章节正文
they sounded in his ears a very pleasant song in an unknown
tongue. He meant to cure this world-cancer with a steady eye
that had never glared with hunger, and a hand that neither
poverty nor strychnine-whiskey had taught to shake. In this
morbid, distorted heart of the Welsh puddler he had failed.
Eighteen centuries ago, the Master of this man tried reform in
the streets of a city as crowded and vile as this, and did not
fail. His disciple, showing Him to-night to cultured hearers,
showing the clearness of the God-power acting through Him,
shrank back from one coarse fact; that in birth and habit the
man Christ was thrown up from the lowest of the people: his
flesh, their flesh; their blood, his blood; tempted like them,
to brutalize day by day; to lie, to steal: the actual slime and
want of their hourly life, and the wine-press he trod alone.
Yet, is there no meaning in this perpetually covered truth? If
the son of the carpenter had stood in the church that night, as
he stood with the fishermen and harlots by the sea of Galilee,
before His Father and their Father, despised and rejected of
men, without a place to lay His head, wounded for their
iniquities, bruised for their transgressions, would not that
hungry mill-boy at least, in the back seat, have "known the
man"? That Jesus did not stand there.
Wolfe rose at last, and turned from the church down the street.
He looked up; the night had come on foggy, damp; the golden
mists had vanished, and the sky lay dull and ash-colored. He
wandered again aimlessly down the street, idly wondering what
had become of the cloud-sea of crimson and scarlet. The trial-
day of this man's life was over, and he had lost the victory.
What followed was mere drifting circumstance,--a quicker walking
over the path,--that was all. Do you want to hear the end of
it? You wish me to make a tragic story out of it? Why, in the
police-reports of the morning paper you can find a dozen such
tragedies: hints of shipwrecks unlike any that ever befell on
the high seas; hints that here a power was lost to heaven,--that
there a soul went down where no tide can ebb or flow.
Commonplace enough the hints are,--jocose sometimes, done up in
rhyme.
Doctor May a month after the night I have told you of, was
reading to his wife at breakfast from this fourth column of the
morning-paper: an unusual thing,--these police-reports not
being, in general, choice reading for ladies; but it was only
one item he read.
"Oh, my dear! You remember that man I told you of, that we saw
at Kirby's mill?--that was arrested for robbing Mitchell? Here
he is; just listen:--'Circuit Court. Judge Day. Hugh Wolfe,
operative in Kirby & John's Loudon Mills. Charge, grand
larceny. Sentence, nineteen years hard labor in penitentiary.
Scoundrel! Serves him right! After all our kindness that
night! Picking Mitchell's pocket at the very time!"
His wife said something about the ingratitude of that kind of
people, and then they began to talk of something else.
Nineteen years! How easy that was to read! What a simple word
for Judge Day to utter! Nineteen years! Half a lifetime!
Hugh Wolfe sat on the window-ledge of his cell, looking out.
His ankles Were ironed. Not usual in such cases; but he had
made two desperate efforts to escape. "Well," as Haley, the
jailer, said, "small blame to him! Nineteen years' inprisonment
was not a pleasant thing to look forward to." Haley was very
good-natured about it, though Wolfe had fought him savagely.
"When he was first caught," the jailer said afterwards, in
telling the story, "before the trial, the fellow was cut down at
once,--laid there on that pallet like a dead man, with his hands
over his eyes. Never saw a man so cut down in my life. Time of
the trial, too, came the queerest dodge of any customer I ever
had. Would choose no lawyer. Judge gave him one, of course.
Gibson it Was. He tried to prove the fellow crazy; but it
wouldn't go. Thing was plain as daylight: money found on him.
'T was a hard sentence,--all the law allows; but it was for
'xample's sake. These mill-hands are gettin' onbearable. When
the sentence was read, he just looked up, and said the money was
his by rights, and that all the world had gone wrong. That
night, after the trial, a gentleman came to see him here, name
of Mitchell,--him as he stole from. Talked to him for an hour.
Thought he came for curiosity, like. After he was gone, thought
Wolfe was remarkable quiet, and went into his cell. Found him
very low; bed all bloody. Doctor said he had been bleeding at
the lungs. He was as weak as a cat; yet if ye'll b'lieve me, he
tried to get a-past me and get out. I just carried him like a
baby, and threw him on the pallet. Three days after, he tried
it again: that time reached the wall. Lord help you! he fought
like a tiger,--giv' some terrible blows. Fightin' for life, you
see; for he can't live long, shut up in the stone crib down
yonder. Got a death-cough now. 'T took two of us to bring him
down that day; so I just put the irons on his feet. There he
sits, in there. Goin' to-morrow, with a batch more of 'em.
That woman, hunchback, tried with him,--you remember?--she's
only got three years. 'Complice. But she's a woman, you know.
He's been quiet ever since I put on irons: giv' up, I suppose.
Looks white, sick-lookin'. It acts different on 'em, bein'
sentenced. Most of 'em gets reckless, devilish-like. Some
prays awful, and sings them vile songs of the mills, all in a
breath. That woman, now, she's desper't'. Been beggin' to see
Hugh, as she calls him, for three days. I'm a-goin' to let her
in. She don't go with him. Here she is in this next cell. I'm
a-goin' now to let her in."
He let her in. Wolfe did not see her. She crept into a corner
of the cell, and stood watching him. He was scratching the iron
bars of the window with a piece of tin which he had picked up,
with an idle, uncertain, vacant stare, just as a child or idiot
would do.
"Tryin' to get out, old boy?" laughed Haley. "Them irons will
need a crow-bar beside your tin, before you can open 'em."
Wolfe laughed, too, in a senseless way.
"I think I'll get out," he said.
"I believe his brain's touched," said Haley, when he came out.
The puddler scraped away with the tin for half an hour. Still
Deborah did not speak. At last she ventured nearer, and touched
his arm.
"Blood?" she said, looking at some spots on his coat with a
shudder.
He looked up at her, "Why, Deb!" he said, smiling,--such a
bright, boyish smile, that it Went to poor Deborah's heart
directly, and she sobbed and cried out loud.
"Oh, Hugh, lad! Hugh! dunnot look at me, when it wur my fault!
To think I brought hur to it! And I loved hur so! Oh lad, I
dud!"
The confession, even In this wretch, came with the woman's blush
through the sharp cry.
He did not seem to hear her,--scraping away diligently at the
bars with the bit of tin.
Was he going mad? She peered closely into his face. Something
she saw there made her draw suddenly back,--something which
Haley had not seen, that lay beneath the pinched, vacant look it
had caught since the trial, or the curious gray shadow that
rested on it. That gray shadow,--yes, she knew what that meant.
She had often seen it creeping over women's faces for months,
who died at last of slow hunger or consumption. That meant
death, distant, lingering: but this--Whatever it was the woman
saw, or thought she saw, used as she was to crime and misery,
seemed to make her sick with a new horror. Forgetting her fear
of him, she caught his shoulders, and looked keenly, steadily,
into his eyes.
"Hugh!" she cried, in a desperate whisper,--"oh, boy, not that!
for God's sake, not that!"
The vacant laugh went off his face, and he answered her in a
muttered word or two that drove her away. Yet the words were
kindly enough. Sitting there on his pallet, she cried silently
a hopeless sort of tears, but did not speak again. The man
looked up furtively at her now and then. Whatever his own
trouble was, her distress vexed him with a momentary sting.
It was market-day. The narrow window of the jail looked down
directly on the carts and wagons drawn up in a long line, where
they had unloaded. He could see, too, and hear distinctly the
clink of money as it changed hands, the busy crowd of whites and
blacks shoving, pushing one another, and the chaffering and
swearing at the stalls. Somehow, the sound, more than anything
else had done, wakened him up,--made the whole real to him. He
was done with the world and the business of it. He let the tin
fall, and looked out, pressing his face close to the rusty bars.
How they crowded and pushed! And he,--he should never walk that
pavement again! There came Neff Sanders, one of the feeders at
the mill, with a basket on his arm. Sure enough, Nyeff was
married the other week. He whistled, hoping he would look up;
but he did not. He wondered if Neff remembered he was there,--
if any of the boys thought of him up there, and thought that he
never was to go down that old cinder-road again. Never again!
He had not quite understood it before; but now he did. Not for
days or years, but never!--that was it.
How clear the light fell on that stall in front of the market!
and how like a picture it was, the dark-green heaps of corn, and
the crimson beets, and golden melons! There was another with
game: how the light flickered on that pheasant's breast, with
the purplish blood dripping over the brown feathers! He could
see the red shining of the drops, it was so near. In one minute
he could be down there. It was just a step. So easy, as it
seemed, so natural to go! Yet it could never be--not in all the
thousands of years to come--that he should put his foot on that
street again! He thought of himself with a sorrowful pity, as
of some one else. There was a dog down in the market, walking
after his master with such a stately, grave look!--only a dog,
yet he could go backwards and forwards just as he pleased: he
had good luck! Why, the very vilest cur, yelping there in the
gutter, had not lived his life, had been free to act out
whatever thought God had put into his brain; while he--No, he
would not think of that! He tried to put the thought away, and
to listen to a dispute between a countryman and a woman about
some meat; but it would come back. He, what had he done to bear
this?
Then came the sudden picture of what might have been, and now.
He knew what it was to be in the penitentiary, how it went with
men there. He knew how in these long years he should slowly
die, but not until soul and body had become corrupt and
rotten,--how, when he came out, if he lived to come, even the
lowest of the mill-hands would jeer him,--how his hands would be
weak, and his brain senseless and stupid. He believed he was
almost that now. He put his hand to his head, with a puzzled,
weary look. It ached, his head, with thinking. He tried to
quiet himself. It was only right, perhaps; he had done wrong.
But was there right or wrong for such as he? What was right?
And who had ever taught him? He thrust the whole matter away.
A dark, cold quiet crept through his brain. It was all wrong;
but let it be! It was nothing to him more than the others. Let
it be!
The door grated, as Haley opened it.
"Come, my woman! Must lock up for t' night. Come, stir
yerself!"
She went up and took Hugh's hand.
"Good-night, Deb," he said, carelessly.
She had not hoped he would say more; but the tired pain on her
mouth just then was bitterer than death. She took his passive
hand and kissed it.
tongue. He meant to cure this world-cancer with a steady eye
that had never glared with hunger, and a hand that neither
poverty nor strychnine-whiskey had taught to shake. In this
morbid, distorted heart of the Welsh puddler he had failed.
Eighteen centuries ago, the Master of this man tried reform in
the streets of a city as crowded and vile as this, and did not
fail. His disciple, showing Him to-night to cultured hearers,
showing the clearness of the God-power acting through Him,
shrank back from one coarse fact; that in birth and habit the
man Christ was thrown up from the lowest of the people: his
flesh, their flesh; their blood, his blood; tempted like them,
to brutalize day by day; to lie, to steal: the actual slime and
want of their hourly life, and the wine-press he trod alone.
Yet, is there no meaning in this perpetually covered truth? If
the son of the carpenter had stood in the church that night, as
he stood with the fishermen and harlots by the sea of Galilee,
before His Father and their Father, despised and rejected of
men, without a place to lay His head, wounded for their
iniquities, bruised for their transgressions, would not that
hungry mill-boy at least, in the back seat, have "known the
man"? That Jesus did not stand there.
Wolfe rose at last, and turned from the church down the street.
He looked up; the night had come on foggy, damp; the golden
mists had vanished, and the sky lay dull and ash-colored. He
wandered again aimlessly down the street, idly wondering what
had become of the cloud-sea of crimson and scarlet. The trial-
day of this man's life was over, and he had lost the victory.
What followed was mere drifting circumstance,--a quicker walking
over the path,--that was all. Do you want to hear the end of
it? You wish me to make a tragic story out of it? Why, in the
police-reports of the morning paper you can find a dozen such
tragedies: hints of shipwrecks unlike any that ever befell on
the high seas; hints that here a power was lost to heaven,--that
there a soul went down where no tide can ebb or flow.
Commonplace enough the hints are,--jocose sometimes, done up in
rhyme.
Doctor May a month after the night I have told you of, was
reading to his wife at breakfast from this fourth column of the
morning-paper: an unusual thing,--these police-reports not
being, in general, choice reading for ladies; but it was only
one item he read.
"Oh, my dear! You remember that man I told you of, that we saw
at Kirby's mill?--that was arrested for robbing Mitchell? Here
he is; just listen:--'Circuit Court. Judge Day. Hugh Wolfe,
operative in Kirby & John's Loudon Mills. Charge, grand
larceny. Sentence, nineteen years hard labor in penitentiary.
Scoundrel! Serves him right! After all our kindness that
night! Picking Mitchell's pocket at the very time!"
His wife said something about the ingratitude of that kind of
people, and then they began to talk of something else.
Nineteen years! How easy that was to read! What a simple word
for Judge Day to utter! Nineteen years! Half a lifetime!
Hugh Wolfe sat on the window-ledge of his cell, looking out.
His ankles Were ironed. Not usual in such cases; but he had
made two desperate efforts to escape. "Well," as Haley, the
jailer, said, "small blame to him! Nineteen years' inprisonment
was not a pleasant thing to look forward to." Haley was very
good-natured about it, though Wolfe had fought him savagely.
"When he was first caught," the jailer said afterwards, in
telling the story, "before the trial, the fellow was cut down at
once,--laid there on that pallet like a dead man, with his hands
over his eyes. Never saw a man so cut down in my life. Time of
the trial, too, came the queerest dodge of any customer I ever
had. Would choose no lawyer. Judge gave him one, of course.
Gibson it Was. He tried to prove the fellow crazy; but it
wouldn't go. Thing was plain as daylight: money found on him.
'T was a hard sentence,--all the law allows; but it was for
'xample's sake. These mill-hands are gettin' onbearable. When
the sentence was read, he just looked up, and said the money was
his by rights, and that all the world had gone wrong. That
night, after the trial, a gentleman came to see him here, name
of Mitchell,--him as he stole from. Talked to him for an hour.
Thought he came for curiosity, like. After he was gone, thought
Wolfe was remarkable quiet, and went into his cell. Found him
very low; bed all bloody. Doctor said he had been bleeding at
the lungs. He was as weak as a cat; yet if ye'll b'lieve me, he
tried to get a-past me and get out. I just carried him like a
baby, and threw him on the pallet. Three days after, he tried
it again: that time reached the wall. Lord help you! he fought
like a tiger,--giv' some terrible blows. Fightin' for life, you
see; for he can't live long, shut up in the stone crib down
yonder. Got a death-cough now. 'T took two of us to bring him
down that day; so I just put the irons on his feet. There he
sits, in there. Goin' to-morrow, with a batch more of 'em.
That woman, hunchback, tried with him,--you remember?--she's
only got three years. 'Complice. But she's a woman, you know.
He's been quiet ever since I put on irons: giv' up, I suppose.
Looks white, sick-lookin'. It acts different on 'em, bein'
sentenced. Most of 'em gets reckless, devilish-like. Some
prays awful, and sings them vile songs of the mills, all in a
breath. That woman, now, she's desper't'. Been beggin' to see
Hugh, as she calls him, for three days. I'm a-goin' to let her
in. She don't go with him. Here she is in this next cell. I'm
a-goin' now to let her in."
He let her in. Wolfe did not see her. She crept into a corner
of the cell, and stood watching him. He was scratching the iron
bars of the window with a piece of tin which he had picked up,
with an idle, uncertain, vacant stare, just as a child or idiot
would do.
"Tryin' to get out, old boy?" laughed Haley. "Them irons will
need a crow-bar beside your tin, before you can open 'em."
Wolfe laughed, too, in a senseless way.
"I think I'll get out," he said.
"I believe his brain's touched," said Haley, when he came out.
The puddler scraped away with the tin for half an hour. Still
Deborah did not speak. At last she ventured nearer, and touched
his arm.
"Blood?" she said, looking at some spots on his coat with a
shudder.
He looked up at her, "Why, Deb!" he said, smiling,--such a
bright, boyish smile, that it Went to poor Deborah's heart
directly, and she sobbed and cried out loud.
"Oh, Hugh, lad! Hugh! dunnot look at me, when it wur my fault!
To think I brought hur to it! And I loved hur so! Oh lad, I
dud!"
The confession, even In this wretch, came with the woman's blush
through the sharp cry.
He did not seem to hear her,--scraping away diligently at the
bars with the bit of tin.
Was he going mad? She peered closely into his face. Something
she saw there made her draw suddenly back,--something which
Haley had not seen, that lay beneath the pinched, vacant look it
had caught since the trial, or the curious gray shadow that
rested on it. That gray shadow,--yes, she knew what that meant.
She had often seen it creeping over women's faces for months,
who died at last of slow hunger or consumption. That meant
death, distant, lingering: but this--Whatever it was the woman
saw, or thought she saw, used as she was to crime and misery,
seemed to make her sick with a new horror. Forgetting her fear
of him, she caught his shoulders, and looked keenly, steadily,
into his eyes.
"Hugh!" she cried, in a desperate whisper,--"oh, boy, not that!
for God's sake, not that!"
The vacant laugh went off his face, and he answered her in a
muttered word or two that drove her away. Yet the words were
kindly enough. Sitting there on his pallet, she cried silently
a hopeless sort of tears, but did not speak again. The man
looked up furtively at her now and then. Whatever his own
trouble was, her distress vexed him with a momentary sting.
It was market-day. The narrow window of the jail looked down
directly on the carts and wagons drawn up in a long line, where
they had unloaded. He could see, too, and hear distinctly the
clink of money as it changed hands, the busy crowd of whites and
blacks shoving, pushing one another, and the chaffering and
swearing at the stalls. Somehow, the sound, more than anything
else had done, wakened him up,--made the whole real to him. He
was done with the world and the business of it. He let the tin
fall, and looked out, pressing his face close to the rusty bars.
How they crowded and pushed! And he,--he should never walk that
pavement again! There came Neff Sanders, one of the feeders at
the mill, with a basket on his arm. Sure enough, Nyeff was
married the other week. He whistled, hoping he would look up;
but he did not. He wondered if Neff remembered he was there,--
if any of the boys thought of him up there, and thought that he
never was to go down that old cinder-road again. Never again!
He had not quite understood it before; but now he did. Not for
days or years, but never!--that was it.
How clear the light fell on that stall in front of the market!
and how like a picture it was, the dark-green heaps of corn, and
the crimson beets, and golden melons! There was another with
game: how the light flickered on that pheasant's breast, with
the purplish blood dripping over the brown feathers! He could
see the red shining of the drops, it was so near. In one minute
he could be down there. It was just a step. So easy, as it
seemed, so natural to go! Yet it could never be--not in all the
thousands of years to come--that he should put his foot on that
street again! He thought of himself with a sorrowful pity, as
of some one else. There was a dog down in the market, walking
after his master with such a stately, grave look!--only a dog,
yet he could go backwards and forwards just as he pleased: he
had good luck! Why, the very vilest cur, yelping there in the
gutter, had not lived his life, had been free to act out
whatever thought God had put into his brain; while he--No, he
would not think of that! He tried to put the thought away, and
to listen to a dispute between a countryman and a woman about
some meat; but it would come back. He, what had he done to bear
this?
Then came the sudden picture of what might have been, and now.
He knew what it was to be in the penitentiary, how it went with
men there. He knew how in these long years he should slowly
die, but not until soul and body had become corrupt and
rotten,--how, when he came out, if he lived to come, even the
lowest of the mill-hands would jeer him,--how his hands would be
weak, and his brain senseless and stupid. He believed he was
almost that now. He put his hand to his head, with a puzzled,
weary look. It ached, his head, with thinking. He tried to
quiet himself. It was only right, perhaps; he had done wrong.
But was there right or wrong for such as he? What was right?
And who had ever taught him? He thrust the whole matter away.
A dark, cold quiet crept through his brain. It was all wrong;
but let it be! It was nothing to him more than the others. Let
it be!
The door grated, as Haley opened it.
"Come, my woman! Must lock up for t' night. Come, stir
yerself!"
She went up and took Hugh's hand.
"Good-night, Deb," he said, carelessly.
She had not hoped he would say more; but the tired pain on her
mouth just then was bitterer than death. She took his passive
hand and kissed it.
- hunger [´hʌŋgə]
n.饥饿；渴望 (初中英语单词) - reform [ri´fɔ:m] v.&n.改革；改良；革除 (初中英语单词)
- acting [´æktiŋ] a.代理的 n.演戏 (初中英语单词)
- coarse [kɔ:s] a.粗(糙)的；粗鲁的 (初中英语单词)
- christ [kraist] n.基督 int.天啊! (初中英语单词)
- actual [´æktʃuəl] a.现实的；实际的 (初中英语单词)
- carpenter [´kɑ:pintə] n.木工 vi.做木工活 (初中英语单词)
- scarlet [´skɑ:lit] n.猩红色 a.猩红的 (初中英语单词)
- unlike [,ʌn´laik] a.不同的 prep.不象... (初中英语单词)
- column [´kɔləm] n.柱；柱状物；纵队 (初中英语单词)
- unusual [ʌn´ju:ʒuəl] a.不平常的；异常的 (初中英语单词)
- reading [´ri:diŋ] n.(阅)读；朗读；读物 (初中英语单词)
- charge [tʃɑ:dʒ] v.收费；冲锋 n.费用 (初中英语单词)
- sentence [´sentəns] n.判决 vt.宣判；处刑 (初中英语单词)
- desperate [´despərit] a.拼死的；绝望的 (初中英语单词)
- customer [´kʌstəmə] n.顾客，买主，主顾 (初中英语单词)
- lawyer [´lɔ:jə] n.律师；法学家 (初中英语单词)
- daylight [´deilait] n.日光；黎明 (初中英语单词)
- curiosity [,kjuəri´ɔsiti] n.好奇；奇事；珍品 (初中英语单词)
- remarkable [ri´mɑ:kəbl] a.值得注意的；显著的 (初中英语单词)
- bloody [´blʌdi] a.(流)血的；血腥的 (初中英语单词)
- uncertain [ʌn´sə:tn] a.不定的；不可靠的 (初中英语单词)
- vacant [´veikənt] a.空虚的，无表情的 (初中英语单词)
- diligently [´dilidʒəntli] ad.勤奋地 (初中英语单词)
- horror [´hɔrə] n.恐怖；战栗 (初中英语单词)
- keenly [´ki:nli] ad.敏锐地；强烈地 (初中英语单词)
- whatever [wɔt´evə] pron.&a.无论什么 (初中英语单词)
- distress [di´stres] n.痛苦 vt.使苦恼 (初中英语单词)
- distinctly [di´stiŋktli] ad.清楚地，明晰地 (初中英语单词)
- dispute [di´spju:t] v.&n.争论，辩论；争吵 (初中英语单词)
- stupid [´stju:pid] a.愚蠢的；糊涂的 (初中英语单词)
- thrust [θrʌst] v.&n.猛推；冲；刺；挤进 (初中英语单词)
- crowded [´kraudid] a.充(拥)满了的 (高中英语单词)
- crimson [´krimzən] a.&n.深(紫)红(的) (高中英语单词)
- tragic [´trædʒik] a.悲剧的；悲惨的 (高中英语单词)
- reckless [´rekləs] a.不注意的；鲁莽的 (高中英语单词)
- confession [kən´feʃən] n.招供；认错；交待 (高中英语单词)
- consumption [kən´sʌmpʃən] n.消耗；结核病 (高中英语单词)
- hopeless [´həupləs] a.无望的，无可救药的 (高中英语单词)
- stately [´steitli] a.庄严的，雄伟的 (高中英语单词)
- countryman [´kʌntrimən] n.同胞(乡)，乡下人 (高中英语单词)
- corrupt [kə´rʌpt] a.腐败的 v.败坏；贿赂 (高中英语单词)
- disciple [di´saipəl] n.门徒，弟子 (英语四级单词)
- befell [bi´fel] befall的过去式 (英语四级单词)
- senseless [´sensləs] a.无知觉的；愚蠢的 (英语四级单词)
- boyish [´bɔiiʃ] a.少年的；幼稚的 (英语四级单词)
- wretch [retʃ] n.不幸的人；卑鄙的人 (英语四级单词)
- momentary [´məuməntəri] a.瞬息间的 (英语四级单词)
- sorrowful [´sɔrəuful] a.悲伤的，使人伤心的 (英语四级单词)
- clearness [´kliənis] n.清楚；明白；明确 (英语六级单词)
- ingratitude [in´grætitju:d] n.忘恩负义 (英语六级单词)
- backwards [´bækwədz] ad.向后 a.向后的 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
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