The sunlight dripped over the house like golden paint over an art jar, and the freckling1 shadows here and there only intensified2 the rigor3 of the bath of light. The Butterworth and Larkin houses flanking were entrenched4 behind great stodgy5 trees; only the Happer house took the full sun, and all day long faced the dusty road-street with a tolerant kindly6 patience. This was the city of Tarleton in southernmost Georgia, September afternoon.
Up in her bedroom window Sally Carrol Happer rested her nineteen-year-old chin on a fifty-two-year-old sill and watched Clark Darrow’s ancient Ford7 turn the corner. The car was hot — being partly metallic8 it retained all the heat it absorbed or evolved — and Clark Darrow sitting bolt upright at the wheel wore a pained, strained expression as though he considered himself a spare part, and rather likely to break. He laboriously9 crossed two dust ruts, the wheels squeaking10 indignantly at the encounter, and then with a terrifying expression he gave the steering-gear a final wrench11 and deposited self and car approximately in front of the Happer steps. There was a heaving sound, a death-rattle, followed by a short silence; and then the air was rent by a startling whistle.
Sally Carrol gazed down sleepily. She started to yawn, but finding this quite impossible unless she raised her chin from the window-sill, changed her mind and continued silently to regard the car, whose owner sat brilliantly if perfunctorily at attention as he waited for an answer to his signal. After a moment the whistle once more split the dusty air.
“Good mawnin’.”
With difficulty Clark twisted his tall body round and bent12 a distorted glance on the window.
“Tain’t mawnin’, Sally Carrol.”
“Isn’t it, sure enough?”
“What you doin’?”
“Eatin’ ‘n apple.”
“Come on go swimmin’— want to?”
“Reckon so.”
“How ‘bout hurryin’ up?”
“Sure enough.”
Sally Carrol sighed voluminously and raised herself with profound inertia13 from the floor where she had been occupied in alternately destroyed parts of a green apple and painting paper dolls for her younger sister. She approached a mirror, regarded her expression with a pleased and pleasant languor14, dabbed15 two spots of rouge16 on her lips and a grain of powder on her nose, and covered her bobbed corn-colored hair with a rose-littered sunbonnet. Then she kicked over the painting water, said, “Oh, damn!”— but let it lay — and left the room.
“How you, Clark?” she inquired a minute later as she slipped nimbly over the side of the car.
“Mighty fine, Sally Carrol.”
“Where we go swimmin’?”
“Out to Walley’s Pool. Told Marylyn we’d call by an’ get her an’ Joe Ewing.”
Clark was dark and lean, and when on foot was rather inclined to stoop. His eyes were ominous17 and his expression somewhat petulant18 except when startlingly illuminated19 by one of his frequent smiles. Clark had “a income”— just enough to keep himself in ease and his car in gasolene — and he had spent the two years since he graduated from Georgia Tech in dozing20 round the lazy streets of his home town, discussing how he could best invest his capital for an immediate21 fortune.
Hanging round he found not at all difficult; a crowd of little girls had grown up beautifully, the amazing Sally Carrol foremost among them; and they enjoyed being swum with and danced with and made love to in the flower-filled summery evenings — and they all liked Clark immensely. When feminine company palled22 there were half a dozen other youths who were always just about to do something, and meanwhile were quite willing to join him in a few holes of golf, or a game of billiards23, or the consumption of a quart of “hard yella licker.” Every once in a while one of these contemporaries made a farewell round of calls before going up to New York or Philadelphia or Pittsburgh to go into business, but mostly they just stayed round in this languid paradise of dreamy skies and firefly evenings and noisy nigger street fairs — and especially of gracious, soft-voiced girls, who were brought up on memories instead of money.
The Ford having been excited into a sort of restless resentful life Clark and Sally Carrol rolled and rattled24 down Valley Avenue into Jefferson Street, where the dust road became a pavement; along opiate Millicent Place, where there were half a dozen prosperous, substantial mansions25; and on into the down-town section. Driving was perilous26 here, for it was shopping time; the population idled casually27 across the streets and a drove of low-moaning oxen were being urged along in front of a placid28 street-car; even the shops seemed only yawning their doors and blinking their windows in the sunshine before retiring into a state of utter and finite coma29.
“Sally Carrol,” said Clark suddenly, “it a fact that you’re engaged?”
She looked at him quickly.
“Where’d you hear that?”
“Sure enough, you engaged?”
“‘At’s a nice question!”
“Girl told me you were engaged to a Yankee you met up in Asheville last summer.”
Sally Carrol sighed.
“Never saw such an old town for rumors30.”
“Don’t marry a Yankee, Sally Carrol. We need you round here.”
Sally Carrol was silent a moment.
“Clark,” she demanded suddenly, “who on earth shall I marry?”
“I offer my services.”
“Honey, you couldn’t support a wife,” she answered cheerfully. “Anyway, I know you too well to fall in love with you.”
“‘At doesn’t mean you ought to marry a Yankee,” he persisted.
“S’pose I love him?”
He shook his head.
“You couldn’t. He’d be a lot different from us, every way.”
He broke off as he halted the car in front of a rambling31, dilapidated house. Marylyn Wade32 and Joe Ewing appeared in the doorway33.
“‘Lo Sally Carrol.”
“Hi!”
“How you-all?”
“Sally Carrol,” demanded Marylyn as they started of again, “you engaged?”
“Lawdy, where’d all this start? Can’t I look at a man ‘thout everybody in town engagin’ me to him?”
Clark stared straight in front of him at a bolt on the clattering34 wind-shield.
“Sally Carrol,” he said with a curious intensity35, “don’t you ‘like us?”
“What?”
“Us down here?”
“Why, Clark, you know I do. I adore all you boys.”
“Then why you gettin’ engaged to a Yankee?.”
“Clark, I don’t know. I’m not sure what I’ll do, but — well, I want to go places and see people. I want my mind to grow. I want to live where things happen on a big scale.”
“What you mean?”
“Oh, Clark, I love you, and I love Joe here and Ben Arrot, and you-all, but you’ll — you’ll ——”
“We’ll all be failures?”
“Yes. I don’t mean only money failures, but just sort of — of ineffectual and sad, and — oh, how can I tell you?”
“You mean because we stay here in Tarleton?”
“Yes, Clark; and because you like it and never want to change things or think or go ahead.”
He nodded and she reached over and pressed his hand.
“Clark,” she said softly, “I wouldn’t change you for the world. You’re sweet the way you are. The things that’ll make you fail I’ll love always — the living in the past, the lazy days and nights you have, and all your carelessness and generosity36.”
“But you’re goin’ away?”
“Yes — because I couldn’t ever marry you. You’ve a place in my heart no one else ever could have, but tied down here I’d get restless. I’d feel I was — wastin’ myself. There’s two sides to me, you see. There’s the sleepy old side you love an’ there’s a sort of energy — the feeling that makes me do wild things. That’s the part of me that may be useful somewhere, that’ll last when I’m not beautiful any more.”
She broke of with characteristic suddenness and sighed, “Oh, sweet cooky!” as her mood changed.
Half closing her eyes and tipping back her head till it rested on the seat-back she let the savory37 breeze fan her eyes and ripple38 the fluffy39 curls of her bobbed hair. They were in the country now, hurrying between tangled40 growths of bright-green coppice and grass and tall trees that sent sprays of foliage41 to hang a cool welcome over the road. Here and there they passed a battered42 negro cabin, its oldest white-haired inhabitant smoking a corncob pipe beside the door, and half a dozen scantily43 clothed pickaninnies parading tattered44 dolls on the wild-grown grass in front. Farther out were lazy cotton-fields where even the workers seemed intangible shadows lent by the sun to the earth, not for toil45, but to while away some age-old tradition in the golden September fields. And round the drowsy46 picturesqueness47, over the trees and shacks48 and muddy rivers, flowed the heat, never hostile, only comforting, like a great warm nourishing bosom49 for the infant earth.
“Sally Carrol, we’re here!”
“Poor chile’s soun’ asleep.”
“Honey, you dead at last outa sheer laziness?”
“Water, Sally Carrol! Cool water waitin’ for you!”
Her eyes opened sleepily.
“Hi!” she murmured, smiling.
收听单词发音 |
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freckling
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| n.斑点v.雀斑，斑点( freckle的现在分词 ) | |
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intensified
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| v.（使）增强， （使）加剧( intensify的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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rigor
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| n.严酷，严格，严厉 | |
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entrenched
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| adj.确立的，不容易改的(风俗习惯) | |
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stodgy
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| adj.易饱的；笨重的；滞涩的；古板的 | |
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kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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Ford
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| n.浅滩，水浅可涉处；v.涉水，涉过 | |
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metallic
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| adj.金属的；金属制的；含金属的；产金属的；像金属的 | |
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laboriously
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| adv.艰苦地；费力地；辛勤地；（文体等）佶屈聱牙地 | |
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squeaking
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| v.短促地尖叫( squeak的现在分词 )；吱吱叫；告密；充当告密者 | |
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wrench
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| v.猛拧；挣脱；使扭伤；n.扳手；痛苦，难受 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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inertia
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| adj.惰性，惯性，懒惰，迟钝 | |
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languor
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| n.无精力，倦怠 | |
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dabbed
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| （用某物）轻触( dab的过去式和过去分词 )； 轻而快地擦掉（或抹掉）； 快速擦拭； （用某物）轻而快地涂上（或点上）… | |
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rouge
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| n.胭脂，口红唇膏；v.(在…上)擦口红 | |
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ominous
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| adj.不祥的，不吉的，预兆的，预示的 | |
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petulant
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| adj.性急的，暴躁的 | |
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illuminated
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| adj.被照明的；受启迪的 | |
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dozing
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| v.打瞌睡,假寐 n.瞌睡 | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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palled
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| v.（因过多或过久而）生厌，感到乏味，厌烦( pall的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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billiards
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| n.台球 | |
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rattled
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| 慌乱的，恼火的 | |
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mansions
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| n.宅第，公馆，大厦( mansion的名词复数 ) | |
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perilous
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| adj.危险的，冒险的 | |
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casually
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| adv.漠不关心地，无动于衷地，不负责任地 | |
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placid
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| adj.安静的，平和的 | |
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coma
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| n.昏迷，昏迷状态 | |
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rumors
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| n.传闻( rumor的名词复数 )；[古]名誉；咕哝；[古]喧嚷v.传闻( rumor的第三人称单数 )；[古]名誉；咕哝；[古]喧嚷 | |
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rambling
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| adj.[建]凌乱的，杂乱的 | |
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wade
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| v.跋涉，涉水；n.跋涉 | |
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doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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clattering
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| 发出咔哒声（clatter的现在分词形式） | |
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intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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generosity
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| n.大度，慷慨，慷慨的行为 | |
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savory
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| adj.风味极佳的，可口的，味香的 | |
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ripple
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| n.涟波，涟漪，波纹，粗钢梳；vt.使...起涟漪，使起波纹； vi.呈波浪状，起伏前进 | |
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fluffy
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| adj.有绒毛的，空洞的 | |
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tangled
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| adj. 纠缠的，紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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foliage
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| n.叶子，树叶，簇叶 | |
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battered
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| adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损 | |
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scantily
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| adv.缺乏地；不充足地；吝啬地；狭窄地 | |
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tattered
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| adj.破旧的，衣衫破的 | |
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toil
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| vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事 | |
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drowsy
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| adj.昏昏欲睡的，令人发困的 | |
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picturesqueness
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48
shacks
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| n.窝棚，简陋的小屋( shack的名词复数 ) | |
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bosom
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| n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的 | |
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