His father was master of a London ketch, and they say that before the boy could stand unaided on his two feet he would lean himself, as a child does, against the waist in a seaway, and never pipe a whimper when she thrust her bows down and shipped enough water to douse2 him from head to heels. He lost his mother before he went into breeches and he was climbing the rigging before he could walk alone. He spent two years at school to the good Dr. Josiah Arber at Roehampton, for his father, being a clergyman's son who had run wild in his youth, hoped to do better by the lad than he had done by himself, and was of a mind to send Philip home a scholar to make peace with the grandparents, in the vicarage at Little Grimsby, whom Tom Marsham had not seen in twenty years. But the boy was his father over again, and taking to books with an ill grace, he endured them only until he had learned to read and write and had laid such foundation of mathematics as he hoped would serve his purpose when he came to study navigation. Then, running away by night from his master's house, he joined his father on board the Sarah ketch, who laughed mightily4 to see how his son took after him, do what he would to make a scholar of the lad. And but for the mercy of God, which laid Philip Marsham on his back with a fever in the spring of his nineteenth year, he had gone down with his father in the ketch Sarah, the night she foundered5 off the North Foreland.
Moll Stevens kept him, while he lay ill with the fever, in her alehouse in High Street, in the borough6 of Southwark, and she was good to him after her fashion, for her heart was set on marrying his father. But though she had brought Tom Marsham to heel and had named the day, nothing is sure till the words are said.
When they had news which there was no doubting that Tom Marsham was lost at sea, she was of a mind to send the boy out of her house the hour he was able to walk thence; and so she would have done, if God's providence7 had not found means to renew his strength before the time and send him packing in wonderful haste, with Moll Stevens and certain others after him in full cry.
For the third day he had come down from his chamber8 and had taken the great chair by the fire, when there entered a huge-bellied countryman who carried a gun of a kind not familiar to those in the house.
"Ah," Phil heard them whispering, as he sat in the great chair, "here's Jamie Barwick come back again." Then they called out, "Welcome, Jamie, and good-morrow!"
Philip Marsham would have liked well to see the gun himself, since a taste for such gear was born in him; but he had been long bedridden, and though he could easily have walked over to look at it, he let well enough alone and stayed where he was.
They passed it from one to another and marvelled9 at the craftsmanship10, and when they let the butt11 fall on the floor, the pots rang and the cans tinkled12. And now one cried, "Have care which way you point the muzzle13." But the countryman who brought it laughed and declared there was no danger, for though it was charged he had spent all his powder and had not primed it.
At last he took it from them all and, spying Moll Stevens, who had heard the bustle14 and had come to learn the cause, he called for a can of ale. There was no place at hand to set down his gun so he turned to the lad in the chair and cried, "Here, whiteface with the great eyes, take my piece and keep it for me. I am dry—Oh, so dry! Keep it till I have drunk, and gramercy. A can of ale, I say! Hostess! Moll! Moll! Where art thou? A can of ale!"
He flung himself down on a bench and mopped his forehead with his sleeve. He was a huge great man with a vast belly15 and a deep voice and a fat red face that was smiling one minute and frowning the next.
"Ho! Hostess!" he roared again. "Ale, ale! A can of ale! Moll, I say! A can of ale!"
A hush16 had fallen upon the room at his first summons, for he had been quiet so long after entering that his clamour amazed all who were present, unless they had known him before, and they now stole glances at him and at one another and at Moll Stevens, who came bustling17 in again, her face as red as his own, for she was his match in girth and temper.
He blew off the topmost foam19 and thrust his hot face into the ale, but not so deep that he could not send Phil Marsham a wink20 over the rim3.
This Moll perceived and in turn shot at the lad a glance so ill-tempered that any one who saw it must know she rued21 the day she had taken him under her roof in his illness. He had got many such a glance since word came that his father was lost, and more than glances, too, for as soon as Moll knew there was nothing to gain by keeping his good will she had berated22 him like the vixen she was at heart, although he was then too ill to raise his head from the sheet.
It was a sad plight23 for a lad whose grandfather was a gentleman (although he had never seen the old man), and there had been times when he would almost have gone back to school and have swallowed without a whimper the Latin and Greek. But he was stronger now and nearer able to fend24 for himself and it was in his mind, as he sat in the great chair with the gun, that after a few days at longest he would pay the score in silver from his chest upstairs, and take leave for ever of Moll Stevens and her alehouse. So now, giving her no heed25, he began fondling the fat countryman's piece.
The stock was of walnut26, polished until a man could see his face in it, and the barrel was of steel chased from breech to muzzle and inlaid with gold and silver. Small wonder that all had been eager to handle it, the lad thought. He saw others in the room furtively27 observing the gun, and he knew there were men not a hundred leagues away who would have killed the owner to take it. He even bethought himself, having no lack of conceit28 in such matters, that the man had done well to pick Phil Marsham to keep it while he drank his ale.
The fellow had gone to the opposite corner of the room and had taken a deep seat just beneath the three long shelves on which stood the three rows of fine platters that were the pride of Moll Stevens's heart.
The platters caught the lad's eye and, raising the gun, he presented it at the uppermost row. Supposing it were loaded and primed, he thought, what a stir and clatter29 it would make to fire the charge! He smiled, cocked the gun, and rested his finger on the trigger; but he was over weak to hold the gun steady. As he let the muzzle fall, his hand slipped. His throat tightened30 like a cramp31. His hair, he verily believed, rose on end. The gun—primed or no—went off.
He had so far lowered the muzzle that not a shot struck the topmost row of platters, but of the second lower row, not one platter was left standing32. The splinters flew in a shower over the whole room, and a dozen stray shots—for the gun was charged to shoot small birds—peppered the fat man about the face and ear. Worst of all, by far, to make good measure of the clatter and clamour, the great mass of the charge, which by grace of God avoided the fat man's head although the wind of it raised his hair, struck fairly a butt of Moll Stevens's richest sack, which six men had raised on a frame to make easier the labour of drawing from it, and shattered a stave so that the goodly wine poured out as if a greater than Moses had smitten33 a rock with his staff.
Of all in the room, mind you, none was more amazed than Philip Marsham, and indeed for a moment his wits were quite numb34. He sat with the gun in his hands, which was still smoking to show who had done the wicked deed, and stared at the splintered platters and at the countryman's furious face, on which rivulets35 of blood were trickling36 down, and at the gurgling flood of wine that was belching37 out on Moll Stevens's dirty floor.
Then in rushed Moll herself with such a face that he hoped never to see the like again. She swept the room at a single glance and bawling38, "As I live, 't is that tike, Philip Marsham! Paddock! Hound! Devil's imp1!"—at him she came, a billet of Flanders brick in her hand.
He was of no mind to try the quality of her scouring39, for although she knew not the meaning of a clean house, she was a brawny40 wench and her hand and her brick were as rough as her tongue. Further, he perceived that there were others to reckon with, for the countryman was on his feet with a murderous look in his eye and there were six besides him who had started up. Although Phil had little wish to play hare to their hounds, since the fever had left him fit for neither fighting nor running, there was urgent need that he act soon and to a purpose, for Moll and her Flanders brick were upon him.
Warmed by the smell of the good wine run to waste, and marvellously strengthened by the danger of bodily harm if once they laid hands on him, he got out of the great chair as nimbly as if he had not spent three weeks in bed, and, turning like a fox, slipped through the door.
God was good to Philip Marsham, for the gun, as he dropped it, tripped Moll Stevens and sent her sprawling41 on the threshold; the fat countryman, thinking more of his property than his injury, stooped for the gun; and those two so filled the door that the six were stoppered in the alehouse until with the whoo-bub ringing in his ears Phil had got him out of sight. He had the craft, though they then came after him like hounds let slip, to turn aside and take to earth in a trench42 hard by, and to lie in hiding there until the hue43 and cry had come and gone. In faith, he had neither the wind nor the strength to run farther.
Who had dug the trench that was his hiding-place he never knew, but it lay not a furlong from the alehouse door, and as he tumbled into it and sprawled45 flat on the wet earth he gave the man an orphan's blessing46. The hue and cry passed him and went racing47 down the river; and when the yells had grown fainter, and at last had died quite away, he got up out of the trench and walked as fast as he could in the opposite direction, stopping often to rest, until he had left Moll Stevens's alehouse a good mile behind him. He passed a parish beadle, but the fellow gave him not a single glance; he passed the crier calling for sale the household goods of a man who desired to take his fortune and depart for New England, and the crier (who, one would suppose, knew everything of the public weal) brushed his coat but hindered him not. In the space of a single furlong he met two Puritans on foot, without enough hair to cover their ears, and two fine gentlemen on horseback whose curls flowed to their shoulders; but neither one nor other gave him let. The rabble48 of higglers and waggoners from the alehouse, headed by the countryman, Jamie Barwick, and by Moll Stevens herself, had raced far down the river, and Phil Marsham was free to go wherever else his discretion49 bade him.
Now it would have been his second nature to have fled to the docks, for he was bred a sailor and could haul and reef and steer50 with any man; but they whom he had no wish to meet had gone that way and in his weakness it had been worse than folly51 to beard them. His patrimony52 was forfeit53, for although his father had left him a bag of silver, it lay in his chest in Moll Stevens's alehouse, and for fear of hanging he dared not go back after it. She was a vindictive54 shrew and would have taken his heart's blood to pay him for his blunder. His father was gone and the ketch with him, and, save for a handful of silver the lad had about him, he was penniless. So what would a sailor do, think you, orphaned55 and penniless and cut off from the sea, but set himself up for a farmer? Phil clapped his hand on his thigh56 and quietly laughed. That a man needed money and skill for husbandry never entered his foolish head. Were not husbandmen all fond fellows whom a lively sailor man might fleer as he pleased? Nay57, they knew not so much as one rope from another. Why, then, he would go into the country and set him up as a kind of prince among husbandmen, who had, by all reports, plenty of good nappy liquor to drink and bread and cheese and meat to eat.
With that he turned his back on the sea and London and on Moll Stevens, whom he never saw again. His trafficking with her was well ended, and as well ended his father's affair, in my belief; for the woman had a bitter temper and a sharp tongue, and there are worse things for a free-hearted, jovial58 man such as Tom Marsham was, than drowning. The son owed her nought59 that the bag in his chest would not repay many times over, so he set out with all good courage and with the handful of silver that chanced to be in his pocket and, though his legs were weak and he must stop often to rest, by nightfall he had gone miles upon his way.
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1
imp
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| n.顽童 | |
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2
douse
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| v.把…浸入水中，用水泼；n.泼洒 | |
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rim
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| n.(圆物的)边，轮缘；边界 | |
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mightily
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| ad.强烈地；非常地 | |
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foundered
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| v.创始人( founder的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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borough
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| n.享有自治权的市镇；(英)自治市镇 | |
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providence
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| n.深谋远虑，天道，天意；远见；节约；上帝 | |
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chamber
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| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
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marvelled
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| v.惊奇，对…感到惊奇( marvel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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craftsmanship
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| n.手艺 | |
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butt
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| n.笑柄；烟蒂；枪托；臀部；v.用头撞或顶 | |
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12
tinkled
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| （使）发出丁当声，（使）发铃铃声( tinkle的过去式和过去分词 )； 叮当响着发出，铃铃响着报出 | |
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13
muzzle
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| n.鼻口部；口套；枪(炮)口；vt.使缄默 | |
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14
bustle
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| v.喧扰地忙乱，匆忙，奔忙；n.忙碌；喧闹 | |
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15
belly
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| n.肚子，腹部；(像肚子一样)鼓起的部分，膛 | |
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16
hush
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| int.嘘，别出声；n.沉默，静寂；v.使安静 | |
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bustling
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| adj.喧闹的 | |
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18
thumped
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| v.重击， （指心脏）急速跳动( thump的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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foam
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| v./n.泡沫，起泡沫 | |
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wink
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| n.眨眼，使眼色，瞬间；v.眨眼，使眼色，闪烁 | |
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21
rued
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| v.对…感到后悔( rue的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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berated
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| v.严厉责备，痛斥( berate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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plight
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| n.困境，境况，誓约，艰难；vt.宣誓，保证，约定 | |
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fend
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| v.照料（自己），（自己）谋生，挡开，避开 | |
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25
heed
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| v.注意，留意；n.注意，留心 | |
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26
walnut
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| n.胡桃，胡桃木，胡桃色，茶色 | |
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furtively
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| adv. 偷偷地, 暗中地 | |
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28
conceit
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| n.自负，自高自大 | |
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29
clatter
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| v./n.(使)发出连续而清脆的撞击声 | |
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30
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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31
cramp
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| n.痉挛；[pl.](腹)绞痛；vt.限制，束缚 | |
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32
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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33
smitten
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| 猛打，重击，打击( smite的过去分词 ) | |
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numb
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| adj.麻木的，失去感觉的；v.使麻木 | |
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35
rivulets
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| n.小河，小溪( rivulet的名词复数 ) | |
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36
trickling
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| n.油画底色含油太多而成泡沫状突起v.滴( trickle的现在分词 )；淌；使)慢慢走；缓慢移动 | |
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37
belching
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| n. 喷出，打嗝 动词belch的现在分词形式 | |
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38
bawling
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| v.大叫，大喊( bawl的现在分词 )；放声大哭；大声叫出；叫卖（货物） | |
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39
scouring
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| 擦[洗]净，冲刷，洗涤 | |
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40
brawny
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| adj.强壮的 | |
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41
sprawling
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| adj.蔓生的，不规则地伸展的v.伸开四肢坐[躺]( sprawl的现在分词 )；蔓延；杂乱无序地拓展；四肢伸展坐着（或躺着） | |
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42
trench
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| n./v.(挖)沟，(挖)战壕 | |
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43
hue
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| n.色度；色调；样子 | |
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44
knave
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| n.流氓；（纸牌中的）杰克 | |
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45
sprawled
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| v.伸开四肢坐[躺]( sprawl的过去式和过去分词)；蔓延；杂乱无序地拓展；四肢伸展坐着（或躺着） | |
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46
blessing
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| n.祈神赐福；祷告；祝福，祝愿 | |
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47
racing
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| n.竞赛，赛马；adj.竞赛用的，赛马用的 | |
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48
rabble
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| n.乌合之众，暴民；下等人 | |
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49
discretion
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| n.谨慎；随意处理 | |
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50
steer
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| vt.驾驶，为…操舵；引导；vi.驾驶 | |
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51
folly
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| n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话 | |
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52
patrimony
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| n.世袭财产，继承物 | |
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53
forfeit
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| vt.丧失；n.罚金，罚款，没收物 | |
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54
vindictive
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| adj.有报仇心的，怀恨的，惩罚的 | |
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55
orphaned
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| [计][修]孤立 | |
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56
thigh
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| n.大腿；股骨 | |
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57
nay
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| adv.不；n.反对票，投反对票者 | |
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jovial
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| adj.快乐的，好交际的 | |
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nought
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| n.／adj.无，零 | |
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