‘Two days and nights!’ thought the child. ‘He said two days and nights we should have to spend among such scenes as these. Oh! if we live to reach the country once again, if we get clear of these dreadful places, though it is only to lie down and die, with what a grateful heart I shall thank God for so much mercy!’
With thoughts like this, and with some vague design of travelling to a great distance among streams and mountains, where only very poor and simple people lived, and where they might maintain themselves by very humble8 helping9 work in farms, free from such terrors as that from which they fled — the child, with no resource but the poor man’s gift, and no encouragement but that which flowed from her own heart, and its sense of the truth and right of what she did, nerved herself to this last journey and boldly pursued her task.
‘We shall be very slow to-day, dear,’ she said, as they toiled10 painfully through the streets; ‘my feet are sore, and I have pains in all my limbs from the wet of yesterday. I saw that he looked at us and thought of that, when he said how long we should be upon the road.’
‘It was a dreary11 way he told us of,’ returned her grandfather, piteously. ‘Is there no other road? Will you not let me go some other way than this?’
‘Places lie beyond these,’ said the child, firmly, ‘where we may live in peace, and be tempted12 to do no harm. We will take the road that promises to have that end, and we would not turn out of it, if it were a hundred times worse than our fears lead us to expect. We would not, dear, would we?’
‘No,’ replied the old man, wavering in his voice, no less than in his manner. ‘No. Let us go on. I am ready. I am quite ready, Nell.’
The child walked with more difficulty than she had led her companion to expect, for the pains that racked her joints13 were of no common severity, and every exertion14 increased them. But they wrung15 from her no complaint, or look of suffering; and, though the two travellers proceeded very slowly, they did proceed. Clearing the town in course of time, they began to feel that they were fairly on their way.
A long suburb of red brick houses — some with patches of garden-ground, where coal-dust and factory smoke darkened the shrinking leaves, and coarse rank flowers, and where the struggling vegetation sickened and sank under the hot breath of kiln16 and furnace, making them by its presence seem yet more blighting17 and unwholesome than in the town itself — a long, flat, straggling suburb passed, they came, by slow degrees, upon a cheerless region, where not a blade of grass was seen to grow, where not a bud put forth18 its promise in the spring, where nothing green could live but on the surface of the stagnant19 pools, which here and there lay idly sweltering by the black road-side.
Advancing more and more into the shadow of this mournful place, its dark depressing influence stole upon their spirits, and filled them with a dismal20 gloom. On every side, and far as the eye could see into the heavy distance, tall chimneys, crowding on each other, and presenting that endless repetition of the same dull, ugly form, which is the horror of oppressive dreams, poured out their plague of smoke, obscured the light, and made foul21 the melancholy22 air. On mounds23 of ashes by the wayside, sheltered only by a few rough boards, or rotten pent-house roofs, strange engines spun24 and writhed25 like tortured creatures; clanking their iron chains, shrieking27 in their rapid whirl from time to time as though in torment28 unendurable, and making the ground tremble with their agonies. Dismantled29 houses here and there appeared, tottering30 to the earth, propped31 up by fragments of others that had fallen down, unroofed, windowless, blackened, desolate32, but yet inhabited. Men, women, children, wan33 in their looks and ragged34 in attire35, tended the engines, fed their tributary36 fire, begged upon the road, or scowled37 half-naked from the doorless houses. Then came more of the wrathful monsters, whose like they almost seemed to be in their wildness and their untamed air, screeching38 and turning round and round again; and still, before, behind, and to the right and left, was the same interminable perspective of brick towers, never ceasing in their black vomit39, blasting all things living or inanimate, shutting out the face of day, and closing in on all these horrors with a dense40 dark cloud.
But night-time in this dreadful spot! — night, when the smoke was changed to fire; when every chimney spirited up its flame; and places, that had been dark vaults41 all day, now shone red-hot, with figures moving to and fro within their blazing jaws42, and calling to one another with hoarse43 cries — night, when the noise of every strange machine was aggravated44 by the darkness; when the people near them looked wilder and more savage45; when bands of unemployed46 labourers paraded the roads, or clustered by torch-light round their leaders, who told them, in stern language, of their wrongs, and urged them on to frightful47 cries and threats; when maddened men, armed with sword and firebrand, spurning48 the tears and prayers of women who would restrain them, rushed forth on errands of terror and destruction, to work no ruin half so surely as their own — night, when carts came rumbling49 by, filled with rude coffins50 (for contagious51 disease and death had been busy with the living crops); when orphans52 cried, and distracted women shrieked53 and followed in their wake — night, when some called for bread, and some for drink to drown their cares, and some with tears, and some with staggering feet, and some with bloodshot eyes, went brooding home — night, which, unlike the night that Heaven sends on earth, brought with it no peace, nor quiet, nor signs of blessed sleep — who shall tell the terrors of the night to the young wandering child!
And yet she lay down, with nothing between her and the sky; and, with no fear for herself, for she was past it now, put up a prayer for the poor old man. So very weak and spent, she felt, so very calm and unresisting, that she had no thought of any wants of her own, but prayed that God would raise up some friend for him. She tried to recall the way they had come, and to look in the direction where the fire by which they had slept last night was burning. She had forgotten to ask the name of the poor man, their friend, and when she had remembered him in her prayers, it seemed ungrateful not to turn one look towards the spot where he was watching.
A penny loaf was all they had had that day. It was very little, but even hunger was forgotten in the strange tranquillity54 that crept over her senses. She lay down, very gently, and, with a quiet smile upon her face, fell into a slumber55. It was not like sleep — and yet it must have been, or why those pleasant dreams of the little scholar all night long! Morning came. Much weaker, diminished powers even of sight and hearing, and yet the child made no complaint — perhaps would have made none, even if she had not had that inducement to be silent, travelling by her side. She felt a hopelessness of their ever being extricated56 together from that forlorn place; a dull conviction that she was very ill, perhaps dying; but no fear or anxiety.
A loathing57 of food that she was not conscious of until they expended58 their last penny in the purchase of another loaf, prevented her partaking even of this poor repast. Her grandfather ate greedily, which she was glad to see.
Their way lay through the same scenes as yesterday, with no variety or improvement. There was the same thick air, difficult to breathe; the same blighted59 ground, the same hopeless prospect60, the same misery and distress61. Objects appeared more dim, the noise less, the path more rugged62 and uneven63, for sometimes she stumbled, and became roused, as it were, in the effort to prevent herself from falling. Poor child! the cause was in her tottering feet.
Towards the afternoon, her grandfather complained bitterly of hunger. She approached one of the wretched hovels by the way-side, and knocked with her hand upon the door.
‘What would you have here?’ said a gaunt man, opening it.
‘Charity. A morsel64 of bread.’
‘Do you see that?’ returned the man hoarsely65, pointing to a kind of bundle on the ground. ‘That’s a dead child. I and five hundred other men were thrown out of work, three months ago. That is my third dead child, and last. Do you think I have charity to bestow66, or a morsel of bread to spare?’
The child recoiled67 from the door, and it closed upon her. Impelled68 by strong necessity, she knocked at another: a neighbouring one, which, yielding to the slight pressure of her hand, flew open.
It seemed that a couple of poor families lived in this hovel, for two women, each among children of her own, occupied different portions of the room. In the centre, stood a grave gentleman in black who appeared to have just entered, and who held by the arm a boy.
‘Here, woman,’ he said, ‘here’s your deaf and dumb son. You may thank me for restoring him to you. He was brought before me, this morning, charged with theft; and with any other boy it would have gone hard, I assure you. But, as I had compassion69 on his infirmities, and thought he might have learnt no better, I have managed to bring him back to you. Take more care of him for the future.’
‘And won’t you give me back MY son!’ said the other woman, hastily rising and confronting him. ‘Won’t you give me back MY son, Sir, who was transported for the same offence!’
‘Was he deaf and dumb, woman?’ asked the gentleman sternly.
‘Was he not, Sir?’
‘You know he was not.’
‘He was,’ cried the woman. ‘He was deaf, dumb, and blind, to all that was good and right, from his cradle. Her boy may have learnt no better! where did mine learn better? where could he? who was there to teach him better, or where was it to be learnt?’
‘Peace, woman,’ said the gentleman, ‘your boy was in possession of all his senses.’
‘He was,’ cried the mother; ‘and he was the more easy to be led astray because he had them. If you save this boy because he may not know right from wrong, why did you not save mine who was never taught the difference? You gentlemen have as good a right to punish her boy, that God has kept in ignorance of sound and speech, as you have to punish mine, that you kept in ignorance yourselves. How many of the girls and boys — ah, men and women too — that are brought before you and you don’t pity, are deaf and dumb in their minds, and go wrong in that state, and are punished in that state, body and soul, while you gentlemen are quarrelling among yourselves whether they ought to learn this or that? — Be a just man, Sir, and give me back my son.’
‘You are desperate,’ said the gentleman, taking out his snuff-box, ‘and I am sorry for you.’
‘I AM desperate,’ returned the woman, ‘and you have made me so. Give me back my son, to work for these helpless children. Be a just man, Sir, and, as you have had mercy upon this boy, give me back my son!’
The child had seen and heard enough to know that this was not a place at which to ask for alms. She led the old man softly from the door, and they pursued their journey.
With less and less of hope or strength, as they went on, but with an undiminished resolution not to betray by any word or sigh her sinking state, so long as she had energy to move, the child, throughout the remainder of that hard day, compelled herself to proceed: not even stopping to rest as frequently as usual, to compensate70 in some measure for the tardy71 pace at which she was obliged to walk. Evening was drawing on, but had not closed in, when — still travelling among the same dismal objects — they came to a busy town.
Faint and spiritless as they were, its streets were insupportable. After humbly72 asking for relief at some few doors, and being repulsed73, they agreed to make their way out of it as speedily as they could, and try if the inmates74 of any lone75 house beyond, would have more pity on their exhausted76 state.
They were dragging themselves along through the last street, and the child felt that the time was close at hand when her enfeebled powers would bear no more. There appeared before them, at this juncture77, going in the same direction as themselves, a traveller on foot, who, with a portmanteau strapped78 to his back, leaned upon a stout79 stick as he walked, and read from a book which he held in his other hand.
It was not an easy matter to come up with him, and beseech80 his aid, for he walked fast, and was a little distance in advance. At length, he stopped, to look more attentively81 at some passage in his book. Animated82 with a ray of hope, the child shot on before her grandfather, and, going close to the stranger without rousing him by the sound of her footsteps, began, in a few faint words, to implore83 his help.
He turned his head. The child clapped her hands together, uttered a wild shriek26, and fell senseless at his feet.
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收听单词发音
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1
ardently
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| adv.热心地，热烈地 | |
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memorable
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| adj.值得回忆的，难忘的，特别的，显著的 | |
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yearned
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| 渴望，切盼，向往( yearn的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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solitudes
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| n.独居( solitude的名词复数 )；孤独；荒僻的地方；人迹罕至的地方 | |
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reeking
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| v.发出浓烈的臭气( reek的现在分词 )；散发臭气；发出难闻的气味 (of sth)；明显带有（令人不快或生疑的跡象） | |
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6
misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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hemmed
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| 缝…的褶边( hem的过去式和过去分词 )； 包围 | |
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humble
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| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
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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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toiled
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| 长时间或辛苦地工作( toil的过去式和过去分词 )； 艰难缓慢地移动，跋涉 | |
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dreary
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| adj.令人沮丧的，沉闷的，单调乏味的 | |
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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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13
joints
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| 接头( joint的名词复数 )； 关节； 公共场所（尤指价格低廉的饮食和娱乐场所） （非正式）； 一块烤肉 （英式英语） | |
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exertion
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| n.尽力，努力 | |
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wrung
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| 绞( wring的过去式和过去分词 )； 握紧（尤指别人的手）； 把（湿衣服）拧干； 绞掉（水） | |
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16
kiln
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| n.（砖、石灰等）窑，炉；v.烧窑 | |
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17
blighting
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| 使凋萎( blight的现在分词 )； 使颓丧； 损害； 妨害 | |
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18
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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stagnant
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| adj.不流动的，停滞的，不景气的 | |
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dismal
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| adj.阴沉的，凄凉的，令人忧郁的，差劲的 | |
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21
foul
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| adj.污秽的；邪恶的；v.弄脏；妨害；犯规；n.犯规 | |
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melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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23
mounds
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| 土堆，土丘( mound的名词复数 )； 一大堆 | |
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24
spun
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| v.纺，杜撰，急转身 | |
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writhed
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| （因极度痛苦而）扭动或翻滚( writhe的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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26
shriek
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| v./n.尖叫，叫喊 | |
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shrieking
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| v.尖叫( shriek的现在分词 ) | |
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28
torment
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| n.折磨；令人痛苦的东西(人)；vt.折磨；纠缠 | |
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29
dismantled
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| 拆开( dismantle的过去式和过去分词 )； 拆卸； 废除； 取消 | |
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30
tottering
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| adj.蹒跚的，动摇的v.走得或动得不稳( totter的现在分词 )；踉跄；蹒跚；摇摇欲坠 | |
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31
propped
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| 支撑，支持，维持( prop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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32
desolate
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| adj.荒凉的，荒芜的；孤独的，凄凉的；v.使荒芜，使孤寂 | |
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wan
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| (wide area network)广域网 | |
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ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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attire
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| v.穿衣，装扮[同]array；n.衣着；盛装 | |
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tributary
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| n.支流；纳贡国；adj.附庸的；辅助的；支流的 | |
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scowled
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| 怒视，生气地皱眉( scowl的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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38
screeching
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| v.发出尖叫声( screech的现在分词 )；发出粗而刺耳的声音；高叫 | |
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39
vomit
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| v.呕吐，作呕；n.呕吐物，吐出物 | |
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40
dense
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| a.密集的，稠密的，浓密的；密度大的 | |
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41
vaults
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| n.拱顶( vault的名词复数 )；地下室；撑物跳高；墓穴 | |
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42
jaws
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| n.口部；嘴 | |
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43
hoarse
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| adj.嘶哑的，沙哑的 | |
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44
aggravated
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| 使恶化( aggravate的过去式和过去分词 )； 使更严重； 激怒； 使恼火 | |
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45
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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46
unemployed
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| adj.失业的，没有工作的；未动用的，闲置的 | |
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47
frightful
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| adj.可怕的；讨厌的 | |
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48
spurning
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| v.一脚踢开，拒绝接受( spurn的现在分词 ) | |
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49
rumbling
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| n. 隆隆声, 辘辘声 adj. 隆隆响的 动词rumble的现在分词 | |
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50
coffins
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| n.棺材( coffin的名词复数 )；使某人早亡[死，完蛋，垮台等]之物 | |
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51
contagious
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| adj.传染性的，有感染力的 | |
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52
orphans
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| 孤儿( orphan的名词复数 ) | |
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53
shrieked
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| v.尖叫( shriek的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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54
tranquillity
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| n. 平静, 安静 | |
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55
slumber
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| n.睡眠，沉睡状态 | |
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56
extricated
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| v.使摆脱困难，脱身( extricate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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loathing
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| n.厌恶，憎恨v.憎恨，厌恶( loathe的现在分词)；极不喜欢 | |
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58
expended
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| v.花费( expend的过去式和过去分词 )；使用（钱等）做某事；用光；耗尽 | |
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59
blighted
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| adj.枯萎的，摧毁的 | |
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60
prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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61
distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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rugged
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| adj.高低不平的，粗糙的，粗壮的，强健的 | |
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uneven
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| adj.不平坦的，不规则的，不均匀的 | |
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64
morsel
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| n.一口，一点点 | |
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hoarsely
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| adv.嘶哑地 | |
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66
bestow
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| v.把…赠与，把…授予；花费 | |
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67
recoiled
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| v.畏缩( recoil的过去式和过去分词 )；退缩；报应；返回 | |
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68
impelled
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| v.推动、推进或敦促某人做某事( impel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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69
compassion
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| n.同情，怜悯 | |
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70
compensate
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| vt.补偿，赔偿；酬报 vi.弥补；补偿；抵消 | |
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71
tardy
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| adj.缓慢的，迟缓的 | |
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72
humbly
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| adv. 恭顺地，谦卑地 | |
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73
repulsed
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| v.击退( repulse的过去式和过去分词 )；驳斥；拒绝 | |
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74
inmates
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| n.囚犯( inmate的名词复数 ) | |
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lone
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| adj.孤寂的，单独的；唯一的 | |
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76
exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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77
juncture
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| n.时刻，关键时刻，紧要关头 | |
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78
strapped
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| adj.用皮带捆住的，用皮带装饰的；身无分文的；缺钱；手头紧v.用皮带捆扎(strap的过去式和过去分词)；用皮带抽打；包扎；给…打绷带 | |
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80
beseech
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| v.祈求，恳求 | |
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81
attentively
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| adv.聚精会神地；周到地；谛；凝神 | |
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82
animated
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| adj.生气勃勃的，活跃的，愉快的 | |
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83
implore
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| vt.乞求，恳求，哀求 | |
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