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In the afternoon |
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作者：fd159753 日期：2010-1-30 15:06:16 |
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In the afternoon
In the afternoon the farmer madeWholesale kitchen cabinets it known that the rick was to be finished that night, since there was a moon by which they could see to work, and the man with the engine was engaged forBike helmets another farm on the morrow. Hence the twanging and humming and rustling proceeded with even less intermission than usual.
It was not till `nammet'-time, about three o'clock, that Tess raised her eyes and gave wedding gownsa momentary glance round. She felt but little surprise at seeing that Alec d'Urberville had come back, and was standing under the hedge by the gate. He had seen her lift her eyes, and waved his hand urbanely to her, while he blew her a kiss. It meant that their quarrel was over. Tess looked down again, and carefully abstainedrip blu ray from gazing in that direction. Thus the afternoon dragged on. The wheat-rick shrank lower, and the straw-rick grew higher, and the corn-sacks were carted away. At six o'clock the wheat-rick was about shoulder-high from the ground. But the unthreshed sheaves remaining untouched seemed countless still, notwithstanding Machine de projection de mousse the enormous numbers that had been gulped down by the insatiable swallower, fed by the man and Tess, through whose two young hands the greater part of them had passed. And the immense stack of straw where in the morning there had been nothing, appeared as the faeces of Machine à ensacher ressorts the same buzzing red glutton.
From the west sky a wrathful shine - all that wild March could afford in the way ofMachine de matelas sunset - had burst forth after the cloudy day, flooding the tired and sticky faces of the threshers, and dyeing them with a coppery light, as also the flapping garments of the women, which clung to them like dull flames.
A panting ache ran through the rick. The man who fed was weary, machine pour fabrication de la mousseand Tess could see that the red nape of his neck was encrusted with dirt and husks. She still stood stainless steel jewelleryat her post, her flushed and perspiring face coated with the corn-dust, and her white bonnet embrowned by it. She was the only woman whose place was upon the machine so as to be shaken bodily by its spinning, and the decrease of the stack now separated her from Marian and Izz, and prevented their changing duties with her as they had done. Pigment redThe incessant quivering, in which every fibre of her frame participated, had thrown her into a stupefied reverie in which her arms worked on independently of her consciousness. She hardy knew where she was, and did not hear Izz Huett tell her from below that her hair was tumbling down.
By degrees the freshest among leather beltthem began to grow cadaverous and saucer-eyed. Whenever Tess lifted her head she beheld always the great upgrown straw-stack, with the men in shirt-sleeves upon it, against the gray north sky; women's pajamasin front of it the long red elevator like a Jacob's ladder, on which a perpetual stream of threshed straw ascended, a yellow river running up-hill, and spouting out on the top of the rick.
She knew that Alec d'Urberville was still on the scene, observing her from some point or other, though she could not say where. There was an excuse for his remaining, for when the threshed rick drew near its final sheaves a little ratting was always done, and men unconnected with the threshingmen's polo sometimes dropped in for that performance - sporting characters of all descriptions, gents with terriers and facetious pipes, roughs with sticks and stones.
But there was another hour's work before the layer of live rats at the base Dining table of the stack would be reached; and as the evening right in the direction of the Giant's Hill by Abbot's-Cernel dissolved away, the white-faced moon of the season arose from the horizon that lay towards Middleton Abbey and Shottsford on the other side. For the last hour or two Marian had felt leather handbaguneasy about Tess, whom she could not get near enough to speak to, the other women having kept up their strength by drinking ale, and Tess having done without it through traditionary dread, owing to its results at her home in childhood. But Tess still kept going: if she could not fill her part she would have to leave; and this contingency, which she would have regarded with equanimity auto oil filterand even with relief a month or two earlier, had become a terror since d'Urberville had begun to hover round her. |
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