‘What are you doing to the man?’ demands Jasper, stepping out into the moonlight from the shade.
‘Making a cock-shy of him,’ replies the hideous small boy.
‘Give me those stones in your hand.’
‘Yes, I’ll give ’em you down your throat, if you come a-ketching hold of me,’ says the small boy, shaking himself loose, and backing. ‘I’ll smash your eye, if you don’t look out!’
‘Baby–Devil that you are, what has the man done to you?’
‘He won’t go home.’
‘What is that to you?’
‘He gives me a ’apenny to pelt5 him home if I ketches him out too late,’ says the boy. And then chants, like a little savage6, half stumbling and half dancing among the rags and laces of his dilapidated boots:–
‘Widdy widdy wen!
I— ket — ches — Im — out — ar — ter — ten,
Widdy widdy wy!
Then — E— don’t — go — then — I— shy —
Widdy Widdy Wake-cock warning!’
— with a comprehensive sweep on the last word, and one more delivery at Durdles.
This would seem to be a poetical7 note of preparation, agreed upon, as a caution to Durdles to stand clear if he can, or to betake himself homeward.
John Jasper invites the boy with a beck of his head to follow him (feeling it hopeless to drag him, or coax8 him), and crosses to the iron railing where the Stony (and stoned) One is profoundly meditating9.
‘Do you know this thing, this child?’ asks Jasper, at a loss for a word that will define this thing.
‘Deputy,’ says Durdles, with a nod.
‘Is that its — his — name?’
‘Deputy,’ assents11 Durdles.
‘I’m man-servant up at the Travellers’ Twopenny in Gas Works Garding,’ this thing explains. ‘All us man-servants at Travellers’ Lodgings12 is named Deputy. When we’re chock full and the Travellers is all a-bed I come out for my ’elth.’ Then withdrawing into the road, and taking aim, he resumes:–
‘Widdy widdy wen!
I— ket — ches — Im — out — ar — ter —’
‘Hold your hand,’ cries Jasper, ‘and don’t throw while I stand so near him, or I’ll kill you! Come, Durdles; let me walk home with you to-night. Shall I carry your bundle?’
‘Not on any account,’ replies Durdles, adjusting it. ‘Durdles was making his reflections here when you come up, sir, surrounded by his works, like a poplar Author. — Your own brother-in-law;’ introducing a sarcophagus within the railing, white and cold in the moonlight. ‘Mrs. Sapsea;’ introducing the monument of that devoted13 wife. ‘Late Incumbent;’ introducing the Reverend Gentleman’s broken column. ‘Departed Assessed Taxes;’ introducing a vase and towel, standing14 on what might represent the cake of soap. ‘Former pastrycook and Muffin-maker, much respected;’ introducing gravestone. ‘All safe and sound here, sir, and all Durdles’s work. Of the common folk, that is merely bundled up in turf and brambles, the less said the better. A poor lot, soon forgot.’
‘This creature, Deputy, is behind us,’ says Jasper, looking back. ‘Is he to follow us?’
The relations between Durdles and Deputy are of a capricious kind; for, on Durdles’s turning himself about with the slow gravity of beery suddenness, Deputy makes a pretty wide circuit into the road and stands on the defensive15.
‘You never cried Widdy Warning before you begun to-night,’ says Durdles, unexpectedly reminded of, or imagining, an injury.
‘Yer lie, I did,’ says Deputy, in his only form of polite contradiction.
‘Own brother, sir,’ observes Durdles, turning himself about again, and as unexpectedly forgetting his offence as he had recalled or conceived it; ‘own brother to Peter the Wild Boy! But I gave him an object in life.’
‘At which he takes aim?’ Mr. Jasper suggests.
‘That’s it, sir,’ returns Durdles, quite satisfied; ‘at which he takes aim. I took him in hand and gave him an object. What was he before? A destroyer. What work did he do? Nothing but destruction. What did he earn by it? Short terms in Cloisterham jail. Not a person, not a piece of property, not a winder, not a horse, nor a dog, nor a cat, nor a bird, nor a fowl16, nor a pig, but what he stoned, for want of an enlightened object. I put that enlightened object before him, and now he can turn his honest halfpenny by the three penn’orth a week.’
‘I wonder he has no competitors.’
‘He has plenty, Mr. Jasper, but he stones ’em all away. Now, I don’t know what this scheme of mine comes to,’ pursues Durdles, considering about it with the same sodden17 gravity; ‘I don’t know what you may precisely18 call it. It ain’t a sort of a — scheme of a — National Education?’
‘I should say not,’ replies Jasper.
‘I should say not,’ assents Durdles; ‘then we won’t try to give it a name.’
‘He still keeps behind us,’ repeats Jasper, looking over his shoulder; ‘is he to follow us?’
‘We can’t help going round by the Travellers’ Twopenny, if we go the short way, which is the back way,’ Durdles answers, ‘and we’ll drop him there.’
So they go on; Deputy, as a rear rank one, taking open order, and invading the silence of the hour and place by stoning every wall, post, pillar, and other inanimate object, by the deserted19 way.
‘Is there anything new down in the crypt, Durdles?’ asks John Jasper.
‘Anything old, I think you mean,’ growls20 Durdles. ‘It ain’t a spot for novelty.’
‘Any new discovery on your part, I meant.’
‘There’s a old ’un under the seventh pillar on the left as you go down the broken steps of the little underground chapel21 as formerly22 was; I make him out (so fur as I’ve made him out yet) to be one of them old ’uns with a crook23. To judge from the size of the passages in the walls, and of the steps and doors, by which they come and went, them crooks24 must have been a good deal in the way of the old ’uns! Two on ’em meeting promiscuous25 must have hitched26 one another by the mitre pretty often, I should say.’
Without any endeavour to correct the literality of this opinion, Jasper surveys his companion — covered from head to foot with old mortar27, lime, and stone grit28 — as though he, Jasper, were getting imbued29 with a romantic interest in his weird30 life.
‘Yours is a curious existence.’
Without furnishing the least clue to the question, whether he receives this as a compliment or as quite the reverse, Durdles gruffly answers: ‘Yours is another.’
‘Well! inasmuch as my lot is cast in the same old earthy, chilly31, never-changing place, Yes. But there is much more mystery and interest in your connection with the Cathedral than in mine. Indeed, I am beginning to have some idea of asking you to take me on as a sort of student, or free ‘prentice, under you, and to let me go about with you sometimes, and see some of these odd nooks in which you pass your days.’
The Stony One replies, in a general way, ‘All right. Everybody knows where to find Durdles, when he’s wanted.’ Which, if not strictly32 true, is approximately so, if taken to express that Durdles may always be found in a state of vagabondage somewhere.
‘What I dwell upon most,’ says Jasper, pursuing his subject of romantic interest, ‘is the remarkable33 accuracy with which you would seem to find out where people are buried. — What is the matter? That bundle is in your way; let me hold it.’
Durdles has stopped and backed a little (Deputy, attentive34 to all his movements, immediately skirmishing into the road), and was looking about for some ledge35 or corner to place his bundle on, when thus relieved of it.
‘Just you give me my hammer out of that,’ says Durdles, ‘and I’ll show you.’
Clink, clink. And his hammer is handed him.
‘Now, lookee here. You pitch your note, don’t you, Mr. Jasper?’
‘Yes.’
‘So I sound for mine. I take my hammer, and I tap.’ (Here he strikes the pavement, and the attentive Deputy skirmishes at a rather wider range, as supposing that his head may be in requisition.) ‘I tap, tap, tap. Solid! I go on tapping. Solid still! Tap again. Holloa! Hollow! Tap again, persevering36. Solid in hollow! Tap, tap, tap, to try it better. Solid in hollow; and inside solid, hollow again! There you are! Old ’un crumbled37 away in stone coffin38, in vault39!’
‘Astonishing!’
‘I have even done this,’ says Durdles, drawing out his two-foot rule (Deputy meanwhile skirmishing nearer, as suspecting that Treasure may be about to be discovered, which may somehow lead to his own enrichment, and the delicious treat of the discoverers being hanged by the neck, on his evidence, until they are dead). ‘Say that hammer of mine’s a wall — my work. Two; four; and two is six,’ measuring on the pavement. ‘Six foot inside that wall is Mrs. Sapsea.’
‘Not really Mrs. Sapsea?’
‘Say Mrs. Sapsea. Her wall’s thicker, but say Mrs. Sapsea. Durdles taps, that wall represented by that hammer, and says, after good sounding: “Something betwixt us!” Sure enough, some rubbish has been left in that same six-foot space by Durdles’s men!’
Jasper opines that such accuracy ‘is a gift.’
‘I wouldn’t have it at a gift,’ returns Durdles, by no means receiving the observation in good part. ‘I worked it out for myself. Durdles comes by his knowledge through grubbing deep for it, and having it up by the roots when it don’t want to come. — Holloa you Deputy!’
‘Widdy!’ is Deputy’s shrill40 response, standing off again.
‘Catch that ha’penny. And don’t let me see any more of you to-night, after we come to the Travellers’ Twopenny.’
‘Warning!’ returns Deputy, having caught the halfpenny, and appearing by this mystic word to express his assent10 to the arrangement.
They have but to cross what was once the vineyard, belonging to what was once the Monastery41, to come into the narrow back lane wherein stands the crazy wooden house of two low stories currently known as the Travellers’ Twopenny:-a house all warped42 and distorted, like the morals of the travellers, with scant43 remains44 of a lattice-work porch over the door, and also of a rustic45 fence before its stamped-out garden; by reason of the travellers being so bound to the premises46 by a tender sentiment (or so fond of having a fire by the roadside in the course of the day), that they can never be persuaded or threatened into departure, without violently possessing themselves of some wooden forget-me-not, and bearing it off.
The semblance47 of an inn is attempted to be given to this wretched place by fragments of conventional red curtaining in the windows, which rags are made muddily transparent48 in the night-season by feeble lights of rush or cotton dip burning dully in the close air of the inside. As Durdles and Jasper come near, they are addressed by an inscribed49 paper lantern over the door, setting forth50 the purport51 of the house. They are also addressed by some half-dozen other hideous small boys — whether twopenny lodgers52 or followers53 or hangers-on of such, who knows! — who, as if attracted by some carrion-scent of Deputy in the air, start into the moonlight, as vultures might gather in the desert, and instantly fall to stoning him and one another.
‘Stop, you young brutes,’ cries Jasper angrily, ‘and let us go by!’
This remonstrance54 being received with yells and flying stones, according to a custom of late years comfortably established among the police regulations of our English communities, where Christians55 are stoned on all sides, as if the days of Saint Stephen were revived, Durdles remarks of the young savages56, with some point, that ‘they haven’t got an object,’ and leads the way down the lane.
At the corner of the lane, Jasper, hotly enraged57, checks his companion and looks back. All is silent. Next moment, a stone coming rattling58 at his hat, and a distant yell of ‘Wake–Cock! Warning!’ followed by a crow, as from some infernally-hatched Chanticleer, apprising59 him under whose victorious60 fire he stands, he turns the corner into safety, and takes Durdles home: Durdles stumbling among the litter of his stony yard as if he were going to turn head foremost into one of the unfinished tombs.
John Jasper returns by another way to his gatehouse, and entering softly with his key, finds his fire still burning. He takes from a locked press a peculiar-looking pipe, which he fills — but not with tobacco — and, having adjusted the contents of the bowl, very carefully, with a little instrument, ascends61 an inner staircase of only a few steps, leading to two rooms. One of these is his own sleeping chamber62: the other is his nephew’s. There is a light in each.
His nephew lies asleep, calm and untroubled. John Jasper stands looking down upon him, his unlighted pipe in his hand, for some time, with a fixed63 and deep attention. Then, hushing his footsteps, he passes to his own room, lights his pipe, and delivers himself to the Spectres it invokes64 at midnight.
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收听单词发音
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1
stony
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| adj.石头的，多石头的，冷酷的，无情的 | |
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2
hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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3
yelps
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| n.（因痛苦、气愤、兴奋等的）短而尖的叫声( yelp的名词复数 )v.发出短而尖的叫声( yelp的第三人称单数 ) | |
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atone
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| v.赎罪，补偿 | |
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pelt
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| v.投掷，剥皮，抨击，开火 | |
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6
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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7
poetical
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| adj.似诗人的；诗一般的；韵文的；富有诗意的 | |
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8
coax
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| v.哄诱，劝诱，用诱哄得到，诱取 | |
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9
meditating
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| a.沉思的，冥想的 | |
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10
assent
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| v.批准，认可；n.批准，认可 | |
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11
assents
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| 同意，赞同( assent的名词复数 ) | |
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12
lodgings
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| n. 出租的房舍, 寄宿舍 | |
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13
devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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14
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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15
defensive
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| adj.防御的；防卫的；防守的 | |
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16
fowl
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| n.家禽，鸡，禽肉 | |
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17
sodden
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| adj.浑身湿透的；v.使浸透；使呆头呆脑 | |
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18
precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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19
deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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20
growls
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| v.（动物）发狺狺声， （雷）作隆隆声( growl的第三人称单数 )；低声咆哮着说 | |
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21
chapel
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| n.小教堂，殡仪馆 | |
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22
formerly
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| adv.从前，以前 | |
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23
crook
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| v.使弯曲；n.小偷，骗子，贼；弯曲(处) | |
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24
crooks
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| n.骗子( crook的名词复数 )；罪犯；弯曲部分；（牧羊人或主教用的）弯拐杖v.弯成钩形( crook的第三人称单数 ) | |
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25
promiscuous
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| adj.杂乱的，随便的 | |
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26
hitched
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| （免费）搭乘他人之车( hitch的过去式和过去分词 )； 搭便车； 攀上； 跃上 | |
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27
mortar
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| n.灰浆，灰泥；迫击炮；v.把…用灰浆涂接合 | |
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28
grit
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| n.沙粒，决心，勇气；v.下定决心，咬紧牙关 | |
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29
imbued
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| v.使（某人/某事）充满或激起（感情等）( imbue的过去式和过去分词 )；使充满；灌输；激发（强烈感情或品质等） | |
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30
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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31
chilly
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| adj.凉快的，寒冷的 | |
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32
strictly
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| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
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33
remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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34
attentive
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| adj.注意的，专心的；关心(别人)的，殷勤的 | |
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35
ledge
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| n.壁架，架状突出物；岩架，岩礁 | |
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36
persevering
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| a.坚忍不拔的 | |
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37
crumbled
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| （把…）弄碎， （使）碎成细屑( crumble的过去式和过去分词 )； 衰落； 坍塌； 损坏 | |
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38
coffin
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| n.棺材，灵柩 | |
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vault
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| n.拱形圆顶，地窖，地下室 | |
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40
shrill
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| adj.尖声的；刺耳的；v尖叫 | |
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41
monastery
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| n.修道院，僧院，寺院 | |
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42
warped
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| adj.反常的；乖戾的；（变）弯曲的；变形的v.弄弯，变歪( warp的过去式和过去分词 )；使（行为等）不合情理，使乖戾， | |
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43
scant
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| adj.不充分的，不足的；v.减缩，限制，忽略 | |
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44
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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45
rustic
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| adj.乡村的，有乡村特色的；n.乡下人，乡巴佬 | |
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46
premises
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| n.建筑物，房屋 | |
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47
semblance
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| n.外貌，外表 | |
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48
transparent
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| adj.明显的，无疑的；透明的 | |
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49
inscribed
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| v.写，刻( inscribe的过去式和过去分词 )；内接 | |
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50
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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51
purport
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| n.意义，要旨，大要；v.意味著，做为...要旨，要领是... | |
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52
lodgers
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| n.房客，租住者( lodger的名词复数 ) | |
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53
followers
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| 追随者( follower的名词复数 )； 用户； 契据的附面； 从动件 | |
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54
remonstrance
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| n抗议，抱怨 | |
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55
Christians
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| n.基督教徒( Christian的名词复数 ) | |
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56
savages
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| 未开化的人，野蛮人( savage的名词复数 ) | |
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57
enraged
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| 使暴怒( enrage的过去式和过去分词 )； 歜； 激愤 | |
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58
rattling
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| adj. 格格作响的, 活泼的, 很好的 adv. 极其, 很, 非常 动词rattle的现在分词 | |
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59
apprising
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| v.告知，通知( apprise的现在分词 )；评价 | |
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60
victorious
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| adj.胜利的，得胜的 | |
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61
ascends
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| v.上升，攀登( ascend的第三人称单数 ) | |
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62
chamber
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| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
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63
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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64
invokes
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| v.援引( invoke的第三人称单数 )；行使（权利等）；祈求救助；恳求 | |
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