There was no parlor14 in the church, and not long after the infamous15 exit of Andrew Bolton the town hall had been destroyed by fire. Therefore all such functions were held in a place which otherwise was a source of sad humiliation16 to its owner: Mrs. Amos Whittle17, the deacon's wife's unfurnished best parlor. It was a very large room, and poor Mrs. Whittle had always dreamed of a fine tapestry18 carpet, furniture upholstered with plush, a piano, and lace curtains.
Her dreams had never been realized. The old tragedy of the little village had cropped dreams, like a species of celestial19 foliage20, close to their roots. Poor Mrs. Whittle, although she did not realize it, missed her dreams more than she would have missed the furniture of that best parlor, had she ever possessed21 and lost it. She had come to think of it as a room in one of the “many mansions,” although she would have been horrified22 had she known that she did so. She was one who kept her religion and her daily life chemically differentiated23. She endeavored to maintain her soul on a high level of orthodoxy, while her large, flat feet trod her round of household tasks. It was only when her best parlor, great empty room, was in demand for some social function like the church fair, that she felt her old dreams return and stimulate24 her as with some wine of youth.
The room was very prettily25 decorated with blossoming boughs26, and Japanese lanterns, and set about with long tables covered with white, which contained the articles for sale. In the center of the room was the flower-booth, and that was lovely. It was a circle of green, with oval openings to frame young girl-faces, and on the circular shelf were heaped flowers in brilliant masses. At seven o'clock the fair was in full swing, as far as the wares27 and saleswomen were concerned. At the flower-booth were four pretty girls: Fanny Dodge28, Ellen Dix, Joyce Fulsom and Ethel Mixter. Each stood looking out of her frame of green, and beamed with happiness in her own youth and beauty. They did not, could not share the anxiety of the older women. The more anxious gathered about the cake table. Four pathetically bedizened middle-aged29 creatures, three too stout30, one too thin, put their heads together in conference. One woman was Mrs. Maria Dodge, Fanny's mother, one was Mrs. Amos Dix, one was Mrs. Deacon Whittle, and one was unmarried.
She was the stoutest31 of the four, tightly laced in an ancient silk, with frizzed hair standing32 erect33 from bulging34 temples. She was Lois Daggett, and a tragedy. She loved the young minister, Wesley Elliot, with all her heart and soul and strength. She had fastened, to attract his admiration35, a little bunch of rose geranium leaves and heliotrope36 in her tightly frizzed hair. That little posy had, all unrecognized, a touching37 pathos38. It was as the aigrette, the splendid curves of waving plumage which birds adopt in the desire for love. Lois had never had a lover. She had never been pretty, or attractive, but always in her heart had been the hunger for love. The young minister seemed the ideal of all the dreams of her life. He was as a god to her. She trembled under his occasional glances, his casual address caused vibrations39 in every nerve. She cherished no illusions. She knew he was not for her, but she loved and worshipped, and she tucked on an absurd little bow of ribbon, and she frizzed tightly her thin hair, and she wore little posies, following out the primitive40 instinct of her sex, even while her reason lagged behind. If once Wesley should look at that pitiful little floral ornament41, should think it pretty, it would have meant as much to that starved virgin42 soul as a kiss—to do her justice, as a spiritual kiss. There was in reality only pathos and tragedy in her adoration43. It was not in the least earthy, or ridiculous, but it needed a saint to understand that. Even while she conferred with her friends, she never lost sight of the young man, always hoped for that one fleeting44 glance of approbation45.
When her sister-in-law, Mrs. Daggett, appeared, she restrained her wandering eyes. All four women conferred anxiously. They, with Mrs. Solomon Black, had engineered the fair. Mrs. Black had not yet appeared and they all wondered why. Abby Daggett, who had the expression of a saint—a fleshy saint, in old purple muslin—gazed about her with admiration.
“Don't it look perfectly46 lovely!” she exclaimed.
Mrs. Whittle fairly snapped at her, like an angry old dog. “Lovely!” said she with a fine edge of sarcasm47 in her tone, “perfectly lovely! Yes it does. But I think we are a set of fools, the whole of us. Here we've got a fair all ready, and worked our fingers to the bone (I don't know but I'll have a felon48 on account of that drawn49-in rug there) and we've used up all our butter and eggs, and I don't see, for one, who is going to buy anything. I ain't got any money t' spend. I don't believe Mrs. Slocum will come over from Grenoble, and if she does, she can't buy everything.”
“Well, what made us get up the fair?” asked Mrs. Dodge.
“I suppose we all thought somebody might have some money,” ventured Abby Daggett.
“I'd like to know who? Not one of us four has, and I don't believe Mrs. Solomon Black has, unless she turns in her egg-money, and if she does I don't see how she is going to feed the minister. Where is Phoebe Black?”
“She is awfully50 late,” said Lois. She looked at the door, and, so doing, got a chance to observe the minister, who was standing beside the flower-table talking to Ellen Dix. Fanny Dodge was busily arranging some flowers, with her face averted51. Ellen Dix was very pretty, with an odd prettiness for a New England girl. Her pale olive skin was flawless and fine of texture52. Her mouth was intensely red, and her eyes very dark and heavily shaded by long lashes53. She wore at the throat of her white dress a beautiful coral brooch. It had been one of her mother's girlhood treasures. The Dix family had been really almost opulent once, before the Andrew Bolton cataclysm54 had involved the village, and there were still left in the family little reminiscences of former splendor55. Mrs. Dix wore a superb old lace scarf over her ancient black silk, and a diamond sparkled at her throat. The other women considered the lace much too old and yellow to be worn, but Mrs. Dix was proud both of the lace and her own superior sense of values. If the lace had been admired she would not have cared so much for it.
Suddenly a little woman came hurrying up, her face sharp with news. “What do you think?” she said to the others. “What do you think?”
They stared at her. “What do you mean, Mrs. Fulsom?” asked Mrs. Whittle acidly.
The little woman tossed her head importantly. “Oh, nothing much,” said she, “only I thought the rest of you might not know. Mrs. Solomon Black has got another boarder. That's what's making her late. She had to get something for her to eat.”
“Another boarder!” said Mrs. Whittle.
“Yes,” said the little woman, “a young lady, and Mrs. Solomon Black is on her way here now.”
“With her?” gasped56 the others.
“Yes, she's coming, and she looks to me as if she might have money.”
“Who is she?” asked Mrs. Whittle.
“How do I know? Mrs. Mixter's Tommy told my Sam, and he told me, and I saw Mrs. Black and the boarder coming out of her yard, when I went out of mine, and I hurried so's to get here first. Hush57! Here they come now.”
While the women were conferring many people had entered the room, although none had purchased the wares. Now there was stark58 silence and a concentrated fire of attention as Mrs. Black entered with a strange young woman. Mrs. Black looked doubtfully important. She, as a matter of fact, was far from sure of her wisdom in the course she was taking. She was even a little pale, and her lips moved nervously59 as she introduced the girl to one and another. “Miss Orr,” she said; sometimes “Miss Lydia Orr.”
As for the girl, she looked timid, yet determined60. She was pretty, perhaps a beauty, had she made the most of her personal advantages instead of apparently61 ignoring them. Her beautiful fair hair, which had red-gold lights, should have shaded her forehead, which was too high. Instead it was drawn smoothly62 back, and fastened in a mat of compact flat braids at the back of her head. She was dressed very simply, in black, and her costume was not of the latest mode.
“I don't see anything about her to have made Mrs. Fulsom think she was rich,” Mrs. Whittle whispered to Mrs. Daggett, who made an unexpectedly shrewd retort: “I can see. She don't look as if she cared what anybody thought of her clothes; as if she had so much she's never minded.”
Mrs. Whittle failed to understand. She grunted63 non-assent. “I don't see,” said she. “Her sleeves are way out of date.”
For awhile there was a loud buzz of conversation all over the room. Then it ceased, for things were happening, amazing things. The strange young lady was buying and she was paying cash down. Some of the women examined the bank notes suspiciously and handed them to their husbands to verify. The girl saw, and flushed, but she continued. She went from table to table, and she bought everything, from quilts and hideous64 drawn-in rugs to frosted cakes. She bought in the midst of that ominous65 hush of suspicion. Once she even heard a woman hiss66 to another, “She's crazy. She got out of an insane asylum67.”
However nobody of all the stunned68 throng69 refused to sell. Her first failure came in the case of a young man. He was Jim Dodge, Fanny's brother. Jim Dodge was a sort of Ishmael in the village estimation, and yet he was liked. He was a handsome young fellow with a wild freedom of carriage. He had worked in the chair factory to support his mother and sister, before it closed. He haunted the woods, and made a little by selling skins. He had brought as his contribution to the fair a beautiful fox skin, and when the young woman essayed to buy that he strode forward. “That is not for sale,” said he. “I beg you to accept that as a gift, Miss Orr.”
The young fellow blushed a little before the girl's blue eyes, although he held himself proudly. “I won't have this sold to a young lady who is buying as much as you are,” he continued.
The girl hesitated. Then she took the skin. “Thank you, it is beautiful,” she said.
Jim's mother sidled close to him. “You did just right, Jim,” she whispered. “I don't know who she is, but I feel ashamed of my life. She can't really want all that truck. She's buying to help. I feel as if we were a parcel of beggars.”
“Well, she won't buy that fox skin to help!” Jim whispered back fiercely.
The whole did not take very long. Finally the girl talked in a low voice to Mrs. Black who then became her spokeswoman. Mrs. Black now looked confident, even triumphant71. “Miss Orr says of course she can't possibly use all the cake and pies and jelly,” she said, “and she wants you to take away all you care for. And she wants to know if Mrs. Whittle will let the other things stay here till she's got a place to put them in. I tell her there's no room in my house.”
“I s'pose so,” said Mrs. Whittle in a thick voice. She and many others looked fairly pale and shocked.
Mrs. Solomon Black, the girl and the minister went out.
The hush continued for a few seconds. Then Mrs. Whittle spoke70. “There's something wrong about that girl,” said she. Other women echoed her. The room seemed full of feminine snarls72.
Jim Dodge turned on them, and his voice rang out. “You are a lot of cats,” said he. “Come on home, mother and Fanny, I am mortal shamed for the whole of it. That girl's buying to help, when she can't want the things, and all you women turning on her for it!”
After the Dodges73 had gone there was another hush. Then it was broken by a man's voice, an old man's voice with a cackle of derision and shrewd amusement in it. “By gosh!” said this voice, resounding74 through the whole room, “that strange young woman has bought the whole church fair!”
“There's something wrong,” said Mrs. Whittle again.
“Ain't you got the money?” queried75 the man's voice.
“Yes, but—”
“Then for God's sake hang onto it!”
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1
purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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2
innocence
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| n.无罪；天真；无害 | |
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subtlety
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| n.微妙，敏锐，精巧；微妙之处，细微的区别 | |
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Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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5
frayed
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| adj.磨损的v.（使布、绳等）磨损，磨破( fray的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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verged
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| 接近，逼近（verge的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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7
immorality
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| n. 不道德, 无道义 | |
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8
broker
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| n.中间人，经纪人；v.作为中间人来安排 | |
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9
worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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10
attire
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| v.穿衣，装扮[同]array；n.衣着；盛装 | |
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11
brazen
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| adj.厚脸皮的，无耻的，坚硬的 | |
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12
raffling
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| v.以抽彩方式售（物）( raffle的现在分词 ) | |
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13
morbid
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| adj.病的；致病的；病态的；可怕的 | |
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14
parlor
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| n.店铺，营业室；会客室，客厅 | |
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15
infamous
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| adj.声名狼藉的，臭名昭著的，邪恶的 | |
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16
humiliation
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| n.羞辱 | |
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17
whittle
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| v.削（木头），削减；n.屠刀 | |
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18
tapestry
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| n.挂毯，丰富多采的画面 | |
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19
celestial
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| adj.天体的；天上的 | |
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20
foliage
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| n.叶子，树叶，簇叶 | |
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21
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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22
horrified
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| a.(表现出)恐惧的 | |
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23
differentiated
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| 区分，区别，辨别( differentiate的过去式和过去分词 )； 区别对待； 表明…间的差别，构成…间差别的特征 | |
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24
stimulate
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| vt.刺激，使兴奋；激励，使…振奋 | |
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25
prettily
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| adv.优美地；可爱地 | |
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26
boughs
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| 大树枝( bough的名词复数 ) | |
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27
wares
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| n. 货物, 商品 | |
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28
dodge
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| v.闪开，躲开，避开；n.妙计，诡计 | |
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29
middle-aged
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| adj.中年的 | |
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31
stoutest
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| 粗壮的( stout的最高级 )； 结实的； 坚固的； 坚定的 | |
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32
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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33
erect
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| n./v.树立，建立，使竖立；adj.直立的，垂直的 | |
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34
bulging
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| 膨胀； 凸出（部）； 打气； 折皱 | |
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35
admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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36
heliotrope
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| n.天芥菜；淡紫色 | |
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37
touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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38
pathos
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| n.哀婉，悲怆 | |
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39
vibrations
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| n.摆动( vibration的名词复数 )；震动；感受；（偏离平衡位置的）一次性往复振动 | |
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40
primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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41
ornament
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| v.装饰，美化；n.装饰，装饰物 | |
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42
virgin
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| n.处女，未婚女子；adj.未经使用的；未经开发的 | |
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43
adoration
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| n.爱慕，崇拜 | |
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44
fleeting
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| adj.短暂的，飞逝的 | |
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45
approbation
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| n.称赞；认可 | |
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46
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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47
sarcasm
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| n.讥讽，讽刺，嘲弄，反话 （adj.sarcastic） | |
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48
felon
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| n.重罪犯；adj.残忍的 | |
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49
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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50
awfully
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| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
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51
averted
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| 防止，避免( avert的过去式和过去分词 )； 转移 | |
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52
texture
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| n.(织物)质地；(材料)构造；结构；肌理 | |
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53
lashes
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| n.鞭挞( lash的名词复数 )；鞭子；突然猛烈的一击；急速挥动v.鞭打( lash的第三人称单数 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥 | |
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54
cataclysm
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| n.洪水，剧变，大灾难 | |
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55
splendor
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| n.光彩；壮丽，华丽；显赫，辉煌 | |
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56
gasped
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| v.喘气( gasp的过去式和过去分词 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
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57
hush
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| int.嘘，别出声；n.沉默，静寂；v.使安静 | |
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58
stark
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| adj.荒凉的；严酷的；完全的；adv.完全地 | |
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59
nervously
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| adv.神情激动地，不安地 | |
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60
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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61
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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62
smoothly
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| adv.平滑地，顺利地，流利地，流畅地 | |
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63
grunted
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| （猪等）作呼噜声( grunt的过去式和过去分词 )； （指人）发出类似的哼声； 咕哝着说 | |
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64
hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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65
ominous
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| adj.不祥的，不吉的，预兆的，预示的 | |
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66
hiss
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| v.发出嘶嘶声；发嘘声表示不满 | |
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67
asylum
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| n.避难所，庇护所，避难 | |
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68
stunned
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| adj. 震惊的，惊讶的 动词stun的过去式和过去分词 | |
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69
throng
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| n.人群，群众；v.拥挤，群集 | |
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70
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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71
triumphant
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| adj.胜利的，成功的；狂欢的，喜悦的 | |
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72
snarls
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| n.（动物的）龇牙低吼( snarl的名词复数 )；愤怒叫嚷（声）；咆哮（声）；疼痛叫声v.（指狗）吠，嗥叫， （人）咆哮( snarl的第三人称单数 )；咆哮着说，厉声地说 | |
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73
dodges
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| n.闪躲( dodge的名词复数 )；躲避；伎俩；妙计v.闪躲( dodge的第三人称单数 )；回避 | |
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74
resounding
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| adj. 响亮的 | |
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75
queried
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| v.质疑，对…表示疑问( query的过去式和过去分词 )；询问 | |
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