The downpour had lessened5 a little, and Jack6 Murchison, flattening7 his nose against the nursery window, saw a country cart driven by a man in a white mackintosh swing into Lombard Street from the silver, rain-drenched8 sheen of St. Antonia’s trees. The man’s big white body streamed with wet, his face shining out like a drenched peony under the brim of his hat, that dripped like the flooded gutter9 of a house. Tremulous rain-drops fell rhythmically10 from the big man’s nose, and the apron11 that covered his legs was full of puddles12.
The country cart drew up outside the doctor’s house, and Master Jack saw the big man in the white mackintosh climb out laboriously13, the cart tilting14 under his weight. He threw the leather apron over the horse’s loins, and swung the water out of his hat, disclosing to the boy above a round bald patch about the size of a saucer.
The bell rang, a good, rattling15, honest peal16 that told of a straightforward17 and unaffected fist. Jack heard Mary’s rather nasal treble answering the big man’s vigorous bass18. The white mackintosh was doffed19 and hung considerately on the handle of the bell. There was much wiping of boots, while the man Gage20 appeared at the side gate in the garden wall, and came forward to hold the farmer’s horse.
“Sorry to bother you, doctor, on such a beast of an evening.”
“Come in, Mr. Carrington.”
“You remember me, sir?”
“I don’t forget many faces. Come into my study.”
The doffing21 of the white mackintosh had uncovered a robust22 and rather corpulent, thick-set figure in rough tweed jacket and breeches and box-cloth leggings. The farmer had one of those typically solid English faces, fresh-colored though deeply wrinkled, and chastening its good humor with an alert, world-wise watchfulness23 in the rather deep-set eyes. Mr. Carrington was considered rather a masterful man by his friends, a man who could laugh while his wits were at work bettering a bargain. He was one of the most prominent farmers in the neighborhood, and one of the few who confessed to making money despite the times.
“My trap’s waiting outside, doctor. I want you to come back with me right away to Goldspur Farm.”
Mr. Carrington was sitting on the extreme edge of a chair, and wiping the rain from his face with a silk handkerchief.
“Anything much the matter?”
“Well, doctor, you know I have taken to growing a lot of ground-fruit, and I’ve had about fifty pickers down from town this year.”
Murchison nodded.
“They’re camped out in two tin shanties24 and a couple of tents down at Goldspur Farm. East-enders, all of them; and you never quite know, doctor, what an East-ender carries. Well, to be frank, I’m worried about some of ’em.”
Mr. Carrington sat squarely in his chair, and tapped the floor with the soles of his boots. He looked thoughtful, and the corners of his big, good-tempered mouth had a melancholy25 droop26.
“There’s one woman in particular, doctor, and her youngster, who seem bad. Sick and sweating; won’t take food; they just lie there in the straw like logs. My foreman didn’t tell me anything about it till this afternoon, but when I’d seen the woman I had the horse put in, and came straight here.”
Murchison glanced at his watch, and then crossed the room and rang the bell.
“Can you have me driven back?” he asked.
“Certainly, doctor.”
“Good. Ah, Mary, will you ask your mistress to have dinner postponed27 till eight. And tell Gage to take these letters to the post. Now, Mr. Carrington, my mackintosh and I are at your service.”
“You’ll need it, doctor, and an old hat.”
A slender vein28 of gold gashed29 the dull west as they left the outskirts30 of the town behind. As the rent in the sky broadened, long rays of light came down the valley, making the woods and meadows a glory of shimmering31 green, and firing the rain pools so that they shone like brass32. The farmer took the private road that ran through Ulverstone Park, a rolling wilderness33 of beeches34 and Scotch36 firs, whose green “rides” plunged37 into the glimmering rain-splashed umbrage38 of tall trees. Here were tangled39 banks of purpling heather, and great stretches of sweet woodland turf. Old yews40 brooded in the deeps of the domain41, solemn and still, most ancient and wise of trees.
“Get up, Molly,” and Mr. Carrington shook a raindrop from his nose, and flicked42 the brown mare43 with the whip. “Clearing a little. Sorry for the people who cut their hay yesterday.”
“Somewhat damp. How is the fruit doing?”
“Oh, pretty fair, pretty fair, as far as our strawberries are concerned. The finest year, doctor, is when you have a first-class crop and your neighbors can only put up rubbish. It’s no good every one being in tip-top form. I’ve got rid of tons, and at no dirt price, either.”
Mr. Carrington’s British face beamed slyly above his angelic white mackintosh. It was a face in which stolid44 satisfaction and stolid woe45 were easily interchanged, for the heavy lines thereof could be twisted into either expression.
Murchison was listening to the hoarse46 rattle47 of the clearing shower beating upon a myriad48 leaves. The gold band in the west was broadening into a canopy49 of splendor50. Had Mr. Carrington been educated up to more pushing and aggressive methods of making money, he would have seen in that sky nothing but a magnificent background for some silhouetted51 sky-sign shouting “Try Our Jam.”
“And these pickers of yours, how long have they been with you?”
The lines in the farmer’s face rearranged themselves abruptly52.
“Poor devils, they look on this as a sort of yearly picnic, doctor. There are about fifty of them, and they’ve been at Goldspur about ten days.”
“Many children?”
“Children? Plenty. If they were Irish, they’d bring the family pig out, doctor, just to give him some new sort of dirt to wallow in. But then, what can you expect—what can you expect?”
They had left the park by the western lodge53, and came out upon a stretch of undulating fields closed in the near distance by woods of oak and beech35. A tall, gabled farm-house of red brick rose outlined against the sky with a great fir topping its chimney-stacks like the flat cloud seen above a volcano in full eruption54. Near it, fronting the road, were a few nondescript cottages; farther still a jumble55 of barns, outhouses, and stables. In the middle of a fourteen-acre field Murchison could see two zinc56-roofed sheds and a couple of old military tents standing57 isolated58 in a waste of sodden59, dreary60 soil.
Mr. Carrington pointed61 to them with his whip.
“There’s the colony. Will you come in first, doctor, and have—” he reconsidered the words and cleared his throat—“and have—a cup of tea?”
Murchison had noticed the break in the invitation, and had reddened.
“No, thanks. We had better walk, I suppose?”
“Sit light, doctor; we have a sort of road, though it ain’t exactly Roman.”
The farmer passed Murchison the reins62, and climbed down, the trap swaying like a small boat anchored in a swell63. He opened a gate leading into the field, his white mackintosh flapping about his legs.
“Not worth while getting up again,” he said, laconically64. “Drive her on, doctor, I’ll follow.”
Murchison heard the click of the gate, and the squelch65 of Mr. Carrington’s boots in the mud, as the trap bumped at a walking pace towards the zinc sheds in the field. The larger of the two resembled a coach-house, and could be closed at one end by two swinging doors. The rain was still rattling on the roof as Murchison drove up, and a thin swirl66 of smoke drifted out sluggishly67 from the darkness of the interior. The two tents had a soaked and slatternly appearance. Empty bottles, old tins, scraps68 of dirty paper, and miscellaneous rubbish littered the ground. On a line slung69 between two chestnut70 poles three dirty towels were hanging, either to wash or to dry?
As the trap stopped at the end of the rough road, Murchison could see that the larger shed was like a big hutch full of live things crowded together. A litter of straw, ankle deep, lay round the walls. A fire burned in the middle of the earth floor. The faces that were lit up by the light from the fire were coarse, quick-eyed, and hungry, the faces seen in London slums.
Half a dozen children scuttled71 out like a litter of young pigs, and stood in the slush and rain, staring at the trap. Murchison’s appearance on the scene seemed to arouse no stir of interest among the adult dwellers72 in the shed. They stared, that was all, one or two breaking the silence with crude and characteristic brevity.
“’Ello, ’ere’s the b——y doctor.”
“There’s ’air!”
“Look at the hold boss, with a phiz like a round o’ raw beef stuck hon top of a sack of flour.”
Mr. Carrington arrived with his boots muddy and the lines of his face emphatic73 and authoritative74.
“Some one hold the mare. Why don’t you keep the kids in out of the wet? This way, doctor, the second tent.”
Mr. Carrington opened the flap, and, letting Murchison enter, contented75 himself with staring hard at two figures lying on an old flock mattress76 with a coat rolled up for a pillow. One was a woman, thin, still pretty, in a hollow-cheeked, hectic77 way, with a ragged78 blouse open at the throat, and a couple of sacks covering her. The other was a child, a girl with flaxen hair tossed about a flushed and feverish79 face. The child seemed asleep, with half an orange, sucked to the pulp80, clutched by her grimy fingers.
Murchison remained for perhaps half an hour in that rain-soaked tent, while Mr. Carrington stumped81 up and down impatiently, kicking the mud from his boots and eying the rubbish that marked the presence of these London poor. The eastern sky was filling fast with the oblivion of night when Murchison emerged. The woman had been able to answer his questions in a dazed and apathetic82 way.
Mr. Carrington met him with a squaring of his sturdy shoulders and a bluff83 uplift of the chin.
“Well, doctor?”
“I’m glad you sent for me.”
“As bad as that, is it?”
“Typhoid, or I am much mistaken.”
The farmer thrust his hands into the side pockets of his mackintosh, and flapped them to and fro.
“Well, I’m damned!” was all he said.
The cold sky rose dusted with a few stars in the west when the farmer’s cart set Murchison down in Lombard Street before his own door. Dinner had been waiting more than an hour. Catherine’s face, bright, yet a little troubled, met him in the shaded glow of the hall.
“You must be soaked to the skin, dear,” and she felt his clothes.
“No, nothing much. I’m more hungry than wet.”
“A long case. Dinner is ready.”
They went into the dining-room together, Murchison’s arm about her body.
“Some responsibility for me at last,” he said, quietly; “I believe it is typhoid.”
“Where, at Goldspur Farm?”
“Yes, among Carrington’s pickers.”
“Poor things!”
“They are cooped up like cattle in a shed.”
He was silent for some minutes, for Mary had set a plateful of hot soup before him, and even doctors are sufficiently84 human to enjoy food.
“There is a child ill,” he said, staring at the bowl of roses in the middle of the table.
“Poor little thing!”
“Strange, Kate, but she reminds me—wonderfully, very wonderfully—of Gwen.”
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1
petals
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| n.花瓣( petal的名词复数 ) | |
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glimmering
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| n.微光，隐约的一瞥adj.薄弱地发光的v.发闪光，发微光( glimmer的现在分词 ) | |
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cypresses
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| n.柏属植物，柏树( cypress的名词复数 ) | |
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monks
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| n.修道士，僧侣( monk的名词复数 ) | |
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lessened
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| 减少的，减弱的 | |
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jack
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| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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flattening
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| n. 修平 动词flatten的现在分词 | |
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drenched
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| adj.湿透的；充满的v.使湿透( drench的过去式和过去分词 )；在某人（某物）上大量使用（某液体） | |
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gutter
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| n.沟，街沟，水槽，檐槽，贫民窟 | |
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rhythmically
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| adv.有节奏地 | |
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apron
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| n.围裙；工作裙 | |
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puddles
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| n.水坑， （尤指道路上的）雨水坑( puddle的名词复数 ) | |
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laboriously
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| adv.艰苦地；费力地；辛勤地；（文体等）佶屈聱牙地 | |
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tilting
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| 倾斜，倾卸 | |
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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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16
peal
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| n.钟声；v.鸣响 | |
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straightforward
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| adj.正直的，坦率的；易懂的，简单的 | |
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bass
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| n.男低音(歌手)；低音乐器；低音大提琴 | |
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doffed
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| v.脱去，（尤指）脱帽( doff的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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gage
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| n.标准尺寸，规格；量规，量表 [=gauge] | |
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doffing
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| n.下筒，落纱v.脱去，（尤指）脱帽( doff的现在分词 ) | |
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robust
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| adj.强壮的，强健的，粗野的，需要体力的，浓的 | |
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watchfulness
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| 警惕，留心； 警觉（性） | |
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shanties
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| n.简陋的小木屋( shanty的名词复数 )；铁皮棚屋；船工号子；船歌 | |
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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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26
droop
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| v.低垂，下垂；凋萎，萎靡 | |
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postponed
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| vt.& vi.延期，缓办，（使）延迟vt.把…放在次要地位；[语]把…放在后面（或句尾）vi.（疟疾等）延缓发作（或复发） | |
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vein
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| n.血管，静脉；叶脉，纹理；情绪；vt.使成脉络 | |
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29
gashed
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| v.划伤，割破( gash的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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outskirts
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| n.郊外，郊区 | |
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shimmering
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| v.闪闪发光，发微光( shimmer的现在分词 ) | |
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brass
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| n.黄铜；黄铜器，铜管乐器 | |
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wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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beeches
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| n.山毛榉( beech的名词复数 )；山毛榉木材 | |
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beech
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| n.山毛榉；adj.山毛榉的 | |
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scotch
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| n.伤口，刻痕；苏格兰威士忌酒；v.粉碎，消灭，阻止；adj.苏格兰(人)的 | |
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37
plunged
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| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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38
umbrage
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| n.不快；树荫 | |
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tangled
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| adj. 纠缠的，紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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yews
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| n.紫杉( yew的名词复数 ) | |
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domain
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| n.(活动等)领域，范围；领地，势力范围 | |
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42
flicked
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| （尤指用手指或手快速地）轻击( flick的过去式和过去分词 )； （用…）轻挥； （快速地）按开关； 向…笑了一下（或瞥了一眼等） | |
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mare
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| n.母马，母驴 | |
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44
stolid
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| adj.无动于衷的，感情麻木的 | |
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45
woe
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| n.悲哀，苦痛，不幸，困难；int.用来表达悲伤或惊慌 | |
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hoarse
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| adj.嘶哑的，沙哑的 | |
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47
rattle
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| v.飞奔，碰响；激怒；n.碰撞声；拨浪鼓 | |
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48
myriad
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| adj.无数的；n.无数，极大数量 | |
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49
canopy
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| n.天篷，遮篷 | |
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50
splendor
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| n.光彩；壮丽，华丽；显赫，辉煌 | |
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51
silhouetted
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| 显出轮廓的，显示影像的 | |
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52
abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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53
lodge
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| v.临时住宿，寄宿，寄存，容纳；n.传达室，小旅馆 | |
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54
eruption
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| n.火山爆发；（战争等）爆发；（疾病等）发作 | |
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55
jumble
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| vt.使混乱，混杂；n.混乱；杂乱的一堆 | |
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56
zinc
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| n.锌；vt.在...上镀锌 | |
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57
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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58
isolated
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| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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sodden
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| adj.浑身湿透的；v.使浸透；使呆头呆脑 | |
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60
dreary
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| adj.令人沮丧的，沉闷的，单调乏味的 | |
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61
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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62
reins
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| 感情，激情； 缰( rein的名词复数 )； 控制手段； 掌管； （成人带着幼儿走路以防其走失时用的）保护带 | |
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63
swell
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| vi.膨胀，肿胀；增长，增强 | |
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64
laconically
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| adv.简短地，简洁地 | |
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65
squelch
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| v.压制，镇压；发吧唧声 | |
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66
swirl
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| v.(使)打漩，(使)涡卷；n.漩涡，螺旋形 | |
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sluggishly
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| adv.懒惰地；缓慢地 | |
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68
scraps
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| 油渣 | |
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69
slung
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| 抛( sling的过去式和过去分词 )； 吊挂； 遣送； 押往 | |
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70
chestnut
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| n.栗树，栗子 | |
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71
scuttled
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| v.使船沉没( scuttle的过去式和过去分词 )；快跑，急走 | |
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72
dwellers
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| n.居民，居住者( dweller的名词复数 ) | |
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73
emphatic
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| adj.强调的，着重的；无可置疑的，明显的 | |
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74
authoritative
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| adj.有权威的，可相信的；命令式的；官方的 | |
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75
contented
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| adj.满意的，安心的，知足的 | |
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76
mattress
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| n.床垫，床褥 | |
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77
hectic
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| adj.肺病的；消耗热的；发热的；闹哄哄的 | |
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78
ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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79
feverish
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| adj.发烧的，狂热的，兴奋的 | |
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80
pulp
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| n.果肉，纸浆；v.化成纸浆，除去...果肉，制成纸浆 | |
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81
stumped
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| 僵直地行走，跺步行走( stump的过去式和过去分词 )； 把（某人）难住； 使为难； （选举前）在某一地区作政治性巡回演说 | |
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82
apathetic
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| adj.冷漠的，无动于衷的 | |
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83
bluff
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| v.虚张声势，用假象骗人；n.虚张声势，欺骗 | |
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84
sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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