Chapter III

One evening, a week after Signa’s wedding, Emil was kneeling before a box in the sitting-room¹, packing his books. From time to time he rose and wandered about the house, picking up stray volumes and bringing them listlessly back to his box. He was packing without enthusiasm. He was not very sanguine³ about his future. Alexandra sat sewing by the table. She had helped him pack his trunk in the afternoon. As Emil came and went by her chair with his books, he thought to himself that it had not been so hard to leave his sister since he first went away to school. He was going directly to Omaha, to read law in the office of a Swedish lawyer until October, when he would enter the law school at Ann Arbor⁴. They had planned that Alexandra was to come to Michigan — a long journey for her — at Christmas time, and spend several weeks with him. Nevertheless, he felt that this leave-taking would be more final than his earlier ones had been; that it meant a definite break with his old home and the beginning of something new — he did not know what. His ideas about the future would not crystallize; the more he tried to think about it, the vaguer his conception of it became. But one thing was clear, he told himself; it was high time that he made good to Alexandra, and that ought to be incentive⁵ enough to begin with.

As he went about gathering⁶ up his books he felt as if he were uprooting⁷ things. At last he threw himself down on the old slat lounge where he had slept when he was little, and lay looking up at the familiar cracks in the ceiling.

“Tired, Emil?” his sister asked.

“Lazy,” he murmured, turning on his side and looking at her. He studied Alexandra’s face for a long time in the lamplight. It had never occurred to him that his sister was a handsome woman until Marie Shabata had told him so. Indeed, he had never thought of her as being a woman at all, only a sister. As he studied her bent⁸ head, he looked up at the picture of John Bergson above the lamp. “No,” he thought to himself, “she didn’t get it there. I suppose I am more like that.”

“Alexandra,” he said suddenly, “that old walnut⁹ secretary you use for a desk was father’s, wasn’t it?”

Alexandra went on stitching. “Yes. It was one of the first things he bought for the old log house. It was a great extravagance in those days. But he wrote a great many letters back to the old country. He had many friends there, and they wrote to him up to the time he died. No one ever blamed him for grandfather’s disgrace. I can see him now, sitting there on Sundays, in his white shirt, writing pages and pages, so carefully. He wrote a fine, regular hand, almost like engraving¹⁰. Yours is something like his, when you take pains.”

“Grandfather was really crooked¹¹, was he?”

“He married an unscrupulous woman, and then — then I’m afraid he was really crooked. When we first came here father used to have dreams about making a great fortune and going back to Sweden to pay back to the poor sailors the money grandfather had lost.”

Emil stirred on the lounge. “I say, that would have been worth while, wouldn’t it? Father wasn’t a bit like Lou or Oscar, was he? I can’t remember much about him before he got sick.”

“Oh, not at all!” Alexandra dropped her sewing on her knee. “He had better opportunities; not to make money, but to make something of himself. He was a quiet man, but he was very intelligent. You would have been proud of him, Emil.”

Alexandra felt that he would like to know there had been a man of his kin² whom he could admire. She knew that Emil was ashamed of Lou and Oscar, because they were bigoted¹² and self-satisfied. He never said much about them, but she could feel his disgust. His brothers had shown their disapproval¹³ of him ever since he first went away to school. The only thing that would have satisfied them would have been his failure at the University. As it was, they resented every change in his speech, in his dress, in his point of view; though the latter they had to conjecture¹⁴, for Emil avoided talking to them about any but family matters. All his interests they treated as affectations.

Alexandra took up her sewing again. “I can remember father when he was quite a young man. He belonged to some kind of a musical society, a male chorus, in Stockholm. I can remember going with mother to hear them sing. There must have been a hundred of them, and they all wore long black coats and white neckties. I was used to seeing father in a blue coat, a sort of jacket, and when I recognized him on the platform, I was very proud. Do you remember that Swedish song he taught you, about the ship boy?”

“Yes. I used to sing it to the Mexicans. They like anything different.” Emil paused. “Father had a hard fight here, didn’t he?” he added thoughtfully.

“Yes, and he died in a dark time. Still, he had hope. He believed in the land.”

“And in you, I guess,” Emil said to himself. There was another period of silence; that warm, friendly silence, full of perfect understanding, in which Emil and Alexandra had spent many of their happiest half-hours.

At last Emil said abruptly¹⁵, “Lou and Oscar would be better off if they were poor, wouldn’t they?”

Alexandra smiled. “Maybe. But their children wouldn’t. I have great hopes of Milly.”

Emil shivered. “I don’t know. Seems to me it gets worse as it goes on. The worst of the Swedes is that they’re never willing to find out how much they don’t know. It was like that at the University. Always so pleased with themselves! There’s no getting behind that conceited¹⁶ Swedish grin. The Bohemians and Germans were so different.”

“Come, Emil, don’t go back on your own people. Father wasn’t conceited, Uncle Otto wasn’t. Even Lou and Oscar weren’t when they were boys.”

Emil looked incredulous, but he did not dispute the point. He turned on his back and lay still for a long time, his hands locked under his head, looking up at the ceiling. Alexandra knew that he was thinking of many things. She felt no anxiety about Emil. She had always believed in him, as she had believed in the land. He had been more like himself since he got back from Mexico; seemed glad to be at home, and talked to her as he used to do. She had no doubt that his wandering fit was over, and that he would soon be settled in life.

“Alexandra,” said Emil suddenly, “do you remember the wild duck we saw down on the river that time?”

His sister looked up. “I often think of her. It always seems to me she’s there still, just like we saw her.”

“I know. It’s queer what things one remembers and what things one forgets.” Emil yawned and sat up. “Well, it’s time to turn in.” He rose, and going over to Alexandra stooped down and kissed her lightly on the cheek. “Good-night, sister. I think you did pretty well by us.”

Emil took up his lamp and went upstairs. Alexandra sat finishing his new nightshirt, that must go in the top tray of his trunk.

1 sitting-room   

n.（BrE）客厅，起居室

参考例句：

• The sitting-room is clean.起居室很清洁。
• Each villa has a separate sitting-room.每栋别墅都有一间独立的起居室。

2 kin   

n.家族，亲属，血缘关系；adj.亲属关系的，同类的

参考例句：

• He comes of good kin.他出身好。
• She has gone to live with her husband's kin.她住到丈夫的亲戚家里去了。

3 sanguine   

adj.充满希望的，乐观的，血红色的

参考例句：

• He has a sanguine attitude to life.他对于人生有乐观的看法。
• He is not very sanguine about our chances of success.他对我们成功的机会不太乐观。

4 arbor   

n.凉亭；树木

参考例句：

• They sat in the arbor and chatted over tea.他们坐在凉亭里，边喝茶边聊天。
• You may have heard of Arbor Day at school.你可能在学校里听过植树节。

5 incentive   

n.刺激；动力；鼓励；诱因；动机

参考例句：

• Money is still a major incentive in most occupations.在许多职业中，钱仍是主要的鼓励因素。
• He hasn't much incentive to work hard.他没有努力工作的动机。

6 gathering   

n.集会，聚会，聚集

参考例句：

• He called on Mr. White to speak at the gathering.他请怀特先生在集会上讲话。
• He is on the wing gathering material for his novels.他正忙于为他的小说收集资料。

7 uprooting   

n.倒根，挖除伐根v.把（某物）连根拔起( uproot的现在分词 )；根除；赶走；把…赶出家园

参考例句：

• He is hard at work uprooting wild grass in the field. 他正在田里辛苦地芟夷呢。 来自互联网
• A storm raged through the village, uprooting trees and flattening crops. 暴风雨袭击了村庄，拔起了树木，吹倒了庄稼。 来自互联网

8 bent   

n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的

参考例句：

• He was fully bent upon the project.他一心扑在这项计划上。
• We bent over backward to help them.我们尽了最大努力帮助他们。

9 walnut   

n.胡桃，胡桃木，胡桃色，茶色

参考例句：

• Walnut is a local specialty here.核桃是此地的土特产。
• The stool comes in several sizes in walnut or mahogany.凳子有几种尺寸，材质分胡桃木和红木两种。

10 engraving   

n.版画；雕刻（作品）；雕刻艺术；镌版术v.在（硬物）上雕刻（字，画等）( engrave的现在分词 )；将某事物深深印在（记忆或头脑中）

参考例句：

• He collected an old engraving of London Bridge. 他收藏了一张古老的伦敦桥版画。 来自辞典例句
• Some writing has the precision of a steel engraving. 有的字体严谨如同钢刻。 来自辞典例句

11 crooked   

adj.弯曲的；不诚实的，狡猾的，不正当的

参考例句：

• He crooked a finger to tell us to go over to him.他弯了弯手指，示意我们到他那儿去。
• You have to drive slowly on these crooked country roads.在这些弯弯曲曲的乡间小路上你得慢慢开车。

12 bigoted   

adj.固执己见的，心胸狭窄的

参考例句：

• He is so bigoted that it is impossible to argue with him.他固执得不可理喻。
• I'll concede you are not as bigoted as some.我承认你不象有些人那么顽固。

13 disapproval   

n.反对，不赞成

参考例句：

• The teacher made an outward show of disapproval.老师表面上表示不同意。
• They shouted their disapproval.他们喊叫表示反对。

14 conjecture   

n./v.推测，猜测

参考例句：

• She felt it no use to conjecture his motives.她觉得猜想他的动机是没有用的。
• This conjecture is not supported by any real evidence.这种推测未被任何确切的证据所证实。

15 abruptly   

adv.突然地，出其不意地

参考例句：

• He gestured abruptly for Virginia to get in the car.他粗鲁地示意弗吉尼亚上车。
• I was abruptly notified that a half-hour speech was expected of me.我突然被通知要讲半个小时的话。

16 conceited   

adj.自负的，骄傲自满的

参考例句：

• He could not bear that they should be so conceited.他们这样自高自大他受不了。
• I'm not as conceited as so many people seem to think.我不像很多人认为的那么自负。