As they were sitting by the roadside among the pine trees half-way up a stretch of hill between Wimborne and Ringwood, however, Mr. Hoopdriver reopened the question of his worldly position.
"Ju think," he began abruptly1, removing a meditative2 cigarette from his mouth, "that a draper's shopman IS a decent citizen?"
"Why not?"
"When he puts people off with what they don't quite want, for instance?"
"Need he do that?"
"Salesmanship," said Hoopdriver. "Wouldn't get a crib if he didn't.--It's no good your arguing. It's not a particularly honest nor a particularly useful trade; it's not very high up ; there's no freedom and no leisure--seven to eight-thirty every day in the week; don't leave much edge to live on, does it?--real workmen laugh at us and educated chaps like bank clerks and solicitors3' clerks look down on us. You look respectable outside, and inside you are packed in dormitories like convicts, fed on bread and butter and bullied4 like slaves. You're just superior enough to feel that you're not superior. Without capital there's no prospects5; one draper in a hundred don't even earn enough to marry on; and if he DOES marry, his G.V. can just use him to black boots if he likes, and he daren't put his back up. That's drapery! And you tell me to be contented6. Would YOU be contented if you was a shop girl?"
She did not answer. She looked at him with distress7 in her brown eyes, and he remained gloomily in possession of the field.
Presently he spoke8. "I've been thinking," he said, and stopped.
She turned her face, resting her cheek on the palm of her hand. There was a light in her eyes that made the expression of them tender. Mr. Hoopdriver had not looked in her face while he had talked. He had regarded the grass, and pointed9 his remarks with redknuckled hands held open and palms upwards10. Now they hung limply over his knees.
"Well?" she said.
"I was thinking it this morning," said Mr. Hoopdriver.
"Yes?"
"Of course it's silly." "Well?"
"It's like this. I'm twenty-three, about. I had my schooling11 all right to fifteen, say. Well, that leaves me eight years behind.--Is it too late? I wasn't so backward. I did algebra12, and Latin up to auxiliary13 verbs, and French genders14. I got a kind of grounding."
"And now you mean, should you go on working?"
"Yes," said Mr. Hoopdriver. "That's it. You can't do much at drapery without capital, you know. But if I could get really educated. I've thought sometimes. . ."
"Why not? said the Young Lady in Grey.
Mr. Hoopdriver was surprised to see it in that light. "You think?" he said. "Of course. You are a Man. You are free--" She warmed. "I wish I were you to have the chance of that struggle."
"Am I Man ENOUGH?" said Mr. Hoopdriver aloud, but addressing himself. "There's that eight years," he said to her.
"You can make it up. What you call educated men--They're not going on. You can catch them. They are quite satisfied. Playing golf, and thinking of clever things to say to women like my stepmother, and dining out. You're in front of them already in one thing. They think they know everything. You don't. And they know such little things."
"Lord!" said Mr. Hoopdriver. "How you encourage a fellow!"
"If I could only help you," she said, and left an eloquent15 hiatus. He became pensive16 again.
"It's pretty evident you don't think much of a draper," he said abruptly.
Another interval17. "Hundreds of men," she said, "have come from the very lowest ranks of life. There was Burns, a ploughman; and Hugh Miller18, a stonemason; and plenty of others. Dodsley was a footman--"
"But drapers! We're too sort of shabby genteel to rise. Our coats and cuffs19 might get crumpled--"
"Wasn't there a Clarke who wrote theology? He was a draper."
"There was one started a sewing cotton, the only one I ever heard tell of."
"Have you ever read 'Hearts Insurgent'?"
"Never," said Mr. Hoopdriver. He did not wait for her context, but suddenly broke out with an account of his literary requirements. "The fact is--I've read precious little. One don't get much of a chance, situated20 as I am. We have a library at business, and I've gone through that. Most Besant I've read, and a lot of Mrs. Braddon's and Rider Haggard and Marie Corelli--and, well--a Ouida or so. They're good stories, of course, and first-class writers, but they didn't seem to have much to do with me. But there's heaps of books one hears talked about, I HAVEN'T read."
"Don't you read any other books but novels?"
"Scarcely ever. One gets tired after business, and you can't get the books. I have been to some extension lectures, of course, 'Lizabethan Dramatists,' it was, but it seemed a little high-flown, you know. And I went and did wood-carving at the same place. But it didn't seem leading nowhere, and I cut my thumb and chucked it."
He made a depressing spectacle, with his face anxious and his hands limp. "It makes me sick," he said, "to think how I've been fooled with. My old schoolmaster ought to have a juiced HIDING. He's a thief. He pretended to undertake to make a man of me, and be's stole twenty-three years of my life, filled me up with scraps21 and sweepings22. Here I am! I don't KNOW anything, and I can't DO anything, and all the learning time is over."
"Is it?" she said ; but he did not seem to hear her. "My o' people didn't know any better, and went and paid thirty pounds premium--thirty pounds down to have me made THIS. The G.V. promised to teach me the trade, and he never taught me anything but to be a Hand. It's the way they do with draper's apprentices23. If every swindler was locked up--well, you'd have nowhere to buy tape and cotton. It's all very well to bring up Burns and those chaps, but I'm not that make. Yet I'm not such muck that I might not have been better--with teaching. I wonder what the chaps who sneer24 and laugh at such as me would be if they'd been fooled about as I've been. At twenty-three--it's a long start."
He looked up with a wintry smile, a sadder and wiser Hoopdriver indeed than him of the glorious imaginings. "It's YOU done this," he said. "You're real. And it sets me thinking what I really am, and what I might have been. Suppose it was all different--"
"MAKE it different."
"How?"
"WORK. Stop playing at life. Face it like a man."
"Ah!" said Hoopdriver, glancing at her out of the corners of his eyes. "And even then--"
"No! It's not much good. I'm beginning too late."
And there, in blankly thoughtful silence, that conversation ended.
收听单词发音 |
1
abruptly
|
|
| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
meditative
|
|
| adj.沉思的，冥想的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
solicitors
|
|
| 初级律师( solicitor的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
bullied
|
|
| adj.被欺负了v.恐吓，威逼( bully的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
prospects
|
|
| n.希望，前途(恒为复数) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
contented
|
|
| adj.满意的，安心的，知足的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
distress
|
|
| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
spoke
|
|
| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
pointed
|
|
| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
upwards
|
|
| adv.向上，在更高处...以上 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
schooling
|
|
| n.教育；正规学校教育 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
algebra
|
|
| n.代数学 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
auxiliary
|
|
| adj.辅助的，备用的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
genders
|
|
| n.性某些语言的（阳性、阴性和中性，不同的性有不同的词尾等）( gender的名词复数 )；性别；某些语言的（名词、代词和形容词）性的区分 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
eloquent
|
|
| adj.雄辩的，口才流利的；明白显示出的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
pensive
|
|
| a.沉思的,哀思的,忧沉的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
interval
|
|
| n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
miller
|
|
| n.磨坊主 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
cuffs
|
|
| n.袖口( cuff的名词复数 )v.掌打，拳打( cuff的第三人称单数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
situated
|
|
| adj.坐落在...的，处于某种境地的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
scraps
|
|
| 油渣 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
sweepings
|
|
| n.笼统的( sweeping的名词复数 )；（在投票等中的）大胜；影响广泛的；包罗万象的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
apprentices
|
|
| 学徒，徒弟( apprentice的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
sneer
|
|
| v.轻蔑；嘲笑；n.嘲笑，讥讽的言语 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |