Gavin was born in Harvie, but left it at such an early age that he could only recall thatched houses with nets drying on the roofs, and a sandy shore in which coarse grass grew. In the picture he could not pick out the house of his birth, though he might have been able to go to it had he ever returned to the village. Soon he learned that his mother did not care to speak of Harvie, and perhaps he thought that she had forgotten it too, all save one scene to which his memory still guided him. When his mind wandered to Harvie, Gavin saw the door of his home open and a fisherman enter, who scratched his head and then said, “Your man’s drowned, missis.” Gavin seemed to see many women crying, and his mother staring at them with a face suddenly painted white, and next to hear a voice that was his own saying, “Never mind, mother; I’ll be a man to you now, and I’ll need breeks for the burial.” But 8 Adam required no funeral, for his body lay deep in the sea.
Gavin thought that this was the tragedy of his mother’s life, and the most memorable6 event of his own childhood. But it was neither. When Margaret, even after she came to Thrums, thought of Harvie, it was not at Adam’s death she shuddered7, but at the recollection of me.
It would ill become me to take a late revenge on Adam Dishart now by saying what is not true of him. Though he died a fisherman he was a sailor for a great part of his life, and doubtless his recklessness was washed into him on the high seas, where in his time men made a crony of death, and drank merrily over dodging8 it for another night. To me his roars of laughter without cause were as repellent as a boy’s drum; yet many faces that were long in my company brightened at his coming, and women, with whom, despite my yearning9, I was in no wise a favorite, ran to their doors to listen to him as readily as to the bell-man. Children scurried10 from him if his mood was savage11, but to him at all other times, while me they merely disregarded. There was always a smell of the sea about him. He had a rolling gait, unless he was drunk, when he walked very straight, and before both sexes he boasted that any woman would take him for his beard alone. Of this beard he took prodigious12 care, though otherwise thinking little of his appearance, and I now see that he understood women better than I did, who had nevertheless reflected much about them. It cannot be said that he was vain, for though he thought he attracted women strangely, that, I maintain, is a weakness common to all men, and so no more to be marvelled13 at than a stake in a fence. Foreign oaths were the nails with which he held his talk together, yet I doubt not they were a curiosity gathered at sea, like his chains of shells, more for his own pleasure than for others’ pain. His friends 9 gave them no weight, and when he wanted to talk emphatically he kept them back, though they were then as troublesome to him as eggs to the bird-nesting boy who has to speak with his spoil in his mouth.
Adam was drowned on Gavin’s fourth birthday, a year after I had to leave Harvie. He was blown off his smack14 in a storm, and could not reach the rope his partner flung him. “It’s no go, lad,” he shouted; “so long, Jim,” and sank.
A month afterwards Margaret sold her share in the smack, which was all Adam left her, and the furniture of the house was rouped. She took Gavin to Glasgow, where her only brother needed a housekeeper15, and there mother and son remained until Gavin got his call to Thrums. During those seventeen years I lost knowledge of them as completely as Margaret had lost knowledge of me. On hearing of Adam’s death I went back to Harvie to try to trace her, but she had feared this, and so told no one where she was going.
According to Margaret, Gavin’s genius showed itself while he was still a child. He was born with a brow whose nobility impressed her from the first. It was a minister’s brow, and though Margaret herself was no scholar, being as slow to read as she was quick at turning bannocks on the girdle, she decided16, when his age was still counted by months, that the ministry17 had need of him. In those days the first question asked of a child was not, “Tell me your name,” but “What are you to be?” and one child in every family replied, “A minister.” He was set apart for the Church as doggedly18 as the shilling a week for the rent, and the rule held good though the family consisted of only one boy. From his earliest days Gavin thought he had been fashioned for the ministry as certainly as a spade for digging, and Margaret rejoiced and marvelled thereat, though she had made her own puzzle. An enthusiastic mother may bend her son’s mind as she chooses if she begins at 10 once; nay19, she may do stranger things. I know a mother in Thrums who loves “features,” and had a child born with no chin to speak of. The neighbors expected this to bring her to the dust, but it only showed what a mother can do. In a few months that child had a chin with the best of them.
Margaret’s brother died, but she remained in his single room, and, ever with a picture of her son in a pulpit to repay her, contrived20 to keep Gavin at school. Everything a woman’s fingers can do Margaret’s did better than most, and among the wealthy people who employed her—would that I could have the teaching of the sons of such as were good to her in those hard days!—her gentle manner was spoken of. For though Margaret had no schooling21, she was a lady at heart, moving and almost speaking as one even in Harvie, where they did not perhaps like her the better for it.
At six Gavin hit another boy hard for belonging to the Established Church, and at seven he could not lose himself in the Shorter Catechism. His mother expounded22 the Scriptures24 to him till he was eight, when he began to expound23 them to her. By this time he was studying the practical work of the pulpit as enthusiastically as ever medical student cut off a leg. From a front pew in the gallery Gavin watched the minister’s every movement, noting that the first thing to do on ascending25 the pulpit is to cover your face with your hands, as if the exalted26 position affected27 you like a strong light, and the second to move the big Bible slightly, to show that the kirk officer, not having had a university education, could not be expected to know the very spot on which it ought to lie. Gavin saw that the minister joined in the singing more like one countenancing28 a seemly thing than because he needed it himself, and that he only sang a mouthful now and again after the congregation was in full pursuit of the precentor. It was noteworthy that the first prayer lasted 11 longer than all the others, and that to read the intimations about the Bible-class and the collection elsewhere than immediately before the last Psalm29 would have been as sacrilegious as to insert the dedication30 to King James at the end of Revelation. Sitting under a minister justly honoured in his day, the boy was often some words in advance of him, not vainglorious31 of his memory, but fervent32, eager, and regarding the preacher as hardly less sacred than the Book. Gavin was encouraged by his frightened yet admiring mother to saw the air from their pew as the minister sawed it in the pulpit, and two benedictions33 were pronounced twice a Sabbath in that church, in the same words, the same manner, and simultaneously34.
There was a black year when the things of this world, especially its pastimes, took such a grip of Gavin that he said to Margaret he would rather be good at the high jump than the author of “The Pilgrim’s Progress.” That year passed, and Gavin came to his right mind. One afternoon Margaret was at home making a glengarry for him out of a piece of carpet, and giving it a tartan edging, when the boy bounded in from school, crying, “Come quick, mother, and you’ll see him.” Margaret reached the door in time to see a street musician flying from Gavin and his friends. “Did you take stock of him, mother?” the boy asked when he reappeared with the mark of a muddy stick on his back. “He’s a Papist!—a sore sight, mother, a sore sight. We stoned him for persecuting35 the noble Martyrs36.”
When Gavin was twelve he went to the university, and also got a place in a shop as errand boy. He used to run through the streets between his work and his classes. Potatoes and salt fish, which could then be got at two pence the pound if bought by the half-hundred weight, were his food. There was not always a good meal for two, yet when Gavin reached home at night there was generally something ready for him, and 12 Margaret had supped “hours ago.” Gavin’s hunger urged him to fall to, but his love for his mother made him watchful37.
“What did you have yourself, mother?” he would demand suspiciously.
“Oh, I had a fine supper, I assure you.”
“What had you?”
“I had potatoes, for one thing.”
“And dripping?”
“You may be sure.”
“Mother, you’re cheating me. The dripping hasn’t been touched since yesterday.”
“I dinna—don’t—care for dripping—no much.”
Then would Gavin stride the room fiercely, a queer little figure.
“Do you think I’ll stand this, mother? Will I let myself be pampered38 with dripping and every delicacy39 while you starve?”
“Gavin, I really dinna care for dripping.”
“Then I’ll give up my classes, and we can have butter.”
“I assure you I’m no hungry. It’s different wi’ a growing laddie.”
“I’m not a growing laddie,” Gavin would say, bitterly; “but, mother, I warn you that not another bite passes my throat till I see you eating too.”
So Margaret had to take her seat at the table, and when she said “I can eat no more,” Gavin retorted sternly, “Nor will I, for fine I see through you.”
These two were as one far more than most married people, and, just as Gavin in his childhood reflected his mother, she now reflected him. The people for whom she sewed thought it was contact with them that had rubbed the broad Scotch40 from her tongue, but she was only keeping pace with Gavin. When she was excited the Harvie words came back to her, as they come back to me. I have taught the English language all 13 my life, and I try to write it, but everything I say in this book I first think to myself in the Doric. This, too, I notice, that in talking to myself I am broader than when gossiping with the farmers of the glen, who send their children to me to learn English, and then jeer41 at them if they say “old lights” instead of “auld lichts.”
To Margaret it was happiness to sit through the long evenings sewing, and look over her work at Gavin as he read or wrote or recited to himself the learning of the schools. But she coughed every time the weather changed, and then Gavin would start.
“You must go to your bed, mother,” he would say, tearing himself from his books; or he would sit beside her and talk of the dream that was common to both—a dream of a manse where Margaret was mistress and Gavin was called the minister. Every night Gavin was at his mother’s bedside to wind her shawl round her feet, and while he did it Margaret smiled.
“Gavin, you needna change them. I winna have the feather pillow.”
“Do you dare to think I’ll let you sleep on chaff? Put up your head. Now, is that soft?”
“It’s fine. I dinna deny but what I sleep better on feathers. Do you mind, Gavin, you bought this pillow for me the moment you got your bursary money?”
The reserve that is a wall between many of the Scottish poor had been broken down by these two. When he saw his mother sleeping happily, Gavin went back to his work. To save the expense of a lamp, he would put his book almost beneath the dying fire, and, taking the place of the fender, read till he was shivering with cold.
“Gavin, it is near morning, and you not in your bed yet! What are you thinking about so hard?”
14
“Oh, mother, I was wondering if the time would ever come when I would be a minister, and you would have an egg for your breakfast every morning.”
So the years passed, and soon Gavin would be a minister. He had now sermons to prepare, and every one of them was first preached to Margaret. How solemn was his voice, how his eyes flashed, how stern were his admonitions.
“Gavin, such a sermon I never heard. The spirit of God is on you. I’m ashamed you should have me for a mother.”
“God grant, mother,” Gavin said, little thinking what was soon to happen, or he would have made this prayer on his knees, “that you may never be ashamed to have me for a son.”
“Ah, mother,” he would say wistfully, “it is not a great sermon, but do you think I’m preaching Christ? That is what I try, but I’m carried away and forget to watch myself.”
“The Lord has you by the hand, Gavin; and mind, I dinna say that because you’re my laddie.”
“Yes, you do, mother, and well I know it, and yet it does me good to hear you.”
That it did him good I, who would fain have shared those days with them, am very sure. The praise that comes of love does not make us vain, but humble43 rather. Knowing what we are, the pride that shines in our mother’s eyes as she looks at us is about the most pathetic thing a man has to face, but he would be a devil altogether if it did not burn some of the sin out of him.
Not long before Gavin preached for our kirk and got his call, a great event took place in the little room at Glasgow. The student appeared for the first time before his mother in his ministerial clothes. He wore the black silk hat, that was destined44 to become a terror to evil-doers in Thrums, and I dare say he was rather 15 puffed45 up about himself that day. You would probably have smiled at him.
“It’s a pity I’m so little, mother,” he said with a sigh.
“You’re no what I would call a particularly long man,” Margaret said, “but you’re just the height I like.”
Then Gavin went out in his grandeur46, and Margaret cried for an hour. She was thinking of me as well as of Gavin, and as it happens, I know that I was thinking at the same time of her. Gavin kept a diary in those days, which I have seen, and by comparing it with mine, I discovered that while he was showing himself to his mother in his black clothes, I was on my way back from Tilliedrum, where I had gone to buy a sand-glass for the school. The one I bought was so like another Margaret had used at Harvie that it set me thinking of her again all the way home. This is a matter hardly worth mentioning, and yet it interests me.
Busy days followed the call to Thrums, and Gavin had difficulty in forcing himself to his sermons when there was always something more to tell his mother about the weaving town they were going to, or about the manse or the furniture that had been transferred to him by the retiring minister. The little room which had become so familiar that it seemed one of a family party of three had to be stripped, and many of its contents were sold. Among what were brought to Thrums was a little exercise book, in which Margaret had tried, unknown to Gavin, to teach herself writing and grammar, that she might be less unfit for a manse. He found it accidentally one day. It was full of “I am, thou art, he is,” and the like, written many times in a shaking hand. Gavin put his arms round his mother when he saw what she had been doing. The exercise book is in my desk now, and will be my little maid’s when I die.
16
“Gavin, Gavin,” Margaret said many times in those last days at Glasgow, “to think it has all come true!”
“Let the last word you say in the house be a prayer of thankfulness,” she whispered to him when they were taking a final glance at the old home.
In the bare room they called the house, the little minister and his mother went on their knees, but, as it chanced, their last word there was not addressed to God.
点击
收听单词发音
收听单词发音 |
1
quarry
|
|
| n.采石场；v.采石；费力地找 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
skulked
|
|
| v.潜伏，偷偷摸摸地走动，鬼鬼祟祟地活动( skulk的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
celebrated
|
|
| adj.有名的，声誉卓著的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
weavers
|
|
| 织工，编织者( weaver的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
unnatural
|
|
| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
memorable
|
|
| adj.值得回忆的，难忘的，特别的，显著的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
shuddered
|
|
| v.战栗( shudder的过去式和过去分词 )；发抖；（机器、车辆等）突然震动；颤动 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
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： |
|
|
|
|
9
yearning
|
|
| a.渴望的；向往的；怀念的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
scurried
|
|
| v.急匆匆地走( scurry的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
savage
|
|
| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
prodigious
|
|
| adj.惊人的，奇妙的；异常的；巨大的；庞大的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
marvelled
|
|
| v.惊奇，对…感到惊奇( marvel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
smack
|
|
| vt.拍，打，掴；咂嘴；vi.含有…意味；n.拍 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
housekeeper
|
|
| n.管理家务的主妇，女管家 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
decided
|
|
| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
ministry
|
|
| n.(政府的)部；牧师 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
doggedly
|
|
| adv.顽强地，固执地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
nay
|
|
| adv.不；n.反对票，投反对票者 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
contrived
|
|
| adj.不自然的，做作的；虚构的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
schooling
|
|
| n.教育；正规学校教育 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
expounded
|
|
| 论述，详细讲解( expound的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
expound
|
|
| v.详述；解释；阐述 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
scriptures
|
|
| 经文，圣典( scripture的名词复数 )； 经典 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
25
ascending
|
|
| adj.上升的，向上的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
26
exalted
|
|
| adj.(地位等)高的，崇高的；尊贵的，高尚的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
27
affected
|
|
| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
28
countenancing
|
|
| v.支持，赞同，批准( countenance的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
|
29
psalm
|
|
| n.赞美诗，圣诗 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
30
dedication
|
|
| n.奉献，献身，致力，题献，献辞 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
31
vainglorious
|
|
| adj.自负的；夸大的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
32
fervent
|
|
| adj.热的，热烈的，热情的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
33
benedictions
|
|
| n.祝福( benediction的名词复数 )；（礼拜结束时的）赐福祈祷；恩赐；（大写）（罗马天主教）祈求上帝赐福的仪式 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
|
34
simultaneously
|
|
| adv.同时发生地，同时进行地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
35
persecuting
|
|
| （尤指宗教或政治信仰的）迫害(~sb. for sth.)( persecute的现在分词 )； 烦扰，困扰或骚扰某人 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
36
martyrs
|
|
| n.martyr的复数形式；烈士( martyr的名词复数 )；殉道者；殉教者；乞怜者（向人诉苦以博取同情） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
37
watchful
|
|
| adj.注意的，警惕的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
38
pampered
|
|
| adj.饮食过量的，饮食奢侈的v.纵容，宠，娇养( pamper的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
39
delicacy
|
|
| n.精致，细微，微妙，精良；美味，佳肴 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
40
scotch
|
|
| 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 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
41
jeer
|
|
| vi.嘲弄，揶揄；vt.奚落；n.嘲笑，讥评 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
42
chaff
|
|
| v.取笑，嘲笑；n.谷壳 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
43
humble
|
|
| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
44
destined
|
|
| adj.命中注定的；(for)以…为目的地的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
45
puffed
|
|
| adj.疏松的v.使喷出( puff的过去式和过去分词 )；喷着汽（或烟）移动；吹嘘；吹捧 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
46
grandeur
|
|
| n.伟大，崇高，宏伟，庄严，豪华 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
47
bonnet
|
|
| n.无边女帽；童帽 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |