湯姆歷險記Chapter 35 受人尊敬的哈克與“強盜”為伍

Chapter 35
      
      
        
            
      
   
    THE reader may rest satisfied that Tom's and Huck's windfall made a mighty stir
    in the poor little village of St. Petersburg. So vast a sum, all in actual cash, seemed
    next to incredible. It was talked about, gloated over, glorified, until the reason of many
    of the citizens tottered under the strain of the unhealthy excitement. Every
    "haunted" house in St. Petersburg and the neighboring villages was dissected,
    plank by plank, and its foundations dug up and ransacked for hidden treasure -- and not by
    boys, but men 每 pretty grave, unromantic men, too, some of them.
    Wherever Tom and Huck appeared they were courted, admired, stared at. The boys were not
    able to remember that their remarks had possessed weight before; but now their sayings
    were treasured and repeated; everything they did seemed somehow to be regarded as
    remarkable; they had evidently lost the power of doing and saying commonplace things;
    moreover, their past history was raked up and discovered to bear marks of conspicuous
    originality. The village paper published biographical sketches of the boys.

    The Widow Douglas put Huck's money out at six per cent., and Judge Thatcher did the
    same with Tom's at Aunt Polly's request. Each lad had an income, now, that was simply
    prodigious -- a dollar for every week-day in the year and half of the Sundays. It was just
    what the minister got -- no, it was what he was promised -- he generally couldn't collect
    it. A dollar and a quarter a week would board, lodge, and school a boy in those old simple
    days -- and clothe him and wash him, too, for that matter.

    Judge Thatcher had conceived a great opinion of Tom. He said that no commonplace boy
    would ever have got his daughter out of the cave. When Becky told her father, in strict
    confidence, how Tom had taken her whipping at school, the Judge was visibly moved; and
    when she pleaded grace for the mighty lie which Tom had told in order to shift that
    whipping from her shoulders to his own, the Judge said with a fine outburst that it was a
    noble, a generous, a magnanimous lie -- a lie that was worthy to hold up its head and
    march down through history breast to breast with George Washington's lauded Truth about
    the hatchet! Becky thought her father had never looked so tall and so superb as when he
    walked the floor and stamped his foot and said that. She went straight off and told Tom
    about it.

    Judge Thatcher hoped to see Tom a great lawyer or a great soldier some day. He said he
    meant to look to it that Tom should be admitted to the National Military Academy and
    afterward trained in the best law school in the country, in order that he might be ready
    for either career or both.

    Huck Finn's wealth and the fact that he was now under the Widow Douglas' protection
    introduced him into society -- no, dragged him into it, hurled him into it -- and his
    sufferings were almost more than he could bear. The widow's servants kept him clean and
    neat, combed and brushed, and they bedded him nightly in unsympathetic sheets that had not
    one little spot or stain which he could press to his heart and know for a friend. He had
    to eat with a knife and fork; he had to use napkin, cup, and plate; he had to learn his
    book, he had to go to church; he had to talk so properly that speech was become insipid in
    his mouth; whithersoever he turned, the bars and shackles of civilization shut him in and
    bound him hand and foot.

    He bravely bore his miseries three weeks, and then one day turned up missing. For
    forty-eight hours the widow hunted for him everywhere in great distress. The public were
    profoundly concerned; they searched high and low, they dragged the river for his body.
    Early the third morning Tom Sawyer wisely went poking among some old empty hogsheads down
    behind the abandoned slaughter-house, and in one of them he found the refugee. Huck had
    slept there; he had just breakfasted upon some stolen odds and ends of food, and was lying
    off, now, in comfort, with his pipe. He was unkempt, uncombed, and clad in the same old
    ruin of rags that had made him picturesque in the days when he was free and happy. Tom
    routed him out, told him the trouble he had been causing, and urged him to go home. Huck's
    face lost its tranquil content, and took a melancholy cast. He said:

    "Don't talk about it, Tom. I've tried it, and it don't work; it don't work, Tom.
    It ain't for me; I ain't used to it. The widder's good to me, and friendly; but I can't
    stand them ways. She makes me get up just at the same time every morning; she makes me
    wash, they comb me all to thunder; she won't let me sleep in the woodshed; I got to wear
    them blamed clothes that just smothers me, Tom; they don't seem to any air git through
    'em, somehow; and they're so rotten nice that I can't set down, nor lay down, nor roll
    around anywher's; I hain't slid on a cellar-door for -- well, it 'pears to be years; I got
    to go to church and sweat and sweat -- I hate them ornery sermons! I can't ketch a fly in
    there, I can't chaw. I got to wear shoes all Sunday. The widder eats by a bell; she goes
    to bed by a bell; she gits up by a bell -- everything's so awful reg'lar a body can't
    stand it."

    "Well, everybody does that way, Huck."

    "Tom, it don't make no difference. I ain't everybody, and I can't stand it. It's
    awful to be tied up so. And grub comes too easy 每 I don't take
    no interest in vittles, that way. I got to ask to go a-fishing; I got to ask to go in
    a-swimming -- dern'd if I hain't got to ask to do everything. Well, I'd got to talk so
    nice it wasn't no comfort -- I'd got to go up in the attic and rip out awhile, every day,
    to git a taste in my mouth, or I'd a died, Tom. The widder wouldn't let me smoke; she
    wouldn't let me yell, she wouldn't let me gape, nor stretch, nor scratch, before folks
    --" [Then with a spasm of special irritation and injury] -- "And dad fetch it,
    she prayed all the time! I never see such a woman! I HAD to shove, Tom -- I just had to.
    And besides, that school's going to open, and I'd a had to go to it -- well, I wouldn't
    stand THAT, Tom. Looky-here, Tom, being rich ain't what it's cracked up to be. It's just
    worry and worry, and sweat and sweat, and a-wishing you was dead all the time. Now these
    clothes suits me, and this bar'l suits me, and I ain't ever going to shake 'em any more.
    Tom, I wouldn't ever got into all this trouble if it hadn't 'a' ben for that money; now
    you just take my sheer of it along with your'n, and gimme a ten-center sometimes -- not
    many times, becuz I don't give a dern for a thing 'thout it's tollable hard to git -- and
    you go and beg off for me with the widder."

    "Oh, Huck, you know I can't do that. 'Tain't fair; and besides if you'll try this
    thing just a while longer you'll come to like it."

    "Like it! Yes -- the way I'd like a hot stove if I was to set on it long enough.
    No, Tom, I won't be rich, and I won't live in them cussed smothery houses. I like the
    woods, and the river, and hogsheads, and I'll stick to 'em, too. Blame it all! just as
    we'd got guns, and a cave, and all just fixed to rob, here this dern foolishness has got
    to come up and spile it all!"

    Tom saw his opportunity --

    "Lookyhere, Huck, being rich ain't going to keep me back from turning
    robber."

    "No! Oh, good-licks; are you in real dead-wood earnest, Tom?"

    "Just as dead earnest as I'm sitting here. But Huck, we can't let you into the
    gang if you ain't respectable, you know."

    Huck's joy was quenched.

    "Can't let me in, Tom? Didn't you let me go for a pirate?"

    "Yes, but that's different. A robber is more high-toned than what a pirate is --
    as a general thing. In most countries they're awful high up in the nobility -- dukes and
    such."

    "Now, Tom, hain't you always ben friendly to me? You wouldn't shet me out, would
    you, Tom? You wouldn't do that, now, would you, Tom?"

    "Huck, I wouldn't want to, and I don't want to -- but what would people say? Why,
    they'd say, 'Mph! Tom Sawyer's Gang! Pretty low characters in it!' They'd mean you, Huck.
    You wouldn't like that, and I wouldn't."

    Huck was silent for some time, engaged in a mental struggle. Finally he said:

    "Well, I'll go back to the widder for a month and tackle it and see if I can come
    to stand it, if you'll let me b'long to the gang, Tom."

    "All right, Huck, it's a whiz! Come along, old chap, and I'll ask the widow to let
    up on you a little, Huck."

    "Will you, Tom -- now will you? That's good. If she'll let up on some of the
    roughest things, I'll smoke private and cuss private, and crowd through or bust. When you
    going to start the gang and turn robbers?"

    "Oh, right off. We'll get the boys together and have the initiation to-night,
    maybe."

    "Have the which?"

    "Have the initiation."

    "What's that?"

    "It's to swear to stand by one another, and never tell the gang's secrets, even if
    you're chopped all to flinders, and kill anybody and all his family that hurts one of the
    gang."

    "That's gay -- that's mighty gay, Tom, I tell you."

    "Well, I bet it is. And all that swearing's got to be done at midnight, in the
    lonesomest, awfulest place you can find -- a ha'nted house is the best, but they're all
    ripped up now."

    "Well, midnight's good, anyway, Tom."

    "Yes, so it is. And you've got to swear on a coffin, and sign it with blood."

    "Now, that's something like! Why, it's a million times bullier than pirating. I'll
    stick to the widder till I rot, Tom; and if I git to be a reg'lar ripper of a robber, and
    everybody talking 'bout it, I reckon she'll be proud she snaked me in out of the
    wet."

    ﹛﹛﹛ CONCLUSION

    SO endeth this chronicle. It being strictly a history of a boy, it must stop here; the
    story could not go much further without becoming the history of a man. When one writes a
    novel about grown people, he knows exactly where to stop -- that is, with a marriage; but
    when he writes of juveniles, he must stop where he best can.

    Most of the characters that perform in this book still live, and are prosperous and
    happy. Some day it may seem worth while to take up the story of the younger ones again and
    see what sort of men and women they turned out to be; therefore it will be wisest not to
    reveal any of that part of their lives at present.