Oliver Twist 雾都孤儿 - Chapter 44
时间：2016-04-05 06:26:26
（单词翻译:单击）
Adept1 as she was, in all the arts of cunning and dissimulation2, the girl Nancy could not wholly conceal3 the effect which the knowledge of the step she had taken, wrought4 upon her mind.
She remembered that both the crafty5 Jew and the brutal6 Sikes had confided7 to her schemes, which had been hidden from all others: in the full confidence that she was trustworthy and beyond the reach of their suspicion.
Vile8 as those schemes were, desperate as were their originators, and bitter as were her feelings towards Fagin, who had led her, step by step, deeper and deeper down into an abyss of crime and misery9, whence was no escape; still, there were times when, even towards him, she felt some relenting, lest her disclosure should bring him within the iron grasp he had so long eluded10, and he should fall at last--richly as he merited such a fate--by her hand. But, these were the mere11 wanderings of a mind unable wholly to detach itself from old companions and associations, though enabled to fix itself steadily12 on one object, and resolved not to be turned aside by any consideration.
Her fears for Sikes would have been more powerful inducements to recoil13 while there was yet time; but she had stipulated14 that her secret should be rigidly15 kept, she had dropped no clue which could lead to his discovery, she had refused, even for his sake, a refuge from all the guilt16 and wretchedness that encompasses17 her--and what more could she do! She was resolved. Though all her mental struggles terminated in this conclusion, they forced themselves upon her, again and again, and left their traces too.
She grew pale and thin, even within a few days.
At times, she took no heed18 of what was passing before her, or no part in conversations where once, she would have been the loudest.
At other times, she laughed without merriment, and was noisy without a moment afterwards--she sat silent and dejected, brooding with her head upon her hands, while the very effort by which she roused herself, told, more forcibly than even these indications, that she was ill at ease, and that her thoughts were occupied with matters very different and distant from those in the course of discussion by her companions. It was Sunday night, and the bell of the nearest church struck the hour.
Sikes and the Jew were talking, but they paused to listen.
Eleven. 'An hour this side of midnight,' said Sikes, raising the blind to look out and returning to his seat.
'Dark and heavy it is too. A good night for business this.' 'Ah!' replied Fagin.
'What a pity, Bill, my dear, that there's none quite ready to be done.' 'You're right for once,' replied Sikes gruffly.
'It is a pity, for I'm in the humour too.' Fagin sighed, and shook his head despondingly. 'We must make up for lost time when we've got things into a good train.
That's all I know,' said Sikes. 'That's the way to talk, my dear,' replied Fagin, venturing to pat him on the shoulder.
'It does me good to hear you.' 'Does you good, does it!' cried Sikes.
'Well, so be it.' 'Ha! ha! ha!' laughed Fagin, as if he were relieved by even this concession20.
'You're like yourself to-night, Bill.
Quite like yourself.' 'I don't feel like myself when you lay that withered21 old claw on my shoulder, so take it away,' said Sikes, casting off the Jew's hand. 'It make you nervous, Bill,--reminds you of being nabbed, does it?' said Fagin, determined22 not to be offended. 'Reminds me of being nabbed by the devil,' returned Sikes. 'There never was another man with such a face as yours, unless it was your father, and I suppose _he_ is singeing23 his grizzled red beard by this time, unless you came straight from the old 'un without any father at all betwixt you; which I shouldn't wonder at, a bit.' Fagin offered no reply to this compliment:
but, pulling Sikes by the sleeve, pointed24 his finger towards Nancy, who had taken advantage of the foregoing conversation to put on her bonnet25, and was now leaving the room. 'Hallo!' cried Sikes.
'Do you hear me?' 'I don't know where,' replied the girl. 'Then I do,' said Sikes, more in the spirit of obstinacy28 than because he had any real objection to the girl going where she listed.
'Nowhere.
Sit down.' 'I'm not well.
I told you that before,' rejoined the girl.
'I want a breath of air.' 'Put your head out of the winder,' replied Sikes. 'There's not enough there,' said the girl.
'I want it in the street.' 'Then you won't have it,' replied Sikes.
With which assurance he rose, locked the door, took the key out, and pulling her bonnet from her head, flung it up to the top of an old press.
'There,' said the robber.
'Now stop quietly where you are, will you?' 'It's not such a matter as a bonnet would keep me,' said the girl turning very pale.
'What do you mean, Bill?
Do you know what you're doing?' 'Know what I'm--Oh!' cried Sikes, turning to Fagin, 'she's out of her senses, you know, or she daren't talk to me in that way.' 'You'll drive me on the something desperate,' muttered the girl placing both hands upon her breast, as though to keep down by force some violent outbreak.
'Let me go, will you,--this minute--this instant.' 'No!' said Sikes. 'Tell him to let me go, Fagin.
He had better.
It'll be better for him.
Do you hear me?' cried Nancy stamping her foot upon the ground. 'Hear you!' repeated Sikes turning round in his chair to confront her.
'Aye!
And if I hear you for half a minute longer, the dog shall have such a grip on your throat as'll tear some of that screaming voice out.
Wot is it?' 'Let me go,' said the girl with great earnestness; then sitting herself down on the floor, before the door, she said, 'Bill, let me go; you don't know what you are doing. You don't, indeed.
For only one hour--do--do!' 'Cut my limbs off one by one!' cried Sikes, seizing her roughly by the arm, 'If I don't think the gal's stark30 raving31 mad.
Get up.' 'Not till you let me go--not till you let me go--Never--never!' screamed the girl.
Sikes looked on, for a minute, watching his opportunity, and suddenly pinioning32 her hands dragged her, struggling and wrestling with him by the way, into a small room adjoining, where he sat himself on a bench, and thrusting her into a chair, held her down by force.
She struggled and implored33 by turns until twelve o'clock had struck, and then, wearied and exhausted34, ceased to contest the point any further.
With a caution, backed by many oaths, to make no more efforts to go out that night, Sikes left her to recover at leisure and rejoined Fagin. 'Whew!' said the housebreaker wiping the perspiration35 from his face.
'Wot a precious strange gal that is!' 'You may say that, Bill,' replied Fagin thoughtfully.
'You may say that.' 'Wot did she take it into her head to go out to-night for, do you think?' asked Sikes.
'Come; you should know her better than me. Wot does it mean?' 'Obstinacy; woman's obstinacy, I suppose, my dear.' 'Well, I suppose it is,' growled36 Sikes.
'I thought I had tamed her, but she's as bad as ever.' 'Worse,' said Fagin thoughtfully.
'I never knew her like this, for such a little cause.' 'Nor I,' said Sikes.
'I think she's got a touch of that fever in her blood yet, and it won't come out--eh?' 'Like enough.' 'I'll let her a little blood, without troubling the doctor, if she's took that way again,' said Sikes. Fagin nodded an expressive37 approval of this mode of treatment. 'She was hanging about me all day, and night too, when I was stretched on my back; and you, like a blackhearted wolf as you are, kept yourself aloof,' said Sikes.
'We was poor too, all the time, and I think, one way or other, it's worried and fretted38 her; and that being shut up here so long has made her restless--eh?' 'That's it, my dear,' replied the Jew in a whisper.
Her eyes were swollen40 and red; she rocked herself to and fro; tossed her head; and, after a little time, burst out laughing. 'Why, now she's on the other tack41!' exclaimed Sikes, turning a look of excessive surprise on his companion. Fagin nodded to him to take no further notice just then; and, in a few minutes, the girl subsided42 into her accustomed demeanour. Whispering Sikes that there was no fear of her relapsing, Fagin took up his hat and bade him good-night.
He paused when he reached the room-door, and looking round, asked if somebody would light him down the dark stairs. 'Light him down,' said Sikes, who was filling his pipe. 'It's a pity he should break his neck himself, and disappoint the sight-seers.
Show him a light.' Nancy followed the old man downstairs, with a candle.
When they reached the passage, he laid his finger on his lip, and drawing close to the girl, said, in a whisper. 'What is it, Nancy, dear?' 'What do you mean?' replied the girl, in the same tone. 'The reason of all this,' replied Fagin.
'If _he_'--he pointed with his skinny fore-finger up the stairs--'is so hard with you (he's a brute43, Nance, a brute-beast), why don't you--' 'Well?' said the girl, as Fagin paused, with his mouth almost touching44 her ear, and his eyes looking into hers. 'No matter just now.
We'll talk of this again.
You have a friend in me, Nance; a staunch friend.
I have the means at hand, quiet and close.
If you want revenge on those that treat you like a dog--like a dog!
worse than his dog, for he humours him sometimes--come to me.
I say, come to me.
He is the mere hound of a day, but you know me of old, Nance.' 'I know you well,' replied the girl, without manifesting the least emotion.
'Good-night.' She shrank back, as Fagin offered to lay his hand on hers, but said good-night again, in a steady voice, and, answering his parting look with a nod of intelligence, closed the door between them. Fagin walked towards his home, intent upon the thoughts that were working within his brain.
He had conceived the idea--not from what had just passed though that had tended to confirm him, but slowly and by degrees--that Nancy, wearied of the housebreaker's brutality45, had conceived an attachment46 for some new friend.
Her altered manner, her repeated absences from home alone, her comparative indifference47 to the interests of the gang for which she had once been so zealous48, and, added to these, her desperate impatience49 to leave home that night at a particular hour, all favoured the supposition, and rendered it, to him at least, almost matter of certainty.
He would be a valuable acquisition with such an assistant as Nancy, and must (thus Fagin argued) be secured without delay. There was another, and a darker object, to be gained.
Sikes knew too much, and his ruffian taunts51 had not galled52 Fagin the less, because the wounds were hidden.
The girl must know, well, that if she shook him off, she could never be safe from his fury, and that it would be surely wreaked--to the maiming of limbs, or perhaps the loss of life--on the object of her more recent fancy. 'With a little persuasion,' thought Fagin, 'what more likely than that she would consent to poison him?
Women have done such things, and worse, to secure the same object before now.
the man I hate:
gone; another secured in his place; and my influence over the girl, with a knowledge of this crime to back it, unlimited54.' These things passed through the mind of Fagin, during the short time he sat alone, in the housebreaker's room; and with them uppermost in his thoughts, he had taken the opportunity afterwards afforded him, of sounding the girl in the broken hints he threw out at parting.
There was no expression of surprise, no assumption of an inability to understand his meaning.
The girl clearly comprehended it.
Her glance at parting showed _that_. But perhaps she would recoil from a plot to take the life of Sikes, and that was one of the chief ends to be attained55. 'How,' thought Fagin, as he crept homeward, 'can I increase my influence with her?
What new power can I acquire?' Such brains are fertile in expedients56.
If, without extracting a confession57 from herself, he laid a watch, discovered the object of her altered regard, and threatened to reveal the whole history to Sikes (of whom she stood in no common fear) unless she entered into his designs, could he not secure her compliance58? 'I can,' said Fagin, almost aloud.
'She durst not refuse me then.
Not for her life, not for her life!
I have it all.
The means are ready, and shall be set to work.
I shall have you yet!' He cast back a dark look, and a threatening motion of the hand, towards the spot where he had left the bolder villain; and went on his way:
busying his bony hands in the folds of his tattered59 garment, which he wrenched60 tightly in his grasp, as though there were a hated enemy crushed with every motion of his fingers.
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1
adept
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| adj.老练的，精通的 | |
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dissimulation
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| n.掩饰，虚伪，装糊涂 | |
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conceal
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽 | |
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wrought
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| v.引起；以…原料制作；运转；adj.制造的 | |
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crafty
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| adj.狡猾的，诡诈的 | |
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brutal
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| adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的 | |
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confided
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| v.吐露（秘密，心事等）( confide的过去式和过去分词 )；（向某人）吐露（隐私、秘密等） | |
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vile
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| adj.卑鄙的，可耻的，邪恶的；坏透的 | |
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misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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eluded
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| v.（尤指机敏地）避开( elude的过去式和过去分词 )；逃避；躲避；使达不到 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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recoil
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| vi.退却，退缩，畏缩 | |
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stipulated
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| vt.& vi.规定；约定adj.[法]合同规定的 | |
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rigidly
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| adv.刻板地，僵化地 | |
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guilt
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| n.犯罪；内疚；过失，罪责 | |
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encompasses
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| v.围绕( encompass的第三人称单数 )；包围；包含；包括 | |
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heed
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| v.注意，留意；n.注意，留心 | |
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crouched
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| v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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concession
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| n.让步，妥协；特许(权) | |
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withered
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| adj. 枯萎的，干瘪的，（人身体的部分器官）因病萎缩的或未发育良好的 动词wither的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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singeing
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| v.浅表烧焦( singe的现在分词 )；（毛发）燎，烧焦尖端[边儿]；烧毛 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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bonnet
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| n.无边女帽；童帽 | |
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nance
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| n.娘娘腔的男人，男同性恋者 | |
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gal
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| n.姑娘，少女 | |
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obstinacy
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| n.顽固；（病痛等）难治 | |
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jade
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| n.玉石；碧玉；翡翠 | |
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stark
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| adj.荒凉的；严酷的；完全的；adv.完全地 | |
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raving
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| adj.说胡话的；疯狂的，怒吼的；非常漂亮的；令人醉心[痴心]的v.胡言乱语(rave的现在分词)n.胡话；疯话adv.胡言乱语地；疯狂地 | |
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pinioning
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| v.抓住[捆住]（双臂）( pinion的现在分词 ) | |
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implored
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| 恳求或乞求（某人）( implore的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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perspiration
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| n.汗水；出汗 | |
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growled
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| v.（动物）发狺狺声， （雷）作隆隆声( growl的过去式和过去分词 )；低声咆哮着说 | |
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expressive
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| adj.表现的，表达…的，富于表情的 | |
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fretted
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| 焦躁的，附有弦马的，腐蚀的 | |
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hush
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| int.嘘，别出声；n.沉默，静寂；v.使安静 | |
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swollen
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| adj.肿大的，水涨的；v.使变大，肿胀 | |
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tack
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| n.大头钉；假缝，粗缝 | |
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subsided
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| v.（土地）下陷（因在地下采矿）( subside的过去式和过去分词 )；减弱；下降至较低或正常水平；一下子坐在椅子等上 | |
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brute
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| n.野兽，兽性 | |
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touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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45
brutality
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| n.野蛮的行为，残忍，野蛮 | |
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attachment
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| n.附属物，附件；依恋；依附 | |
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indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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zealous
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| adj.狂热的，热心的 | |
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impatience
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| n.不耐烦，急躁 | |
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liking
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| n.爱好；嗜好；喜欢 | |
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51
taunts
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| 嘲弄的言语，嘲笑，奚落( taunt的名词复数 ) | |
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52
galled
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| v.使…擦痛( gall的过去式和过去分词 )；擦伤；烦扰；侮辱 | |
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53
villain
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| n.反派演员，反面人物；恶棍；问题的起因 | |
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unlimited
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| adj.无限的，不受控制的，无条件的 | |
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attained
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| （通常经过努力）实现( attain的过去式和过去分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况） | |
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expedients
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| n.应急有效的，权宜之计的( expedient的名词复数 ) | |
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confession
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| n.自白，供认，承认 | |
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compliance
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| n.顺从；服从；附和；屈从 | |
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tattered
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| adj.破旧的，衣衫破的 | |
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wrenched
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| v.（猛力地）扭( wrench的过去式和过去分词 )；扭伤；使感到痛苦；使悲痛 | |
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