Alexandra has settled back into her old routine. There are weekly letters from Emil. Lou and Oscar she has not seen since Carl went away. To avoid awkward encounters in the presence of curious spectators, she has stopped going to the Norwegian Church and drives up to the Reform Church at Hanover, or goes with Marie Shabata to the Catholic Church, locally known as “the French Church.” She has not told Marie about Carl, or her differences with her brothers. She was never very communicative about her own affairs, and when she came to the point, an instinct told her that about such things she and Marie would not understand one another.
Old Mrs. Lee had been afraid that family misunderstandings might deprive her of her yearly visit to Alexandra. But on the first day of December Alexandra telephoned Annie that tomorrow she would send Ivar over for her mother, and the next day the old lady arrived with her bundles. For twelve years Mrs. Lee had always entered Alexandra’s sitting-room10 with the same exclamation11, “Now we be yust-a like old times!” She enjoyed the liberty Alexandra gave her, and hearing her own language about her all day long. Here she could wear her nightcap and sleep with all her windows shut, listen to Ivar reading the Bible, and here she could run about among the stables in a pair of Emil’s old boots. Though she was bent12 almost double, she was as spry as a gopher. Her face was as brown as if it had been varnished13, and as full of wrinkles as a washerwoman’s hands. She had three jolly old teeth left in the front of her mouth, and when she grinned she looked very knowing, as if when you found out how to take it, life wasn’t half bad. While she and Alexandra patched and pieced and quilted, she talked incessantly14 about stories she read in a Swedish family paper, telling the plots in great detail; or about her life on a dairy farm in Gottland when she was a girl. Sometimes she forgot which were the printed stories and which were the real stories, it all seemed so far away. She loved to take a little brandy, with hot water and sugar, before she went to bed, and Alexandra always had it ready for her. “It sends good dreams,” she would say with a twinkle in her eye.
When Mrs. Lee had been with Alexandra for a week, Marie Shabata telephoned one morning to say that Frank had gone to town for the day, and she would like them to come over for coffee in the afternoon. Mrs. Lee hurried to wash out and iron her new cross-stitched apron16, which she had finished only the night before; a checked gingham apron worked with a design ten inches broad across the bottom; a hunting scene, with fir trees and a stag and dogs and huntsmen. Mrs. Lee was firm with herself at dinner, and refused a second helping17 of apple dumplings. “I ta-ank I save up,” she said with a giggle18.
At two o’clock in the afternoon Alexandra’s cart drove up to the Shabatas’ gate, and Marie saw Mrs. Lee’s red shawl come bobbing up the path. She ran to the door and pulled the old woman into the house with a hug, helping her to take off her wraps while Alexandra blanketed the horse outside. Mrs. Lee had put on her best black satine dress — she abominated19 woolen20 stuffs, even in winter — and a crocheted22 collar, fastened with a big pale gold pin, containing faded daguerreotypes of her father and mother. She had not worn her apron for fear of rumpling23 it, and now she shook it out and tied it round her waist with a conscious air. Marie drew back and threw up her hands, exclaiming, “Oh, what a beauty! I’ve never seen this one before, have I, Mrs. Lee?”
The old woman giggled24 and ducked her head. “No, yust las’ night I ma-ake. See dis tread; verra strong, no wa-ash out, no fade. My sister send from Sveden. I yust-a ta-ank you like dis.”
Marie ran to the door again. “Come in, Alexandra. I have been looking at Mrs. Lee’s apron. Do stop on your way home and show it to Mrs. Hiller. She’s crazy about cross-stitch.”
While Alexandra removed her hat and veil, Mrs. Lee went out to the kitchen and settled herself in a wooden rocking-chair by the stove, looking with great interest at the table, set for three, with a white cloth, and a pot of pink geraniums in the middle. “My, a-an’t you gotta fine plants; such-a much flower. How you keep from freeze?”
She pointed25 to the window-shelves, full of blooming fuchsias and geraniums.
“I keep the fire all night, Mrs. Lee, and when it’s very cold I put them all on the table, in the middle of the room. Other nights I only put newspapers behind them. Frank laughs at me for fussing, but when they don’t bloom he says, ‘What’s the matter with the darned things?’ — What do you hear from Carl, Alexandra?”
“He got to Dawson before the river froze, and now I suppose I won’t hear any more until spring. Before he left California he sent me a box of orange flowers, but they didn’t keep very well. I have brought a bunch of Emil’s letters for you.” Alexandra came out from the sitting-room and pinched Marie’s cheek playfully. “You don’t look as if the weather ever froze you up. Never have colds, do you? That’s a good girl. She had dark red cheeks like this when she was a little girl, Mrs. Lee. She looked like some queer foreign kind of a doll. I’ve never forgot the first time I saw you in Mieklejohn’s store, Marie, the time father was lying sick. Carl and I were talking about that before he went away.”
“I remember, and Emil had his kitten along. When are you going to send Emil’s Christmas box?”
“It ought to have gone before this. I’ll have to send it by mail now, to get it there in time.”
Marie pulled a dark purple silk necktie from her workbasket. “I knit this for him. It’s a good color, don’t you think? Will you please put it in with your things and tell him it’s from me, to wear when he goes serenading.”
Alexandra laughed. “I don’t believe he goes serenading much. He says in one letter that the Mexican ladies are said to be very beautiful, but that don’t seem to me very warm praise.”
Marie tossed her head. “Emil can’t fool me. If he’s bought a guitar, he goes serenading. Who wouldn’t, with all those Spanish girls dropping flowers down from their windows! I’d sing to them every night, wouldn’t you, Mrs. Lee?”
The old lady chuckled26. Her eyes lit up as Marie bent down and opened the oven door. A delicious hot fragrance27 blew out into the tidy kitchen. “My, somet’ing smell good!” She turned to Alexandra with a wink15, her three yellow teeth making a brave show, “I ta-ank dat stop my yaw from ache no more!” she said contentedly28.
Marie took out a pan of delicate little rolls, stuffed with stewed29 apricots, and began to dust them over with powdered sugar. “I hope you’ll like these, Mrs. Lee; Alexandra does. The Bohemians always like them with their coffee. But if you don’t, I have a coffee-cake with nuts and poppy seeds. Alexandra, will you get the cream jug30? I put it in the window to keep cool.”
“The Bohemians,” said Alexandra, as they drew up to the table, “certainly know how to make more kinds of bread than any other people in the world. Old Mrs. Hiller told me once at the church supper that she could make seven kinds of fancy bread, but Marie could make a dozen.”
Mrs. Lee held up one of the apricot rolls between her brown thumb and forefinger31 and weighed it critically. “Yust like-a fedders,” she pronounced with satisfaction. “My, a-an’t dis nice!” she exclaimed as she stirred her coffee. “I yust ta-ake a liddle yelly now, too, I ta-ank.”
Alexandra and Marie laughed at her forehandedness, and fell to talking of their own affairs. “I was afraid you had a cold when I talked to you over the telephone the other night, Marie. What was the matter, had you been crying?”
“Maybe I had,” Marie smiled guiltily. “Frank was out late that night. Don’t you get lonely sometimes in the winter, when everybody has gone away?”
“I thought it was something like that. If I hadn’t had company, I’d have run over to see for myself. If you get down-hearted, what will become of the rest of us?” Alexandra asked.
“I don’t, very often. There’s Mrs. Lee without any coffee!”
Later, when Mrs. Lee declared that her powers were spent, Marie and Alexandra went upstairs to look for some crochet21 patterns the old lady wanted to borrow. “Better put on your coat, Alexandra. It’s cold up there, and I have no idea where those patterns are. I may have to look through my old trunks.” Marie caught up a shawl and opened the stair door, running up the steps ahead of her guest. “While I go through the bureau drawers, you might look in those hat-boxes on the closet-shelf, over where Frank’s clothes hang. There are a lot of odds32 and ends in them.”
She began tossing over the contents of the drawers, and Alexandra went into the clothes-closet. Presently she came back, holding a slender elastic33 yellow stick in her hand.
“What in the world is this, Marie? You don’t mean to tell me Frank ever carried such a thing?”
Marie blinked at it with astonishment34 and sat down on the floor. “Where did you find it? I didn’t know he had kept it. I haven’t seen it for years.”
“It really is a cane35, then?”
“Yes. One he brought from the old country. He used to carry it when I first knew him. Isn’t it foolish? Poor Frank!”
Alexandra twirled the stick in her fingers and laughed. “He must have looked funny!”
Marie was thoughtful. “No, he didn’t, really. It didn’t seem out of place. He used to be awfully36 gay like that when he was a young man. I guess people always get what’s hardest for them, Alexandra.” Marie gathered the shawl closer about her and still looked hard at the cane. “Frank would be all right in the right place,” she said reflectively. “He ought to have a different kind of wife, for one thing. Do you know, Alexandra, I could pick out exactly the right sort of woman for Frank — now. The trouble is you almost have to marry a man before you can find out the sort of wife he needs; and usually it’s exactly the sort you are not. Then what are you going to do about it?” she asked candidly37.
Alexandra confessed she didn’t know. “However,” she added, “it seems to me that you get along with Frank about as well as any woman I’ve ever seen or heard of could.”
Marie shook her head, pursing her lips and blowing her warm breath softly out into the frosty air. “No; I was spoiled at home. I like my own way, and I have a quick tongue. When Frank brags38, I say sharp things, and he never forgets. He goes over and over it in his mind; I can feel him. Then I’m too giddy. Frank’s wife ought to be timid, and she ought not to care about another living thing in the world but just Frank! I didn’t, when I married him, but I suppose I was too young to stay like that.” Marie sighed.
Alexandra had never heard Marie speak so frankly39 about her husband before, and she felt that it was wiser not to encourage her. No good, she reasoned, ever came from talking about such things, and while Marie was thinking aloud, Alexandra had been steadily40 searching the hat-boxes. “Aren’t these the patterns, Maria?”
Maria sprang up from the floor. “Sure enough, we were looking for patterns, weren’t we? I’d forgot about everything but Frank’s other wife. I’ll put that away.”
She poked41 the cane behind Frank’s Sunday clothes, and though she laughed, Alexandra saw there were tears in her eyes.
When they went back to the kitchen, the snow had begun to fall, and Marie’s visitors thought they must be getting home. She went out to the cart with them, and tucked the robes about old Mrs. Lee while Alexandra took the blanket off her horse. As they drove away, Marie turned and went slowly back to the house. She took up the package of letters Alexandra had brought, but she did not read them. She turned them over and looked at the foreign stamps, and then sat watching the flying snow while the dusk deepened in the kitchen and the stove sent out a red glow.
Marie knew perfectly42 well that Emil’s letters were written more for her than for Alexandra. They were not the sort of letters that a young man writes to his sister. They were both more personal and more painstaking43; full of descriptions of the gay life in the old Mexican capital in the days when the strong hand of Porfirio Diaz was still strong. He told about bull-fights and cock-fights, churches and FIESTAS, the flower-markets and the fountains, the music and dancing, the people of all nations he met in the Italian restaurants on San Francisco Street. In short, they were the kind of letters a young man writes to a woman when he wishes himself and his life to seem interesting to her, when he wishes to enlist44 her imagination in his behalf.
Marie, when she was alone or when she sat sewing in the evening, often thought about what it must be like down there where Emil was; where there were flowers and street bands everywhere, and carriages rattling45 up and down, and where there was a little blind boot-black in front of the cathedral who could play any tune46 you asked for by dropping the lids of blacking-boxes on the stone steps. When everything is done and over for one at twenty-three, it is pleasant to let the mind wander forth47 and follow a young adventurer who has life before him. “And if it had not been for me,” she thought, “Frank might still be free like that, and having a good time making people admire him. Poor Frank, getting married wasn’t very good for him either. I’m afraid I do set people against him, as he says. I seem, somehow, to give him away all the time. Perhaps he would try to be agreeable to people again, if I were not around. It seems as if I always make him just as bad as he can be.”
Later in the winter, Alexandra looked back upon that afternoon as the last satisfactory visit she had had with Marie. After that day the younger woman seemed to shrink more and more into herself. When she was with Alexandra she was not spontaneous and frank as she used to be. She seemed to be brooding over something, and holding something back. The weather had a good deal to do with their seeing less of each other than usual. There had not been such snowstorms in twenty years, and the path across the fields was drifted deep from Christmas until March. When the two neighbors went to see each other, they had to go round by the wagon-road, which was twice as far. They telephoned each other almost every night, though in January there was a stretch of three weeks when the wires were down, and when the postman did not come at all.
Marie often ran in to see her nearest neighbor, old Mrs. Hiller, who was crippled with rheumatism48 and had only her son, the lame49 shoemaker, to take care of her; and she went to the French Church, whatever the weather. She was a sincerely devout50 girl. She prayed for herself and for Frank, and for Emil, among the temptations of that gay, corrupt51 old city. She found more comfort in the Church that winter than ever before. It seemed to come closer to her, and to fill an emptiness that ached in her heart. She tried to be patient with her husband. He and his hired man usually played California Jack52 in the evening. Marie sat sewing or crocheting53 and tried to take a friendly interest in the game, but she was always thinking about the wide fields outside, where the snow was drifting over the fences; and about the orchard54, where the snow was falling and packing, crust over crust. When she went out into the dark kitchen to fix her plants for the night, she used to stand by the window and look out at the white fields, or watch the currents of snow whirling over the orchard. She seemed to feel the weight of all the snow that lay down there. The branches had become so hard that they wounded your hand if you but tried to break a twig55. And yet, down under the frozen crusts, at the roots of the trees, the secret of life was still safe, warm as the blood in one’s heart; and the spring would come again! Oh, it would come again!
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1
recuperates
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| v.恢复（健康、体力等），复原( recuperate的第三人称单数 ) | |
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2
teeming
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| adj.丰富的v.充满( teem的现在分词 )；到处都是；（指水、雨等）暴降；倾注 | |
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exterminated
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| v.消灭，根绝( exterminate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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variegated
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| adj.斑驳的，杂色的 | |
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slaty
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| 石板一样的，石板色的 | |
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hue
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| n.色度；色调；样子 | |
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bruises
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| n.瘀伤，伤痕，擦伤( bruise的名词复数 ) | |
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rigor
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| n.严酷，严格，严厉 | |
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melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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sitting-room
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| n.（BrE）客厅，起居室 | |
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exclamation
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| n.感叹号，惊呼，惊叹词 | |
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12
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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varnished
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| 浸渍过的，涂漆的 | |
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incessantly
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| ad.不停地 | |
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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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apron
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| n.围裙；工作裙 | |
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helping
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| n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的 | |
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giggle
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| n.痴笑，咯咯地笑；v.咯咯地笑着说 | |
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abominated
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| v.憎恶，厌恶，不喜欢( abominate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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woolen
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| adj.羊毛(制)的；毛纺的 | |
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crochet
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| n.钩针织物；v.用钩针编制 | |
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crocheted
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| v.用钩针编织( crochet的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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23
rumpling
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| v.弄皱，使凌乱( rumple的现在分词 ) | |
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giggled
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| v.咯咯地笑( giggle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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chuckled
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| 轻声地笑( chuckle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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fragrance
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| n.芬芳，香味，香气 | |
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contentedly
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| adv.心满意足地 | |
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stewed
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| adj.焦虑不安的，烂醉的v.炖( stew的过去式和过去分词 )；煨；思考；担忧 | |
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30
jug
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| n.(有柄，小口，可盛水等的)大壶，罐，盂 | |
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31
forefinger
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| n.食指 | |
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32
odds
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| n.让步，机率，可能性，比率；胜败优劣之别 | |
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elastic
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| n.橡皮圈，松紧带；adj.有弹性的；灵活的 | |
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34
astonishment
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| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
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35
cane
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| n.手杖，细长的茎，藤条；v.以杖击，以藤编制的 | |
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36
awfully
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| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
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37
candidly
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| adv.坦率地，直率而诚恳地 | |
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38
brags
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| v.自夸，吹嘘( brag的第三人称单数 ) | |
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frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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40
steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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41
poked
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| v.伸出( poke的过去式和过去分词 )；戳出；拨弄；与（某人）性交 | |
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42
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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43
painstaking
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| adj.苦干的；艰苦的，费力的，刻苦的 | |
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44
enlist
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| vt.谋取(支持等)，赢得；征募；vi.入伍 | |
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45
rattling
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| adj. 格格作响的, 活泼的, 很好的 adv. 极其, 很, 非常 动词rattle的现在分词 | |
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46
tune
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| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
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47
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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48
rheumatism
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| n.风湿病 | |
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49
lame
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| adj.跛的，(辩解、论据等)无说服力的 | |
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50
devout
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| adj.虔诚的，虔敬的，衷心的 (n.devoutness) | |
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51
corrupt
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| v.贿赂，收买；adj.腐败的，贪污的 | |
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52
jack
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| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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53
crocheting
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| v.用钩针编织( crochet的现在分词 )；钩编 | |
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54
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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55
twig
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| n.小树枝，嫩枝；v.理解 | |
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