章节正文
talked rapidly to the ceiling.
"Then the old woman was sick about that poor little baby. She was
afraid to tell them at the Home, because she knew she never should
have left it, but she wrote a letter and sent it to where the
beautiful woman, when she was ill, had said her husband's people lived.
She told all about the little baby that she could remember:
when it was born, how it was named for the man's elder brother,
that its hand had been cut off in the fire, and where she had put
it to be doctored and taken care of. She told them that its mother
and father were both burned, and she begged and implored them to
come after it.
"You'd think that would have melted a heart of ice, but that old
man hadn't any heart to melt, for he got that letter and read it.
He hid it away among his papers and never told a soul. A few months
ago he died. When his elder son went to settle his business, he
found the letter almost the first thing. He dropped everything, and
came, with his wife, to hunt that baby, because he always had loved
his brother dearly, and wanted him back. He had hunted for him all
he dared all these years, but when he got here you were gone--I
mean the baby was gone, and I had to tell you, Freckles, for you
see, it might have happened to you like that just as easy as to
that other lost boy."
Freckles reached up and turned the Angel's face until he compelled
her eyes to meet his.
"Angel," he asked quietly, "why don't you look at me when you are
telling about that lost boy?"
"I--I didn't know I wasn't," faltered the Angel.
"It seems to me," said Freckles, his breathbeginning to come in
sharp wheezes, "that you got us rather mixed, and it ain't like you
to be mixing things till one can't be knowing. If they were telling
you so much, did they say which hand was for being off that lost boy?"
The Angel's eyes escaped again.
"It--it was the same as yours," she ventured, barelybreathing in
her fear.
Still Freckles lay rigid and whiter than the coverlet.
"Would that boy be as old as me?" he asked.
"Yes," said the Angel faintly.
"Angel," said Freckles at last, catching her wrist, "are you trying
to tell me that there is somebody hunting a boy that you're
thinking might be me? Are you belavin' you've found me relations?"
Then the Angel's eyes came home. The time had come. She pinioned
Freckles' arms to his sides and bent above him.
"How strong are you, dear heart?" she breathed. "How brave are you?
Can you bear it? Dare I tell you that?"
"No!" gasped Freckles. "Not if you're sure! I can't bear it!
I'll die if you do!"
The day had been one unremitting strain with the Angel.
Nerve tension was drawn to the finest thread. It snapped suddenly.
"Die!" she flamed. "Die, if I tell you that! You said this morning
that you would die if you DIDN'T know your name, and if your people
were honorable. Now I've gone and found you a name that stands for
ages of honor, a mother who loved you enough to go into the fire
and die for you, and the nicest kind of relatives, and you turn
round and say you'll die over that! YOU JUST TRY DYING AND YOU'LL
GET A GOOD SLAP!"
The Angel stood glaring at him. One second Freckles lay paralyzed
and dumb with astonishment. The next the Irish in his soul arose
above everything. A laugh burst from him. The terrified Angel
caught him in her arms and tried to stifle the sound. She implored
and commanded. When he was too worn to utter another sound, his
eyes laughed silently.
After a long time, when he was quiet and rested, the Angel
commenced talking to him gently, and this time her big eyes, humid
with tenderness and mellow with happiness, seemed as if they could
not leave his face.
"Dear Freckles," she was saying, "across your knees there is the
face of the mother who went into the fire for you, and I know the
name--old and full of honor--to which you were born. Dear heart,
which will you have first?"
Freckles was very tired; the big drops of perspiration ran together
on his temples; but the watching Angel caught the words his lips
formed, "Me mother!"
She lifted the lovely pictured face and set it in the nook of his arm.
Freckles caught her hand and drew her beside him, and together
they gazed at the picture while the tears slid over their cheeks.
"Me mother! Oh, me mother! Can you ever be forgiving me? Oh, me
beautiful little mother!" chanted Freckles over and over in exalted
wonder, until he was so completely exhausted that his lips refused
to form the question in his weary eyes.
"Wait!" cried the Angel with inborn refinement, for she could no
more answer that question than he could ask. "Wait, I will write it!"
She hurried to the table, caught up the nurse's pencil, and on the
back of a prescription tablet scrawled it: "Terence Maxwell O'More,
Dunderry House, County Clare, Ireland."
Before she had finished came Freckles' voice: "Angel, are you hurrying?"
"Yes," said the Angel; "I am. But there is a good deal of it. I have
to put in your house and country, so that you will feel located."
"Me house?" marveled Freckles.
"Of course," said the Angel. "Your uncle says your grandmother left
your father her dower house and estate, because she knew his father
would cut him off. You get that, and all your share of your
grandfather's property besides. It is all set off for you and
waiting. Lord O'More told me so. I suspect you are richer than
McLean, Freckles."
She closed his fingers over the slip and straightened his hair.
"Now you are all right, dear Limberlost guard," she said. "You go
to sleep and don't think of a thing but just pure joy, joy, joy!
I'll keep your people until you wake up. You are too tired to see
anyone else just now!"
Freckles caught her skirt as she turned from him.
"I'll go to sleep in five minutes," he said, "if you will be doing
just one thing more for me. Send for your father! Oh, Angel, send
for him quick! How will I ever be waiting until he comes?"
One instant the Angel stood looking at him. The next a crimson wave
darkly stained her lovely face. Her chin began a spasmodic
quivering and the tears sprang into her eyes. Her hands caught at
her chest as if she were stifling. Freckles' grasp on her tightened
until he drew her beside him. He slipped his arm around her and
drew her face to his pillow.
"Don't, Angel; for the love of mercy don't be doing that,"
he implored. "I can't be bearing it. Tell me. You must tell me."
The Angel shook her head.
"That ain't fair, Angel," said Freckles. "You made me tell you
when it was like tearing the heart raw from me breast. And you was
for making everything heaven--just heaven and nothing else for me.
If I'm so much more now than I was an hour ago, maybe I can be
thinking of some way to fix things. You will be telling me?" he
coaxed, moving his cheek against her hair.
The Angel's head moved in negation. Freckles did a moment of
intent thinking.
"Maybe I can be guessing," he whispered. "Will you be giving me
three chances?"
There was the faintest possible assent.
"You didn't want me to be knowing me name," guessed Freckles.
The Angel's head sprang from the pillow and her tear-stained face
flamed with outraged indignation.
"Why, I did too!" she cried angrily.
"One gone," said Freckles calmly. "You didn't want me to have
relatives, a home, and money."
"I did!" exclaimed the Angel. "Didn't I go myself, all alone, into
the city, and find them when I was afraid as death? I did too!"
"Two gone," said Freckles. "You didn't want the beautifulest girl
in the world to be telling me.----"
Down went the Angel's face and a heavy sob shook her. Freckles'
clasp tightened around her shoulders, while his face, in its
conflicting emotions, was a study. He was so stunned and bewildered
by the miracle that had been performed in bringing to light his
name and relatives that he had no strength left for elaborate
mental processes. Despite all it meant to him to know his name at
last, and that he was of honorable birth--knowledge without which
life was an eternaldisgrace and burden the one thing that was
hammering in Freckles' heart and beating in his brain, past any
attempted expression, was the fact that, while nameless and
possibly born in shame, the Angel had told him that she loved him.
He could find no word with which to begin to voice the rapture of
his heart over that. But if she regretted it--if it had been a
thing done out of her pity for his condition, or her feeling of
responsibility, if it killed him after all, there was only one
thing left to do. Not for McLean, not for the Bird Woman, not for
the Duncans would Freckles have done it--but for the Angel--if it
would make her happy--he would do anything.
"Angel," whispered Freckles, with his lips against her hair, "you
haven't learned your history book very well, or else you've forgotten."
"Forgotten what?" sobbed the Angel.
"Forgotten about the real knight, Ladybird," breathed Freckles.
"Don't you know that, if anything happened that made his lady
sorry, a real knight just simply couldn't be remembering it? Angel,
darling little Swamp Angel, you be listening to me. There was one
night on the trail, one solemn, grand, white night, that there
wasn't ever any other like before or since, when the dear Boss put
his arm around me and told me that he loved me; but if you care,
Angel, if you don't want it that way, why, I ain't remembering that
anyone else ever did--not in me whole life."
The Angel lifted her head and looked into the depths of Freckles'
honest gray eyes, and they met hers unwaveringly; but the pain in
them was pitiful.
"Do you mean," she demanded, "that you don't remember that a
brazen, forward girl told you, when you hadn't asked her, that
she"--the Angel choked on it a second, but she gave a gulp and
brought it out bravely--"that she loved you?"
"No!" cried Freckles. "No! I don't remember anything of the kind!"
But all the songbirds of his soul burst into melody over that one
little clause: "When you hadn't asked her."
"But you will," said the Angel. "You may live to be an old, old
man, and then you will."
"I will not!" cried Freckles. "How can you think it, Angel?"
"You won't even LOOK as if you remember?"
"I will not!" persisted Freckles. "I'll be swearing to it if you
want me to. If you wasn't too tired to think this thing out
straight, you'd be seeing that I couldn't--that I just simply
couldn't! I'd rather give it all up now and go into eternity alone,
without ever seeing a soul of me same blood, or me home, or hearing
another man call me by the name I was born to, than to remember
anything that would be hurting you, Angel. I should think you'd be
understanding that it ain't no ways possible for me to do it."
The Angel's tear-stained face flashed into dazzling beauty.
A half-hysterical little laugh broke from her heart and bubbled over
her lips.
"Oh, Freckles, forgive me!" she cried. "I've been through so much
that I'm scarcely myself, or I wouldn't be here bothering you when you
should be sleeping. Of course you couldn't! I knew it all the time!
I was just scared! I was forgetting that you were you! You're too
good a knight to remember a thing like that. Of course you are!
And when you don't remember, why, then it's the same as if it
never happened. I was almost killed because I'd gone and spoiled
everything, but now it will be all right. Now you can go on and do
things like other men, and I can have some flowers, and letters,
and my sweetheart coming, and when you are SURE, why, then YOU can tell
ME things, can't you? Oh, Freckles, I'm so glad! Oh, I'm so happy!
It's dear of you not to remember, Freckles; perfectly dear!
It's no wonder I love you so. The wonder would be if I did not.
"Then the old woman was sick about that poor little baby. She was
afraid to tell them at the Home, because she knew she never should
have left it, but she wrote a letter and sent it to where the
beautiful woman, when she was ill, had said her husband's people lived.
She told all about the little baby that she could remember:
when it was born, how it was named for the man's elder brother,
that its hand had been cut off in the fire, and where she had put
it to be doctored and taken care of. She told them that its mother
and father were both burned, and she begged and implored them to
come after it.
"You'd think that would have melted a heart of ice, but that old
man hadn't any heart to melt, for he got that letter and read it.
He hid it away among his papers and never told a soul. A few months
ago he died. When his elder son went to settle his business, he
found the letter almost the first thing. He dropped everything, and
came, with his wife, to hunt that baby, because he always had loved
his brother dearly, and wanted him back. He had hunted for him all
he dared all these years, but when he got here you were gone--I
mean the baby was gone, and I had to tell you, Freckles, for you
see, it might have happened to you like that just as easy as to
that other lost boy."
Freckles reached up and turned the Angel's face until he compelled
her eyes to meet his.
"Angel," he asked quietly, "why don't you look at me when you are
telling about that lost boy?"
"I--I didn't know I wasn't," faltered the Angel.
"It seems to me," said Freckles, his breathbeginning to come in
sharp wheezes, "that you got us rather mixed, and it ain't like you
to be mixing things till one can't be knowing. If they were telling
you so much, did they say which hand was for being off that lost boy?"
The Angel's eyes escaped again.
"It--it was the same as yours," she ventured, barelybreathing in
her fear.
Still Freckles lay rigid and whiter than the coverlet.
"Would that boy be as old as me?" he asked.
"Yes," said the Angel faintly.
"Angel," said Freckles at last, catching her wrist, "are you trying
to tell me that there is somebody hunting a boy that you're
thinking might be me? Are you belavin' you've found me relations?"
Then the Angel's eyes came home. The time had come. She pinioned
Freckles' arms to his sides and bent above him.
"How strong are you, dear heart?" she breathed. "How brave are you?
Can you bear it? Dare I tell you that?"
"No!" gasped Freckles. "Not if you're sure! I can't bear it!
I'll die if you do!"
The day had been one unremitting strain with the Angel.
Nerve tension was drawn to the finest thread. It snapped suddenly.
"Die!" she flamed. "Die, if I tell you that! You said this morning
that you would die if you DIDN'T know your name, and if your people
were honorable. Now I've gone and found you a name that stands for
ages of honor, a mother who loved you enough to go into the fire
and die for you, and the nicest kind of relatives, and you turn
round and say you'll die over that! YOU JUST TRY DYING AND YOU'LL
GET A GOOD SLAP!"
The Angel stood glaring at him. One second Freckles lay paralyzed
and dumb with astonishment. The next the Irish in his soul arose
above everything. A laugh burst from him. The terrified Angel
caught him in her arms and tried to stifle the sound. She implored
and commanded. When he was too worn to utter another sound, his
eyes laughed silently.
After a long time, when he was quiet and rested, the Angel
commenced talking to him gently, and this time her big eyes, humid
with tenderness and mellow with happiness, seemed as if they could
not leave his face.
"Dear Freckles," she was saying, "across your knees there is the
face of the mother who went into the fire for you, and I know the
name--old and full of honor--to which you were born. Dear heart,
which will you have first?"
Freckles was very tired; the big drops of perspiration ran together
on his temples; but the watching Angel caught the words his lips
formed, "Me mother!"
She lifted the lovely pictured face and set it in the nook of his arm.
Freckles caught her hand and drew her beside him, and together
they gazed at the picture while the tears slid over their cheeks.
"Me mother! Oh, me mother! Can you ever be forgiving me? Oh, me
beautiful little mother!" chanted Freckles over and over in exalted
wonder, until he was so completely exhausted that his lips refused
to form the question in his weary eyes.
"Wait!" cried the Angel with inborn refinement, for she could no
more answer that question than he could ask. "Wait, I will write it!"
She hurried to the table, caught up the nurse's pencil, and on the
back of a prescription tablet scrawled it: "Terence Maxwell O'More,
Dunderry House, County Clare, Ireland."
Before she had finished came Freckles' voice: "Angel, are you hurrying?"
"Yes," said the Angel; "I am. But there is a good deal of it. I have
to put in your house and country, so that you will feel located."
"Me house?" marveled Freckles.
"Of course," said the Angel. "Your uncle says your grandmother left
your father her dower house and estate, because she knew his father
would cut him off. You get that, and all your share of your
grandfather's property besides. It is all set off for you and
waiting. Lord O'More told me so. I suspect you are richer than
McLean, Freckles."
She closed his fingers over the slip and straightened his hair.
"Now you are all right, dear Limberlost guard," she said. "You go
to sleep and don't think of a thing but just pure joy, joy, joy!
I'll keep your people until you wake up. You are too tired to see
anyone else just now!"
Freckles caught her skirt as she turned from him.
"I'll go to sleep in five minutes," he said, "if you will be doing
just one thing more for me. Send for your father! Oh, Angel, send
for him quick! How will I ever be waiting until he comes?"
One instant the Angel stood looking at him. The next a crimson wave
darkly stained her lovely face. Her chin began a spasmodic
quivering and the tears sprang into her eyes. Her hands caught at
her chest as if she were stifling. Freckles' grasp on her tightened
until he drew her beside him. He slipped his arm around her and
drew her face to his pillow.
"Don't, Angel; for the love of mercy don't be doing that,"
he implored. "I can't be bearing it. Tell me. You must tell me."
The Angel shook her head.
"That ain't fair, Angel," said Freckles. "You made me tell you
when it was like tearing the heart raw from me breast. And you was
for making everything heaven--just heaven and nothing else for me.
If I'm so much more now than I was an hour ago, maybe I can be
thinking of some way to fix things. You will be telling me?" he
coaxed, moving his cheek against her hair.
The Angel's head moved in negation. Freckles did a moment of
intent thinking.
"Maybe I can be guessing," he whispered. "Will you be giving me
three chances?"
There was the faintest possible assent.
"You didn't want me to be knowing me name," guessed Freckles.
The Angel's head sprang from the pillow and her tear-stained face
flamed with outraged indignation.
"Why, I did too!" she cried angrily.
"One gone," said Freckles calmly. "You didn't want me to have
relatives, a home, and money."
"I did!" exclaimed the Angel. "Didn't I go myself, all alone, into
the city, and find them when I was afraid as death? I did too!"
"Two gone," said Freckles. "You didn't want the beautifulest girl
in the world to be telling me.----"
Down went the Angel's face and a heavy sob shook her. Freckles'
clasp tightened around her shoulders, while his face, in its
conflicting emotions, was a study. He was so stunned and bewildered
by the miracle that had been performed in bringing to light his
name and relatives that he had no strength left for elaborate
mental processes. Despite all it meant to him to know his name at
last, and that he was of honorable birth--knowledge without which
life was an eternaldisgrace and burden the one thing that was
hammering in Freckles' heart and beating in his brain, past any
attempted expression, was the fact that, while nameless and
possibly born in shame, the Angel had told him that she loved him.
He could find no word with which to begin to voice the rapture of
his heart over that. But if she regretted it--if it had been a
thing done out of her pity for his condition, or her feeling of
responsibility, if it killed him after all, there was only one
thing left to do. Not for McLean, not for the Bird Woman, not for
the Duncans would Freckles have done it--but for the Angel--if it
would make her happy--he would do anything.
"Angel," whispered Freckles, with his lips against her hair, "you
haven't learned your history book very well, or else you've forgotten."
"Forgotten what?" sobbed the Angel.
"Forgotten about the real knight, Ladybird," breathed Freckles.
"Don't you know that, if anything happened that made his lady
sorry, a real knight just simply couldn't be remembering it? Angel,
darling little Swamp Angel, you be listening to me. There was one
night on the trail, one solemn, grand, white night, that there
wasn't ever any other like before or since, when the dear Boss put
his arm around me and told me that he loved me; but if you care,
Angel, if you don't want it that way, why, I ain't remembering that
anyone else ever did--not in me whole life."
The Angel lifted her head and looked into the depths of Freckles'
honest gray eyes, and they met hers unwaveringly; but the pain in
them was pitiful.
"Do you mean," she demanded, "that you don't remember that a
brazen, forward girl told you, when you hadn't asked her, that
she"--the Angel choked on it a second, but she gave a gulp and
brought it out bravely--"that she loved you?"
"No!" cried Freckles. "No! I don't remember anything of the kind!"
But all the songbirds of his soul burst into melody over that one
little clause: "When you hadn't asked her."
"But you will," said the Angel. "You may live to be an old, old
man, and then you will."
"I will not!" cried Freckles. "How can you think it, Angel?"
"You won't even LOOK as if you remember?"
"I will not!" persisted Freckles. "I'll be swearing to it if you
want me to. If you wasn't too tired to think this thing out
straight, you'd be seeing that I couldn't--that I just simply
couldn't! I'd rather give it all up now and go into eternity alone,
without ever seeing a soul of me same blood, or me home, or hearing
another man call me by the name I was born to, than to remember
anything that would be hurting you, Angel. I should think you'd be
understanding that it ain't no ways possible for me to do it."
The Angel's tear-stained face flashed into dazzling beauty.
A half-hysterical little laugh broke from her heart and bubbled over
her lips.
"Oh, Freckles, forgive me!" she cried. "I've been through so much
that I'm scarcely myself, or I wouldn't be here bothering you when you
should be sleeping. Of course you couldn't! I knew it all the time!
I was just scared! I was forgetting that you were you! You're too
good a knight to remember a thing like that. Of course you are!
And when you don't remember, why, then it's the same as if it
never happened. I was almost killed because I'd gone and spoiled
everything, but now it will be all right. Now you can go on and do
things like other men, and I can have some flowers, and letters,
and my sweetheart coming, and when you are SURE, why, then YOU can tell
ME things, can't you? Oh, Freckles, I'm so glad! Oh, I'm so happy!
It's dear of you not to remember, Freckles; perfectly dear!
It's no wonder I love you so. The wonder would be if I did not.
- breath [breθ]
n.呼吸；气息 (初中英语单词) - beginning [bi´giniŋ] n.开始，开端；起源 (初中英语单词)
- knowing [´nəuiŋ] a.会意的，心照不宣的 (初中英语单词)
- barely [´beəli] ad.公开地；仅仅 (初中英语单词)
- astonishment [ə´stɔniʃmənt] n.吃惊；惊异 (初中英语单词)
- gently [´dʒentli] ad.温和地；静静地 (初中英语单词)
- grandmother [´græn,mʌðə] n.(外)祖母 (初中英语单词)
- estate [i´steit] n.财产；庄园；等级 (初中英语单词)
- suspect [´sʌspekt, sə´spekt] v.怀疑；觉得 n.嫌疑犯 (初中英语单词)
- waiting [´weitiŋ] n.等候；伺候 (初中英语单词)
- instant [´instənt] a.立即的 n.紧迫；瞬间 (初中英语单词)
- sprang [spræŋ] spring 的过去式 (初中英语单词)
- calmly [´kɑ:mli] ad.平静地；无风浪地 (初中英语单词)
- miracle [´mirəkl] n.奇迹；令人惊奇的 (初中英语单词)
- despite [di´spait] prep.尽管 (初中英语单词)
- eternal [i´tə:nəl] a.永远的；永恒的 (初中英语单词)
- disgrace [dis´greis] n.耻辱 vt.玷辱；贬黜 (初中英语单词)
- solemn [´sɔləm] a.严肃的；隆重的 (初中英语单词)
- forgive [fə´giv] vt.原谅，谅解，宽恕 (初中英语单词)
- sleeping [´sli:piŋ] n.&a.睡着(的) (初中英语单词)
- strain [strein] vt.拉紧 vi.拖 n.张力 (高中英语单词)
- stifle [´staifəl] vt.(使)窒息，闷死 (高中英语单词)
- tenderness [´tendənis] n.娇嫩；柔软；温柔 (高中英语单词)
- mellow [´meləu] a.芳醇的 v.(使)成熟 (高中英语单词)
- saying [´seiŋ, ´sei-iŋ] n.言语；言论；格言 (高中英语单词)
- hurried [´hʌrid] a.仓促的，慌忙的 (高中英语单词)
- tablet [´tæblit] n.碑；牌；匾额 (高中英语单词)
- crimson [´krimzən] a.&n.深(紫)红(的) (高中英语单词)
- bearing [´beəriŋ] n.举止；忍耐；关系 (高中英语单词)
- rapture [´ræptʃə] n.着迷；全神贯注 (高中英语单词)
- learned [´lə:nid] a.有学问的，博学的 (高中英语单词)
- knight [nait] n.骑士；爵士 (高中英语单词)
- melody [´melədi] n.悦耳的音调；乐曲 (高中英语单词)
- seeing [si:iŋ] see的现在分词 n.视觉 (高中英语单词)
- eternity [i´tə:niti] n.永恒，来世，无穷 (高中英语单词)
- sweetheart [´swi:thɑ:t] n.爱人；情人 (高中英语单词)
- perfectly [´pə:fiktli] ad.理想地；完美地 (高中英语单词)
- dearly [´diəli] ad.深深地(爱等)；昂贵 (英语四级单词)
- tension [´tenʃən] n.紧张；压力；拉力 (英语四级单词)
- refinement [ri´fainmənt] n.精炼；精制；文雅 (英语四级单词)
- clause [klɔ:z] n.条(款)；分句，从句 (英语四级单词)
- hunting [´hʌntiŋ] n.打猎 (英语六级单词)
- beating [´bi:tiŋ] n.敲；搅打；失败 (英语六级单词)
- nameless [´neimlis] a.无名字的；无名声的 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
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