Maggie said nothing, but turned away from her with a deeper frown. As long as Tom seemed to prefer Lucy to her, Lucy made part of his unkindness. Maggie would have thought a little while ago that she could never be cross with pretty little Lucy, any more than she could be cruel to a little white mouse; but then, Tom had always been quite indifferent to Lucy before, and it had been left to Maggie to pet and make much of her. As it was, she was actually beginning to think that she should like to make Lucy cry by slapping or pinching her, especially as it might vex13 Tom, whom it was of no use to slap, even if she dared, because he didn’t mind it. And if Lucy hadn’t been there, Maggie was sure he would have got friends with her sooner.
Tickling a fat toad who is not highly sensitive is an amusement that it is possible to exhaust, and Tom by and by began to look round for some other mode of passing the time. But in so prim14 a garden, where they were not to go off the paved walks, there was not a great choice of sport. The only great pleasure such a restriction15 suggested was the pleasure of breaking it, and Tom began to meditate16 an insurrectionary visit to the pond, about a field’s length beyond the garden.
“I say, Lucy,” he began, nodding his head up and down with great significance, as he coiled up his string again, “what do you think I mean to do?”
“What, Tom?” said Lucy, with curiosity.
“I mean to go to the pond and look at the pike. You may go with me if you like,” said the young sultan.
“Oh, Tom, dare you?” said Lucy. “Aunt said we mustn’t go out of the garden.”
“Oh, I shall go out at the other end of the garden,” said Tom. “Nobody ‘ull see us. Besides, I don’t care if they do — I’ll run off home.”
“But I couldn’t run,” said Lucy, who had never before been exposed to such severe temptation.
“Oh, never mind; they won’t be cross with you,” said Tom. “You say I took you.”
Tom walked along, and Lucy trotted17 by his side, timidly enjoying the rare treat of doing something naughty — excited also by the mention of that celebrity18, the pike, about which she was quite uncertain whether it was a fish or a fowl19.
Maggie saw them leaving the garden, and could not resist the impulse to follow. Anger and jealousy20 can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love, and that Tom and Lucy should do or see anything of which she was ignorant would have been an intolerable idea to Maggie. So she kept a few yards behind them, unobserved by Tom, who was presently absorbed in watching for the pike — a highly interesting monster; he was said to be so very old, so very large, and to have such a remarkable21 appetite. The pike, like other celebrities22, did not show when he was watched for, but Tom caught sight of something in rapid movement in the water, which attracted him to another spot on the brink23 of the pond.
“Here, Lucy!” he said in a loud whisper, “come here! take care! keep on the grass! — don’t step where the cows have been!” he added, pointing to a peninsula of dry grass, with trodden mud on each side of it; for Tom’s contemptuous conception of a girl included the attribute of being unfit to walk in dirty places.
Lucy came carefully as she was bidden, and bent24 down to look at what seemed a golden arrow-head darting25 through the water. It was a water-snake, Tom told her; and Lucy at last could see the serpentine26 wave of its body, very much wondering that a snake could swim. Maggie had drawn27 nearer and nearer; she must see it too, though it was bitter to her, like everything else, since Tom did not care about her seeing it. At last she was close by Lucy; and Tom, who had been aware of her approach, but would not notice it till he was obliged, turned round and said —
“Now, get away, Maggie; there’s no room for you on the grass here. Nobody asked you to come.”
There were passions at war in Maggie at that moment to have made a tragedy, if tragedies were made by passion only; but the essential [Greek text] which was present in the passion was wanting to the action; the utmost Maggie could do, with a fierce thrust of her small brown arm, was to push poor little pink-and-white Lucy into the cow-trodden mud.
Then Tom could not restrain himself, and gave Maggie two smart slaps on the arm as he ran to pick up Lucy, who lay crying helplessly. Maggie retreated to the roots of a tree a few yards off, and looked on impenitently28. Usually her repentance29 came quickly after one rash deed, but now Tom and Lucy had made her so miserable30, she was glad to spoil their happiness — glad to make everybody uncomfortable. Why should she be sorry? Tom was very slow to forgive her, however sorry she might have been.
“I shall tell mother, you know, Miss Mag,” said Tom, loudly and emphatically, as soon as Lucy was up and ready to walk away. It was not Tom’s practice to “tell,” but here justice clearly demanded that Maggie should be visited with the utmost punishment; not that Tom had learned to put his views in that abstract form; he never mentioned “justice,” and had no idea that his desire to punish might be called by that fine name. Lucy was too entirely31 absorbed by the evil that had befallen her — the spoiling of her pretty best clothes, and the discomfort32 of being wet and dirty — to think much of the cause, which was entirely mysterious to her. She could never have guessed what she had done to make Maggie angry with her; but she felt that Maggie was very unkind and disagreeable, and made no magnanimous entreaties33 to Tom that he would not “tell,” only running along by his side and crying piteously, while Maggie sat on the roots of the tree and looked after them with her small Medusa face.
“Sally,” said Tom, when they reached the kitchen door, and Sally looked at them in speechless amaze, with a piece of bread-and-butter in her mouth and a toasting-fork in her hand — “Sally, tell mother it was Maggie pushed Lucy into the mud.”
“But Lors ha’ massy, how did you get near such mud as that?” said Sally, making a wry34 face, as she stooped down and examined the corpus delicti.
Tom’s imagination had not been rapid and capacious enough to include this question among the foreseen consequences, but it was no sooner put than he foresaw whither it tended, and that Maggie would not be considered the only culprit in the case. He walked quietly away from the kitchen door, leaving Sally to that pleasure of guessing which active minds notoriously prefer to ready-made knowledge.
Sally, as you are aware, lost no time in presenting Lucy at the parlor door, for to have so dirty an object introduced into the house at Garum Firs was too great a weight to be sustained by a single mind.
“Goodness gracious!” aunt Pullet exclaimed, after preluding by an inarticulate scream; “keep her at the door, Sally! Don’t bring her off the oil-cloth, whatever you do.”
“Why, she’s tumbled into some nasty mud,” said Mrs. Tulliver, going up to Lucy to examine into the amount of damage to clothes for which she felt herself responsible to her sister Deane.
“If you please, ‘um, it was Miss Maggie as pushed her in,” said Sally; “Master Tom’s been and said so, and they must ha’ been to the pond, for it’s only there they could ha’ got into such dirt.”
“There it is, Bessy; it’s what I’ve been telling you,” said Mrs. Pullet, in a tone of prophetic sadness; “it’s your children — there’s no knowing what they’ll come to.”
Mrs. Tulliver was mute, feeling herself a truly wretched mother. As usual, the thought pressed upon her that people would think she had done something wicked to deserve her maternal35 troubles, while Mrs. Pullet began to give elaborate directions to Sally how to guard the premises36 from serious injury in the course of removing the dirt. Meantime tea was to be brought in by the cook, and the two naughty children were to have theirs in an ignominious37 manner in the kitchen. Mrs. Tulliver went out to speak to these naughty children, supposing them to be close at hand; but it was not until after some search that she found Tom leaning with rather a hardened, careless air against the white paling of the poultry38-yard, and lowering his piece of string on the other side as a means of exasperating39 the turkey-cock.
“Tom, you naughty boy, where’s your sister?” said Mrs. Tulliver, in a distressed40 voice.
“I don’t know,” said Tom; his eagerness for justice on Maggie had diminished since he had seen clearly that it could hardly be brought about without the injustice41 of some blame on his own conduct.
“Why, where did you leave her?” said the mother, looking round.
“Sitting under the tree, against the pond,” said Tom, apparently42 indifferent to everything but the string and the turkey-cock.
“Then go and fetch her in this minute, you naughty boy. And how could you think o’ going to the pond, and taking your sister where there was dirt? You know she’ll do mischief43 if there’s mischief to be done.”
It was Mrs. Tulliver’s way, if she blamed Tom, to refer his misdemeanor, somehow or other, to Maggie.
The idea of Maggie sitting alone by the pond roused an habitual fear in Mrs. Tulliver’s mind, and she mounted the horse-block to satisfy herself by a sight of that fatal child, while Tom walked — not very quickly — on his way toward her.
“They’re such children for the water, mine are,” she said aloud, without reflecting that there was no one to hear her; “they’ll be brought in dead and drownded some day. I wish that river was far enough.”
But when she not only failed to discern Maggie, but presently saw Tom returning from the pool alone, this hovering44 fear entered and took complete possession of her, and she hurried to meet him.
“Maggie’s nowhere about the pond, mother,” said Tom; “she’s gone away.”
You may conceive the terrified search for Maggie, and the difficulty of convincing her mother that she was not in the pond. Mrs. Pullet observed that the child might come to a worse end if she lived, there was no knowing; and Mr. Pullet, confused and overwhelmed by this revolutionary aspect of things — the tea deferred45 and the poultry alarmed by the unusual running to and fro — took up his spud as an instrument of search, and reached down a key to unlock the goose-pen, as a likely place for Maggie to lie concealed46 in.
Tom, after a while, started the idea that Maggie was gone home (without thinking it necessary to state that it was what he should have done himself under the circumstances), and the suggestion was seized as a comfort by his mother.
“Sister, for goodness’ sake let ’em put the horse in the carriage and take me home; we shall perhaps find her on the road. Lucy can’t walk in her dirty clothes,” she said, looking at that innocent victim, who was wrapped up in a shawl, and sitting with naked feet on the sofa.
Aunt Pullet was quite willing to take the shortest means of restoring her premises to order and quiet, and it was not long before Mrs. Tulliver was in the chaise, looking anxiously at the most distant point before her. What the father would say if Maggie was lost, was a question that predominated over every other.
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1
epoch
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| n.(新)时代；历元 | |
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unprecedented
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| adj.无前例的，新奇的 | |
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apparition
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| n.幽灵，神奇的现象 | |
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parlor
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| n.店铺，营业室；会客室，客厅 | |
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demons
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| n.恶人( demon的名词复数 )；恶魔；精力过人的人；邪念 | |
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considerably
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| adv.极大地；相当大地；在很大程度上 | |
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toad
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| n.蟾蜍，癞蛤蟆 | |
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toads
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| n.蟾蜍，癞蛤蟆( toad的名词复数 ) | |
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tickling
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| 反馈，回授，自旋挠痒法 | |
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copper
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| n.铜；铜币；铜器；adj.铜(制)的；(紫)铜色的 | |
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superfluous
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| adj.过多的，过剩的，多余的 | |
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habitual
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| adj.习惯性的；通常的，惯常的 | |
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13
vex
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| vt.使烦恼，使苦恼 | |
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14
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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15
restriction
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| n.限制，约束 | |
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meditate
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| v.想，考虑，（尤指宗教上的）沉思，冥想 | |
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17
trotted
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| 小跑，急走( trot的过去分词 )； 匆匆忙忙地走 | |
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18
celebrity
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| n.名人，名流；著名，名声，名望 | |
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fowl
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| n.家禽，鸡，禽肉 | |
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jealousy
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| n.妒忌，嫉妒，猜忌 | |
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remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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celebrities
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| n.（尤指娱乐界的）名人( celebrity的名词复数 )；名流；名声；名誉 | |
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23
brink
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| n.(悬崖、河流等的)边缘，边沿 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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darting
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| v.投掷，投射( dart的现在分词 )；向前冲，飞奔 | |
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serpentine
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| adj.蜿蜒的，弯曲的 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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impenitently
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| adv.不知悔改地 | |
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repentance
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| n.懊悔 | |
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miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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discomfort
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| n.不舒服，不安，难过，困难，不方便 | |
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entreaties
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| n.恳求，乞求( entreaty的名词复数 ) | |
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wry
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| adj.讽刺的；扭曲的 | |
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maternal
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| adj.母亲的，母亲般的，母系的，母方的 | |
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premises
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| n.建筑物，房屋 | |
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ignominious
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| adj.可鄙的，不光彩的，耻辱的 | |
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poultry
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| n.家禽，禽肉 | |
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exasperating
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| adj. 激怒的 动词exasperate的现在分词形式 | |
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distressed
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| 痛苦的 | |
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41
injustice
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| n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利 | |
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42
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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43
mischief
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| n.损害，伤害，危害；恶作剧，捣蛋，胡闹 | |
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44
hovering
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| 鸟( hover的现在分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫 | |
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45
deferred
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| adj.延期的，缓召的v.拖延，延缓，推迟( defer的过去式和过去分词 )；服从某人的意愿，遵从 | |
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46
concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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