While he, subdued7 and abashed8, seemed to crouch9 before her, and to shrink and cower10 down, as if in the presence of some superior creature, the child herself was sensible of a new feeling within her, which elevated her nature, and inspired her with an energy and confidence she had never known. There was no divided responsibility now; the whole burden of their two lives had fallen upon her, and henceforth she must think and act for both. ‘I have saved him,’ she thought. ‘In all dangers and distresses13, I will remember that.’
At any other time, the recollection of having deserted14 the friend who had shown them so much homely15 kindness, without a word of justification16 — the thought that they were guilty, in appearance, of treachery and ingratitude17 — even the having parted from the two sisters — would have filled her with sorrow and regret. But now, all other considerations were lost in the new uncertainties18 and anxieties of their wild and wandering life; and the very desperation of their condition roused and stimulated19 her.
In the pale moonlight, which lent a wanness20 of its own to the delicate face where thoughtful care already mingled21 with the winning grace and loveliness of youth, the too bright eye, the spiritual head, the lips that pressed each other with such high resolve and courage of the heart, the slight figure firm in its bearing and yet so very weak, told their silent tale; but told it only to the wind that rustled22 by, which, taking up its burden, carried, perhaps to some mother’s pillow, faint dreams of childhood fading in its bloom, and resting in the sleep that knows no waking.
The night crept on apace, the moon went down, the stars grew pale and dim, and morning, cold as they, slowly approached. Then, from behind a distant hill, the noble sun rose up, driving the mists in phantom24 shapes before it, and clearing the earth of their ghostly forms till darkness came again. When it had climbed higher into the sky, and there was warmth in its cheerful beams, they laid them down to sleep, upon a bank, hard by some water.
But Nell retained her grasp upon the old man’s arm, and long after he was slumbering25 soundly, watched him with untiring eyes. Fatigue26 stole over her at last; her grasp relaxed, tightened27, relaxed again, and they slept side by side.
A confused sound of voices, mingling28 with her dreams, awoke her. A man of very uncouth29 and rough appearance was standing30 over them, and two of his companions were looking on, from a long heavy boat which had come close to the bank while they were sleeping. The boat had neither oar31 nor sail, but was towed by a couple of horses, who, with the rope to which they were harnessed slack and dripping in the water, were resting on the path.
‘Holloa!’ said the man roughly. ‘What’s the matter here?’
‘We were only asleep, Sir,’ said Nell. ‘We have been walking all night.’
‘A pair of queer travellers to be walking all night,’ observed the man who had first accosted32 them. ‘One of you is a trifle too old for that sort of work, and the other a trifle too young. Where are you going?’
Nell faltered33, and pointed34 at hazard towards the West, upon which the man inquired if she meant a certain town which he named. Nell, to avoid more questioning, said ‘Yes, that was the place.’
‘Where have you come from?’ was the next question; and this being an easier one to answer, Nell mentioned the name of the village in which their friend the schoolmaster dwelt, as being less likely to be known to the men or to provoke further inquiry35.
‘I thought somebody had been robbing and ill-using you, might be,’ said the man. ‘That’s all. Good day.’
Returning his salute36 and feeling greatly relieved by his departure, Nell looked after him as he mounted one of the horses, and the boat went on. It had not gone very far, when it stopped again, and she saw the men beckoning37 to her.
‘Did you call to me?’ said Nell, running up to them.
‘You may go with us if you like,’ replied one of those in the boat. ‘We’re going to the same place.’
The child hesitated for a moment. Thinking, as she had thought with great trepidation38 more than once before, that the men whom she had seen with her grandfather might, perhaps, in their eagerness for the booty, follow them, and regaining39 their influence over him, set hers at nought40; and that if they went with these men, all traces of them must surely be lost at that spot; determined41 to accept the offer. The boat came close to the bank again, and before she had had any more time for consideration, she and her grandfather were on board, and gliding42 smoothly43 down the canal.
The sun shone pleasantly on the bright water, which was sometimes shaded by trees, and sometimes open to a wide extent of country, intersected by running streams, and rich with wooded hills, cultivated land, and sheltered farms. Now and then, a village with its modest spire11, thatched roofs, and gable-ends, would peep out from among the trees; and, more than once, a distant town, with great church towers looming44 through its smoke, and high factories or workshops rising above the mass of houses, would come in view, and, by the length of time it lingered in the distance, show them how slowly they travelled. Their way lay, for the most part, through the low grounds, and open plains; and except these distant places, and occasionally some men working in the fields, or lounging on the bridges under which they passed, to see them creep along, nothing encroached on their monotonous45 and secluded46 track.
Nell was rather disheartened, when they stopped at a kind of wharf47 late in the afternoon, to learn from one of the men that they would not reach their place of destination until next day, and that, if she had no provision with her, she had better buy it there. She had but a few pence, having already bargained with them for some bread, but even of these it was necessary to be very careful, as they were on their way to an utterly48 strange place, with no resource whatever. A small loaf and a morsel49 of cheese, therefore, were all she could afford, and with these she took her place in the boat again, and, after half an hour’s delay during which the men were drinking at the public-house, proceeded on the journey.
They brought some beer and spirits into the boat with them, and what with drinking freely before, and again now, were soon in a fair way of being quarrelsome and intoxicated50. Avoiding the small cabin, therefore, which was very dark and filthy51, and to which they often invited both her and her grandfather, Nell sat in the open air with the old man by her side: listening to their boisterous52 hosts with a palpitating heart, and almost wishing herself safe on shore again though she should have to walk all night.
They were, in truth, very rugged53, noisy fellows, and quite brutal54 among themselves, though civil enough to their two passengers. Thus, when a quarrel arose between the man who was steering55 and his friend in the cabin, upon the question who had first suggested the propriety56 of offering Nell some beer, and when the quarrel led to a scuffle in which they beat each other fearfully, to her inexpressible terror, neither visited his displeasure upon her, but each contented57 himself with venting58 it on his adversary59, on whom, in addition to blows, he bestowed60 a variety of compliments, which, happily for the child, were conveyed in terms, to her quite unintelligible61. The difference was finally adjusted, by the man who had come out of the cabin knocking the other into it head first, and taking the helm into his own hands, without evincing the least discomposure himself, or causing any in his friend, who, being of a tolerably strong constitution and perfectly62 inured63 to such trifles, went to sleep as he was, with his heels upwards64, and in a couple of minutes or so was snoring comfortably.
By this time it was night again, and though the child felt cold, being but poorly clad, her anxious thoughts were far removed from her own suffering or uneasiness, and busily engaged in endeavouring to devise some scheme for their joint65 subsistence. The same spirit which had supported her on the previous night, upheld and sustained her now. Her grandfather lay sleeping safely at her side, and the crime to which his madness urged him, was not committed. That was her comfort.
How every circumstance of her short, eventful life, came thronging66 into her mind, as they travelled on! Slight incidents, never thought of or remembered until now; faces, seen once and ever since forgotten; words scarcely heeded67 at the time; scenes, of a year ago and those of yesterday, mixing up and linking themselves together; familiar places shaping themselves out in the darkness from things which, when approached, were, of all others, the most remote and most unlike them; sometimes, a strange confusion in her mind relative to the occasion of her being there, and the place to which she was going, and the people she was with; and imagination suggesting remarks and questions which sounded so plainly in her ears, that she would start, and turn, and be almost tempted68 to reply; — all the fancies and contradictions common in watching and excitement and restless change of place, beset69 the child.
She happened, while she was thus engaged, to encounter the face of the man on deck, in whom the sentimental70 stage of drunkenness had now succeeded to the boisterous, and who, taking from his mouth a short pipe, quilted over with string for its longer preservation, requested that she would oblige him with a song.
‘You’ve got a very pretty voice, a very soft eye, and a very strong memory,’ said this gentleman; ‘the voice and eye I’ve got evidence for, and the memory’s an opinion of my own. And I’m never wrong. Let me hear a song this minute.’
‘I don’t think I know one, sir,’ returned Nell.
‘You know forty-seven songs,’ said the man, with a gravity which admitted of no altercation71 on the subject. ‘Forty-seven’s your number. Let me hear one of ’em — the best. Give me a song this minute.’
Not knowing what might be the consequences of irritating her friend, and trembling with the fear of doing so, poor Nell sang him some little ditty which she had learned in happier times, and which was so agreeable to his ear, that on its conclusion he in the same peremptory72 manner requested to be favoured with another, to which he was so obliging as to roar a chorus to no particular tune73, and with no words at all, but which amply made up in its amazing energy for its deficiency in other respects. The noise of this vocal74 performance awakened75 the other man, who, staggering upon deck and shaking his late opponent by the hand, swore that singing was his pride and joy and chief delight, and that he desired no better entertainment. With a third call, more imperative76 than either of the two former, Nell felt obliged to comply, and this time a chorus was maintained not only by the two men together, but also by the third man on horseback, who being by his position debarred from a nearer participation77 in the revels78 of the night, roared when his companions roared, and rent the very air. In this way, with little cessation, and singing the same songs again and again, the tired and exhausted79 child kept them in good humour all that night; and many a cottager, who was roused from his soundest sleep by the discordant80 chorus as it floated away upon the wind, hid his head beneath the bed-clothes and trembled at the sounds.
At length the morning dawned. It was no sooner light than it began to rain heavily. As the child could not endure the intolerable vapours of the cabin, they covered her, in return for her exertions81, with some pieces of sail-cloth and ends of tarpaulin82, which sufficed to keep her tolerably dry and to shelter her grandfather besides. As the day advanced the rain increased. At noon it poured down more hopelessly and heavily than ever without the faintest promise of abatement83.
They had, for some time, been gradually approaching the place for which they were bound. The water had become thicker and dirtier; other barges84, coming from it, passed them frequently; the paths of coal-ash and huts of staring brick, marked the vicinity of some great manufacturing town; while scattered85 streets and houses, and smoke from distant furnaces, indicated that they were already in the outskirts86. Now, the clustered roofs, and piles of buildings, trembling with the working of engines, and dimly resounding87 with their shrieks88 and throbbings; the tall chimneys vomiting89 forth12 a black vapour, which hung in a dense90 ill-favoured cloud above the housetops and filled the air with gloom; the clank of hammers beating upon iron, the roar of busy streets and noisy crowds, gradually augmenting91 until all the various sounds blended into one and none was distinguishable for itself, announced the termination of their journey.
The boat floated into the wharf to which it belonged. The men were occupied directly. The child and her grandfather, after waiting in vain to thank them or ask them whither they should go, passed through a dirty lane into a crowded street, and stood, amid its din23 and tumult92, and in the pouring rain, as strange, bewildered, and confused, as if they had lived a thousand years before, and were raised from the dead and placed there by a miracle.
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收听单词发音
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1
momentary
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| adj.片刻的，瞬息的；短暂的 | |
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steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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preservation
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| n.保护，维护，保存，保留，保持 | |
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solely
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| adv.仅仅，唯一地 | |
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helping
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| n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的 | |
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onward
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| adj.向前的，前进的；adv.向前，前进，在先 | |
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subdued
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| adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
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abashed
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| adj.窘迫的，尴尬的v.使羞愧，使局促，使窘迫( abash的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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crouch
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| v.蹲伏，蜷缩，低头弯腰；n.蹲伏 | |
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cower
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| v.畏缩，退缩，抖缩 | |
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spire
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| n.(教堂)尖顶，尖塔，高点 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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distresses
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| n.悲痛( distress的名词复数 )；痛苦；贫困；危险 | |
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deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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homely
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| adj.家常的，简朴的；不漂亮的 | |
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justification
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| n.正当的理由；辩解的理由 | |
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ingratitude
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| n.忘恩负义 | |
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uncertainties
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| 无把握( uncertainty的名词复数 )； 不确定； 变化不定； 无把握、不确定的事物 | |
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19
stimulated
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| a.刺激的 | |
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wanness
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| n.虚弱 | |
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mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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rustled
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| v.发出沙沙的声音( rustle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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din
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| n.喧闹声，嘈杂声 | |
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phantom
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| n.幻影，虚位，幽灵；adj.错觉的，幻影的，幽灵的 | |
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25
slumbering
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| 微睡，睡眠（slumber的现在分词形式） | |
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fatigue
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| n.疲劳，劳累 | |
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tightened
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| 收紧( tighten的过去式和过去分词 )； （使）变紧； （使）绷紧； 加紧 | |
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28
mingling
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| adj.混合的 | |
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uncouth
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| adj.无教养的，粗鲁的 | |
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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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oar
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| n.桨，橹，划手；v.划行 | |
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32
accosted
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| v.走过去跟…讲话( accost的过去式和过去分词 )；跟…搭讪；（乞丐等）上前向…乞讨；（妓女等）勾搭 | |
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33
faltered
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| （嗓音）颤抖( falter的过去式和过去分词 )； 支吾其词； 蹒跚； 摇晃 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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salute
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| vi.行礼，致意，问候，放礼炮；vt.向…致意，迎接，赞扬；n.招呼，敬礼，礼炮 | |
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beckoning
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| adj.引诱人的，令人心动的v.（用头或手的动作）示意，召唤( beckon的现在分词 ) | |
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38
trepidation
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| n.惊恐，惶恐 | |
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39
regaining
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| 复得( regain的现在分词 )； 赢回； 重回； 复至某地 | |
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nought
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| n.／adj.无，零 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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42
gliding
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| v. 滑翔 adj. 滑动的 | |
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smoothly
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| adv.平滑地，顺利地，流利地，流畅地 | |
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44
looming
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| n.上现蜃景（光通过低层大气发生异常折射形成的一种海市蜃楼）v.隐约出现，阴森地逼近( loom的现在分词 )；隐约出现，阴森地逼近 | |
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45
monotonous
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| adj.单调的，一成不变的，使人厌倦的 | |
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46
secluded
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| adj.与世隔绝的；隐退的；偏僻的v.使隔开，使隐退( seclude的过去式和过去分词) | |
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47
wharf
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| n.码头，停泊处 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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morsel
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| n.一口，一点点 | |
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50
intoxicated
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| 喝醉的，极其兴奋的 | |
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51
filthy
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| adj.卑劣的；恶劣的，肮脏的 | |
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52
boisterous
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| adj.喧闹的，欢闹的 | |
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53
rugged
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| adj.高低不平的，粗糙的，粗壮的，强健的 | |
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54
brutal
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| adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的 | |
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55
steering
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| n.操舵装置 | |
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56
propriety
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| n.正当行为；正当；适当 | |
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57
contented
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| adj.满意的，安心的，知足的 | |
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58
venting
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| 消除； 泄去； 排去； 通风 | |
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adversary
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| adj.敌手，对手 | |
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60
bestowed
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| 赠给，授予( bestow的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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unintelligible
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| adj.无法了解的，难解的，莫明其妙的 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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inured
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| adj.坚强的，习惯的 | |
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upwards
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| adv.向上，在更高处...以上 | |
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joint
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| adj.联合的，共同的；n.关节，接合处；v.连接，贴合 | |
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thronging
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| v.成群，挤满( throng的现在分词 ) | |
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67
heeded
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| v.听某人的劝告，听从( heed的过去式和过去分词 )；变平，使（某物）变平( flatten的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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tempted
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| v.怂恿（某人）干不正当的事；冒…的险（tempt的过去分词） | |
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beset
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| v.镶嵌；困扰，包围 | |
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sentimental
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| adj.多愁善感的，感伤的 | |
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71
altercation
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| n.争吵，争论 | |
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peremptory
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| adj.紧急的，专横的，断然的 | |
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tune
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| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
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vocal
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| adj.直言不讳的；嗓音的；n.[pl.]声乐节目 | |
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75
awakened
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| v.（使）醒( awaken的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到 | |
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76
imperative
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| n.命令，需要；规则；祈使语气；adj.强制的；紧急的 | |
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participation
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| n.参与，参加，分享 | |
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78
revels
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| n.作乐( revel的名词复数 )；狂欢；着迷；陶醉v.作乐( revel的第三人称单数 )；狂欢；着迷；陶醉 | |
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79
exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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80
discordant
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| adj.不调和的 | |
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exertions
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| n.努力( exertion的名词复数 )；费力；（能力、权力等的）运用；行使 | |
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82
tarpaulin
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| n.涂油防水布，防水衣，防水帽 | |
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83
abatement
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| n.减(免)税，打折扣，冲销 | |
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84
barges
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| 驳船( barge的名词复数 ) | |
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85
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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86
outskirts
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| n.郊外，郊区 | |
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87
resounding
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| adj. 响亮的 | |
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88
shrieks
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| n.尖叫声( shriek的名词复数 )v.尖叫( shriek的第三人称单数 ) | |
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89
vomiting
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| 吐 | |
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90
dense
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| a.密集的，稠密的，浓密的；密度大的 | |
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91
augmenting
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| 使扩张 | |
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tumult
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| n.喧哗；激动，混乱；吵闹 | |
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