章节正文
'My God!' he cried. 'Uncle Joseph!'
'Yes,' said John, 'where can he be? He can't be far off. I hope
the old party isn't damaged.'
'Come and help me to look,' said Morris, with a snap of savage
determination strangely foreign to his ordinary bearing; and
then, for one moment, he broke forth. 'If he's dead!' he cried,
and shook his fist at heaven.
To and fro the brothers hurried, staring in the faces of the
wounded, or turning the dead upon their backs. They must have
thus examined forty people, and still there was no word of Uncle
Joseph. But now the course of their search brought them near the
centre of the collision, where the boilers were still blowing off
steam with a deafening clamour. It was a part of the field not
yet gleaned by the rescuing party. The ground, especially on the
margin of the wood, was full of inequalities--here a pit, there a
hillock surmounted with a bush of furze. It was a place where
many bodies might lie concealed, and they beat it like pointers
after game. Suddenly Morris, who was leading, paused and reached
forth his index with a tragicgesture. John followed the
direction of his brother's hand.
In the bottom of a sandy hole lay something that had once been
human. The face had suffered severely, and it was unrecognizable;
but that was not required. The snowy hair, the coat of marten,
the ventilating cloth, the hygienic flannel--everything down to
the health boots from Messrs Dail and Crumbie's, identified the
body as that of Uncle Joseph. Only the forage cap must have been
lost in the convulsion, for the dead man was bareheaded.
'The poor old beggar!' said John, with a touch of natural
feeling; 'I would give ten pounds if we hadn't chivvied him in
the train!'
But there was no sentiment in the face of Morris as he gazed upon
the dead. Gnawing his nails, with introverted eyes, his brow
marked with the stamp of tragicindignation and tragic
intellectual effort, he stood there silent. Here was a last
injustice; he had been robbed while he was an orphan at school,
he had been lashed to a decadent leather business, he had been
saddled with Miss Hazeltine, his cousin had been defrauding him
of the tontine, and he had borne all this, we might almost say,
with dignity, and now they had gone and killed his uncle!
'Here!' he said suddenly, 'take his heels, we must get him into
the woods. I'm not going to have anybody find this.'
'O, fudge!' said John, 'where's the use?'
'Do what I tell you,' spirted Morris, as he took the corpse by
the shoulders. 'Am I to carry him myself?'
They were close upon the borders of the wood; in ten or twelve
paces they were under cover; and a little further back, in a
sandy clearing of the trees, they laid their burthen down, and
stood and looked at it with loathing.
'What do you mean to do?' whispered John.
'Bury him, to be sure,' responded Morris, and he opened his
pocket-knife and began feverishly to dig.
'You'll never make a hand of it with that,' objected the other.
'If you won't help me, you cowardly shirk,' screamed Morris, 'you
can go to the devil!'
'It's the childishest folly,' said John; 'but no man shall call
me a coward,' and he began to help his brother grudgingly.
The soil was sandy and light, but matted with the roots of the
surrounding firs. Gorse tore their hands; and as they baled the
sand from the grave, it was often discoloured with their blood.
An hour passed of unremitting energy upon the part of Morris, of
lukewarm help on that of John; and still the trench was barely
nine inches in depth. Into this the body was rudely flung: sand
was piled upon it, and then more sand must be dug, and gorse had
to be cut to pile on that; and still from one end of the sordid
mound a pair of feet projected and caught the light upon their
patent-leather toes. But by this time the nerves of both were
shaken; even Morris had enough of his grisly task; and they
skulked off like animals into the thickest of the neighbouring
covert.
'It's the best that we can do,' said Morris, sitting down.
'And now,' said John, 'perhaps you'll have the politeness to tell
me what it's all about.'
'Upon my word,' cried Morris, 'if you do not understand for
yourself, I almost despair of telling you.'
'O, of course it's some rot about the tontine,' returned the
other. 'But it's the merest nonsense. We've lost it, and there's
an end.'
'I tell you,' said Morris, 'Uncle Masterman is dead. I know it,
there's a voice that tells me so.'
'Well, and so is Uncle Joseph,' said John.
'He's not dead, unless I choose,' returned Morris.
'And come to that,' cried John, 'if you're right, and Uncle
Masterman's been dead ever so long, all we have to do is to tell
the truth and expose Michael.'
'You seem to think Michael is a fool,' sneered Morris. 'Can't you
understand he's been preparing this fraud for years? He has the
whole thing ready: the nurse, the doctor, the undertaker, all
bought, the certificate all ready but the date! Let him get wind
of this business, and you mark my words, Uncle Masterman will die
in two days and be buried in a week. But see here, Johnny; what
Michael can do, I can do. If he plays a game of bluff, so can I.
If his father is to live for ever, by God, so shall my uncle!'
'It's illegal, ain't it?' said John.
'A man must have SOME moral courage,' replied Morris with
dignity.
'And then suppose you're wrong? Suppose Uncle Masterman's alive
and kicking?'
'Well, even then,' responded the plotter, 'we are no worse off
than we were before; in fact, we're better. Uncle Masterman must
die some day; as long as Uncle Joseph was alive, he might have
died any day; but we're out of all that trouble now: there's no
sort of limit to the game that I propose--it can be kept up till
Kingdom Come.'
'If I could only see how you meant to set about it' sighed John.
'But you know, Morris, you always were such a bungler.'
'I'd like to know what I ever bungled,' cried Morris; 'I have the
best collection of signet rings in London.'
'Well, you know, there's the leather business,' suggested the
other. 'That's considered rather a hash.'
It was a mark of singularself-control in Morris that he suffered
this to pass unchallenged, and even unresented.
'About the business in hand,' said he, 'once we can get him up to
Bloomsbury, there's no sort of trouble. We bury him in the
cellar, which seems made for it; and then all I have to do is to
start out and find a venal doctor.'
'Why can't we leave him where he is?' asked John.
'Because we know nothing about the country,' retorted Morris.
'This wood may be a regular lovers' walk. Turn your mind to the
real difficulty. How are we to get him up to Bloomsbury?'
Various schemes were mooted and rejected. The railway station at
Browndean was, of course, out of the question, for it would now
be a centre of curiosity and gossip, and (of all things) they
would be least able to dispatch a dead body without remark. John
feebly proposed getting an ale-cask and sending it as beer, but
the objections to this course were so overwhelming that Morris
scorned to answer. The purchase of a packing-case seemed equally
hopeless, for why should two gentlemen without baggage of any
kind require a packing-case? They would be more likely to require
clean linen.
'We are working on wrong lines,' cried Morris at last. 'The thing
must be gone about more carefully. Suppose now,' he added
excitedly, speaking by fits and starts, as if he were thinking
aloud, 'suppose we rent a cottage by the month. A householder can
buy a packing-case without remark. Then suppose we clear the
people out today, get the packing-case tonight, and tomorrow I
hire a carriage or a cart that we could drive ourselves--and take
the box, or whatever we get, to Ringwood or Lyndhurst or
somewhere; we could label it "specimens", don't you see? Johnny,
I believe I've hit the nail at last.'
'Well, it sounds more feasible,' admitted John.
'Of course we must take assumed names,' continued Morris. 'It
would never do to keep our own. What do you say to "Masterman"
itself? It sounds quiet and dignified.'
'I will NOT take the name of Masterman,' returned his brother;
'you may, if you like. I shall call myself Vance--the Great
Vance; positively the last six nights. There's some go in a name
like that.'
'Vance?' cried Morris. 'Do you think we are playing a pantomime
for our amusement? There was never anybody named Vance who wasn't
a music-hall singer.'
'That's the beauty of it,' returned John; 'it gives you some
standing at once. You may call yourself Fortescue till all's
blue, and nobody cares; but to be Vance gives a man a natural
nobility.'
'But there's lots of other theatrical names,' cried Morris.
'Leybourne, Irving, Brough, Toole--'
'Devil a one will I take!' returned his brother. 'I am going to
have my little lark out of this as well as you.'
'Very well,' said Morris, who perceived that John was determined
to carry his point, 'I shall be Robert Vance.'
'And I shall be George Vance,' cried John, 'the only original
George Vance! Rally round the only original!'
Repairing as well as they were able the disorder of their
clothes, the Finsbury brothers returned to Browndean by a
circuitous route in quest of luncheon and a suitablecottage. It
is not always easy to drop at a moment's notice on a furnished
residence in a retiredlocality; but fortune presently introduced
our adventurers to a deaf carpenter, a man rich in cottages of
the required description, and unaffectedly eager to supply their
wants. The second place they visited, standing, as it did, about
a mile and a half from any neighbours, caused them to exchange a
glance of hope. On a nearer view, the place was not without
depressing features. It stood in a marshy-looking hollow of a
heath; tall trees obscured its windows; the thatch visibly rotted
on the rafters; and the walls were stained with splashes of
unwholesome green. The rooms were small, the ceilings low, the
furniture merely nominal; a strange chill and a haunting smell of
damp pervaded the kitchen; and the bedroom boasted only of one
bed.
Morris, with a view to cheapening the place, remarked on this
defect.
'Well,' returned the man; 'if you can't sleep two abed, you'd
better take a villa residence.'
'And then,' pursued Morris, 'there's no water. How do you get
your water?'
'We fill THAT from the spring,' replied the carpenter, pointing
to a big barrel that stood beside the door. 'The spring ain't so
VERY far off, after all, and it's easy brought in buckets.
There's a bucket there.'
Morris nudged his brother as they examined the water-butt. It was
new, and very solidly constructed for its office. If anything had
been wanting to decide them, this eminently practical barrel
would have turned the scale. A bargain was promptly struck, the
month's rent was paid upon the nail, and about an hour later the
Finsbury brothers might have been observed returning to the
blighted cottage, having along with them the key, which was the
symbol of their tenancy, a spirit-lamp, with which they fondly
told themselves they would be able to cook, a pork pie of
suitable dimensions, and a quart of the worst whisky in
Hampshire. Nor was this all they had effected; already (under the
plea that they were landscape-painters) they had hired for dawn
'Yes,' said John, 'where can he be? He can't be far off. I hope
the old party isn't damaged.'
'Come and help me to look,' said Morris, with a snap of savage
determination strangely foreign to his ordinary bearing; and
then, for one moment, he broke forth. 'If he's dead!' he cried,
and shook his fist at heaven.
To and fro the brothers hurried, staring in the faces of the
wounded, or turning the dead upon their backs. They must have
thus examined forty people, and still there was no word of Uncle
Joseph. But now the course of their search brought them near the
centre of the collision, where the boilers were still blowing off
steam with a deafening clamour. It was a part of the field not
yet gleaned by the rescuing party. The ground, especially on the
margin of the wood, was full of inequalities--here a pit, there a
hillock surmounted with a bush of furze. It was a place where
many bodies might lie concealed, and they beat it like pointers
after game. Suddenly Morris, who was leading, paused and reached
forth his index with a tragicgesture. John followed the
direction of his brother's hand.
In the bottom of a sandy hole lay something that had once been
human. The face had suffered severely, and it was unrecognizable;
but that was not required. The snowy hair, the coat of marten,
the ventilating cloth, the hygienic flannel--everything down to
the health boots from Messrs Dail and Crumbie's, identified the
body as that of Uncle Joseph. Only the forage cap must have been
lost in the convulsion, for the dead man was bareheaded.
'The poor old beggar!' said John, with a touch of natural
feeling; 'I would give ten pounds if we hadn't chivvied him in
the train!'
But there was no sentiment in the face of Morris as he gazed upon
the dead. Gnawing his nails, with introverted eyes, his brow
marked with the stamp of tragicindignation and tragic
intellectual effort, he stood there silent. Here was a last
injustice; he had been robbed while he was an orphan at school,
he had been lashed to a decadent leather business, he had been
saddled with Miss Hazeltine, his cousin had been defrauding him
of the tontine, and he had borne all this, we might almost say,
with dignity, and now they had gone and killed his uncle!
'Here!' he said suddenly, 'take his heels, we must get him into
the woods. I'm not going to have anybody find this.'
'O, fudge!' said John, 'where's the use?'
'Do what I tell you,' spirted Morris, as he took the corpse by
the shoulders. 'Am I to carry him myself?'
They were close upon the borders of the wood; in ten or twelve
paces they were under cover; and a little further back, in a
sandy clearing of the trees, they laid their burthen down, and
stood and looked at it with loathing.
'What do you mean to do?' whispered John.
'Bury him, to be sure,' responded Morris, and he opened his
pocket-knife and began feverishly to dig.
'You'll never make a hand of it with that,' objected the other.
'If you won't help me, you cowardly shirk,' screamed Morris, 'you
can go to the devil!'
'It's the childishest folly,' said John; 'but no man shall call
me a coward,' and he began to help his brother grudgingly.
The soil was sandy and light, but matted with the roots of the
surrounding firs. Gorse tore their hands; and as they baled the
sand from the grave, it was often discoloured with their blood.
An hour passed of unremitting energy upon the part of Morris, of
lukewarm help on that of John; and still the trench was barely
nine inches in depth. Into this the body was rudely flung: sand
was piled upon it, and then more sand must be dug, and gorse had
to be cut to pile on that; and still from one end of the sordid
mound a pair of feet projected and caught the light upon their
patent-leather toes. But by this time the nerves of both were
shaken; even Morris had enough of his grisly task; and they
skulked off like animals into the thickest of the neighbouring
covert.
'It's the best that we can do,' said Morris, sitting down.
'And now,' said John, 'perhaps you'll have the politeness to tell
me what it's all about.'
'Upon my word,' cried Morris, 'if you do not understand for
yourself, I almost despair of telling you.'
'O, of course it's some rot about the tontine,' returned the
other. 'But it's the merest nonsense. We've lost it, and there's
an end.'
'I tell you,' said Morris, 'Uncle Masterman is dead. I know it,
there's a voice that tells me so.'
'Well, and so is Uncle Joseph,' said John.
'He's not dead, unless I choose,' returned Morris.
'And come to that,' cried John, 'if you're right, and Uncle
Masterman's been dead ever so long, all we have to do is to tell
the truth and expose Michael.'
'You seem to think Michael is a fool,' sneered Morris. 'Can't you
understand he's been preparing this fraud for years? He has the
whole thing ready: the nurse, the doctor, the undertaker, all
bought, the certificate all ready but the date! Let him get wind
of this business, and you mark my words, Uncle Masterman will die
in two days and be buried in a week. But see here, Johnny; what
Michael can do, I can do. If he plays a game of bluff, so can I.
If his father is to live for ever, by God, so shall my uncle!'
'It's illegal, ain't it?' said John.
'A man must have SOME moral courage,' replied Morris with
dignity.
'And then suppose you're wrong? Suppose Uncle Masterman's alive
and kicking?'
'Well, even then,' responded the plotter, 'we are no worse off
than we were before; in fact, we're better. Uncle Masterman must
die some day; as long as Uncle Joseph was alive, he might have
died any day; but we're out of all that trouble now: there's no
sort of limit to the game that I propose--it can be kept up till
Kingdom Come.'
'If I could only see how you meant to set about it' sighed John.
'But you know, Morris, you always were such a bungler.'
'I'd like to know what I ever bungled,' cried Morris; 'I have the
best collection of signet rings in London.'
'Well, you know, there's the leather business,' suggested the
other. 'That's considered rather a hash.'
It was a mark of singularself-control in Morris that he suffered
this to pass unchallenged, and even unresented.
'About the business in hand,' said he, 'once we can get him up to
Bloomsbury, there's no sort of trouble. We bury him in the
cellar, which seems made for it; and then all I have to do is to
start out and find a venal doctor.'
'Why can't we leave him where he is?' asked John.
'Because we know nothing about the country,' retorted Morris.
'This wood may be a regular lovers' walk. Turn your mind to the
real difficulty. How are we to get him up to Bloomsbury?'
Various schemes were mooted and rejected. The railway station at
Browndean was, of course, out of the question, for it would now
be a centre of curiosity and gossip, and (of all things) they
would be least able to dispatch a dead body without remark. John
feebly proposed getting an ale-cask and sending it as beer, but
the objections to this course were so overwhelming that Morris
scorned to answer. The purchase of a packing-case seemed equally
hopeless, for why should two gentlemen without baggage of any
kind require a packing-case? They would be more likely to require
clean linen.
'We are working on wrong lines,' cried Morris at last. 'The thing
must be gone about more carefully. Suppose now,' he added
excitedly, speaking by fits and starts, as if he were thinking
aloud, 'suppose we rent a cottage by the month. A householder can
buy a packing-case without remark. Then suppose we clear the
people out today, get the packing-case tonight, and tomorrow I
hire a carriage or a cart that we could drive ourselves--and take
the box, or whatever we get, to Ringwood or Lyndhurst or
somewhere; we could label it "specimens", don't you see? Johnny,
I believe I've hit the nail at last.'
'Well, it sounds more feasible,' admitted John.
'Of course we must take assumed names,' continued Morris. 'It
would never do to keep our own. What do you say to "Masterman"
itself? It sounds quiet and dignified.'
'I will NOT take the name of Masterman,' returned his brother;
'you may, if you like. I shall call myself Vance--the Great
Vance; positively the last six nights. There's some go in a name
like that.'
'Vance?' cried Morris. 'Do you think we are playing a pantomime
for our amusement? There was never anybody named Vance who wasn't
a music-hall singer.'
'That's the beauty of it,' returned John; 'it gives you some
standing at once. You may call yourself Fortescue till all's
blue, and nobody cares; but to be Vance gives a man a natural
nobility.'
'But there's lots of other theatrical names,' cried Morris.
'Leybourne, Irving, Brough, Toole--'
'Devil a one will I take!' returned his brother. 'I am going to
have my little lark out of this as well as you.'
'Very well,' said Morris, who perceived that John was determined
to carry his point, 'I shall be Robert Vance.'
'And I shall be George Vance,' cried John, 'the only original
George Vance! Rally round the only original!'
Repairing as well as they were able the disorder of their
clothes, the Finsbury brothers returned to Browndean by a
circuitous route in quest of luncheon and a suitablecottage. It
is not always easy to drop at a moment's notice on a furnished
residence in a retiredlocality; but fortune presently introduced
our adventurers to a deaf carpenter, a man rich in cottages of
the required description, and unaffectedly eager to supply their
wants. The second place they visited, standing, as it did, about
a mile and a half from any neighbours, caused them to exchange a
glance of hope. On a nearer view, the place was not without
depressing features. It stood in a marshy-looking hollow of a
heath; tall trees obscured its windows; the thatch visibly rotted
on the rafters; and the walls were stained with splashes of
unwholesome green. The rooms were small, the ceilings low, the
furniture merely nominal; a strange chill and a haunting smell of
damp pervaded the kitchen; and the bedroom boasted only of one
bed.
Morris, with a view to cheapening the place, remarked on this
defect.
'Well,' returned the man; 'if you can't sleep two abed, you'd
better take a villa residence.'
'And then,' pursued Morris, 'there's no water. How do you get
your water?'
'We fill THAT from the spring,' replied the carpenter, pointing
to a big barrel that stood beside the door. 'The spring ain't so
VERY far off, after all, and it's easy brought in buckets.
There's a bucket there.'
Morris nudged his brother as they examined the water-butt. It was
new, and very solidly constructed for its office. If anything had
been wanting to decide them, this eminently practical barrel
would have turned the scale. A bargain was promptly struck, the
month's rent was paid upon the nail, and about an hour later the
Finsbury brothers might have been observed returning to the
blighted cottage, having along with them the key, which was the
symbol of their tenancy, a spirit-lamp, with which they fondly
told themselves they would be able to cook, a pork pie of
suitable dimensions, and a quart of the worst whisky in
Hampshire. Nor was this all they had effected; already (under the
plea that they were landscape-painters) they had hired for dawn
- strangely [´streindʒli]
ad.奇怪地；陌生地 (初中英语单词) - gesture [´dʒestʃə] n.手势 v.打手势 (初中英语单词)
- sentiment [´sentimənt] n.情绪；多愁善感 (初中英语单词)
- dignity [´digniti] n.尊严，尊贵；高官显贵 (初中英语单词)
- energy [´enədʒi] n.活力，精力；能力 (初中英语单词)
- despair [di´speə] vi.&n.绝望 (初中英语单词)
- expose [ik´spəuz] vt.揭露，暴露；陈列 (初中英语单词)
- collection [kə´lekʃən] n.收集；征收；募捐 (初中英语单词)
- curiosity [,kjuəri´ɔsiti] n.好奇；奇事；珍品 (初中英语单词)
- working [´wə:kiŋ] a.工人的；劳动的 (初中英语单词)
- cottage [´kɔtidʒ] n.村舍；小屋；小别墅 (初中英语单词)
- carriage [´kæridʒ] n.马车；客车；货运 (初中英语单词)
- whatever [wɔt´evə] pron.&a.无论什么 (初中英语单词)
- amusement [ə´mju:zmənt] n.娱乐；文娱设施 (初中英语单词)
- luncheon [´lʌntʃ(ə)n] n.午餐，午宴 (初中英语单词)
- suitable [´su:təbəl, ´sju:-] a.合适的，适当的 (初中英语单词)
- presently [´prezəntli] ad.不久；目前 (初中英语单词)
- carpenter [´kɑ:pintə] n.木工 vi.做木工活 (初中英语单词)
- description [di´skripʃən] n.描写 (初中英语单词)
- standing [´stændiŋ] n.持续 a.直立的 (初中英语单词)
- barrel [´bærəl] n.(琵琶)桶；圆筒 (初中英语单词)
- bargain [´bɑ:gin] n.买卖合同 v.议(价) (初中英语单词)
- promptly [´prɔmptli] ad.敏捷地；即时地 (初中英语单词)
- bearing [´beəriŋ] n.举止；忍耐；关系 (高中英语单词)
- hurried [´hʌrid] a.仓促的，慌忙的 (高中英语单词)
- tragic [´trædʒik] a.悲剧的；悲惨的 (高中英语单词)
- severely [si´viəli] ad.剧烈地；严格地 (高中英语单词)
- indignation [,indig´neiʃən] n.愤慨；气愤 (高中英语单词)
- orphan [´ɔ:fən] n.&a.孤儿 vt.使成孤儿 (高中英语单词)
- trench [trentʃ] n.&v.(挖)沟，(挖)战壕 (高中英语单词)
- nonsense [´nɔnsəns] n.胡说 int.胡说!废话 (高中英语单词)
- certificate [sə´tifikət] n.执照；文凭 vt.批准 (高中英语单词)
- singular [´siŋgjulə] a.单一的；非凡的 (高中英语单词)
- gossip [´gɔsip] n.&vi.说闲话；聊天 (高中英语单词)
- dispatch [di´spætʃ] vt.&n.发送；派遣；调度 (高中英语单词)
- baggage [´bægidʒ] n.行李 (高中英语单词)
- positively [´pɔzətivli] ad.确实；断然；绝对 (高中英语单词)
- disorder [dis´ɔ:də] n.杂乱 vt.扰乱 (高中英语单词)
- locality [ləu´kæliti] n.位置，地区，发生地 (高中英语单词)
- bucket [´bʌkit] n.水桶 (高中英语单词)
- corpse [kɔ:ps] n.尸体 (英语四级单词)
- clearing [´kliəriŋ] n.(森林中的)空旷地 (英语四级单词)
- cowardly [´kauədli] a.&ad.胆小的(地) (英语四级单词)
- overwhelming [,əuvə´welmiŋ] a.压倒的；势不可挡的 (英语四级单词)
- theatrical [θi´ætrikəl] a.戏院的；戏剧(性)的 (英语四级单词)
- thatch [θætʃ] n.茅草屋顶 (英语四级单词)
- collision [kə´liʒən] n.碰幢；冲突；互撞事件 (英语六级单词)
- forage [´fɔridʒ] n.饲料 v.搜寻(粮草) (英语六级单词)
- convulsion [kən´vʌlʃən] n.震动；骚动；灾变 (英语六级单词)
- rudely [´ru:dli] ad.粗鲁地；粗略地 (英语六级单词)
- politeness [pə´laitnis] n.礼貌；文雅；温和 (英语六级单词)
- illegal [i´li:gəl] a.不合法的，非法的 (英语六级单词)
- self-control [,self´kəntrəul] n.自我克制 (英语六级单词)
- speaking [´spi:kiŋ] n.说话 a.发言的 (英语六级单词)
- retired [ri´taiəd] a.退休的；通职的 (英语六级单词)
- wanting [´wɔntiŋ, wɑ:n-] a.短缺的；不足的 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
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