Approaching the door, Claude stopped a moment and peered in at the kitchen window. The table was set for supper, and Mahailey was at the stove, stirring something in a big iron pot; cornmeal mush, probably, — she often made it for herself now that her teeth had begun to fail. She stood leaning over, embracing the pot with one arm, and with the other she beat the stiff contents, nodding her head in time to this rotary2 movement. Confused emotions surged up in Claude. He went in quickly and gave her a bearish3 hug.
Her face wrinkled up in the foolish grin he knew so well. “Lord, how you scared me, Mr. Claude! A little more’n I’d ‘a’ had my mush all over the floor. You lookin’ fine, you nice boy, you!”
He knew Mahailey was gladder to see him come home than any one except his mother. Hearing Mrs. Wheeler’s wandering, uncertain steps in the enclosed stairway, he opened the door and ran halfway4 up to meet her, putting his arm about her with the almost painful tenderness he always felt, but seldom was at liberty to show. She reached up both hands and stroked his hair for a moment, laughing as one does to a little boy, and telling him she believed it was redder every time he came back.
“Have we got all the corn in, Mother?”
“No, Claude, we haven’t. You know we’re always behindhand. It’s been fine, open weather for husking, too. But at least we’ve got rid of that miserable5 Jerry; so there’s something to be thankful for. He had one of his fits of temper in town one day, when he was hitching6 up to come home, and Leonard Dawson saw him beat one of our horses with the neck-yoke. Leonard told your father, and spoke7 his mind, and your father discharged Jerry. If you or Ralph had told him, he most likely wouldn’t have done anything about it. But I guess all fathers are the same.” She chuckled8 confidingly9, leaning on Claude’s arm as they descended10 the stairs.
“I guess so. Did he hurt the horse much? Which one was it?”
“The little black, Pompey. I believe he is rather a mean horse. The men said one of the bones over the eye was broken, but he would probably come round all right.”
“Pompey isn’t mean; he’s nervous. All the horses hated Jerry, and they had good reason to.” Claude jerked his shoulders to shake off disgusting recollections of this mongrel man which flashed back into his mind. He had seen things happen in the barn that he positively11 couldn’t tell his father. Mr. Wheeler came into the kitchen and stopped on his way upstairs long enough to say, “Hello, Claude. You look pretty well.”
“Yes, sir. I’m all right, thank you.”
“Bayliss tells me you’ve been playing football a good deal.”
“Not more than usual. We played half a dozen games; generally got licked. The State has a fine team, though.”
“I expect,” Mr. Wheeler drawled as he strode upstairs.
Supper went as usual. Dan kept grinning and blinking at Claude, trying to discover whether he had already been informed of Jerry’s fate. Ralph told him the neighbourhood gossip: Gus Yoeder, their German neighbour, was bringing suit against a farmer who had shot his dog. Leonard Dawson was going to marry Susie Grey. She was the girl on whose account Leonard had slapped Bayliss, Claude remembered.
After supper Ralph and Mr. Wheeler went off in the car to a Christmas entertainment at the country schoolhouse. Claude and his mother sat down for a quiet talk by the hard-coal burner in the living room upstairs. Claude liked this room, especially when his father was not there. The old carpet, the faded chairs, the secretary book-case, the spotty engraving12 with all the scenes from Pilgrim’s Progress that hung over the sofa, — these things made him feel at home. Ralph was always proposing to refurnish the room in Mission oak, but so far Claude and his mother had saved it.
Claude drew up his favourite chair and began to tell Mrs. Wheeler about the Erlich boys and their mother. She listened, but he could see that she was much more interested in hearing about the Chapins, and whether Edward’s throat had improved, and where he had preached this fall. That was one of the disappointing things about coming home; he could never interest his mother in new things or people unless they in some way had to do with the church. He knew, too, she was always hoping to hear that he at last felt the need of coming closer to the church. She did not harass13 him about these things, but she had told him once or twice that nothing could happen in the world which would give her so much pleasure as to see him reconciled to Christ. He realized, as he talked to her about the Erlichs, that she was wondering whether they weren’t very “worldly” people, and was apprehensive14 about their influence on him. The evening was rather a failure, and he went to bed early.
Claude had gone through a painful time of doubt and fear when he thought a great deal about religion. For several years, from fourteen to eighteen, he believed that he would be lost if he did not repent15 and undergo that mysterious change called conversion16. But there was something stubborn in him that would not let him avail himself of the pardon offered. He felt condemned17, but he did not want to renounce18 a world he as yet knew nothing of. He would like to go into life with all his vigour19, with all his faculties20 free. He didn’t want to be like the young men who said in prayer-meeting that they leaned on their Saviour21. He hated their way of meekly22 accepting permitted pleasures.
In those days Claude had a sharp physical fear of death. A funeral, the sight of a neighbour lying rigid23 in his black coffin24, overwhelmed him with terror. He used to lie awake in the dark, plotting against death, trying to devise some plan of escaping it, angrily wishing he had never been born. Was there no way out of the world but this? When he thought of the millions of lonely creatures rotting away under ground, life seemed nothing but a trap that caught people for one horrible end. There had never been a man so strong or so good that he had escaped. And yet he sometimes felt sure that he, Claude Wheeler, would escape; that he would actually invent some clever shift to save himself from dissolution. When he found it, he would tell nobody; he would be crafty25 and secret. Putrefaction26, decay. . . . He could not give his pleasant, warm body over to that filthiness27! What did it mean, that verse in the Bible, “He shall not suffer His holy one to see corruption”?
If anything could cure an intelligent boy of morbid28 religious fears, it was a denominational school like that to which Claude had been sent. Now he dismissed all Christian29 theology as something too full of evasions30 and sophistries31 to be reasoned about. The men who made it, he felt sure, were like the men who taught it. The noblest could be damned, according to their theory, while almost any mean-spirited parasite32 could be saved by faith. “Faith,” as he saw it exemplified in the faculty33 of the Temple school, was a substitute for most of the manly34 qualities he admired. Young men went into the ministry35 because they were timid or lazy and wanted society to take care of them; because they wanted to be pampered36 by kind, trusting women like his mother.
Though he wanted little to do with theology and theologians, Claude would have said that he was a Christian. He believed in God, and in the spirit of the four Gospels, and in the Sermon on the Mount. He used to halt and stumble at “Blessed are the meek,” until one day he happened to think that this verse was meant exactly for people like Mahailey; and surely she was blessed!
点击
收听单词发音
收听单词发音 |
1
humbled
|
|
| adj. 卑下的，谦逊的，粗陋的 vt. 使 ... 卑下，贬低 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
rotary
|
|
| adj.(运动等)旋转的；轮转的；转动的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
bearish
|
|
| adj.(行情)看跌的，卖空的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
halfway
|
|
| adj.中途的，不彻底的，部分的；adv.半路地，在中途，在半途 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
miserable
|
|
| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
hitching
|
|
| 搭乘； （免费）搭乘他人之车( hitch的现在分词 )； 搭便车； 攀上； 跃上 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
spoke
|
|
| 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 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
chuckled
|
|
| 轻声地笑( chuckle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
confidingly
|
|
| adv.信任地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
descended
|
|
| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
positively
|
|
| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
engraving
|
|
| n.版画；雕刻（作品）；雕刻艺术；镌版术v.在（硬物）上雕刻（字，画等）( engrave的现在分词 )；将某事物深深印在（记忆或头脑中） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
harass
|
|
| vt.使烦恼，折磨，骚扰 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
apprehensive
|
|
| adj.担心的，恐惧的，善于领会的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
repent
|
|
| v.悔悟，悔改，忏悔，后悔 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
conversion
|
|
| n.转化，转换，转变 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
condemned
|
|
| adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
renounce
|
|
| v.放弃；拒绝承认，宣布与…断绝关系 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
vigour
|
|
| （=vigor）n.智力，体力，精力 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
faculties
|
|
| n.能力( faculty的名词复数 )；全体教职员；技巧；院 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
saviour
|
|
| n.拯救者，救星 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
meekly
|
|
| adv.温顺地，逆来顺受地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
rigid
|
|
| adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
coffin
|
|
| n.棺材，灵柩 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
25
crafty
|
|
| adj.狡猾的，诡诈的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
26
putrefaction
|
|
| n.腐坏，腐败 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
27
filthiness
|
|
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
28
morbid
|
|
| adj.病的；致病的；病态的；可怕的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
29
Christian
|
|
| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
30
evasions
|
|
| 逃避( evasion的名词复数 )； 回避； 遁辞； 借口 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
31
sophistries
|
|
| n.诡辩术( sophistry的名词复数 )；（一次）诡辩 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
32
parasite
|
|
| n.寄生虫；寄生菌；食客 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
33
faculty
|
|
| n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
34
manly
|
|
| adj.有男子气概的；adv.男子般地，果断地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
35
ministry
|
|
| n.(政府的)部；牧师 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
36
pampered
|
|
| adj.饮食过量的，饮食奢侈的v.纵容，宠，娇养( pamper的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |