Arrived at Lower Binfield, we sprawled1 for a long time on the green, watched by cottagers from their front gates. A clergyman and his daughter came and stared silently at us for a while, as though we had been aquarium2 fishes, and then went away again. There were several dozen of us waiting. William and Fred were there, still singing, and the men who had fought, and Bill the moocher. He had been mooching from bakers3, and had quantities of stale bread tucked away between his coat and his bare body. He shared it out, and we were all glad of it. There was a woman among us, the first woman tramp I had ever seen. She was a fattish, battered4, very dirty woman of sixty, in a long, trailing black skirt. She put on great airs of dignity, and if anyone sat down near her she sniffed5 and moved farther off.
‘Where you bound for, missis?’ one of the tramps called to her.
The woman sniffed and looked into the distance.
‘Come on, missis,’ he said, ‘cheer up. Be chummy. We’re all in the same boat ‘ere.’
‘Thank you,’ said the woman bitterly, ‘when I want to get mixed up with a set of TRAMPS, I’ll let you know.’
I enjoyed the way she said TRAMPS. It seemed to show you in a flash the whole other soul; a small, blinkered, feminine soul, that had learned absolutely nothing from years on the road. She was, no doubt, a respectable widow woman, become a tramp through some grotesque6 accident.
The spike7 opened at six. This was Saturday, and we were to be confined over the week-end, which is the usual practice; why, I do not know, unless it is from a vague feeling that Sunday merits something disagreeable. When we registered I gave my trade as ‘journalist’. It was truer than ‘painter’, for I had sometimes earned money from newspaper articles, but it was a silly thing to say, being bound to lead to questions. As soon as we were inside the spike and had been lined up for the search, the Tramp Major called my name. He was a stiff, soldierly man of forty, not looking the bully8 he had been represented, but with an old soldier’s gruffness. He said sharply:
‘Which of you is Blank?’ (I forget what name I had given.)
‘Me, sir.’
‘So you are a journalist?’
‘Yes, sir,’ I said, quaking. A few questions would betray the fact that I had been lying, which might mean prison. But the Tramp Major only looked me up and down and said:
‘Then you are a gentleman?’
‘I suppose so.’
He gave me another long look. ‘Well, that’s bloody9 bad luck, guv’nor,’ he said; ‘bloody bad luck that is.’ And thereafter he treated me with unfair favouritism, and even with a kind of deference10. He did not search me, and in the bathroom he actually gave me a clean towel to myself — an unheard-of luxury. So powerful is the word ‘gentleman’ in an old soldier’s ear.
By seven we had wolfed our bread and tea and were in our cells. We slept one in a cell, and there were bedsteads and straw palliasses, so that one ought to have had a good night’s sleep. But no spike is perfect, and the peculiar11 shortcoming at Lower Binfield was the cold. The hot pipes were not working, and the two blankets we had been given were thin cotton things and almost useless. It was only autumn, but the cold was bitter. One spent the long twelve-hour night in turning from side to side, falling asleep for a few minutes and waking up shivering. We could not smoke, for our tobacco, which we had managed to smuggle12 in, was in our clothes and we should not get these back till the morning. All down the passage one could hear groaning13 noises, and sometimes a shouted oath. No one, I imagine, got more than an hour or two of sleep.
In the morning, after breakfast and the doctor’s inspection14, the Tramp Major herded15 us all into the dining-room and locked the door upon us. It was a limewashed, stone-floored room, unutterably dreary16, with its furniture of deal boards and benches, and its prison smell. The barred windows were too high to look out of, and there were no ornaments17 save a clock and a copy of the workhouse rules. Packed elbow to elbow on the benches, we were bored already, though it was barely eight in the morning. There was nothing to do, nothing to talk about, not even room to move. The sole consolation18 was that one could smoke, for smoking was connived19 at so long as one was not caught in the act. Scotty, a little hairy tramp with a bastard20 accent sired by Cockney out of Glasgow, was tobaccoless, his tin of cigarette ends having fallen out of his boot during the search and been impounded. I stood him the makings of a cigarette. We smoked furtively21, thrusting our cigarettes into our pockets, like schoolboys, when we heard the Tramp Major coming.
Most of the tramps spent ten continuous hours in this comfortless, soulless room. Heaven knows how they put up with it. I was luckier than the others, for at ten o’clock the Tramp Major told off a few men for odd jobs, and he picked me out to help in the workhouse kitchen, the most coveted22 job of all. This, like the clean towel, was a charm worked by the word ‘gentleman’.
There was no work to do in the kitchen, and I sneaked23 off into a small shed used for storing potatoes, where some workhouse paupers24 were skulking25 to avoid the Sunday morning service. There were comfortable packing-cases to sit on, and some back numbers of the FAMILY HERALD26, and even a copy of RAFFLES27 from the workhouse library. The paupers talked interestingly about workhouse life. They told me, among other things, that the thing really hated in the workhouse, as a stigma28 of charity, is the uniform; if the men could wear their own clothes, or even their own caps and scarves, they would not mind being paupers. I had my dinner from the workhouse table, and it was a meal fit for a boa-constrictor — the largest meal I had eaten since my first day at the Hotel X. The paupers said that they habitually29 gorged30 to the bursting-point on Sunday and were underfed the rest of the week. After dinner the cook set me to do the washing up, and told me to throw away the food that remained. The wastage was astonishing and, in the circumstances, appalling31. Half-eateh joints32 of meat, and bucketfuls of broken bread and vegetables, were pitched away like so much rubbish and then defiled33 with tea-leaves. I filled five dustbins to overflowing34 with quite eatable food. And while I did so fifty tramps were sitting in the spike with their bellies35 half filled by the spike dinner of bread and cheese, and perhaps two cold boiled potatoes each in honour of Sunday. According to the paupers, the food was thrown away from deliberate policy, rather than that it should be given to the tramps.
At three I went back to the spike. The tramps had been sitting there since eight, with hardly room to move an elbow, and they were now half mad with boredom36. Even smoking was at an end, for a tramp’s tobacco is picked-up cigarette ends, and he starves if he is more than a few hours away from the pavement. Most of the men were too bored even to talk; they just sat packed on the benches, staring at nothing, their scrubby faces split in two by enormous yawns. The room stank37 of ENNUI38.
Paddy, his backside aching from the hard bench, was in a whimpering mood, and to pass the time away I talked with a rather superior tramp, a young carpenter who wore a collar and tie and was on the road, he said, for lack of a set of tools. He kept a little aloof39 from the other tramps, and held himself more like a free man than a casual. He had literary tastes, too, and carried a copy of QUENTIN DURWARD in his pocket. He told me that he never went into a spike unless driven there by hunger, sleeping under hedges and behind ricks in preference. Along the south coast he had begged by day and slept in bathing-huts for weeks at a time.
We talked of life on the road. He criticized the system that makes a tramp spend fourteen hours a day in the spike, and the other ten in walking and dodging40 the police. He spoke41 of his own case — six months at the public charge for want of a few pounds’ worth of tools. It was idiotic42, he said.
Then I told him about the wastage of food in the workhouse kitchen, and what I thought of it. And at that he changed his tone instantly. I saw that I had awakened43 the pew-renter who sleeps in every English workman. Though he had been famished44 along with the others, he at once saw reasons why the food should have been thrown away rather that given to the tramps. He admonished45 me quite severely46.
‘They have to do it,’ he said. ‘If they made these places too comfortable, you’d have all the scum of the country flocking into them. It’s only the bad food as keeps all that scum away. These here tramps are too lazy to work, that’s all that’s wrong with them. You don’t want to go encouraging of them. They’re scum.’
I produced arguments to prove him wrong, but he would not listen. He kept repeating:
‘You don’t want to have any pity on these here tramps — scum, they are. You don’t want to judge them by the same standards as men like you and me. They’re scum, just scum.’
It was interesting to see the subtle way in which he disassociated himself from ‘these here tramps’. He had been on the road six months, but in the sight of God, he seemed to imply, he was not a tramp. I imagine there are quite a lot of tramps who thank God they are not tramps. They are like the trippers who say such cutting things about trippers.
Three hours dragged by. At six supper arrived, and turned out to be quite uneatable; the bread, tough enough in the morning (it had been cut into slices on Saturday night), was now as hard as ship’s biscuit. Luckily it was spread with dripping, and we scraped the dripping off and ate that alone, which was better than nothing. At a quarter past six we were sent to bed. New tramps were arriving, and in order not to mix the tramps of different days (for fear of infectious diseases) the new men were put in the cells and we in dormitories. Our dormitory was a barn-like room with thirty beds close together, and a tub to serve as a common chamber-pot. It stank abominably47, and the older men coughed and got up all night. But being so many together kept the room warm, and we had some sleep.
We dispersed48 at ten in the morning, after a fresh medical inspection, with a hunk of bread and cheese for our midday dinner. William and Fred, strong in the possession of a shilling, impaled49 their bread on the spike railings — as a protest, they said. This was the second spike in Kent that they had made too hot to hold them, and they thought it a great joke. They were cheerful souls, for tramps. The imbecile (there is an imbecile in every collection of tramps) said that he was too tired to walk and clung to the railings, until the Tramp Major had to dislodge him and start him with a kick. Paddy and I turned north, for London. Most of the others were going on to Ide Hill, said to be about the worst spike in England.
[* I have been in it since, and it is not so bad]
Once again it was jolly autumn weather, and the road was quiet, with few cars passing. The air was like sweet-briar after the spike’s mingled50 stenches of sweat, soap, and drains. We two seemed the only tramps on the road. Then I heard a hurried step behind us, and someone calling. It was little Scotty, the Glasgow tramp, who had run after us panting. He produced a rusty51 tin from his pocket. He wore a friendly smile, like someone repaying an obligation.
‘Here y’are, mate,’ he said cordially. ‘I owe you some fag ends. You stood me a smoke yesterday. The Tramp Major give me back my box of fag ends when we come out this morning. One good turn deserves another — here y’are.’
And he put four sodden52, debauched, loathly cigarette ends into my hand.
收听单词发音 |
1
sprawled
|
|
| 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） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
aquarium
|
|
| n.水族馆，养鱼池，玻璃缸 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
bakers
|
|
| n.面包师( baker的名词复数 )；面包店；面包店店主；十三 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
battered
|
|
| adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
sniffed
|
|
| v.以鼻吸气，嗅，闻( sniff的过去式和过去分词 )；抽鼻子（尤指哭泣、患感冒等时出声地用鼻子吸气）；抱怨，不以为然地说 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
grotesque
|
|
| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
spike
|
|
| n.长钉，钉鞋；v.以大钉钉牢，使...失效 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
bully
|
|
| n.恃强欺弱者，小流氓；vt.威胁，欺侮 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
bloody
|
|
| adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
deference
|
|
| n.尊重，顺从；敬意 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
peculiar
|
|
| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
smuggle
|
|
| vt.私运；vi.走私 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
groaning
|
|
| adj. 呜咽的, 呻吟的 动词groan的现在分词形式 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
inspection
|
|
| n.检查，审查，检阅 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
herded
|
|
| 群集，纠结( herd的过去式和过去分词 )； 放牧； （使）向…移动 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
dreary
|
|
| adj.令人沮丧的，沉闷的，单调乏味的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
ornaments
|
|
| n.装饰( ornament的名词复数 )；点缀；装饰品；首饰v.装饰，点缀，美化( ornament的第三人称单数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
consolation
|
|
| n.安慰，慰问 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
connived
|
|
| v.密谋 ( connive的过去式和过去分词 )；搞阴谋；默许；纵容 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
bastard
|
|
| n.坏蛋，混蛋；私生子 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
furtively
|
|
| adv. 偷偷地, 暗中地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
coveted
|
|
| adj.令人垂涎的；垂涎的，梦寐以求的v.贪求，觊觎(covet的过去分词)；垂涎；贪图 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
sneaked
|
|
| v.潜行( sneak的过去式和过去分词 )；偷偷溜走；（儿童向成人）打小报告；告状 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
paupers
|
|
| n.穷人( pauper的名词复数 )；贫民；贫穷 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
25
skulking
|
|
| v.潜伏，偷偷摸摸地走动，鬼鬼祟祟地活动( skulk的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
26
herald
|
|
| vt.预示...的来临，预告，宣布，欢迎 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
27
raffles
|
|
| n.抽彩售物( raffle的名词复数 )v.以抽彩方式售（物）( raffle的第三人称单数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
28
stigma
|
|
| n.耻辱，污名；(花的)柱头 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
29
habitually
|
|
| ad.习惯地，通常地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
30
gorged
|
|
| v.（用食物把自己）塞饱，填饱( gorge的过去式和过去分词 )；作呕 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
31
appalling
|
|
| adj.骇人听闻的，令人震惊的，可怕的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
32
joints
|
|
| 接头( joint的名词复数 )； 关节； 公共场所（尤指价格低廉的饮食和娱乐场所） （非正式）； 一块烤肉 （英式英语） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
33
defiled
|
|
| v.玷污( defile的过去式和过去分词 )；污染；弄脏；纵列行进 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
34
overflowing
|
|
| n. 溢出物,溢流 adj. 充沛的，充满的 动词overflow的现在分词形式 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
35
bellies
|
|
| n.肚子( belly的名词复数 )；腹部；（物体的）圆形或凸起部份；腹部…形的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
36
boredom
|
|
| n.厌烦，厌倦，乏味，无聊 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
37
stank
|
|
| n. (英)坝，堰，池塘 动词stink的过去式 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
38
ennui
|
|
| n.怠倦，无聊 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
39
aloof
|
|
| adj.远离的；冷淡的，漠不关心的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
40
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： |
|
|
|
|
41
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： |
|
|
|
|
42
idiotic
|
|
| adj.白痴的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
43
awakened
|
|
| v.（使）醒( awaken的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
44
famished
|
|
| adj.饥饿的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
45
admonished
|
|
| v.劝告( admonish的过去式和过去分词 )；训诫；（温和地）责备；轻责 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
46
severely
|
|
| adv.严格地；严厉地；非常恶劣地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
47
abominably
|
|
| adv. 可恶地，可恨地，恶劣地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
48
dispersed
|
|
| adj. 被驱散的, 被分散的, 散布的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
49
impaled
|
|
| 钉在尖桩上( impale的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
50
mingled
|
|
| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
51
rusty
|
|
| adj.生锈的；锈色的；荒废了的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
52
sodden
|
|
| adj.浑身湿透的；v.使浸透；使呆头呆脑 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |