The Divide is now thickly populated. The rich soil yields heavy harvests; the dry, bracing8 climate and the smoothness of the land make labor9 easy for men and beasts. There are few scenes more gratifying than a spring plowing10 in that country, where the furrows12 of a single field often lie a mile in length, and the brown earth, with such a strong, clean smell, and such a power of growth and fertility in it, yields itself eagerly to the plow11; rolls away from the shear13, not even dimming the brightness of the metal, with a soft, deep sigh of happiness. The wheat-cutting sometimes goes on all night as well as all day, and in good seasons there are scarcely men and horses enough to do the harvesting. The grain is so heavy that it bends toward the blade and cuts like velvet14.
There is something frank and joyous15 and young in the open face of the country. It gives itself ungrudgingly to the moods of the season, holding nothing back. Like the plains of Lombardy, it seems to rise a little to meet the sun. The air and the earth are curiously16 mated and intermingled, as if the one were the breath of the other. You feel in the atmosphere the same tonic17, puissant18 quality that is in the tilth, the same strength and resoluteness19.
One June morning a young man stood at the gate of the Norwegian graveyard, sharpening his scythe20 in strokes unconsciously timed to the tune21 he was whistling. He wore a flannel22 cap and duck trousers, and the sleeves of his white flannel shirt were rolled back to the elbow. When he was satisfied with the edge of his blade, he slipped the whetstone into his hip23 pocket and began to swing his scythe, still whistling, but softly, out of respect to the quiet folk about him. Unconscious respect, probably, for he seemed intent upon his own thoughts, and, like the Gladiator’s, they were far away. He was a splendid figure of a boy, tall and straight as a young pine tree, with a handsome head, and stormy gray eyes, deeply set under a serious brow. The space between his two front teeth, which were unusually far apart, gave him the proficiency24 in whistling for which he was distinguished25 at college. (He also played the cornet in the University band.)
When the grass required his close attention, or when he had to stoop to cut about a head-stone, he paused in his lively air, — the “Jewel” song, — taking it up where he had left it when his scythe swung free again. He was not thinking about the tired pioneers over whom his blade glittered. The old wild country, the struggle in which his sister was destined26 to succeed while so many men broke their hearts and died, he can scarcely remember. That is all among the dim things of childhood and has been forgotten in the brighter pattern life weaves today, in the bright facts of being captain of the track team, and holding the interstate record for the high jump, in the all-suffusing brightness of being twenty-one. Yet sometimes, in the pauses of his work, the young man frowned and looked at the ground with an intentness which suggested that even twenty-one might have its problems.
When he had been mowing28 the better part of an hour, he heard the rattle29 of a light cart on the road behind him. Supposing that it was his sister coming back from one of her farms, he kept on with his work. The cart stopped at the gate and a merry contralto voice called, “Almost through, Emil?” He dropped his scythe and went toward the fence, wiping his face and neck with his handkerchief. In the cart sat a young woman who wore driving gauntlets and a wide shade hat, trimmed with red poppies. Her face, too, was rather like a poppy, round and brown, with rich color in her cheeks and lips, and her dancing yellow-brown eyes bubbled with gayety. The wind was flapping her big hat and teasing a curl of her chestnut-colored hair. She shook her head at the tall youth.
“What time did you get over here? That’s not much of a job for an athlete. Here I’ve been to town and back. Alexandra lets you sleep late. Oh, I know! Lou’s wife was telling me about the way she spoils you. I was going to give you a lift, if you were done.” She gathered up her reins30.
“But I will be, in a minute. Please wait for me, Marie,” Emil coaxed31. “Alexandra sent me to mow27 our lot, but I’ve done half a dozen others, you see. Just wait till I finish off the Kourdnas’. By the way, they were Bohemians. Why aren’t they up in the Catholic graveyard?”
“Free-thinkers,” replied the young woman laconically32.
“Lots of the Bohemian boys at the University are,” said Emil, taking up his scythe again. “What did you ever burn John Huss for, anyway? It’s made an awful row. They still jaw33 about it in history classes.”
“We’d do it right over again, most of us,” said the young woman hotly. “Don’t they ever teach you in your history classes that you’d all be heathen Turks if it hadn’t been for the Bohemians?”
Emil had fallen to mowing. “Oh, there’s no denying you’re a spunky little bunch, you Czechs,” he called back over his shoulder.
Marie Shabata settled herself in her seat and watched the rhythmical34 movement of the young man’s long arms, swinging her foot as if in time to some air that was going through her mind. The minutes passed. Emil mowed35 vigorously and Marie sat sunning herself and watching the long grass fall. She sat with the ease that belongs to persons of an essentially36 happy nature, who can find a comfortable spot almost anywhere; who are supple37, and quick in adapting themselves to circumstances. After a final swish, Emil snapped the gate and sprang into the cart, holding his scythe well out over the wheel. “There,” he sighed. “I gave old man Lee a cut or so, too. Lou’s wife needn’t talk. I never see Lou’s scythe over here.”
Marie clucked to her horse. “Oh, you know Annie!” She looked at the young man’s bare arms. “How brown you’ve got since you came home. I wish I had an athlete to mow my orchard38. I get wet to my knees when I go down to pick cherries.”
“You can have one, any time you want him. Better wait until after it rains.” Emil squinted39 off at the horizon as if he were looking for clouds.
“Will you? Oh, there’s a good boy!” She turned her head to him with a quick, bright smile. He felt it rather than saw it. Indeed, he had looked away with the purpose of not seeing it. “I’ve been up looking at Angelique’s wedding clothes,” Marie went on, “and I’m so excited I can hardly wait until Sunday. Amedee will be a handsome bridegroom. Is anybody but you going to stand up with him? Well, then it will be a handsome wedding party.” She made a droll40 face at Emil, who flushed. “Frank,” Marie continued, flicking41 her horse, “is cranky at me because I loaned his saddle to Jan Smirka, and I’m terribly afraid he won’t take me to the dance in the evening. Maybe the supper will tempt42 him. All Angelique’s folks are baking for it, and all Amedee’s twenty cousins. There will be barrels of beer. If once I get Frank to the supper, I’ll see that I stay for the dance. And by the way, Emil, you mustn’t dance with me but once or twice. You must dance with all the French girls. It hurts their feelings if you don’t. They think you’re proud because you’ve been away to school or something.”
Emil sniffed43. “How do you know they think that?”
“Well, you didn’t dance with them much at Raoul Marcel’s party, and I could tell how they took it by the way they looked at you — and at me.”
“All right,” said Emil shortly, studying the glittering blade of his scythe.
They drove westward44 toward Norway Creek45, and toward a big white house that stood on a hill, several miles across the fields. There were so many sheds and outbuildings grouped about it that the place looked not unlike a tiny village. A stranger, approaching it, could not help noticing the beauty and fruitfulness of the outlying fields. There was something individual about the great farm, a most unusual trimness and care for detail. On either side of the road, for a mile before you reached the foot of the hill, stood tall osage orange hedges, their glossy46 green marking off the yellow fields. South of the hill, in a low, sheltered swale, surrounded by a mulberry hedge, was the orchard, its fruit trees knee-deep in timothy grass. Any one thereabouts would have told you that this was one of the richest farms on the Divide, and that the farmer was a woman, Alexandra Bergson.
If you go up the hill and enter Alexandra’s big house, you will find that it is curiously unfinished and uneven47 in comfort. One room is papered, carpeted, over-furnished; the next is almost bare. The pleasantest rooms in the house are the kitchen — where Alexandra’s three young Swedish girls chatter48 and cook and pickle49 and preserve all summer long — and the sitting-room50, in which Alexandra has brought together the old homely51 furniture that the Bergsons used in their first log house, the family portraits, and the few things her mother brought from Sweden.
When you go out of the house into the flower garden, there you feel again the order and fine arrangement manifest all over the great farm; in the fencing and hedging, in the windbreaks and sheds, in the symmetrical pasture ponds, planted with scrub willows52 to give shade to the cattle in fly-time. There is even a white row of beehives in the orchard, under the walnut53 trees. You feel that, properly, Alexandra’s house is the big out-of-doors, and that it is in the soil that she expresses herself best.
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1
shaft
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| n.(工具的)柄，杆状物 | |
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graveyard
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| n.坟场 | |
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farmhouses
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| n.农舍，农场的主要住房( farmhouse的名词复数 ) | |
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gilded
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| a.镀金的，富有的 | |
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wink
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| n.眨眼，使眼色，瞬间；v.眨眼，使眼色，闪烁 | |
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tug
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| v.用力拖(或拉)；苦干；n.拖；苦干；拖船 | |
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resolute
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| adj.坚决的，果敢的 | |
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bracing
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| adj.令人振奋的 | |
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labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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plowing
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| v.耕( plow的现在分词 )；犁耕；费力穿过 | |
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plow
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| n.犁，耕地，犁过的地；v.犁，费力地前进[英]plough | |
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furrows
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| n.犁沟( furrow的名词复数 )；（脸上的）皱纹v.犁田，开沟( furrow的第三人称单数 ) | |
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13
shear
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| n.修剪，剪下的东西，羊的一岁；vt.剪掉，割，剥夺；vi.修剪，切割，剥夺，穿越 | |
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14
velvet
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| n.丝绒，天鹅绒；adj.丝绒制的，柔软的 | |
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joyous
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| adj.充满快乐的；令人高兴的 | |
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curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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tonic
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| n./adj.滋补品，补药，强身的，健体的 | |
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puissant
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| adj.强有力的 | |
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resoluteness
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scythe
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| n. 长柄的大镰刀，战车镰； v. 以大镰刀割 | |
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tune
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| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
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flannel
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| n.法兰绒；法兰绒衣服 | |
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hip
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| n.臀部，髋；屋脊 | |
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proficiency
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| n.精通，熟练，精练 | |
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distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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destined
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| adj.命中注定的；(for)以…为目的地的 | |
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mow
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| v.割（草、麦等），扫射，皱眉；n.草堆，谷物堆 | |
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mowing
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| n.割草，一次收割量，牧草地v.刈，割( mow的现在分词 ) | |
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rattle
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| v.飞奔，碰响；激怒；n.碰撞声；拨浪鼓 | |
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reins
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| 感情，激情； 缰( rein的名词复数 )； 控制手段； 掌管； （成人带着幼儿走路以防其走失时用的）保护带 | |
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coaxed
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| v.哄，用好话劝说( coax的过去式和过去分词 )；巧言骗取；哄劝，劝诱 | |
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laconically
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| adv.简短地，简洁地 | |
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jaw
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| n.颚，颌，说教，流言蜚语；v.喋喋不休，教训 | |
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rhythmical
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| adj.有节奏的，有韵律的 | |
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mowed
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| v.刈，割( mow的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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essentially
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| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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supple
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| adj.柔软的，易弯的，逢迎的，顺从的，灵活的；vt.使柔软，使柔顺，使顺从；vi.变柔软，变柔顺 | |
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38
orchard
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| n.果园，果园里的全部果树，(美俚)棒球场 | |
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39
squinted
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| 斜视( squint的过去式和过去分词 )； 眯着眼睛； 瞟； 从小孔或缝隙里看 | |
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40
droll
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| adj.古怪的，好笑的 | |
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41
flicking
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| （尤指用手指或手快速地）轻击( flick的现在分词 )； （用…）轻挥； （快速地）按开关； 向…笑了一下（或瞥了一眼等） | |
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42
tempt
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| vt.引诱，勾引，吸引，引起…的兴趣 | |
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43
sniffed
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| v.以鼻吸气，嗅，闻( sniff的过去式和过去分词 )；抽鼻子（尤指哭泣、患感冒等时出声地用鼻子吸气）；抱怨，不以为然地说 | |
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44
westward
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| n.西方，西部；adj.西方的，向西的；adv.向西 | |
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45
creek
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| n.小溪，小河，小湾 | |
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glossy
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| adj.平滑的；有光泽的 | |
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uneven
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| adj.不平坦的，不规则的，不均匀的 | |
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48
chatter
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| vi.／n.喋喋不休；短促尖叫；(牙齿)打战 | |
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49
pickle
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| n.腌汁，泡菜；v.腌，泡 | |
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50
sitting-room
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| n.（BrE）客厅，起居室 | |
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51
homely
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| adj.家常的，简朴的；不漂亮的 | |
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52
willows
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| n.柳树( willow的名词复数 )；柳木 | |
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53
walnut
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| n.胡桃，胡桃木，胡桃色，茶色 | |
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