The door opened, and Albert entered. “You wanted to see me, Aunt, so Annie said,” he remarked! gravely, in a subdued6 tone.
She motioned him to a chair and answered, in a solemn voice curiously7 like his own: “Yes, there’s some things I want to say to you, all by yourself.”
They sat for some moments in silence, the lawyer watching his aunt with amiable8 forbearance, as if conscious that his time was being wasted, and she, poor woman, groping in a novel mental fog for some suitable phrases with which to present her views. Under Albert’s calm, uninspiring gaze those views seemed to lose form, and diminish in intelligence as much as in distinctness. It had all been so clear to her mind—and now she suddenly found it fading off into a misty9 jumble10 of speculations11, mere12 castles in the air. She had expected to present an unanswerable case lucidly13 and forcibly to her lawyer nephew; instead, it seemed increasingly probable that he would scout14 the thing as ridiculous—and, what was worse, be justified15 in so doing. So it was that she finally made her beginning doubtingly, almost dolefully:
“Of course I dunno haow you feel abaout it, Albert, but I can’t help thinking something ought to be settled abaout th’ farm, while yer here.”
“Settled? How settled?’’ asked Albert. There was a dry, dispassionate fibre in his voice which further chilled her enthusiasm.
“Why—well—you knaow—what I mean, Albert,” she said, almost pathetically. It was so hard to know just how to say things to Albert.
“On the contrary, I don’t in the least know what you mean. What do you want settled about the farm? What is there to settle about it?”
“Oh, nothin’, ef yeh don’t choose to understand” said Miss Sabrina.
Another period of silence ensued. Albert made a movement as if to rise, and said:
“If there is’nt anything more, I think I’ll go down again.”
There was an artificial nicety of enunciation16 about this speech, which grated on the old lady’s nerves. She squared her shoulders and turned upon her nephew.
“Naow what’s the use of bein’ mean, Albert? Yeh dew knaow what I’m thinking of, jis’ ez well ez I dew! Yeh unly want to make it ez hard fer me to tell yeh as yeh possibly kin4. I s’pose thet’s the lawyer of it!”
Albert smiled with all his face but the eyes, and slightly lifting his hands from his fat knees, turned them palms up, in mute deprecation of his aunt’s unreasonableness17. The gesture was as near the shoulder-shrug as the self-contained lawyer ever permitted himself to go. It was a trifle, but it angered the old maid enough to remove the last vestige18 of hesitation19 from her tongue:
“Well, ef yeh don’t knaow what I mean, then I’ll tell yeh! I mean that ef th’ Fairchilds are goin’ to be a Dearborn caounty fam’ly, ’n’ hole their heads up amongst folks, ther’s got to be a change o’ some sort right away. Your father’s let everything slide year after year, till there’s pesky little lef’ naow to slide on. He’s behine hand agin in money matters, even with th’ Pratt mortgage on top of t’others. What’s wuss, it’s in everybody’s maouth. They’ve left him off th’ board at th’ cheese-factory this year, even; of course they say, it’s cuz he never ’tended th’ meetin’s—but I knaow better! It’s jis cuz Lemuel Fairchild’s goin’ deown hill, ’n’ the farm’s goin’ to rack ’n’ ruin, ’n’ ev’rybuddy knaows it. Jis’ think of it? Why, ’twas th’ Fairchilds made that cheese-factory, ’n’ it’s allus gone by aour name, ’n’ we used to sen’ th’ milk of a hundred ’n’ thirty caows there—almost as much as all th’ rest of ’em put togither—’n’ ez I said to Leander Crump, when he was squirmin’ raound tryin’ to make me b’lieve they didn’t mean nothin’ by droppin’ Lemuel aout o’ th’ board, says I—‘nobuddy ever ’spected a table spoonful o’ water in aour milk!’—’n’ he colored up, I tell yeh!”
“No doubt” said Albert, impassively.
Miss Sabrina paused to mentally retrace20 her argument, and see if this remark had any special bearing. She could discover none, and grew a little angrier.
“Well, then, th’ question’s right here. My father, your grand father, made a name fer hisself, and a place for his fam’ly, here in Dearborn caounty, second to nobuddy. Fer years ’n’ years I kin remember thet th’ one question people ast, when it was proposed to dew anything, was ‘what does Seth Fairchild think ’baout it?’ He went to th’ Senate twice; he could ’a gone to Congress from this dees-trick time ’n’ time agin, if he’d be’n a mine to. Ev’rybuddy looked up to him. When he died, all of a suddent, he lef’ Lemuel th’ bes’ farm, th’ bes’ stock, th’ bes’ farm haouse, fer miles raound. Well, thet’s forty year ago. I’ve lived here threw it all. I’ve swallered my pride every day in th’ week, all thet time. I’ve tried to learn myself a humble21 spirit—but I’ve hed to see this place, and the fam’ly, going daown, daown, daown!”
There were tears in the old maid’s eyes now, as she spoke22, tears of mortification23 and revolt against her helplessness, for she seemed to read the failure of her appeal in the placid24 face of her nephew, with its only decent pretence25 of interest. She went on, with a rising voice:
“You knaow a little of haow things hev’ gone, though you’ve allus took precious good pains to knaow ez little ez yeh could. You knaow that when you were a boy you were a rich man’s son, with yer pony26, ’n’ yer dancin’ lessons, ’n’ yer college eddica-tion; ’n’ yer mother dressed well, ’n’ had a kerridge, ’n’ visited with th’ bes’ people of Albany, people who were my friends tew when I used to go to Albany with yer grandfather. ’N’ what hev we come to? Yer mother slaved her life aout, lost all her ambition, lost all her pride, saw things goin’ to th’ dogs and didn’t knaow haow to stop ’em—sakes forbid thet I should say anything agin Sissly; she did all she could; p’raps ’twould ’ev gone different if she’d be’n a different kine o’ woman, p’raps not; there’s no use talkin’ ’baout thet. ’N’ ef I’d hed my say, tew, maybe things’d be’n different; but its ez it is, ’n’ it’s no use cryin’ over spilt milk.
“Father never meant to be hard with me. When he lef’ me nothin’ but a living aout o’ th’ farm, he expected, everybuddy expected, my Aunt Sabrina’d leave me a clean sixty thaousand dollars when she died. She was an ole woman, ’n’ a widow, ’n’ she hed no childern. She’d allus promised my father thet if I was named after her—confaound her name!—I shaould be her heir. ’N’ then, Iess’n a year after his death, what does the old huzzy up ’n’ do but marry some fortune hunter young enough to be her son, ’n’ give him every cent she hed in the world. He led her a fine dance of it, tew, ’n’ serve her right! But there I was, lef ’thaout a thing ’cep a roof over my head.
“’N’ then Lemuel, nothin’ ud do but he must go to Californy when the gold cry riz, ’n’ no sooner’d he git there than he was homesick ’n’ hed to come back; ’n’ when he got back, ’n’ begun to hear what fortunes them who’d gone aout with him were a making, than he must start aout again. But where it’d be’n wilderness27 a few months b’fore, he faound cities naow, ’n’ ev’ry chance took up; then he got robbed o’ all his money, ’n’ hed to borrer, ’n’ then he took chills ’n’ fever off th’ isthmus28, n’ hed to lay in quarantine fer weeks, on ’caount o’ th’ yellah fever; it’d be’n a poor year on the farm, ’n’ when he got back, it took ev’ry cent of his ready-money to set himself right.
“From thet day to this, his Californy luck hez stuck to him like death to a nigger, tell here, to-day, the Fitches don’t think it wuth while to come to your poor mother’s fun’ral—I kin remember Lije Fitch when he was glad enough to beg beans o’ my father fer seed—’n’ I’m wearing borrered mournin’ of Sarah Andrewses, a mile tew big for me!”
“It seems to me I’ve been told all this a good many times, Aunt Sabrina,” said Albert, as his aunt stopped and glared at him trembling with the excitement of her peroration29. “There’s nothing very-pleasant in it, for either of us, to listen to or talk about; but I don’t see that there’s anything more than I’ve heard over and over again, except about your having on another woman’s dress, and I don’t assume that I am expected to interfere30 about that!”
Poor Miss Sabrina was too deeply moved, and too much in earnest, to note the sarcastic31 levity32 underlying33 the lawyer’s conclusion. She caught only the general sense of a negative response, and looked at her nephew steadily with a gaze half-indignant, half appealing.
“Then you won’t dew anything, ay?” she asked at last.
“Oh, I am very far from saying that. That’s another thing. You send for me, saying that you have an important communication to make to me—at least, I assume that it is important, from the circumstances surrounding the request. I come, and you first insist that I know as well as you do what you mean, and then, when I demur34, you rehearse all the unfortunate details of my father’s failure in life. I suggest that these are already tolerably familiar to me, and this mild statement you construe35 as a definite refusal on my part to do something—what, I don’t know.”
“I declare, Albert, you better send in a bill fer givin’ me this consultation36. I never knew a son who could take his father’s ruin ’n’ his fam’ly’s disgrace so cool, before. I s’pose that’s th’ lawyer of it, tew!”
“Perhaps it’s an advantage that some one of the family should keep cool, Aunt, and look at things one by one, in their true relation. Now, if you have any proposition to make to me, any plan to present for my consideration, I should like to hear it—because really this other style of conversation is profitless beyond description. In a word, what do you want me to do?”
“What do I want yeh to do?” The old maid leaned forward and put a thin, mitted hand on Albert’s knee, looking eagerly into his face, and speaking almost shrilly37. “I want yeh to take this farm, to come here to live, to make it a rich gentleman’s home agin! to put the Fairchilds up once more where my father left ’em.”
“Yes?” was the provokingly unenthusiastic response.
Miss Sabrina felt that she had failed. She put her spectacles on, and took the Bible into her lap, as if to say that she washed her hands of all mundane38 matters. But it did not suit Albert to regard the interview as closed.
“There is one thing you don’t seem to see at all, Aunt,” he said. “That is, that Dearborn County is relatively39 not altogether the most important section of the Republic, and that it is quite possible for a man to win public recognition or attain40 professional distinction in other communities which might reconcile him to a loss of prestige here. It may sound like heresy41 to you, but I am free to admit that the good opinion of the business men of New York City, where I am regarded as a successful sort of man, seems to me to outweigh42 all possible questions as to how I am regarded by Elhanan Pratt and Le-ander Crump and—and that Baptist gentleman, for instance, whom you had here to-day. The world has grown so large, my dear aunt, since your day, that there are thousands upon thousands of Americans now who go all their lives without ever once thinking about Dearborn County’s opinion. Of course I can understand how deeply you must feel what you regard as a social decline in the eyes of your neighbours. But truly, it does not specially43 affect me. They are not my neighbours; if I seem to them to be of less importance than I was in my boyhood, when I had a pony, I can’t help it, and I am sure I don’t want to. Frankly44, to use my mother’s old phrase, I don’t care a cotton hat for their opinion good, bad, or indifferent. It is this, I think, which you leave out of your calculation.”
Miss Sabrina had listened, with the Book opened only by a finger’s width. The elaborate irony45 of her nephew’s words had escaped her, but she saw a gleam of hope in his willingness to discuss the matter at all.
“But then this is the home o’ the Fairchilds; the fam’ly belongs to Dearborn Caounty; father was allus spoken of ez Seth Fairchild o’ Dearborn, jis’ as much ez—ez Silas Wright o’ Dutchess.”
“Of course that last is a powerful argument,” said Albert with a furtive46 smile twitching47 at the corners of his mouth. “But, after all, the county family idea doesn’t seem to attract me much. Why, aunt, do you know that your grandfather Roger was a journeyman shoemaker, who walked all the way here from Providence48. There was nothing incongruous in his son becoming a Senator. Very well; if you have a state of society where sudden elevations49 of this sort occur, there will inevitably50 be corresponding descents—just as lean streaks51 alternate with fat in the bacon of commerce. The Fairchilds went up—they, come down. They have exhausted52 the soil. Do you see?”
“Nao! I don’t see a bit! ’N’ I b’lieve at heart you’re jis’ ez praoud ez I be!”
“Proud? Yes! Proud of myself, proud of my practice, proud of my position. But proud because three or four hundred dull countrymen, seeing my cows sleek53, my harness glossy54, my farm well in order, and knowing that my grandfather had been a State Senator, would consider me a ‘likely ’ man—no, not at all.”
Albert rose at this to go, and added, as he turned the door-knob:
“As soon as he’s equal to it, Aunt Sabrina, I’ll get father to go over his affairs with me, and I’ll try and straighten them out a trifle. I dare say we can find some way out of the muddle55.”
“But yeh won’t take up the thing yerself? Yeh won’t dew what I wanted yeh tew?”
The lawyer smiled, and said: “What really? Come here and be a farmer?”
Miss Sabrina had risen, too, and came toward her nephew. “No” she said, “not a farmer. Be a country gentleman, ’n’—’n’—a Congressman56!” Albert smiled again, and left the room. He smiled to himself going down the stairs, and narrowly escaped forgetting to change his expression of countenance57 when he entered the living room, where were sitting people who had not entirely58 forgotten the fact that it was a house of mourning.
For Albert had a highly interesting idea in his mind, both interesting and diverting. Curiously enough, he had begun developing it from the moment when his aunt first disclosed her ambition for him. At the last moment, in a blind way she had suggested the first political office that entered her mind as an added bribe59. She could not know that her astute60 nephew had, from the first suggestion of her plan, been trying to remember whether it was Jay and Adams Counties, or Jay and Morgan, that were associated with Dearborn in the Congressional district; or that, when she finally in despair said “Be a country gentleman and a Congressman,” his brain had already turned over a dozen projects in as many seconds, every one Congressional.
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1
habitual
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| adj.习惯性的；通常的，惯常的 | |
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bonnet
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| n.无边女帽；童帽 | |
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dense
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| a.密集的，稠密的，浓密的；密度大的 | |
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kin
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| n.家族，亲属，血缘关系；adj.亲属关系的，同类的 | |
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steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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subdued
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| adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
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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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amiable
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| adj.和蔼可亲的，友善的，亲切的 | |
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misty
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| adj.雾蒙蒙的，有雾的 | |
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jumble
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| vt.使混乱，混杂；n.混乱；杂乱的一堆 | |
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speculations
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| n.投机买卖( speculation的名词复数 )；思考；投机活动；推断 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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lucidly
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| adv.清透地，透明地 | |
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scout
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| n.童子军，侦察员；v.侦察，搜索 | |
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justified
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| a.正当的，有理的 | |
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enunciation
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| n.清晰的发音；表明，宣言；口齿 | |
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unreasonableness
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| 无理性； 横逆 | |
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vestige
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| n.痕迹，遗迹，残余 | |
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hesitation
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| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
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20
retrace
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| v.折回；追溯，探源 | |
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21
humble
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| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
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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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mortification
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| n.耻辱，屈辱 | |
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placid
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| adj.安静的，平和的 | |
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pretence
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| n.假装，作假；借口，口实；虚伪；虚饰 | |
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pony
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| adj.小型的；n.小马 | |
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wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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isthmus
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| n.地峡 | |
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peroration
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| n.（演说等之）结论 | |
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interfere
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| v.(in)干涉，干预；(with)妨碍，打扰 | |
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sarcastic
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| adj.讥讽的，讽刺的，嘲弄的 | |
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levity
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| n.轻率，轻浮，不稳定，多变 | |
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underlying
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| adj.在下面的，含蓄的，潜在的 | |
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demur
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| v．表示异议，反对 | |
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construe
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| v.翻译，解释 | |
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consultation
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| n.咨询；商量；商议；会议 | |
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shrilly
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| 尖声的； 光亮的，耀眼的 | |
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mundane
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| adj.平凡的；尘世的；宇宙的 | |
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relatively
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| adv.比较...地，相对地 | |
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attain
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| vt.达到，获得，完成 | |
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heresy
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| n.异端邪说；异教 | |
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outweigh
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| vt.比...更重，...更重要 | |
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specially
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| adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地 | |
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frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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irony
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| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
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furtive
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| adj.鬼鬼崇崇的，偷偷摸摸的 | |
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twitching
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| n.颤搐 | |
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48
providence
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| n.深谋远虑，天道，天意；远见；节约；上帝 | |
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49
elevations
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| （水平或数量）提高( elevation的名词复数 )； 高地； 海拔； 提升 | |
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50
inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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51
streaks
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| n.（与周围有所不同的）条纹( streak的名词复数 )；（通常指不好的）特征（倾向）；（不断经历成功或失败的）一段时期v.快速移动( streak的第三人称单数 )；使布满条纹 | |
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52
exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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53
sleek
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| adj.光滑的，井然有序的；v.使光滑，梳拢 | |
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glossy
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| adj.平滑的；有光泽的 | |
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55
muddle
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| n.困惑，混浊状态；vt.使混乱，使糊涂，使惊呆；vi.胡乱应付，混乱 | |
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56
Congressman
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| n.（美）国会议员 | |
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57
countenance
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| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
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58
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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59
bribe
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| n.贿赂；v.向…行贿，买通 | |
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astute
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| adj.机敏的，精明的 | |
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