
“Don’t talk. I want to hear what happens.”
“Is something happening?” I inquired innocently.
“You mean to say you don’t know?” said Miss Baker, honestly surprised. “I thought everybody knew.”
“I don’t.”
“Why——” she said hesitantly, “Tom’s got some woman in New York.”
“Got some woman?” I repeated blankly.
Miss Baker nodded.
Almost before I had grasped her meaning there was the flutter of a dress and the crunch12 of leather boots, and Tom and Daisy were back at the table.
“It couldn’t be helped!” cried Daisy with tense gaiety.
She sat down, glanced searchingly at Miss Baker and then at me, and continued: “I looked outdoors for a minute, and it’s very romantic outdoors. There’s a bird on the lawn that I think must be a nightingale come over on the Cunard or White Star Line. He’s singing away——” Her voice sang: “It’s romantic, isn’t it, Tom?”
“Very romantic,” he said, and then miserably13 to me: “If it’s light enough after dinner, I want to take you down to the stables.”
The telephone rang inside, startlingly, and as Daisy shook her head decisively at Tom the subject of the stables, in fact all subjects, vanished into air. Among the broken fragments of the last five minutes at table I remember the candles being lit again, pointlessly, and I was conscious of wanting to look squarely at every one, and yet to avoid all eyes. I couldn’t guess what Daisy and Tom were thinking, but I doubt if even Miss Baker, who seemed to have mastered a certain hardy14 scepticism, was able utterly15 to put this fifth guest’s shrill16 metallic17 urgency out of mind. To a certain temperament18 the situation might have seemed intriguing—my own instinct was to telephone immediately for the police.
The horses, needless to say, were not mentioned again. Tom and Miss Baker, with several feet of twilight19 between them, strolled back into the library, as if to a vigil beside a perfectly20 tangible21 body, while, trying to look pleasantly interested and a little deaf, I followed Daisy around a chain of connecting verandas23 to the porch in front. In its deep gloom we sat down side by side on a wicker settee.
Daisy took her face in her hands as if feeling its lovely shape, and her eyes moved gradually out into the velvet24 dusk. I saw that turbulent emotions possessed25 her, so I asked what I thought would be some sedative26 questions about her little girl.
“We don’t know each other very well, Nick,” she said suddenly. “Even if we are cousins. You didn’t come to my wedding.”
“I wasn’t back from the war.”
“That’s true.” She hesitated. “Well, I’ve had a very bad time, Nick, and I’m pretty cynical27 about everything.”
Evidently she had reason to be. I waited but she didn’t say any more, and after a moment I returned rather feebly to the subject of her daughter.
“I suppose she talks, and—eats, and everything.”
“Oh, yes.” She looked at me absently. “Listen, Nick; let me tell you what I said when she was born. Would you like to hear?”
“Very much.”
“It’ll show you how I’ve gotten to feel about—things. Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling, and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. ‘all right,’ I said, ‘I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”
“You see I think everything’s terrible anyhow,” she went on in a convinced way. “Everybody thinks so—the most advanced people. And I KNOW. I’ve been everywhere and seen everything and done everything.” Her eyes flashed around her in a defiant28 way, rather like Tom’s, and she laughed with thrilling scorn. “Sophisticated—God, I’m sophisticated!”
The instant her voice broke off, ceasing to compel my attention, my belief, I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said. It made me uneasy, as though the whole evening had been a trick of some sort to exact a contributory emotion from me. I waited, and sure enough, in a moment she looked at me with an absolute smirk29 on her lovely face, as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished30 secret society to which she and Tom belonged.
Tom and Miss Baker sat at either end of the long couch and she read aloud to him from the SATURDAY EVENING POST.—the words, murmurous32 and uninflected, running together in a soothing33 tune34. The lamp-light, bright on his boots and dull on the autumn-leaf yellow of her hair, glinted along the paper as she turned a page with a flutter of slender muscles in her arms.
When we came in she held us silent for a moment with a lifted hand.
“To be continued,” she said, tossing the magazine on the table, “in our very next issue.”
Her body asserted itself with a restless movement of her knee, and she stood up.
“Ten o’clock,” she remarked, apparently35 finding the time on the ceiling. “Time for this good girl to go to bed.”
“Jordan’s going to play in the tournament to-morrow,” explained Daisy, “over at Westchester.”
“Oh—you’re Jordan BAKER.”
I knew now why her face was familiar—its pleasing contemptuous expression had looked out at me from many rotogravure pictures of the sporting life at Asheville and Hot Springs and Palm Beach. I had heard some story of her too, a critical, unpleasant story, but what it was I had forgotten long ago.
“Good night,” she said softly. “Wake me at eight, won’t you.”
“If you’ll get up.”
“I will. Good night, Mr. Carraway. See you anon.”
“Of course you will,” confirmed Daisy. “In fact I think I’ll arrange a marriage. Come over often, Nick, and I’ll sort of—oh—fling you together. You know—lock you up accidentally in linen36 closets and push you out to sea in a boat, and all that sort of thing——”
“Good night,” called Miss Baker from the stairs. “I haven’t heard a word.”
“She’s a nice girl,” said Tom after a moment. “They oughtn’t to let her run around the country this way.”
“Who oughtn’t to?” inquired Daisy coldly.
“Her family.”
“Her family is one aunt about a thousand years old. Besides, Nick’s going to look after her, aren’t you, Nick? She’s going to spend lots of week-ends out here this summer. I think the home influence will be very good for her.”
Daisy and Tom looked at each other for a moment in silence.
“Is she from New York?” I asked quickly.
“From Louisville. Our white girlhood was passed together there. Our beautiful white——”
“Did I?” She looked at me.
“I can’t seem to remember, but I think we talked about the Nordic race. Yes, I’m sure we did. It sort of crept up on us and first thing you know——”
“Don’t believe everything you hear, Nick,” he advised me.
I said lightly that I had heard nothing at all, and a few minutes later I got up to go home. They came to the door with me and stood side by side in a cheerful square of light. As I started my motor Daisy peremptorily37 called: “Wait!”
“I forgot to ask you something, and it’s important. We heard you were engaged to a girl out West.”
“It’s libel. I’m too poor.”
“But we heard it,” insisted Daisy, surprising me by opening up again in a flower-like way. “We heard it from three people, so it must be true.”
Of course I knew what they were referring to, but I wasn’t even vaguely40 engaged. The fact that gossip had published the banns was one of the reasons I had come East. You can’t stop going with an old friend on account of rumors41, and on the other hand I had no intention of being rumored42 into marriage.
Their interest rather touched me and made them less remotely rich—nevertheless, I was confused and a little disgusted as I drove away. It seemed to me that the thing for Daisy to do was to rush out of the house, child in arms—but apparently there were no such intentions in her head. As for Tom, the fact that he “had some woman in New York.” was really less surprising than that he had been depressed43 by a book. Something was making him nibble44 at the edge of stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his peremptory45 heart.
Already it was deep summer on roadhouse roofs and in front of wayside garages, where new red gas-pumps sat out in pools of light, and when I reached my estate at West Egg I ran the car under its shed and sat for a while on an abandoned grass roller in the yard. The wind had blown off, leaving a loud, bright night, with wings beating in the trees and a persistent46 organ sound as the full bellows47 of the earth blew the frogs full of life. The silhouette48 of a moving cat wavered across the moonlight, and turning my head to watch it, I saw that I was not alone—fifty feet away a figure had emerged from the shadow of my neighbor’s mansion49 and was standing50 with his hands in his pockets regarding the silver pepper of the stars. Something in his leisurely51 movements and the secure position of his feet upon the lawn suggested that it was Mr. Gatsby himself, come out to determine what share was his of our local heavens.
I decided52 to call to him. Miss Baker had mentioned him at dinner, and that would do for an introduction. But I didn’t call to him, for he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone—he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness.
点击
收听单词发音
收听单词发音 |
1
murmur
|
|
| n.低语，低声的怨言；v.低语，低声而言 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
baker
|
|
| n.面包师 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
confirmation
|
|
| n.证实，确认，批准 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
extemporizing
|
|
| v.即兴创作，即席演奏( extemporize的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
|
5
concealed
|
|
| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
devoid
|
|
| adj.全无的，缺乏的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
subdued
|
|
| adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
verge
|
|
| n.边，边缘；v.接近，濒临 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
coherence
|
|
| n.紧凑；连贯；一致性 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
spoke
|
|
| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
decency
|
|
| n.体面，得体，合宜，正派，庄重 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
crunch
|
|
| n.关键时刻；艰难局面；v.发出碎裂声 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
miserably
|
|
| adv.痛苦地；悲惨地；糟糕地；极度地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
hardy
|
|
| adj.勇敢的，果断的，吃苦的；耐寒的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
utterly
|
|
| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
shrill
|
|
| adj.尖声的；刺耳的；v尖叫 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
metallic
|
|
| adj.金属的；金属制的；含金属的；产金属的；像金属的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
temperament
|
|
| n.气质，性格，性情 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
twilight
|
|
| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
perfectly
|
|
| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
tangible
|
|
| adj.有形的，可触摸的，确凿的，实际的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
veranda
|
|
| n.走廊；阳台 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
verandas
|
|
| 阳台，走廊( veranda的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
velvet
|
|
| n.丝绒，天鹅绒；adj.丝绒制的，柔软的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
25
possessed
|
|
| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
26
sedative
|
|
| adj.使安静的，使镇静的；n. 镇静剂，能使安静的东西 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
27
cynical
|
|
| adj.(对人性或动机)怀疑的，不信世道向善的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
28
defiant
|
|
| adj.无礼的，挑战的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
29
smirk
|
|
| n.得意地笑；v.傻笑；假笑着说 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
30
distinguished
|
|
| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
31
crimson
|
|
| n./adj.深(绯)红色(的)；vi.脸变绯红色 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
32
murmurous
|
|
| adj.低声的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
|
33
soothing
|
|
| adj.慰藉的；使人宽心的；镇静的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
34
tune
|
|
| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
35
apparently
|
|
| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
36
linen
|
|
| n.亚麻布，亚麻线，亚麻制品；adj.亚麻布制的，亚麻的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
37
peremptorily
|
|
| adv.紧急地，不容分说地，专横地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
38
corroborated
|
|
| v.证实，支持（某种说法、信仰、理论等）( corroborate的过去式 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
39
kindly
|
|
| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
40
vaguely
|
|
| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
41
rumors
|
|
| n.传闻( rumor的名词复数 )；[古]名誉；咕哝；[古]喧嚷v.传闻( rumor的第三人称单数 )；[古]名誉；咕哝；[古]喧嚷 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
42
rumored
|
|
| adj.传说的，谣传的v.传闻( rumor的过去式和过去分词 )；[古]名誉；咕哝；[古]喧嚷 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
43
depressed
|
|
| adj.沮丧的，抑郁的，不景气的，萧条的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
44
nibble
|
|
| n.轻咬，啃；v.一点点地咬，慢慢啃，吹毛求疵 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
45
peremptory
|
|
| adj.紧急的，专横的，断然的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
46
persistent
|
|
| adj.坚持不懈的，执意的；持续的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
47
bellows
|
|
| n.风箱；发出吼叫声，咆哮（尤指因痛苦）( bellow的名词复数 )；（愤怒地）说出（某事），大叫v.发出吼叫声，咆哮（尤指因痛苦）( bellow的第三人称单数 )；（愤怒地）说出（某事），大叫 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
48
silhouette
|
|
| n.黑色半身侧面影，影子，轮廓；v.描绘成侧面影，照出影子来，仅仅显出轮廓 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
49
mansion
|
|
| n.大厦，大楼；宅第 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
50
standing
|
|
| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
51
leisurely
|
|
| adj.悠闲的；从容的，慢慢的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
52
decided
|
|
| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
购买
在百度中搜索