Into this humble9 abode10 I would take any one who cares to accompany me. But you must not come in a contemptuous mood, thinking that the poor are but a stage removed from beasts of burden, as some cruel writers of these days say; nor will I have you turn over with your foot the shabby horse-hair chairs that Leeby kept so speckless11, and Hendry weaved for years to buy, and Jess so loved to look upon.
I speak of the chairs, but if we go together into the "room" they will not be visible to you. For a long time the house has been to let. Here, on the left of the doorway12, as we enter, is the room, without a shred13 of furniture in it except the boards of two closed-in beds. The flooring is not steady, and here and there holes have been eaten into the planks14. You can scarcely stand upright beneath the decaying ceiling. Worn boards and ragged15 walls, and the rusty16 ribs17 fallen from the fireplace, are all that meet your eyes, but I see a round, unsteady, waxcloth-covered table, with four books lying at equal distances on it. There are six prim18 chairs, two of them not to be sat upon, backed against the walls, and between the window and the fireplace a chest of drawers, with a snowy coverlet. On the drawers stands a board with coloured marbles for the game of solitaire, and I have only to open the drawer with the loose handle to bring out the dambrod. In the carved wood frame over the window hangs Jamie's portrait; in the only other frame a picture of Daniel in the den6 of lions, sewn by Leeby in wool. Over the chimney-piece with its shells, in which the roar of the sea can be heard, are strung three rows of birds' eggs. Once again we might be expecting company to tea.
The passage is narrow. There is a square hole between the rafters, and a ladder leading up to it. You may climb and look into the attic20, as Jess liked to hear me call my tiny garret-room. I am stiffer now than in the days when I lodged21 with Jess during the summer holiday I am trying to bring back, and there is no need for me to ascend22. Do not laugh at the newspapers with which Leeby papered the garret, nor at the yarn23 Hendry stuffed into the windy holes. He did it to warm the house for Jess. But the paper must have gone to pieces and the yarn rotted decades ago.
I have kept the kitchen for the last, as Jamie did on the dire24 day of which I shall have to tell. It has a flooring of stone now, where there used only to be hard earth, and a broken pane25 in the window is indifferently stuffed with rags. But it is the other window I turn to, with a pain at my heart, and pride and fondness too, the square foot of glass where Jess sat in her chair and looked down the brae.
Ah, that brae! The history of tragic26 little Thrums is sunk into it like the stones it swallows in the winter. We have all found the brae long and steep in the spring of life. Do you remember how the child you once were sat at the foot of it and wondered if a new world began at the top? It climbs from a shallow burn, and we used to sit on the brig a long time before venturing to climb. As boys we ran up the brae. As men and women, young and in our prime, we almost forgot that it was there. But the autumn of life comes, and the brae grows steeper; then the winter, and once again we are as the child pausing apprehensively27 on the brig. Yet are we no longer the child; we look now for no new world at the top, only for a little garden and a tiny house, and a handloom in the house. It is only a garden of kail and potatoes, but there may be a line of daisies, white and red, on each side of the narrow footpath28, and honeysuckle over the door. Life is not always hard, even after backs grow bent29, and we know that all braes lead only to the grave.
This is Jess's window. For more than twenty years she had not been able to go so far as the door, and only once while I knew her was she ben in the room. With her husband, Hendry, or their only daughter, Leeby, to lean upon, and her hand clutching her staff, she took twice a day, when she was strong, the journey between her bed and the window where stood her chair. She did not lie there looking at the sparrows or at Leeby redding up the house, and I hardly ever heard her complain. All the sewing was done by her; she often baked on a table pushed close to the window, and by leaning forward she could stir the porridge. Leeby was seldom off her feet, but I do not know that she did more than Jess, who liked to tell me, when she had a moment to spare, that she had a terrible lot to be thankful for.
To those who dwell in great cities Thrums is only a small place, but what a clatter30 of life it has for me when I come to it from my school-house in the glen. Had my lot been cast in a town I would no doubt have sought country parts during my September holiday, but the school-house is quiet even when the summer takes brakes full of sportsmen and others past the top of my footpath, and I was always light-hearted when Craigiebuckle's cart bore me into the din19 of Thrums. I only once stayed during the whole of my holiday at the house on the brae, but I knew its inmates31 for many years, including Jamie, the son, who was a barber in London. Of their ancestry32 I never heard. With us it was only some of the articles of furniture, or perhaps a snuff-mull, that had a genealogical tree. In the house on the brae was a great kettle, called the boiler33, that was said to be fifty years old in the days of Hendry's grandfather, of whom nothing more is known. Jess's chair, which had carved arms and a seat stuffed with rags, had been Snecky Hobart's father's before it was hers, and old Snecky bought it at a roup in the Tenements34. Jess's rarest possession was, perhaps, the christening robe that even people at a distance came to borrow. Her mother could count up a hundred persons who had been baptized in it.
Every one of the hundred, I believe, is dead, and even I cannot now pick out Jess and Hendry's grave; but I heard recently that the christening robe is still in use. It is strange that I should still be left after so many changes, one of the three or four who can to-day stand on the brae and point out Jess's window. The little window commands the incline to the point where the brae suddenly jerks out of sight in its climb down into the town. The steep path up the commonty makes for this elbow of the brae, and thus, whichever way the traveller takes, it is here that he comes first into sight of the window. Here, too, those who go to the town from the south get their first glimpse of Thrums.
Carts pass up and down the brae every few minutes, and there comes an occasional gig. Seldom is the brae empty, for many live beyond the top of it now, and men and women go by to their work, children to school or play. Not one of the children I see from the window to-day is known to me, and most of the men and women I only recognize by their likeness35 to their parents. That sweet-faced old woman with the shawl on her shoulders may be one of the girls who was playing at the game of palaulays when Jamie stole into Thrums for the last time; the man who is leaning on the commonty gate gathering36 breath for the last quarter of the brae may, as a barefooted callant, have been one of those who chased Cree Queery past the poor-house. I cannot say; but this I know, that the grandparents of most of these boys and girls were once young with me. If I see the sons and daughters of my friends grown old, I also see the grandchildren spinning the peerie and hunkering at I-dree-I-dree—I-droppit-it—as we did so long ago. The world remains37 as young as ever. The lovers that met on the commonty in the gloaming are gone, but there are other lovers to take their place, and still the commonty is here. The sun had sunk on a fine day in June, early in the century, when Hendry and Jess, newly married, he in a rich moleskin waistcoat, she in a white net cap, walked to the house on the brae that was to be their home. So Jess has told me. Here again has been just such a day, and somewhere in Thrums there may be just such a couple, setting out for their home behind a horse with white ears instead of walking, but with the same hopes and fears, and the same love light in their eyes. The world does not age. The hearse passes over the brae and up the straight burying-ground road, but still there is a cry for the christening robe.
Jess's window was a beacon38 by night to travellers in the dark, and it will be so in the future when there are none to remember Jess. There are many such windows still, with loving faces behind them. From them we watch for the friends and relatives who are coming back, and some, alas39! watch in vain. Not every one returns who takes the elbow of the brae bravely, or waves his handkerchief to those who watch from the window with wet eyes, and some return too late. To Jess, at her window always when she was not in bed, things happy and mournful and terrible came into view. At this window she sat for twenty years or more looking at the world as through a telescope; and here an awful ordeal40 was gone through after her sweet untarnished soul had been given back to God.
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1
whitewashed
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| 粉饰，美化，掩饰( whitewash的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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2
streaked
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| adj.有条斑纹的，不安的v.快速移动( streak的过去式和过去分词 )；使布满条纹 | |
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3
ascent
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| n.(声望或地位)提高；上升，升高；登高 | |
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dwellings
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| n.住处，处所( dwelling的名词复数 ) | |
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shrub
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| n.灌木，灌木丛 | |
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den
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| n.兽穴；秘密地方；安静的小房间，私室 | |
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7
dyke
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| n.堤，水坝，排水沟 | |
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8
thatch
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| vt.用茅草覆盖…的顶部；n.茅草(屋) | |
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9
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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10
abode
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| n.住处，住所 | |
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speckless
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| adj.无斑点的，无瑕疵的 | |
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12
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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13
shred
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| v.撕成碎片，变成碎片；n.碎布条，细片，些少 | |
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14
planks
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| （厚）木板( plank的名词复数 )； 政纲条目，政策要点 | |
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15
ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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16
rusty
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| adj.生锈的；锈色的；荒废了的 | |
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17
ribs
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| n.肋骨( rib的名词复数 )；（船或屋顶等的）肋拱；肋骨状的东西；（织物的）凸条花纹 | |
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18
prim
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| adj.拘泥形式的，一本正经的；n.循规蹈矩，整洁；adv.循规蹈矩地，整洁地 | |
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19
din
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| n.喧闹声，嘈杂声 | |
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attic
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| n.顶楼，屋顶室 | |
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21
lodged
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| v.存放( lodge的过去式和过去分词 )；暂住；埋入；（权利、权威等）归属 | |
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22
ascend
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| vi.渐渐上升，升高；vt.攀登，登上 | |
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23
yarn
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| n.纱，纱线，纺线；奇闻漫谈，旅行轶事 | |
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24
dire
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| adj.可怕的，悲惨的，阴惨的，极端的 | |
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pane
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| n.窗格玻璃，长方块 | |
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26
tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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apprehensively
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| adv.担心地 | |
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28
footpath
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| n.小路，人行道 | |
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29
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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30
clatter
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| v./n.(使)发出连续而清脆的撞击声 | |
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31
inmates
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| n.囚犯( inmate的名词复数 ) | |
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32
ancestry
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| n.祖先，家世 | |
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33
boiler
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| n.锅炉；煮器(壶，锅等) | |
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34
tenements
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| n.房屋，住户，租房子( tenement的名词复数 ) | |
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35
likeness
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| n.相像，相似（之处） | |
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36
gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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37
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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38
beacon
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| n.烽火，（警告用的）闪火灯，灯塔 | |
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39
alas
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| int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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40
ordeal
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| n.苦难经历，（尤指对品格、耐力的）严峻考验 | |
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