章节正文
by so free a permission, he had been for a quarter of an hour
walking with his charge in silence when the boy became sociable
again with the remark: "I'll tell you how I know it; I know it
through Zenobie."
"Zenobie? Who in the world is SHE?"
"A nurse I used to have - ever so many years ago. A charming
woman. I liked her awfully, and she liked me."
"There's no accounting for tastes. What is it you know through
her?"
"Why what their idea is. She went away because they didn't fork
out. She did like me awfully, and she stayed two years. She told
me all about it - that at last she could never get her wages. As
soon as they saw how much she liked me they stopped giving her
anything. They thought she'd stay for nothing - just BECAUSE,
don't you know?" And Morgan had a queer little conscious lucid
look. "She did stay ever so long - as long an she could. She was
only a poor girl. She used to send money to her mother. At last
she couldn't afford it any longer, and went away in a fearful rage
one night - I mean of course in a rage against THEM. She cried
over me tremendously, she hugged me nearly to death. She told me
all about it," the boy repeated. "She told me it was their idea.
So I guessed, ever so long ago, that they have had the same idea
with you."
"Zenobie was very sharp," said Pemberton. "And she made you so."
"Oh that wasn't Zenobie; that was nature. And experience!" Morgan
laughed.
"Well, Zenobie was a part of your experience."
"Certainly I was a part of hers, poor dear!" the boy wisely sighed.
"And I'm part of yours."
"A very important part. But I don't see how you know that I've
been treated like Zenobie."
"Do you take me for the biggest dunce you've known?" Morgan asked.
"Haven't I been conscious of what we've been through together?"
"What we've been through?"
"Our privations - our dark days."
"Oh our days have been bright enough."
Morgan went on in silence for a moment. Then he said: "My dear
chap, you're a hero!"
"Well, you're another!" Pemberton retorted.
"No I'm not, but I ain't a baby. I won't stand it any longer. You
must get some occupation that pays. I'm ashamed, I'm ashamed!"
quavered the boy with a ring of passion, like some high silver note
from a small cathedralcloister, that deeply touched his friend.
"We ought to go off and live somewhere together," the young man
said.
"I'll go like a shot if you'll take me."
"I'd get some work that would keep us both afloat," Pemberton
continued.
"So would I. Why shouldn't I work? I ain't such a beastly little
muff as that comes to."
"The difficulty is that your parents wouldn't hear of it. They'd
never part with you; they worship the ground you tread on. Don't
you see the proof of it?" Pemberton developed. "They don't dislike
me; they wish me no harm; they're very amiable people; but they're
perfectly ready to expose me to any awkwardness in life for your
sake."
The silence in which Morgan received his fond sophistry struck
Pemberton somehow as expressive. After a moment the child
repeated: "You are a hero!" Then he added: "They leave me with
you altogether. You've all the responsibility. They put me off on
you from morning till night. Why then should they object to my
taking up with you completely? I'd help you."
"They're not particularly keen about my being helped, and they
delight in thinking of you as THEIRS. They're tremendously proud
of you."
"I'm not proud of THEM. But you know that," Morgan returned.
"Except for the little matter we speak of they're charming people,"
said Pemberton, not taking up the point made for his intelligence,
but wondering greatly at the boy's own, and especially at this
fresh reminder of something he had been conscious of from the first
- the strangest thing in his friend's large little composition, a
temper, a sensibility, even a private ideal, which made him as
privately disown the stuff his people were made of. Morgan had in
secret a small loftiness which made him acute about betrayed
meanness; as well as a critical sense for the manners immediately
surrounding him that was quite without precedent in a juvenile
nature, especially when one noted that it had not made this nature
"old-fashioned," as the word is of children - quaint or wizened or
offensive. It was as if he had been a little gentleman and had
paid the penalty by discovering that he was the only such person in
his family. This comparison didn't make him vain, but it could
make him melancholy and a trifleaustere. While Pemberton guessed
at these dim young things, shadows of shadows, he was partly drawn
on and partly checked, as for a scruple, by the charm of attempting
to sound the little cool shallows that were so quickly growing
deeper. When he tried to figure to himself the morning twilight of
childhood, so as to deal with it safely, he saw it was never fixed,
never arrested, that ignorance, at the instant he touched it, was
already flushing faintly into knowledge, that there was nothing
that at a given moment you could say an intelligent child didn't
know. It seemed to him that he himself knew too much to imagine
Morgan's simplicity and too little to disembroil his tangle.
The boy paid no heed to his last remark; he only went on: "I'd
have spoken to them about their idea, as I call it, long ago, if I
hadn't been sure what they'd say."
"And what would they say?"
"Just what they said about what poor Zenobie told me - that it was
a horriddreadful story, that they had paid her every penny they
owed her."
"Well, perhaps they had," said Pemberton.
"Perhaps they've paid you!"
"Let us pretend they have, and n'en parlons plus."
"They accused her of lying and cheating" - Morgan stuck to historic
truth. "That's why I don't want to speak to them."
"Lest they should accuse me, too?" To this Morgan made no answer,
and his companion, looking down at him - the boy turned away his
eyes, which had filled - saw what he couldn't have trusted himself
to utter. "You're right. Don't worry them," Pemberton pursued.
"Except for that, they ARE charming people."
"Except for THEIR lying and THEIR cheating?"
"I say - I say!" cried Pemberton, imitating a little tone of the
lad's which was itself an imitation.
"We must be frank, at the last; we MUST come to an understanding,"
said Morgan with the importance of the small boy who lets himself
think he is arranging great affairs - almost playing at shipwreck
or at Indians. "I know all about everything."
"I dare say your father has his reasons,'' Pemberton replied, but
too vaguely, as he was aware.
"For lying and cheating?"
"For saving and managing and turning his means to the best account.
He has plenty to do with his money. You're an expensive family."
"Yes, I'm very expensive," Morgan concurred in a manner that made
his preceptor burst out laughing.
"He's saving for YOU," said Pemberton. "They think of you in
everything they do."
"He might, while he's about it, save a little - " The boy paused,
and his friend waited to hear what. Then Morgan brought out oddly:
"A little reputation."
"Oh there's plenty of that. That's all right!"
"Enough of it for the people they know, no doubt. The people they
know are awful."
"Do you mean the princes? We mustn't abuse the princes."
"Why not? They haven't married Paula - they haven't married Amy.
They only clean out Ulick."
"You DO know everything!" Pemberton declared.
"No, I don't, after all. I don't know what they live on, or how
they live, or WHY they live! What have they got and how did they
get it? Are they rich, are they poor, or have they a modeste
aisance? Why are they always chiveying me about - living one year
like ambassadors and the next like paupers? Who are they, any way,
and what are they? I've thought of all that - I've thought of a
lot of things. They're so beastlyworldly. That's what I hate
most - oh, I've SEEN it! All they care about is to make an
appearance and to pass for something or other. What the dickens do
they want to pass for? What DO they, Mr. Pemberton?"
"You pause for a reply," said Pemberton, treating the question as a
joke, yet wondering too and greatly struck with his mate's intense
if imperfectvision. "I haven't the least idea."
"And what good does it do? Haven't I seen the way people treat
them - the 'nice' people, the ones they want to know? They'll take
anything from them - they'll lie down and be trampled on. The nice
ones hate that - they just sicken them. You're the only really
nice person we know."
"Are you sure? They don't lie down for me!"
"Well, you shan't lie down for them. You've got to go - that's
what you've got to do," said Morgan.
"And what will become of you?"
"Oh I'm growing up. I shall get off before long. I'll see you
later."
"You had better let me finish you," Pemberton urged, lending
himself to the child's strange superiority.
Morgan stopped in their walk, looking up at him. He had to look up
much less than a couple of years before - he had grown, in his
loose leanness, so long and high. "Finish me?" he echoed.
"There are such a lot of jolly things we can do together yet. I
want to turn you out - I want you to do me credit."
Morgan continued to look at him. "To give you credit - do you
mean?"
"My dear fellow, you're too clever to live."
"That's just what I'm afraid you think. No, no; it isn't fair - I
can't endure it. We'll separate next week. The sooner it's over
the sooner to sleep."
"If I hear of anything - any other chance - I promise to go,"
Pemberton said.
Morgan consented to consider this. "But you'll be honest," he
demanded; "you won't pretend you haven't heard?"
"I'm much more likely to pretend I have."
"But what can you hear of, this way, stuck in a hole with us? You
ought to be on the spot, to go to England - you ought to go to
America."
"One would think you were MY tutor!" said Pemberton.
Morgan walked on and after a little had begun again: "Well, now
that you know I know and that we look at the facts and keep nothing
back - it's much more comfortable, isn't it?"
"My dear boy, it's so amusing, so interesting, that it will surely
be quite impossible for me to forego such hours as these."
This made Morgan stop once more. "You DO keep something back. Oh
you're not straight - I am!"
"How am I not straight?"
"Oh you've got your idea!"
"My idea?"
"Why that I probably shan't make old - make older - bones, and that
you can stick it out till I'm removed."
"You ARE too clever to live!" Pemberton repeated.
"I call it a mean idea," Morgan pursued. "But I shall punish you
by the way I hang on."
"Look out or I'll poison you!" Pemberton laughed.
"I'm stronger and better every year. Haven't you noticed that
there hasn't been a doctor near me since you came?"
"I'M your doctor," said the young man, taking his arm and drawing
him tenderly on again.
walking with his charge in silence when the boy became sociable
again with the remark: "I'll tell you how I know it; I know it
through Zenobie."
"Zenobie? Who in the world is SHE?"
"A nurse I used to have - ever so many years ago. A charming
woman. I liked her awfully, and she liked me."
"There's no accounting for tastes. What is it you know through
her?"
"Why what their idea is. She went away because they didn't fork
out. She did like me awfully, and she stayed two years. She told
me all about it - that at last she could never get her wages. As
soon as they saw how much she liked me they stopped giving her
anything. They thought she'd stay for nothing - just BECAUSE,
don't you know?" And Morgan had a queer little conscious lucid
look. "She did stay ever so long - as long an she could. She was
only a poor girl. She used to send money to her mother. At last
she couldn't afford it any longer, and went away in a fearful rage
one night - I mean of course in a rage against THEM. She cried
over me tremendously, she hugged me nearly to death. She told me
all about it," the boy repeated. "She told me it was their idea.
So I guessed, ever so long ago, that they have had the same idea
with you."
"Zenobie was very sharp," said Pemberton. "And she made you so."
"Oh that wasn't Zenobie; that was nature. And experience!" Morgan
laughed.
"Well, Zenobie was a part of your experience."
"Certainly I was a part of hers, poor dear!" the boy wisely sighed.
"And I'm part of yours."
"A very important part. But I don't see how you know that I've
been treated like Zenobie."
"Do you take me for the biggest dunce you've known?" Morgan asked.
"Haven't I been conscious of what we've been through together?"
"What we've been through?"
"Our privations - our dark days."
"Oh our days have been bright enough."
Morgan went on in silence for a moment. Then he said: "My dear
chap, you're a hero!"
"Well, you're another!" Pemberton retorted.
"No I'm not, but I ain't a baby. I won't stand it any longer. You
must get some occupation that pays. I'm ashamed, I'm ashamed!"
quavered the boy with a ring of passion, like some high silver note
from a small cathedralcloister, that deeply touched his friend.
"We ought to go off and live somewhere together," the young man
said.
"I'll go like a shot if you'll take me."
"I'd get some work that would keep us both afloat," Pemberton
continued.
"So would I. Why shouldn't I work? I ain't such a beastly little
muff as that comes to."
"The difficulty is that your parents wouldn't hear of it. They'd
never part with you; they worship the ground you tread on. Don't
you see the proof of it?" Pemberton developed. "They don't dislike
me; they wish me no harm; they're very amiable people; but they're
perfectly ready to expose me to any awkwardness in life for your
sake."
The silence in which Morgan received his fond sophistry struck
Pemberton somehow as expressive. After a moment the child
repeated: "You are a hero!" Then he added: "They leave me with
you altogether. You've all the responsibility. They put me off on
you from morning till night. Why then should they object to my
taking up with you completely? I'd help you."
"They're not particularly keen about my being helped, and they
delight in thinking of you as THEIRS. They're tremendously proud
of you."
"I'm not proud of THEM. But you know that," Morgan returned.
"Except for the little matter we speak of they're charming people,"
said Pemberton, not taking up the point made for his intelligence,
but wondering greatly at the boy's own, and especially at this
fresh reminder of something he had been conscious of from the first
- the strangest thing in his friend's large little composition, a
temper, a sensibility, even a private ideal, which made him as
privately disown the stuff his people were made of. Morgan had in
secret a small loftiness which made him acute about betrayed
meanness; as well as a critical sense for the manners immediately
surrounding him that was quite without precedent in a juvenile
nature, especially when one noted that it had not made this nature
"old-fashioned," as the word is of children - quaint or wizened or
offensive. It was as if he had been a little gentleman and had
paid the penalty by discovering that he was the only such person in
his family. This comparison didn't make him vain, but it could
make him melancholy and a trifleaustere. While Pemberton guessed
at these dim young things, shadows of shadows, he was partly drawn
on and partly checked, as for a scruple, by the charm of attempting
to sound the little cool shallows that were so quickly growing
deeper. When he tried to figure to himself the morning twilight of
childhood, so as to deal with it safely, he saw it was never fixed,
never arrested, that ignorance, at the instant he touched it, was
already flushing faintly into knowledge, that there was nothing
that at a given moment you could say an intelligent child didn't
know. It seemed to him that he himself knew too much to imagine
Morgan's simplicity and too little to disembroil his tangle.
The boy paid no heed to his last remark; he only went on: "I'd
have spoken to them about their idea, as I call it, long ago, if I
hadn't been sure what they'd say."
"And what would they say?"
"Just what they said about what poor Zenobie told me - that it was
a horriddreadful story, that they had paid her every penny they
owed her."
"Well, perhaps they had," said Pemberton.
"Perhaps they've paid you!"
"Let us pretend they have, and n'en parlons plus."
"They accused her of lying and cheating" - Morgan stuck to historic
truth. "That's why I don't want to speak to them."
"Lest they should accuse me, too?" To this Morgan made no answer,
and his companion, looking down at him - the boy turned away his
eyes, which had filled - saw what he couldn't have trusted himself
to utter. "You're right. Don't worry them," Pemberton pursued.
"Except for that, they ARE charming people."
"Except for THEIR lying and THEIR cheating?"
"I say - I say!" cried Pemberton, imitating a little tone of the
lad's which was itself an imitation.
"We must be frank, at the last; we MUST come to an understanding,"
said Morgan with the importance of the small boy who lets himself
think he is arranging great affairs - almost playing at shipwreck
or at Indians. "I know all about everything."
"I dare say your father has his reasons,'' Pemberton replied, but
too vaguely, as he was aware.
"For lying and cheating?"
"For saving and managing and turning his means to the best account.
He has plenty to do with his money. You're an expensive family."
"Yes, I'm very expensive," Morgan concurred in a manner that made
his preceptor burst out laughing.
"He's saving for YOU," said Pemberton. "They think of you in
everything they do."
"He might, while he's about it, save a little - " The boy paused,
and his friend waited to hear what. Then Morgan brought out oddly:
"A little reputation."
"Oh there's plenty of that. That's all right!"
"Enough of it for the people they know, no doubt. The people they
know are awful."
"Do you mean the princes? We mustn't abuse the princes."
"Why not? They haven't married Paula - they haven't married Amy.
They only clean out Ulick."
"You DO know everything!" Pemberton declared.
"No, I don't, after all. I don't know what they live on, or how
they live, or WHY they live! What have they got and how did they
get it? Are they rich, are they poor, or have they a modeste
aisance? Why are they always chiveying me about - living one year
like ambassadors and the next like paupers? Who are they, any way,
and what are they? I've thought of all that - I've thought of a
lot of things. They're so beastlyworldly. That's what I hate
most - oh, I've SEEN it! All they care about is to make an
appearance and to pass for something or other. What the dickens do
they want to pass for? What DO they, Mr. Pemberton?"
"You pause for a reply," said Pemberton, treating the question as a
joke, yet wondering too and greatly struck with his mate's intense
if imperfectvision. "I haven't the least idea."
"And what good does it do? Haven't I seen the way people treat
them - the 'nice' people, the ones they want to know? They'll take
anything from them - they'll lie down and be trampled on. The nice
ones hate that - they just sicken them. You're the only really
nice person we know."
"Are you sure? They don't lie down for me!"
"Well, you shan't lie down for them. You've got to go - that's
what you've got to do," said Morgan.
"And what will become of you?"
"Oh I'm growing up. I shall get off before long. I'll see you
later."
"You had better let me finish you," Pemberton urged, lending
himself to the child's strange superiority.
Morgan stopped in their walk, looking up at him. He had to look up
much less than a couple of years before - he had grown, in his
loose leanness, so long and high. "Finish me?" he echoed.
"There are such a lot of jolly things we can do together yet. I
want to turn you out - I want you to do me credit."
Morgan continued to look at him. "To give you credit - do you
mean?"
"My dear fellow, you're too clever to live."
"That's just what I'm afraid you think. No, no; it isn't fair - I
can't endure it. We'll separate next week. The sooner it's over
the sooner to sleep."
"If I hear of anything - any other chance - I promise to go,"
Pemberton said.
Morgan consented to consider this. "But you'll be honest," he
demanded; "you won't pretend you haven't heard?"
"I'm much more likely to pretend I have."
"But what can you hear of, this way, stuck in a hole with us? You
ought to be on the spot, to go to England - you ought to go to
America."
"One would think you were MY tutor!" said Pemberton.
Morgan walked on and after a little had begun again: "Well, now
that you know I know and that we look at the facts and keep nothing
back - it's much more comfortable, isn't it?"
"My dear boy, it's so amusing, so interesting, that it will surely
be quite impossible for me to forego such hours as these."
This made Morgan stop once more. "You DO keep something back. Oh
you're not straight - I am!"
"How am I not straight?"
"Oh you've got your idea!"
"My idea?"
"Why that I probably shan't make old - make older - bones, and that
you can stick it out till I'm removed."
"You ARE too clever to live!" Pemberton repeated.
"I call it a mean idea," Morgan pursued. "But I shall punish you
by the way I hang on."
"Look out or I'll poison you!" Pemberton laughed.
"I'm stronger and better every year. Haven't you noticed that
there hasn't been a doctor near me since you came?"
"I'M your doctor," said the young man, taking his arm and drawing
him tenderly on again.
- permission [pə´miʃən]
n.允许；同意；许可 (初中英语单词) - charge [tʃɑ:dʒ] v.收费；冲锋 n.费用 (初中英语单词)
- conscious [´kɔnʃəs] a.意识的；自觉的 (初中英语单词)
- fearful [´fiəfəl] a.可怕的；担心的 (初中英语单词)
- occupation [,ɔkju´peiʃən] a.职业的；军事占领的 (初中英语单词)
- ashamed [ə´ʃeimd] a.惭愧；不好意思 (初中英语单词)
- passion [´pæʃən] n.激情；激怒；恋爱 (初中英语单词)
- cathedral [kə´θi:drəl] n.大教堂 (初中英语单词)
- worship [´wə:ʃip] n.&v.崇拜；敬仰 (初中英语单词)
- expose [ik´spəuz] vt.揭露，暴露；陈列 (初中英语单词)
- altogether [,ɔ:ltə´geðə] ad.完全；总而言之 (初中英语单词)
- responsibility [ri,spɔnsə´biliti] n.责任(心)；职责；任务 (初中英语单词)
- charming [´tʃɑ:miŋ] a.可爱的；极好的 (初中英语单词)
- comparison [kəm´pærisən] n.比较；对照；比喻 (初中英语单词)
- trifle [´traifəl] n.琐事，小事；少量 (初中英语单词)
- partly [´pɑ:tli] ad.部分地；不完全地 (初中英语单词)
- twilight [´twailait] n.黎明；黄昏 (初中英语单词)
- safely [´seifli] ad.安全地；平安地 (初中英语单词)
- ignorance [´ignərəns] n.无知，愚昧 (初中英语单词)
- instant [´instənt] a.立即的 n.紧迫；瞬间 (初中英语单词)
- intelligent [in´telidʒənt] a.聪明的；理智的 (初中英语单词)
- spoken [´spəukən] speak的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
- dreadful [´dredful] a.可怕的；讨厌的 (初中英语单词)
- pretend [pri´tend] v.假装；借口；妄求 (初中英语单词)
- accuse [ə´kju:z] vt.谴责；控告，告发 (初中英语单词)
- companion [kəm´pæniən] n.同伴；同事；伴侣 (初中英语单词)
- expensive [ik´spensiv] a.费钱的，昂贵的 (初中英语单词)
- vision [´viʒən] n.视觉；想象力；幻影 (初中英语单词)
- endure [in´djuə] vt.忍耐，忍受；坚持 (初中英语单词)
- punish [´pʌniʃ] vt.(惩)罚；痛击；折磨 (初中英语单词)
- poison [´pɔizən] n.毒物 v.毒害 a.有毒的 (初中英语单词)
- awfully [´ɔ:fuli] ad.令人畏惧地 (高中英语单词)
- repeated [ri´pi:tid] a.反复的；重复的 (高中英语单词)
- wisely [´waizli] ad.明智地，聪明地 (高中英语单词)
- theirs [ðeəz] pron.他们的 (高中英语单词)
- composition [,kɔmpə´ziʃən] n.写作；作曲；作品 (高中英语单词)
- critical [´kritikəl] a.批评的；关键性的 (高中英语单词)
- quaint [kweint] a.离奇的；奇妙的 (高中英语单词)
- penalty [´penlti] n.刑罚；惩罚；障碍 (高中英语单词)
- melancholy [´melənkəli] n.忧郁 a.忧郁的 (高中英语单词)
- faintly [´feintli] ad.微弱地，软弱无力的 (高中英语单词)
- simplicity [sim´plisiti] n.简单；朴素 (高中英语单词)
- horrid [´hɔrid] a.令人讨厌的；极糟的 (高中英语单词)
- amusing [ə´mju:ziŋ] a.有趣的 (高中英语单词)
- tenderly [´tendəli] ad.娇嫩地；柔和地 (高中英语单词)
- tremendously [tri´mendəsli] ad.可怕地；极大地 (英语四级单词)
- cloister [´klɔistə] n.修道院；隐居处 (英语四级单词)
- amiable [´eimiəbəl] a.亲切的，温和的 (英语四级单词)
- precedent [´presidənt] n.先例 a.在先的 (英语四级单词)
- austere [ɔ´stiə] a.严峻(格)的；质朴的 (英语四级单词)
- vaguely [´veigli] ad.含糊地，暖昧地 (英语四级单词)
- worldly [´wə:ldli] a.现世的；世俗的 (英语四级单词)
- imperfect [im´pə:fikt] a.不完全的；未完成的 (英语四级单词)
- sicken [´sikən] v.(使)生病；厌恶 (英语四级单词)
- beastly [´bi:stli] a.残忍的；卑鄙的 (英语六级单词)
- expressive [ik´spresiv] a.有表现力的 (英语六级单词)
- taking [´teikiŋ] a.迷人的 n.捕获物 (英语六级单词)
- reminder [ri´maində] n.提醒物；纪念品；暗示 (英语六级单词)
- scruple [´skru:pəl] n.&v.犹豫；顾忌 (英语六级单词)
- dickens [´dikinz] n.=devil 魔鬼 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
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