Later that morning Isobel McLaughlin sat telling[221] Wully about that night, in the Keiths’ kitchen, whispering, looking carefully towards the door of the room where Libby was supposed to be resting. She was sitting by the breakfast table. On the red cloth three cold half-drunk cups of tea told how negligible a thing food was in that household. Suddenly she said passionately10:
“Wully, you’ve got to bring him home alive to-day!” and with that, to her son’s consternation11, she burst into great weeping.
Wully, fearing the sight of his aunt’s grief, hadn’t wanted to come that morning to the accursed house. But his father had asked him to, looking at him, Wully thought, with an unusual sharpness, so that hurriedly, to avoid suspicion, he had said he would come. He had dreaded12 the errand. But he had never foreseen this. He never remembered seeing his mother cry before, not even at the time of his brother’s death, though she must have wept then. And now—well, it was no wonder she was undone13, after forty-eight hours of such nightmare. But he was beside himself at the sight. He got up and strode around the room, at his wits’ end. Life was upside down. Chirstie at his mother’s broken and nervous from her shock; his aunt raving14 mad; his mother crying noisily....
“You think he’s alive, don’t you, Wully?” she was asking him, between sobs15 and sniffles. “You don’t think he’s dead, do you?” He marveled to see how utterly16 she shared his aunt’s grief. She[222] could scarcely have wanted more Peter’s return, if he had been her own son. He answered staunchly;
“No! Of course he’s not dead, mother! A man don’t die from sleeping outdoors a couple of nights in July!”
“No, mother! Of course not! He’s around some place, drunk, likely! Don’t cry, mother!”
“How could he be alive—some place—and let us all go on hunting him?”
“Wully, if Peter’s alive, and just letting his mother think he’s lost, we ought to whip him when he’s found! Every man that’s spent a day hunting him ought to give him a—beating! Wully, he’d never do that! I think he’s—he’s dead!”
“Mother, mother! Don’t you cry so! It’ll be all right. They’ll find him soon!”
“If you don’t find him soon, Auntie will go mad!”
Wully could have cried aloud the conviction that came flooding over him that minute: “If we do find him alive, and I get my hands on him, you will go mad!” He began, like a child begging;
“Mother, don’t you stay here! You come home with me! It’s enough to kill you, staying here with Auntie! Let someone else stay a while.[223] Why can’t Aunt Flora18 stay with her to-day? You come on home with me!”
“I can stay. She wants me. I can stand anything, if only he’s found. Wully!” she cried, raising a face toward him distorted with tears, “don’t you know where he is?”
If Chirstie had been there to see that face, she would have thought that now, at last, Isobel McLaughlin was betraying her secret, so visibly did forbidden questions tremble on her tongue. Wully only said, soothingly19, indulgently;
“If I knew where he was, don’t you think I would go there and find him? Mother, you need a rest. You haven’t had enough sleep!”
His mother sat bending towards him, beseeching20 him with all her soul to tell her the truth. But not one of her passionate9 unspoken entreaties22 reached him. It never occurred to him that she might know. He sat looking at her sympathetically, troubled that she spoke21 words of such unusual foolishness, being overwrought by all that had befallen her.
“Won’t you come home with me?” he said again.
“No, I won’t!” she said, with some asperity23, and put her head down on her arms on the table, and went on crying.
He rode away to his place in the hunt, and underneath24 all his greetings, his short and dry comments on the day’s possibilities, there stayed with him a troubled sense of pity for his mother.[224] She was getting old. And he had treated her badly. Sometimes he even thought that he had treated her very badly in that affair, even though it was over now. All those hours, those murderous hours of the last days, he had never given her a thought. He hadn’t stopped in his hating long enough to imagine how deeply, how terribly, he was about to wound her. If he came upon Peter, and killed him—as he must—what would his mother do? How brokenly even now she grieved for Aunt Libby! What would her grief be like then? The thought sickened him. He said to himself bitterly that he was so tired, so confused, that if he came upon that damned snake alone, he’d likely shake hands with him and let him go! He scarcely knew what he was doing.
All the parties had changed places that day. It seemed impossible for men to hunt repeatedly through the same place with any heart. It was a fifteen-hour nightmare. Added to the growing sense of futility25, of frustration26, of physical exhaustion27, and the burden of the heat, Wully had that uneasiness about his mother to harrow him. He had gone with the men who were searching through his own lands, that day, through the low land where he had so prayerfully hoped to bury his enemy. And he seldom was allowed even to hunt about alone. Someone or other was always near him, so that if he came upon that—that—he would have no chance to work his quick will upon him safely.
[225]The fourth day they gathered again, going over routes that seemed hopeless. Peter, alive or dead, was simply in no place within miles. Not a little pebble28, even, remained unturned now. The older men were sustaining themselves on strong drink more or less soberly, and the younger ones considerably29 less soberly. The first day of the alarm had been something of a picnic to thoughtless youngsters used to solitary30 hoeing, something of a diversion to men accustomed to plowing31 alone from dawn to darkness. But the excitement was dying away. Paths were beaten roads, and roads great wide highways. Miles of untrodden sloughs32 had become familiar ground, and acres of cryptic33 underbrush had become overworked monotony. What the slough had swallowed up, it would keep. If the tall grasses had treasures hidden, only the winter could bring low the tall grasses. The crowd dwindled34.
First those from the farther and less concerned settlements went back to their work, protesting they would all be watching, that they would keep a wide and long lookout35 always, for any signs of news. They regretted that their harvests were urgent. They departed. Then day by day members of the clan36 returned to neglected fields. John McLaughlin kept his children hunting, and as for the Squire37 he vowed38 he would never stop. His sporting blood was up. For nine days more Wully and his father went again and again from impossible clue to foolish conjecture39. Wully’s belief[226] grew constantly stronger that Peter had simply gone back to wherever he had come from. But how he had done it on a road where one passer-by made a day memorable40, he couldn’t imagine. It suggested a devilish cunning, a subtility not to be lightly reckoned with, a persistence41 that made an honest man’s blood boil. To his praying mother he affirmed that Peter was alive. To his dreading42 wife, he proclaimed that certainly he was dead. The whole desire of his life was to know which statement was true.
Their wheat called them, at length. It was almost their year’s income, and to its whitening invitation they must listen. They took down their cradles, and fell upon it. Then they together went and harvested poor old Uncle Keith’s crop for him. He was no farmer at any time, and now too weakened by sorrow to save his wheat. Libby kept her bed for days together, and for many days Isobel McLaughlin hung over her, trying to save her sanity43.
However much Chirstie shrank from it, she had to leave her mother-in-law’s well-filled house and go back to the loneliness of her own. Her harvesters must have food cooked and ready for them. Sometimes one of Wully’s little sisters stayed a few days with her, sometimes a little brother. Wully had told his mother simply that since the day Chirstie had fainted there alone on the Fourth of July, he wouldn’t have her left without company. His mother had listened simply, searchingly,[227] wondering unhappily about many suggestive circumstances.
And all the time Chirstie kept insisting she wasn’t afraid. Not she! No indeed! But she never got Wully to believe her. He knew why she brought lunches so often to the field, and why she loitered about with him, forgetting her housework. He saw why she had suddenly become so keen about shooting, why day by day she potted away at worthless small birds, which formerly44 her pity would never have let her shoot. Let her say what she would, she was so much afraid that her very eyes had changed. Never before had they had that way of shifting instantly under her long lashes45. Never before since she had been his wife had they had that haunted expression. She was bitterly afraid, and he was unable to reassure46 her. He could do nothing. It was as if some invisible unconquerable rattler crawled about in that little house where his wife and baby had been so happy. It seemed that all his safety lay in crushing down a great, uplifted club upon an intangible enemy.
The green months passed at length, and the golden ones were all but gone. John went back to Chicago, and the young children started back to school through goldenrod and wild sunflowers, down paths with fuchsia-colored wild asters, amethyst47, blue, and pink. Chirstie was alone, perforce. Occasionally she had a visitor. Aunt Libby came oftener than anyone else. She was[228] better again, able to spend day after day on horseback, going about from neighbor to neighbor, and calling, as she went, to ease her heart in the lonely places, “Lammie, Lammie!” She came often to Wully’s to see Bonnie Wee Johnnie. She had taken a notion that he was like her Peter. He ran about now, and it seemed not strange to his mother that a woman should ride miles for the pleasure of watching him. She taught him carefully to tolerate Aunt Libby’s extravagant48 caresses49. Wully’s sisters were entirely50 indignant when they heard that Aunt Libby thought the baby looked like her son. But as they afterwards remarked, it was just like Aunt Libby to say that the prettiest child in the neighborhood resembled her blessed Peter.
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1
sob
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| n.空间轨道的轰炸机；呜咽，哭泣 | |
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poker
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| n.扑克；vt.烙制 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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5
hitch
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| v.免费搭(车旅行)；系住；急提；n.故障；急拉 | |
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wagon
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| n.四轮马车，手推车，面包车；无盖运货列车 | |
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7
gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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8
din
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| n.喧闹声，嘈杂声 | |
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9
passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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10
passionately
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| ad.热烈地，激烈地 | |
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11
consternation
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| n.大为吃惊，惊骇 | |
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12
dreaded
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| adj.令人畏惧的；害怕的v.害怕，恐惧，担心( dread的过去式和过去分词) | |
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13
undone
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| a.未做完的，未完成的 | |
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14
raving
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| adj.说胡话的；疯狂的，怒吼的；非常漂亮的；令人醉心[痴心]的v.胡言乱语(rave的现在分词)n.胡话；疯话adv.胡言乱语地；疯狂地 | |
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15
sobs
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| 啜泣（声），呜咽（声）( sob的名词复数 ) | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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slough
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| v.蜕皮，脱落，抛弃 | |
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18
flora
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| n.(某一地区的)植物群 | |
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soothingly
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| adv.抚慰地，安慰地；镇痛地 | |
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beseeching
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| adj.恳求似的v.恳求，乞求（某事物）( beseech的现在分词 ) | |
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21
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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entreaties
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| n.恳求，乞求( entreaty的名词复数 ) | |
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asperity
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| n.粗鲁，艰苦 | |
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24
underneath
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| adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面 | |
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25
futility
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| n.无用 | |
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26
frustration
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| n.挫折，失败，失效，落空 | |
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27
exhaustion
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| n.耗尽枯竭，疲惫，筋疲力尽，竭尽，详尽无遗的论述 | |
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28
pebble
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| n.卵石，小圆石 | |
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considerably
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| adv.极大地；相当大地；在很大程度上 | |
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30
solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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31
plowing
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| v.耕( plow的现在分词 )；犁耕；费力穿过 | |
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32
sloughs
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| n.沼泽( slough的名词复数 )；苦难的深渊；难以改变的不良心情；斯劳(Slough)v.使蜕下或脱落( slough的第三人称单数 )；舍弃；除掉；摒弃 | |
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33
cryptic
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| adj.秘密的，神秘的，含义模糊的 | |
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34
dwindled
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| v.逐渐变少或变小( dwindle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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35
lookout
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| n.注意，前途，瞭望台 | |
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36
clan
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| n.氏族，部落，宗族，家族，宗派 | |
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squire
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| n.护卫, 侍从, 乡绅 | |
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38
vowed
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| 起誓，发誓（vow的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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39
conjecture
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| n./v.推测，猜测 | |
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40
memorable
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| adj.值得回忆的，难忘的，特别的，显著的 | |
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41
persistence
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| n.坚持，持续，存留 | |
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42
dreading
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| v.害怕，恐惧，担心( dread的现在分词 ) | |
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43
sanity
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| n.心智健全，神智正常，判断正确 | |
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44
formerly
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| adv.从前，以前 | |
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45
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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46
reassure
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| v.使放心，使消除疑虑 | |
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47
amethyst
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| n.紫水晶 | |
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48
extravagant
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| adj.奢侈的；过分的；(言行等)放肆的 | |
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49
caresses
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| 爱抚，抚摸( caress的名词复数 ) | |
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50
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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