Then the whole matter had been thought out and decreed by an authority higher than himself. The child mind, like the childish mind at all times, is under the weight of authority. The source of the authority is a matter of little moment so long as it speaks decidedly enough. It is always a means by which to get rid of the bother of using private judgment5, which as often as not is a bore to the person with the right to it.
In the case of a boy of twelve, private judgment is hampered6 by a knowledge of his insufficiency. The man who provides food, clothing, shelter, is invested with the right to speak. The child mind is logical, orderly, respectful, and prenatally disposed to discipline. Except on severe provocation7 it does not rebel. Tom Quidmore felt no impulse to rebellion,
[Pg 92]
even though his sense of right and wrong was, for the moment, mystified.
He lacked data. Such data as came to his hearing, and less often to his sight, lay morally outside his range. Like those scientifically minded men who during the childhood of our race registered the phenomena8 of electricity without going further, he had no power of making deductions9 from what eyes and ears could record. He knew that there was in life such an element as sexual love; but that was all he knew. It entered into the relations of married people, and in some puzzling way contributed to the birth of children; but of its wanderings and aberrations10 he had never heard. That man and wife should reach a breaking point was no part of his conception of the things that happened. There was nothing of the kind between the Tollivants, nor among the parents of the lads with whom he had grown up at Harfrey. That which at Harfrey had been clear unrelenting daylight was at Bere a gloaming haunted by strange shapes which perplexed11 and rather frightened him.
Not until he was fourteen or fifteen years of age, and the Quidmore episode behind him, like an island passed at sea, did the significance of these queer doings and sayings really occur to him. All that for the present his mind and experience were equal to was listening, observing, and wondering. He knew already what it was to have things which he hadn't understood at the time of their happening become clear as he grew older.
An illustration of this came from the small events of that very afternoon. On going back from his
[Pg 93]
midday dinner to work in the carrot patch he fixed12 on half past two as the hour at which he would make the attempt to force on his mother the prescribed medicine. That time having arrived, he rose, brushed the earth from his knees, dusted his hands against each other, and started slowly for the house. A faraway memory which had been in the back of his mind ever since his father had made the odd request now began to assert itself, like the throb13 of an old pain.
He was a little boy again. In the dim hall of the Swindon Street Home he was listening to the friendly policeman talking to Miss Honiton. He recaptured his own emotions, the dumb distress14 of the young creature lost in the dark, and ignorant of everything but its helplessness. His mother had taken something, or had not taken something, he wasn't sure which. The beaming young lady handed him his present from the Christmas Tree, and told him that cyanide of potassium—the words were still branded on his brain—was a deadly poison. Then he stood once more, as in memory he had stood so many times, in the half-darkened room where words were mumbled15 over the long black box which they spoke16 of as "the body."
Now that it was all in far perspective he knew what it had meant. That is, he knew the type of woman his mother had been; he knew the kind of soil he had sprung from. The events of five years back to a boy of twelve are a very long distance away. So his mother seemed to Tom. So did the sneaking17 through shops, and the flights from tenement18 to tenement. So did the awful Christmas Eve when he had lost her. He could think of her tenderly now because
[Pg 94]
he understood that her mind had been unhinged. What hurt him with a pain which never fell into perspective was that in trying to create in his boyish way some faint tradition of self-respect, he worked back always to this origin in shame.
While seeing no connection between such far-off things and the task put upon him by his father, he found them jostling each other in his mind. You took something—and there was disaster. It was as far as his thought carried him. After that came the fact that, his respect for authority being strong, he dared not disobey.
He could only dawdle20. A delay of five minutes would be five minutes to the good. Besides, dawdling21 on a hot, windless summer afternoon, on which the butterflies, bees, and humming-birds were the only nonhuman living things not taking a siesta22, eased the muscles cramped23 with long crouching24 in the carrot beds. There being two ways of getting to the house, he took the longer one.
The longer one led him round the duck pond, whence the heat had driven ashore25 all the ducks and geese with the exception of one gander. For no particular reason the gander's name was Ernest. Between Ernest and Gimlets, the wire-haired terrier pup, one of those battles such as might take place between Bolivia and Switzerland was in full swing of rage. Gimlets fought from the bank; Ernest from the pond. When Ernest paddled forward, with neck outstretched and nostrils26 hissing27, Gimlets scampered28 to the top of the shelving shore, where he could stand and bark defiantly29. When Ernest swung himself
[Pg 95]
round and made for the open sea, Gimlets galloped30 bravely down to the water's edge, yelping31 out challenges. This bloody32 fray33 gave the boy a further excuse for lingering. Three or four times had Ernest, stung by the taunts34 to which he had tried to seem indifferent, wheeled round on his enemy. Three or four times had Gimlets scrambled35 up the bank and down again. But he, too, recognized authority, and a call that he couldn't disobey. A long whistle, and the battle was at an end! Gimlets trotted36 off.
The whistle came from the grove37 of pines climbing the little bluff38 on the side of the duck pond remote from the house. It struck the boy as odd that his father should be there at a time when he was supposed to be cutting New Zealand spinach39 for the morrow's market. Not to be caught idling, the boy slipped down the bank to creep undetected below the pinewood bluff. Neither seeing nor being seen, he nevertheless heard voices, catching40 but a single word. The word was Bertha, and it was spoken by his father. The only Bertha in the place was a certain beautiful young widow living in Bere. That his father should be talking to her in the pinewood was another of those details difficult to explain.
More difficult to explain he found a little scene he caught on looking backward. Having now passed the bluff, he was about to round the corner of the pond where the path led through a plantation41 of blue spruces which hid the house. His glancing back was an accident, but it made him witness of an incident pastoral in its charm.
Bertha, being indeed the beautiful young widow,
[Pg 96]
the boy was astonished to see his father steal a kiss from her. Bertha responded with such a slap as nymphs give to shepherds, running playfully away. His father shambled after her, as shepherds after nymphs, catching her in his arms.
Tom plunged42 into the blue spruce plantation where he could be out of sight. Hot as he was already, he grew hotter still. What he had seen was so silly, so stupid, so undignified! He wished he hadn't seen it. Having seen it, he wished he could forget it. He couldn't forget it because, unpleasant as he found it, he was somehow aware that it had bearings beyond unpleasantness. What they were he had nothing to tell him. He could only run through the plantation as if he would leave the thing as quickly as possible behind him; and all at once the house came into sight.
With the house in sight he remembered again what he had come to do. He stopped running. His steps again began to lag. Feeling for the powder in his waistcoat pocket, he reminded himself that it would do his mother good. The house lay sleeping and silent in the heat. He crept up to the back door.
And there at the open window stood his mother rolling dough43 on a table. She rolled languidly, as she did everything. Her head drooped44 a little to one side; her expression was full of that tremulous protest against life which might with a word break into a rain of tears.
Relieved and delighted, he stole round the house, to enter by another way. She was now lifting a cover of the stove, so that she didn't hear his approach. Before she knew that anyone was there he had slipped
[Pg 97]
his arm around her, and smacked45 a big kiss on her cheek. She turned slowly, the lifter in her hand. A new life seemed to dawn in her, brightening her eyes and flushing her sallowness.
"You bad little boy! What did you come home for?"
He replied as was true, that he had come for a drink of water. He had meant to take a drink of water after putting her powder in the teapot. "I thought," he ended, "you'd be lying down asleep."
"I was lying down, but something made me get up."
He was curious. "Something—like what?"
"Well, I just couldn't sleep. And then I remembered that it was a long time since I'd made him any of them silver cookies he used to be so fond of."
He liked the name. "Is that what you're baking?"
"Yes; and you'll ..." she went back to the table, picking up the cutter—"you'll have some for supper if you'll—if you'll call me ma."
"But I do."
Her smile had the slow timidity that might have been born of disuse. "Yes, when I ask you. But I want you to do it all the time, and natural."
"All right then; I will—ma."
While he stood drinking a first, and then a second, cup of water, she began on the memories dear to her, but which few now would listen to. She had been born in Wilmington, Delaware, where Martin also had been born. His father worked in a powder factory in that city. It was owing to an explosion when he was a lad that Martin's frame had been partially46 paralyzed.
[Pg 98]
"He wasn't blowed up or anything; he just got a shock. He was awful delicate, and used to have fits till he grew out of them. I think the crook47 in his face makes him look aristocratic, don't you?"
The boy having said that he didn't know but what it did, she continued plaintively48, cutting out her cookies with a heart-shaped cutter.
"I was awful pretty in those days, and that refined I wouldn't hardly do a thing for my mother in the house, or carry the tiniest little parcel across the street. I was just born ladylike. And when Martin and I were married he let me have a girl for the first two years to do everything. All he ever expected of me was to get up and dress, and look stylish49; and now...."
As she paused in her cutting to press back a sob19, the boy took the opportunity to speak of getting back to work.
"I think I must beat it, ma. I've got all those carrots—"
"Oh, wait a little while. He can spare you for a few minutes, can't he? Anyhow, nothing you can do'll save him from going bankrupt. This place don't pay. He'll never make it pay. His work was to run a hat store. That's what he did when he married me, and he made swell50 money at it, too."
The family history interested the boy, as all tales did which accounted for the personal. He knew now how Martin Quidmore's health had broken down, and the doctor had ordered out-of-door life as a remedy. Out-of-door life would have been impossible if an
[Pg 99]
uncle hadn't died and left him fifteen thousand dollars.
"Enough to live on quite genteel for life," his wife complained, "but nothing would do but that he should think himself a market-gardener, him that couldn't tell a turnip51 from a spade. Blew in the whole thing on this place, away from everywheres, and making me a drudge52 that hardly knew so much as to wash a dish. Even that I could have stood if he'd only gone on loving me as his marriage vows53 made it his duty to do, but—"
"I'll love you, ma," the boy declared, tenderly. "You don't have to cry because there's no one to love you, not while I'm around."
The new life in her eyes was as much of incredulity as of joy. "Don't say that, dearie, if you don't mean it. You don't have to love me just because I'm trying to be a mother to you, and look after your clothes."
"But, ma, I want to. I do."
They gazed at each other, she with the cutter in her hand, he with the cup. What he saw was not a feeble, slatternly woman, but some one who wanted him. He had not been wanted by anyone since the night when his mudda—he still used the word in his deep silences—had gone away with the wardress who looked like a Fate. In the five intervening years he had suffered less from unkindness than from being shut out of hearts. Here was a heart that had need of him, so that he had need of it. The type of heart didn't matter. If it made any difference it was only that where there was weakness the appeal to him was
[Pg 100]
the greater. With this poor thing he would have something on which to spend his treasure.
"You'll see, ma! I'll bring in the water for you, and split the kindlings, and get up in the morning and light the fire, and milk the cow, and everything."
Straight and sturdy, he looked at her with the level gaze of eyes that seemed the calmer and more competent because they were hidden so far beneath his bushy, horizontal eyebrows54. The uniform tan from working in the sun heightened his air of manliness55. Even the earth on his clothes, and a smudge of it across his forehead where a dirty hand had been put up to push back his crisp ashen56 hair, hinted at his capacity to share in the world's work. To the helpless woman whose prop57 had failed her, the coming of this young strength to her aid was little short of a miracle.
In the struggle between tears and laughter she was almost hysterical58. "Oh, you darling boy!" she was beginning, advancing to clasp him in her arms. But with old, old memories in his heart he dreaded59 the paroxysm of affection.
"All right, ma!" he laughed, dodging60 her and slipping out. "I've got to beat it, or fath—" he stumbled on the word because he found it difficult to use—"or father will wonder where I am." But once in the yard, he called back consolingly, though keeping to the practical, "Don't you bother about Geraldine. I'll go round by the pasture and drive her home as I come back from work. I'll milk her, too."
"God bless you, dearie!"
[Pg 101]
Standing61 in the doorway62, shading her eyes with her hand, her limp figure seemed braced63 to a new power, as she watched him till he disappeared within the plantation of blue spruces.
点击
收听单词发音
收听单词发音 |
1
hesitation
|
|
| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
exhortations
|
|
| n.敦促( exhortation的名词复数 )；极力推荐；（正式的）演讲；（宗教仪式中的）劝诫 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
offense
|
|
| n.犯规，违法行为；冒犯，得罪 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
defilement
|
|
| n.弄脏，污辱，污秽 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
judgment
|
|
| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
hampered
|
|
| 妨碍，束缚，限制( hamper的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
provocation
|
|
| n.激怒，刺激，挑拨，挑衅的事物，激怒的原因 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
phenomena
|
|
| n.现象 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
deductions
|
|
| 扣除( deduction的名词复数 )； 结论； 扣除的量； 推演 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
aberrations
|
|
| n.偏差( aberration的名词复数 )；差错；脱离常规；心理失常 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
perplexed
|
|
| adj.不知所措的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
fixed
|
|
| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
throb
|
|
| v.震颤，颤动；(急速强烈地)跳动，搏动 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
distress
|
|
| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
mumbled
|
|
| 含糊地说某事，叽咕，咕哝( mumble的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
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： |
|
|
|
|
17
sneaking
|
|
| a.秘密的，不公开的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
tenement
|
|
| n.公寓；房屋 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
sob
|
|
| n.空间轨道的轰炸机；呜咽，哭泣 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
dawdle
|
|
| vi.浪费时间；闲荡 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
dawdling
|
|
| adj.闲逛的，懒散的v.混（时间）( dawdle的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
siesta
|
|
| n.午睡 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
cramped
|
|
| a.狭窄的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
crouching
|
|
| v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
25
ashore
|
|
| adv.在(向)岸上，上岸 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
26
nostrils
|
|
| 鼻孔( nostril的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
27
hissing
|
|
| n. 发嘶嘶声, 蔑视 动词hiss的现在分词形式 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
28
scampered
|
|
| v.蹦蹦跳跳地跑，惊惶奔跑( scamper的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
29
defiantly
|
|
| adv.挑战地，大胆对抗地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
30
galloped
|
|
| （使马）飞奔，奔驰( gallop的过去式和过去分词 )； 快速做[说]某事 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
31
yelping
|
|
| v.发出短而尖的叫声( yelp的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
32
bloody
|
|
| adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
33
fray
|
|
| v.争吵；打斗；磨损，磨破；n.吵架；打斗 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
34
taunts
|
|
| 嘲弄的言语，嘲笑，奚落( taunt的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
35
scrambled
|
|
| v.快速爬行( scramble的过去式和过去分词 )；攀登；争夺；（军事飞机）紧急起飞 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
36
trotted
|
|
| 小跑，急走( trot的过去分词 )； 匆匆忙忙地走 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
37
grove
|
|
| n.林子，小树林，园林 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
38
bluff
|
|
| v.虚张声势，用假象骗人；n.虚张声势，欺骗 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
39
spinach
|
|
| n.菠菜 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
40
catching
|
|
| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
41
plantation
|
|
| n.种植园，大农场 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
42
plunged
|
|
| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
43
dough
|
|
| n.生面团；钱，现款 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
44
drooped
|
|
| 弯曲或下垂，发蔫( droop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
45
smacked
|
|
| 拍，打，掴( smack的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
46
partially
|
|
| adv.部分地，从某些方面讲 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
47
crook
|
|
| v.使弯曲；n.小偷，骗子，贼；弯曲(处) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
48
plaintively
|
|
| adv.悲哀地，哀怨地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
49
stylish
|
|
| adj.流行的，时髦的；漂亮的，气派的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
50
swell
|
|
| vi.膨胀，肿胀；增长，增强 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
51
turnip
|
|
| n.萝卜，芜菁 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
52
drudge
|
|
| n.劳碌的人；v.做苦工，操劳 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
53
vows
|
|
| 誓言( vow的名词复数 )； 郑重宣布，许愿 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
54
eyebrows
|
|
| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
55
manliness
|
|
| 刚毅 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
56
ashen
|
|
| adj.灰的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
57
prop
|
|
| vt.支撑；n.支柱，支撑物；支持者，靠山 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
58
hysterical
|
|
| adj.情绪异常激动的，歇斯底里般的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
59
dreaded
|
|
| adj.令人畏惧的；害怕的v.害怕，恐惧，担心( dread的过去式和过去分词) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
60
dodging
|
|
| n.避开，闪过，音调改变v.闪躲( dodge的现在分词 )；回避 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
61
standing
|
|
| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
62
doorway
|
|
| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
63
braced
|
|
| adj.拉牢的v.支住( brace的过去式和过去分词 )；撑牢；使自己站稳；振作起来 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |