“Well, let ’em flare, says I. ’Taint none o’ aour business, Alviry.”
“I knaow, Milton; but still it seems to me she might wait at least till th’ corpse3 was aout o’ th’ haouse.”
“What’s thet got to dew with it?”
The callousness4 of the question must have grated upon the hired-girl, for she made no reply, and slapped the dough5 over on the board with an impatient gesture.
It was near the close of a fair day, late in May, and the reddened sunlight from the West would have helped to glorify6 any human being less hopelessly commonplace than Milton Squires7 as he sat in its full radiance on the doorstep, peeling and quartering apples over a pan which he held between his knees. This sunlight, to reach him, painted with warm tints8 many objects near at hand which it could not make picturesque9. The three great barns, standing10 in the shadow to the south, were ricketty and ancient without being comely11, and the glare only made their awkward outlines and patched, paintless surfaces the meaner; the score of lean cows, standing idly fetlock-deep in the black mire12 of the barnyard, or nipping the scant13 tufts of rank grass near the trough, seemed all the dingier14 and scrawnier for the brilliancy of the light which covered them; the broken gate, the bars eked15 out with a hop-pole, the wheelbarrow turned shiftlessly against a break in the wall, the mildewed16 wellcurb, with its antiquated17 reach—all seemed in this glow of dying day to be conscious of exhibiting at its worse their squalid side. The sunset could not well have illumined, during that hour at least, a less inspiring scene than this which Alvira, looking out as she talked, or the hired man, raising his head from over the apples, could see from the kitchen door of Lemuel Fairchild’s farm-house. But any student of his species would have agreed that, in all the uninviting view, Milton was the least attractive object.
As he rose to empty his pan within, and start afresh, he could be seen more fully18. He was clumsily cased from neck to ankles in brown over-alls, threadbare, discolored, patched, with mud about the knees and ragged19 edges lower down. He wore rubber boots, over the bulging20 legs of which the trousers came reluctantly, and the huge feet of these were slit21 down the instep. His hat had been soft and black once; now it seemed stiffened22 with dirt, to which the afternoon milking had lent a new contribution of short reddish hair, and was shapeless and colorless from age. His back was narrow and bent23, and his long arms terminated in hands which it seemed sinful to have touch anything thereafter to be eaten. Viewed from behind, Milton appeared to be at least fifty. But his face showed a somewhat younger man, despite its sun-baked lines and the frowzy24 beard which might be either the yellow of unkempt youth or the gray of untidy age. In reality he was not yet thirty-six.
He slouched out now with a fresh lot of apples, and, squatting25 on the door-stone, resumed the conversation.
“I s’pose naow Sissly’s gone, ther’ won’t be no livin’ under th’ same roof with Sabriny fer any of us. Ther’ ain’t nobuddy lef’ fer her to rassle with ’cep’ us. Ole Lemuel’s so broken-up, he won’t dare say his soul’s his own; ’n John—well, Lize Wilkins says she heerd him say he didn’t know’s he’d come to th’ funer’l ’t all, after th’ way him ’n’ Sabriny hed it aout las’ time he was here.”
“I wasn’t talkin’ o’ them!” said Alvira, slapping the flour from her hands’ and beginning with the roller; “it’d be nothin’ new, her tryin’ to boss them. But she’s got her dander up naow agin somebuddy that beats them all holler. They won’t no Richardsons come puttin’ on airs ’raoun’ here, an’ takin’ th’ parlor26 bedroom ’thaout askin’, not ef th’ ole lady knaows herself—’n’ I guess she does.”
“What Richardsons?” asked Milton. “Thought Sissly was th’ last of ’em—thet they wa’n’t no more Richardsons.”
“Why, man alive, ain’t Albert’s wife a Richardson, th’ daughter of Sissly’s cousin—you remember, that pock-pitted man who kep’ th’ fast hoss here one summer. Of course she’s a Richardson—full-blooded! When she come up from th’ train here this mornin’, with Albert, I see by th’ ole lady’s eye ’t she meant misch’f. I didn’t want to see no raow, here with a corpse in th’ haouse, ’n’ so I tried to smooth matters over, ’n’ kind o’ quiet Sabriny daown, tellin’ her thet they had to come to th’ fu-ner’l, ’n’ they’d go ’way soon’s it was through with, ’n’ that Albert, bein’ the oldest son, hed a right to th’ comp’ny bed-room.”
“’N’ what’d she say?”
“She didn’t say much, ’cep’ thet th’ Richardsons hed never brung nothin’ but bad luck to this haouse, ’n’ they never would, nuther. ’N’ then she flaounced upstairs to her room, jis’s she allus does when she’s riled, ’n’ she give Albert’s wife sech a look, I said to m’self, ‘Milady, I wouldn’t be in your shoes fer all yer fine fixin’s.’”
“Well, she’s a dum likely lookin’ woman, ef she is a Richardson,” said Milton, with something like enthusiasm. “Wonder ef she wears one o’ them low-necked gaowns when she’s to hum, like th’ picters in th’ Ledger27. They say they all dew, in New York.”
“Haow sh’d I knaow!” Alvira sharply responded. “I got enough things to think of, ’thaout both’rin’ my head abaout city women’s dresses. ’N’ you ought to hev, tew. Ef you’n’ Leander’d pay more heed28 to yer work, ’n’ dew yer chores up ship-shape, ’n’ spen’ less time porin’ over them good-fer-nothin’ story-papers, th’ farm wouldn’t look so run-daown ’n’ slaouchy. Did yeh hear what Albert said this mornin’, when he looked ’raoun’? ‘I swan! ’ he said, ‘I b’lieve this is th’ seediest lookin’ place ’n all Northern New York.’ Nice thing fer him to hev to say, wa’n’t it!”
“What d’ I keer what he says? He ain’t th’ boss here, by a jug-full!”
“’N’ more’s th’ pity, tew. He’d make yeh toe th’ mark!”
“Yes, ’n’ Sabriny’d make it lively fer his wife, tew. Th’ ole fight ’baout th’ Fairchileses ’n’ th’ Richardsons wouldn’t be a succumstance to thet. Sissly’d thank her stars thet she was dead ’n’ buried aout o’ th’ way.”
These two hired people, who discussed their employer and his family with that easy familiarity of Christian29 names to be found only in Russia and rural America, knew very well what portended30 to the house when the Richardson subject came up. Alvira Roberts had spent more than twenty years of her life in the thick of the gaseous31 strife32 between Fairchild and Richardson. She was a mere33 slip of a girl, barely thirteen, when she had first hired out at the homestead, and now, black-browed, sallow from much tea-drinking, and with a sharp, deep wrinkle vertically34 dividing her high forehead, she looked every year of her thirty-five. Compared with her, Milton Squires was a new comer on the farm, but still there were lean old cows over yonder in the barnyard, lazily waiting for the night-march to the pastures, that had been ravenous35 calves36 in their gruel-bucket stage when he came.
What these two did not know about the Fairchild family was hardly worth the knowing. Something of what they knew, the reader ought here to be told.
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1
flare
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| v.闪耀，闪烁；n.潮红；突发 | |
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2
consistency
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| n.一贯性，前后一致，稳定性；(液体的)浓度 | |
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3
corpse
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| n.尸体，死尸 | |
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4
callousness
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5
dough
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| n.生面团；钱，现款 | |
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6
glorify
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| vt.颂扬，赞美，使增光，美化 | |
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7
squires
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| n.地主，乡绅( squire的名词复数 ) | |
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8
tints
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| 色彩( tint的名词复数 )； 带白的颜色； （淡色）染发剂； 痕迹 | |
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9
picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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10
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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11
comely
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| adj.漂亮的，合宜的 | |
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mire
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| n.泥沼，泥泞；v.使...陷于泥泞，使...陷入困境 | |
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13
scant
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| adj.不充分的，不足的；v.减缩，限制，忽略 | |
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14
dingier
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| adj.暗淡的，乏味的( dingy的比较级 )；肮脏的 | |
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15
eked
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| v.（靠节省用量）使…的供应持久( eke的过去式和过去分词 )；节约使用；竭力维持生计；勉强度日 | |
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16
mildewed
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| adj.发了霉的，陈腐的，长了霉花的v.（使）发霉，（使）长霉( mildew的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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17
antiquated
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| adj.陈旧的，过时的 | |
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18
fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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19
ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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20
bulging
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| 膨胀； 凸出（部）； 打气； 折皱 | |
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21
slit
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| n.狭长的切口；裂缝；vt.切开，撕裂 | |
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22
stiffened
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| 加强的 | |
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23
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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24
frowzy
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| adj.不整洁的；污秽的 | |
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25
squatting
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| v.像动物一样蹲下( squat的现在分词 )；非法擅自占用（土地或房屋）；为获得其所有权；而占用某片公共用地。 | |
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26
parlor
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| n.店铺，营业室；会客室，客厅 | |
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27
ledger
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| n.总帐，分类帐；帐簿 | |
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28
heed
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| v.注意，留意；n.注意，留心 | |
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29
Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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30
portended
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| v.预示( portend的过去式和过去分词 )；预兆；给…以警告；预告 | |
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31
gaseous
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| adj.气体的，气态的 | |
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32
strife
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| n.争吵，冲突，倾轧，竞争 | |
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33
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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34
vertically
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| adv.垂直地 | |
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ravenous
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| adj.极饿的，贪婪的 | |
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36
calves
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| n.(calf的复数)笨拙的男子，腓；腿肚子( calf的名词复数 )；牛犊；腓；小腿肚v.生小牛( calve的第三人称单数 )；（冰川）崩解；生（小牛等），产（犊）；使（冰川）崩解 | |
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