章节正文
were growing more noisy, shouting, as they had to do, to be
heard over the deep clamor of the mills. Suddenly they grew
less boisterous,--at the far end, entirely silent. Something
unusual had happened. After a moment, the silence came nearer;
the men stopped their jeers and drunken choruses. Deborah,
stupidly lifting up her head, saw the cause of the quiet. A
group of five or six men were slowly approaching, stopping to
examine each furnace as they came. Visitors often came to see
the mills after night: except by growing less noisy, the men
took no notice of them. The furnace where Wolfe worked was near
the bounds of the works; they halted there hot and tired: a
walk over one of these great foundries is no trifling task. The
woman, drawing out of sight, turned over to sleep. Wolfe,
seeing them stop, suddenly roused from his indifferent stupor,
and watched them keenly. He knew some of them: the overseer,
Clarke,--a son of Kirby, one of the mill-owners,--and a Doctor
May, one of the town-physicians. The other two were strangers.
Wolfe came closer. He seized eagerly every chance that brought
him into contact with this mysterious class that shone down on
him perpetually with the glamour of another order of being.
What made the difference between them? That was the mystery of
his life. He had a vague notion that perhaps to-night he could
find it out. One of the strangers sat down on a pile of bricks,
and beckoned young Kirby to his side.
"This is hot, with a vengeance. A match, please?"--lighting his
cigar. "But the walk is worth the trouble. If it were not that
you must have heard it so often, Kirby, I would tell you that
your works look like Dante's Inferno."
Kirby laughed.
"Yes. Yonder is Farinata himself in the burning tomb,"--
pointing to some figure in the shimmering shadows.
"Judging from some of the faces of your men," said the other,
"they bid fair to try the reality of Dante's vision, some day."
Young Kirby looked curiously around, as if seeing the faces of
his hands for the first time.
"They're bad enough, that's true. A desperate set, I fancy.
Eh, Clarke?"
The overseer did not hear him. He was talking of net profits
just then,--giving, in fact, a schedule of the annual business
of the firm to a sharp peering little Yankee, who jotted down
notes on a paper laid on the crown of his hat: a reporter for
one of the city-papers, getting up a series of reviews of the
leading manufactories. The other gentlemen had accompanied them
merely for amusement. They were silent until the notes were
finished, drying their feet at the furnaces, and sheltering
their faces from the intolerable heat. At last the overseer
concluded with--
"I believe that is a pretty fair estimate, Captain."
"Here, some of you men!" said Kirby, "bring up those boards. We
may as well sit down, gentlemen, until the rain is over. It
cannot last much longer at this rate."
"Pig-metal,"--mumbled the reporter,--"um! coal facilities,--um!
hands employed, twelve hundred,--bitumen,--um!--all right, I
believe, Mr. Clarke;--sinking-fund,--what did you say was your
sinking-fund?"
"Twelve hundred hands?" said the stranger, the young man who
had first spoken. "Do you control their votes, Kirby?"
"Control? No." The young man smiled complacently. "But my
father brought seven hundred votes to the polls for his
candidate last November. No force-work, you understand,--only
a speech or two, a hint to form themselves into a society, and
a bit of red and blue bunting to make them a flag. The
Invincible Roughs,--I believe that is their name. I forget the
motto: 'Our country's hope,' I think."
There was a laugh. The young man talking to Kirby sat with an
amused light in his cool gray eye, surveying critically the
half-clothed figures of the puddlers, and the slow swing of
their brawny muscles. He was a stranger in the city,--spending
a couple of months in the borders of a Slave State, to study the
institutions of the South,--a brother-in-law of Kirby's,--
Mitchell. He was an amateur gymnast,--hence his anatomical eye;
a patron, in a blase' way, of the prize-ring; a man who sucked
the essence out of a science or philosophy in an indifferent,
gentlemanly way; who took Kant, Novalis, Humboldt, for what they
were worth in his own scales; accepting all, despising nothing,
in heaven, earth, or hell, but one-idead men; with a temper
yielding and brilliant as summer water, until his Self was
touched, when it was ice, though brilliant still. Such men are
not rare in the States.
As he knocked the ashes from his cigar, Wolfe caught with a
quick pleasure the contour of the white hand, the blood-glow of
a red ring he wore. His voice, too, and that of Kirby's,
touched him like music,--low, even, with chording cadences.
About this man Mitchell hung the impalpable atmosphere belonging
to the thoroughbred gentleman, Wolfe, scraping away the ashes
beside him, was conscious of it, did obeisance to it with his
artist sense, unconscious that he did so.
The rain did not cease. Clarke and the reporter left the mills;
the others, comfortably seated near the furnace, lingered,
smoking and talking in a desultory way. Greek would not have
been more unintelligible to the furnace-tenders, whose presence
they soon forgot entirely. Kirby drew out a newspaper from his
pocket and read aloud some article, which they discussed
eagerly. At every sentence, Wolfe listened more and more like
a dumb, hopeless animal, with a duller, more stolid look
creeping over his face, glancing now and then at Mitchell,
marking acutely every smallest sign of refinement, then back to
himself, seeing as in a mirror his filthy body, his more stained
soul.
Never! He had no words for such a thought, but he knew now, in
all the sharpness of the bitter certainty, that between them
there was a great gulf never to be passed. Never!
The bell of the mills rang for midnight. Sunday morning had
dawned. Whatever hidden message lay in the tolling bells
floated past these men unknown. Yet it was there. Veiled in
the solemn music ushering the risen Saviour was a key-note to
solve the darkest secrets of a world gone wrong,--even this
social riddle which the brain of the grimy puddler grappled with
madly to-night.
The men began to withdraw the metal from the caldrons. The
mills were deserted on Sundays, except by the hands who fed the
fires, and those who had no lodgings and slept usually on the
ash-heaps. The three strangers sat still during the next hour,
watching the men cover the furnaces, laughing now and then at
some jest of Kirby's.
"Do you know," said Mitchell, "I like this view of the works
better than when the glare was fiercest? These heavy shadows
and the amphitheatre of smothered fires are ghostly, unreal.
One could fancy these red smouldering lights to be the half-shut
eyes of wild beasts, and the spectral figures their victims in
the den."
Kirby laughed. "You are fanciful. Come, let us get out of the
den. The spectral figures, as you call them, are a little too
real for me to fancy a close proximity in the darkness,--
unarmed, too."
The others rose, buttoning their overcoats, and lighting cigars.
"Raining, still," said Doctor May, "and hard. Where did we
leave the coach, Mitchell?"
"At the other side of the works.--Kirby, what's that?"
Mitchell started back, half-frightened, as, suddenly turning a
corner, the white figure of a woman faced him in the darkness,--
a woman, white, of giant proportions, crouching on the ground,
her arms flung out in some wild gesture of warning.
"Stop! Make that fire burn there!" cried Kirby, stopping short.
The flame burst out, flashing the gaunt figure into bold relief.
Mitchell drew a long breath.
"I thought it was alive," he said, going up curiously.
The others followed.
"Not marble, eh?" asked Kirby, touching it.
One of the lower overseers stopped.
"Korl, Sir."
"Who did it?"
"Can't say. Some of the hands; chipped it out in off-hours."
"Chipped to some purpose, I should say. What a flesh-tint the
stuff has! Do you see, Mitchell?"
"I see."
He had stepped aside where the light fell boldest on the figure,
looking at it in silence. There was not one line of beauty or
grace in it: a nude woman's form, muscular, grown coarse with
labor, the powerful limbs instinct with some one poignant
longing. One idea: there it was in the tense, rigid muscles,
the clutching hands, the wild, eager face, like that of a
starving wolf's. Kirby and Doctor May walked around it,
critical, curious. Mitchell stood aloof, silent. The figure
touched him strangely.
"Not badly done," said Doctor May, "Where did the fellow learn
that sweep of the muscles in the arm and hand? Look at them!
They are groping,do you see?--clutching: the peculiar action of
a man dying of thirst."
"They have ample facilities for studying anatomy," sneered
Kirby, glancing at the half-naked figures.
"Look," continued the Doctor, "at this bony wrist, and the
strained sinews of the instep! A working-woman,--the very type
of her class."
"God forbid!" muttered Mitchell.
"Why?" demanded May, "What does the fellow intend by the
figure? I cannot catch the meaning."
"Ask him," said the other, dryly, "There he stands,"--pointing
to Wolfe, who stood with a group of men, leaning on his ash-
rake.
The Doctor beckoned him with the affable smile which kind-
hearted men put on, when talking to these people.
"Mr. Mitchell has picked you out as the man who did this,--I'm
sure I don't know why. But what did you mean by it?"
"She be hungry."
Wolfe's eyes answered Mitchell, not the Doctor.
"Oh-h! But what a mistake you have made, my fine fellow! You
have given no sign of starvation to the body. It is strong,--
terribly strong. It has the mad, half-despairing gesture of
drowning."
Wolfe stammered, glanced appealingly at Mitchell, who saw the
soul of the thing, he knew. But the cool, probing eyes were
turned on himself now,--mocking, cruel, relentless.
"Not hungry for meat," the furnace-tender said at last.
"What then? Whiskey?" jeered Kirby, with a coarse laugh.
Wolfe was silent a moment, thinking.
"I dunno," he said, with a bewildered look. "It mebbe. Summat
to make her live, I think,--like you. Whiskey ull do it, in a
way.
The young man laughed again. Mitchell flashed a look of disgust
somewhere,--not at Wolfe.
"May," he broke out impatiently, "are you blind? Look at that
woman's face! It asks questions of God, and says, 'I have a
right to know,' Good God, how hungry it is!"
They looked a moment; then May turned to the mill-owner:--
"Have you many such hands as this? What are you going to do
with them? Keep them at puddling iron?"
Kirby shrugged his shoulders. Mitchell's look had irritated
him.
"Ce n'est pas mon affaire. I have no fancy for nursing infant
geniuses. I suppose there are some stray gleams of mind and
heard over the deep clamor of the mills. Suddenly they grew
less boisterous,--at the far end, entirely silent. Something
unusual had happened. After a moment, the silence came nearer;
the men stopped their jeers and drunken choruses. Deborah,
stupidly lifting up her head, saw the cause of the quiet. A
group of five or six men were slowly approaching, stopping to
examine each furnace as they came. Visitors often came to see
the mills after night: except by growing less noisy, the men
took no notice of them. The furnace where Wolfe worked was near
the bounds of the works; they halted there hot and tired: a
walk over one of these great foundries is no trifling task. The
woman, drawing out of sight, turned over to sleep. Wolfe,
seeing them stop, suddenly roused from his indifferent stupor,
and watched them keenly. He knew some of them: the overseer,
Clarke,--a son of Kirby, one of the mill-owners,--and a Doctor
May, one of the town-physicians. The other two were strangers.
Wolfe came closer. He seized eagerly every chance that brought
him into contact with this mysterious class that shone down on
him perpetually with the glamour of another order of being.
What made the difference between them? That was the mystery of
his life. He had a vague notion that perhaps to-night he could
find it out. One of the strangers sat down on a pile of bricks,
and beckoned young Kirby to his side.
"This is hot, with a vengeance. A match, please?"--lighting his
cigar. "But the walk is worth the trouble. If it were not that
you must have heard it so often, Kirby, I would tell you that
your works look like Dante's Inferno."
Kirby laughed.
"Yes. Yonder is Farinata himself in the burning tomb,"--
pointing to some figure in the shimmering shadows.
"Judging from some of the faces of your men," said the other,
"they bid fair to try the reality of Dante's vision, some day."
Young Kirby looked curiously around, as if seeing the faces of
his hands for the first time.
"They're bad enough, that's true. A desperate set, I fancy.
Eh, Clarke?"
The overseer did not hear him. He was talking of net profits
just then,--giving, in fact, a schedule of the annual business
of the firm to a sharp peering little Yankee, who jotted down
notes on a paper laid on the crown of his hat: a reporter for
one of the city-papers, getting up a series of reviews of the
leading manufactories. The other gentlemen had accompanied them
merely for amusement. They were silent until the notes were
finished, drying their feet at the furnaces, and sheltering
their faces from the intolerable heat. At last the overseer
concluded with--
"I believe that is a pretty fair estimate, Captain."
"Here, some of you men!" said Kirby, "bring up those boards. We
may as well sit down, gentlemen, until the rain is over. It
cannot last much longer at this rate."
"Pig-metal,"--mumbled the reporter,--"um! coal facilities,--um!
hands employed, twelve hundred,--bitumen,--um!--all right, I
believe, Mr. Clarke;--sinking-fund,--what did you say was your
sinking-fund?"
"Twelve hundred hands?" said the stranger, the young man who
had first spoken. "Do you control their votes, Kirby?"
"Control? No." The young man smiled complacently. "But my
father brought seven hundred votes to the polls for his
candidate last November. No force-work, you understand,--only
a speech or two, a hint to form themselves into a society, and
a bit of red and blue bunting to make them a flag. The
Invincible Roughs,--I believe that is their name. I forget the
motto: 'Our country's hope,' I think."
There was a laugh. The young man talking to Kirby sat with an
amused light in his cool gray eye, surveying critically the
half-clothed figures of the puddlers, and the slow swing of
their brawny muscles. He was a stranger in the city,--spending
a couple of months in the borders of a Slave State, to study the
institutions of the South,--a brother-in-law of Kirby's,--
Mitchell. He was an amateur gymnast,--hence his anatomical eye;
a patron, in a blase' way, of the prize-ring; a man who sucked
the essence out of a science or philosophy in an indifferent,
gentlemanly way; who took Kant, Novalis, Humboldt, for what they
were worth in his own scales; accepting all, despising nothing,
in heaven, earth, or hell, but one-idead men; with a temper
yielding and brilliant as summer water, until his Self was
touched, when it was ice, though brilliant still. Such men are
not rare in the States.
As he knocked the ashes from his cigar, Wolfe caught with a
quick pleasure the contour of the white hand, the blood-glow of
a red ring he wore. His voice, too, and that of Kirby's,
touched him like music,--low, even, with chording cadences.
About this man Mitchell hung the impalpable atmosphere belonging
to the thoroughbred gentleman, Wolfe, scraping away the ashes
beside him, was conscious of it, did obeisance to it with his
artist sense, unconscious that he did so.
The rain did not cease. Clarke and the reporter left the mills;
the others, comfortably seated near the furnace, lingered,
smoking and talking in a desultory way. Greek would not have
been more unintelligible to the furnace-tenders, whose presence
they soon forgot entirely. Kirby drew out a newspaper from his
pocket and read aloud some article, which they discussed
eagerly. At every sentence, Wolfe listened more and more like
a dumb, hopeless animal, with a duller, more stolid look
creeping over his face, glancing now and then at Mitchell,
marking acutely every smallest sign of refinement, then back to
himself, seeing as in a mirror his filthy body, his more stained
soul.
Never! He had no words for such a thought, but he knew now, in
all the sharpness of the bitter certainty, that between them
there was a great gulf never to be passed. Never!
The bell of the mills rang for midnight. Sunday morning had
dawned. Whatever hidden message lay in the tolling bells
floated past these men unknown. Yet it was there. Veiled in
the solemn music ushering the risen Saviour was a key-note to
solve the darkest secrets of a world gone wrong,--even this
social riddle which the brain of the grimy puddler grappled with
madly to-night.
The men began to withdraw the metal from the caldrons. The
mills were deserted on Sundays, except by the hands who fed the
fires, and those who had no lodgings and slept usually on the
ash-heaps. The three strangers sat still during the next hour,
watching the men cover the furnaces, laughing now and then at
some jest of Kirby's.
"Do you know," said Mitchell, "I like this view of the works
better than when the glare was fiercest? These heavy shadows
and the amphitheatre of smothered fires are ghostly, unreal.
One could fancy these red smouldering lights to be the half-shut
eyes of wild beasts, and the spectral figures their victims in
the den."
Kirby laughed. "You are fanciful. Come, let us get out of the
den. The spectral figures, as you call them, are a little too
real for me to fancy a close proximity in the darkness,--
unarmed, too."
The others rose, buttoning their overcoats, and lighting cigars.
"Raining, still," said Doctor May, "and hard. Where did we
leave the coach, Mitchell?"
"At the other side of the works.--Kirby, what's that?"
Mitchell started back, half-frightened, as, suddenly turning a
corner, the white figure of a woman faced him in the darkness,--
a woman, white, of giant proportions, crouching on the ground,
her arms flung out in some wild gesture of warning.
"Stop! Make that fire burn there!" cried Kirby, stopping short.
The flame burst out, flashing the gaunt figure into bold relief.
Mitchell drew a long breath.
"I thought it was alive," he said, going up curiously.
The others followed.
"Not marble, eh?" asked Kirby, touching it.
One of the lower overseers stopped.
"Korl, Sir."
"Who did it?"
"Can't say. Some of the hands; chipped it out in off-hours."
"Chipped to some purpose, I should say. What a flesh-tint the
stuff has! Do you see, Mitchell?"
"I see."
He had stepped aside where the light fell boldest on the figure,
looking at it in silence. There was not one line of beauty or
grace in it: a nude woman's form, muscular, grown coarse with
labor, the powerful limbs instinct with some one poignant
longing. One idea: there it was in the tense, rigid muscles,
the clutching hands, the wild, eager face, like that of a
starving wolf's. Kirby and Doctor May walked around it,
critical, curious. Mitchell stood aloof, silent. The figure
touched him strangely.
"Not badly done," said Doctor May, "Where did the fellow learn
that sweep of the muscles in the arm and hand? Look at them!
They are groping,do you see?--clutching: the peculiar action of
a man dying of thirst."
"They have ample facilities for studying anatomy," sneered
Kirby, glancing at the half-naked figures.
"Look," continued the Doctor, "at this bony wrist, and the
strained sinews of the instep! A working-woman,--the very type
of her class."
"God forbid!" muttered Mitchell.
"Why?" demanded May, "What does the fellow intend by the
figure? I cannot catch the meaning."
"Ask him," said the other, dryly, "There he stands,"--pointing
to Wolfe, who stood with a group of men, leaning on his ash-
rake.
The Doctor beckoned him with the affable smile which kind-
hearted men put on, when talking to these people.
"Mr. Mitchell has picked you out as the man who did this,--I'm
sure I don't know why. But what did you mean by it?"
"She be hungry."
Wolfe's eyes answered Mitchell, not the Doctor.
"Oh-h! But what a mistake you have made, my fine fellow! You
have given no sign of starvation to the body. It is strong,--
terribly strong. It has the mad, half-despairing gesture of
drowning."
Wolfe stammered, glanced appealingly at Mitchell, who saw the
soul of the thing, he knew. But the cool, probing eyes were
turned on himself now,--mocking, cruel, relentless.
"Not hungry for meat," the furnace-tender said at last.
"What then? Whiskey?" jeered Kirby, with a coarse laugh.
Wolfe was silent a moment, thinking.
"I dunno," he said, with a bewildered look. "It mebbe. Summat
to make her live, I think,--like you. Whiskey ull do it, in a
way.
The young man laughed again. Mitchell flashed a look of disgust
somewhere,--not at Wolfe.
"May," he broke out impatiently, "are you blind? Look at that
woman's face! It asks questions of God, and says, 'I have a
right to know,' Good God, how hungry it is!"
They looked a moment; then May turned to the mill-owner:--
"Have you many such hands as this? What are you going to do
with them? Keep them at puddling iron?"
Kirby shrugged his shoulders. Mitchell's look had irritated
him.
"Ce n'est pas mon affaire. I have no fancy for nursing infant
geniuses. I suppose there are some stray gleams of mind and
- drunken [´drʌŋkən]
a.喝醉的；常醉的 (初中英语单词) - furnace [´fə:nis] n.熔炉；火炉 (初中英语单词)
- trifling [´traifliŋ] a.微小的；轻浮的 (初中英语单词)
- keenly [´ki:nli] ad.敏锐地；强烈地 (初中英语单词)
- eagerly [´i:gəli] ad.渴望地，急切地 (初中英语单词)
- contact [´kɔntækt] n.接触；联系 v.联络 (初中英语单词)
- mysterious [mi´stiəriəs] a.神秘的；难以理解的 (初中英语单词)
- mystery [´mistəri] n.神秘；秘密；故弄玄虚 (初中英语单词)
- reality [ri´æliti] n.现实(性)；真实；逼真 (初中英语单词)
- vision [´viʒən] n.视觉；想象力；幻影 (初中英语单词)
- curiously [´kjuəriəsli] ad.好奇地；稀奇古怪地 (初中英语单词)
- desperate [´despərit] a.拼死的；绝望的 (初中英语单词)
- annual [´ænjuəl] a.每年的 n.年刊 (初中英语单词)
- yankee [´jæŋki] n.美国佬；美国公民 (初中英语单词)
- series [´siəri:z] n.连续；系列；丛书 (初中英语单词)
- amusement [ə´mju:zmənt] n.娱乐；文娱设施 (初中英语单词)
- estimate [´estimət, ´estimeit] n.估计；评价 vt.估价 (初中英语单词)
- spoken [´spəukən] speak的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
- amateur [´æmətə, ,æmə´tə:] n.业余爱好者 (初中英语单词)
- philosophy [fi´lɔsəfi] n.哲学；人生观 (初中英语单词)
- brilliant [´briliənt] a.灿烂的；杰出的 (初中英语单词)
- atmosphere [´ætməsfiə] n.大气；空气；气氛 (初中英语单词)
- conscious [´kɔnʃəs] a.意识的；自觉的 (初中英语单词)
- sentence [´sentəns] n.判决 vt.宣判；处刑 (初中英语单词)
- midnight [´midnait] n.午夜；漆黑 (初中英语单词)
- whatever [wɔt´evə] pron.&a.无论什么 (初中英语单词)
- hidden [´hid(ə)n] hide 的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
- solemn [´sɔləm] a.严肃的；隆重的 (初中英语单词)
- withdraw [wið´drɔ:] v.收回；撤销；撤退 (初中英语单词)
- gesture [´dʒestʃə] n.手势 v.打手势 (初中英语单词)
- marble [´mɑ:bəl] n.大理石 a.大理石的 (初中英语单词)
- coarse [kɔ:s] a.粗(糙)的；粗鲁的 (初中英语单词)
- instinct [´instiŋkt] n.本能；直觉；天资 (初中英语单词)
- peculiar [pi´kju:liə] a.特有的；奇异的 (初中英语单词)
- indifferent [in´difrənt] a.不关心的；中立的 (高中英语单词)
- vengeance [´vendʒəns] n.报复，复仇 (高中英语单词)
- seeing [si:iŋ] see的现在分词 n.视觉 (高中英语单词)
- schedule [´ʃedju:l] n.目录；清单；一览表 (高中英语单词)
- reporter [ri´pɔ:tə] n.报告人；记者；广播员 (高中英语单词)
- patron [´peitrən] n.庇护人，保护人；赞助人 (高中英语单词)
- unconscious [ʌn´kɔnʃəs] a.无意识的；不觉察的 (高中英语单词)
- comfortably [´kʌmfətəbli] ad.舒适地 (高中英语单词)
- hopeless [´həupləs] a.无望的，无可救药的 (高中英语单词)
- certainty [´sə:tənti] n.确实(性)；确信 (高中英语单词)
- riddle [´ridl] n.谜(语) v.解(谜等) (高中英语单词)
- muscular [´mʌskjulə] a.肌肉的；强有力的 (高中英语单词)
- drawing [´drɔ:iŋ] n.画图；制图；图样 (英语四级单词)
- intolerable [in´tɔlərəb(ə)l] a.无法忍受的 (英语四级单词)
- essence [´esəns] n.本质；要素；精华 (英语四级单词)
- refinement [ri´fainmənt] n.精炼；精制；文雅 (英语四级单词)
- filthy [´filθi] a.污秽的，肮脏的 (英语四级单词)
- saviour [´seiviə] n.救星；救助者 (英语四级单词)
- lighting [´laitiŋ] n.照明，发光 (英语四级单词)
- touching [´tʌtʃiŋ] a.动人的 prep.提到 (英语四级单词)
- starvation [stɑ:´veiʃən] n.饥饿；饿死 (英语四级单词)
- whiskey [´wiski] n.威士忌酒 =whisky (英语四级单词)
- impatiently [im´peiʃəntli] ad.不耐烦地，急躁地 (英语四级单词)
- bunting [´bʌntiŋ] n.旗帜；白颊鸟 (英语六级单词)
- brother-in-law [´brʌðəinlɔ:] n.姐夫；妹夫；内弟 (英语六级单词)
- contour [´kɔntuə] n.外形 vt.描...的轮廓 (英语六级单词)
- ghostly [´gəustli] a.鬼的；朦胧的 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
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