Chapter 3

After the heavy work of harvest was over, Mrs. Wheeler often persuaded her husband, when he was starting off in his buckboard, to take her as far as Claude’s new house. She was glad Enid didn’t keep her parlour dark, as Mrs. Royce kept hers. The doors and windows were always open, the vines and the long petunias¹ in the window-boxes waved in the breeze, and the rooms were full of sunlight and in perfect order. Enid wore white dresses about her work, and white shoes and stockings. She managed a house easily and systematically². On Monday morning Claude turned the washing machine before he went to work, and by nine o’clock the clothes were on the line. Enid liked to iron, and Claude had never before in his life worn so many clean shirts, or worn them with such satisfaction. She told him he need not economize³ in working shirts; it was as easy to iron six as three.

Although within a few months Enid’s car travelled more than two thousand miles for the Prohibition⁴ cause, it could not be said that she neglected her house for reform. Whether she neglected her husband depended upon one’s conception of what was his due. When Mrs. Wheeler saw how well their little establishment was conducted, how cheerful and attractive Enid looked when one happened to drop in there, she wondered that Claude was not happy. And Claude himself wondered. If his marriage disappointed him in some respects, he ought to be a man, he told himself, and make the best of what was good in it. If his wife didn’t love him, it was because love meant one thing to him and quite another thing to her. She was proud of him, was glad to see him when he came in from the fields, and was solicitous⁵ for his comfort. Everything about a man’s embrace was distasteful to Enid; something inflicted⁶ upon women, like the pain of childbirth, — for Eve’s transgression⁷, perhaps.

This repugnance⁸ was more than physical; she disliked ardour of any kind, even religious ardour. She had been fonder of Claude before she married him than she was now; but she hoped for a readjustment. Perhaps sometime she could like him again in exactly the same way. Even Brother Weldon had hinted to her that for the sake of their future tranquillity⁹ she must be lenient¹⁰ with the boy. And she thought she had been lenient. She could not understand his moods of desperate silence, the bitter, biting remarks he sometimes dropped, his evident annoyance¹¹ if she went over to join him in the timber claim when he lay there idle in the deep grass on a Sunday afternoon.

Claude used to lie there and watch the clouds, saying to himself, “It’s the end of everything for me.” Other men than he must have been disappointed, and he wondered how they bore it through a lifetime. Claude had been a well behaved boy because he was an idealist; he had looked forward to being wonderfully happy in love, and to deserving his happiness. He had never dreamed that it might be otherwise.

Sometimes now, when he went out into the fields on a bright summer morning, it seemed to him that Nature not only smiled, but broadly laughed at him. He suffered in his pride, but even more in his ideals, in his vague sense of what was beautiful. Enid could make his life hideous¹² to him without ever knowing it. At such times he hated himself for accepting at all her grudging¹³ hospitality. He was wronging something in himself.

In her person Enid was still attractive to him. He wondered why she had no shades of feeling to correspond to her natural grace and lightness of movement, to the gentle, almost wistful attitudes of body in which he sometimes surprised her. When he came in from work and found her sitting on the porch, leaning against a pillar, her hands clasped about her knees, her head drooping¹⁴ a little, he could scarcely believe in the rigidity¹⁵ which met him at every turn. Was there something repellent in him? Was it, after all, his fault?

Enid was rather more indulgent with his father than with any one else, he noticed. Mr. Wheeler stopped to see her almost every day, and even took her driving in his old buckboard. Bayliss came out from town to spend the evening occasionally. Enid’s vegetarian¹⁶ suppers suited him, and as she worked with him in the Prohibition campaign, they always had business to discuss. Bayliss had a social as well as a hygienic prejudice against alcohol, and he hated it less for the harm it did than for the pleasure it gave. Claude consistently refused to take any part in the activities of the Anti–Saloon League, or to distribute what Bayliss and Enid called “our literature.”

In the farming towns the term “literature” was applied¹⁷ only to a special kind of printed matter; there was Prohibition literature, Sex–Hygiene literature, and, during a scourge¹⁸ of cattle disease, there was Hoof-and-Mouth literature. This special application of the word didn’t bother Claude, but his mother, being an old-fashioned school-teacher, complained about it.

Enid did not understand her husband’s indifference¹⁹ to a burning question, and could only attribute it to the influence of Ernest Havel. She sometimes asked Claude to go with her to one of her committee meetings. If it was a Sunday, he said he was tired and wanted to read the paper. If it was a week-day, he had something to do at the barn, or meant to clear out the timber claim. He did, indeed, saw off a few dead limbs, and cut down a tree the lightning had blasted. Further than that he wouldn’t have let anybody clear the timber lot; he would have died defending it.

The timber claim was his refuge. In the open, grassy²⁰ spots, shut in by the bushy walls of yellowing ash trees, he felt unmarried and free; free to smoke as much as he liked, and to read and dream. Some of his dreams would have frozen his young wife’s blood with horror — and some would have melted his mother’s heart with pity. To lie in the hot sun and look up at the stainless²¹ blue of the autumn sky, to hear the dry rustle²² of the leaves as they fell, and the sound of the bold squirrels leaping from branch to branch; to lie thus and let his imagination play with life — that was the best he could do. His thoughts, he told himself, were his own. He was no longer a boy. He went off into the timber claim to meet a young man more experienced and interesting than himself, who had not tied himself up with compromises.

1 petunias   

n.矮牵牛（花）( petunia的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The petunias were already wilting in the hot sun. 在烈日下矮牵牛花已经开始枯萎了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• With my porch and my pillow, my pretty purple petunias. 那里有我的前廊我的枕头，我漂亮的紫色矮牵牛。 来自互联网

2 systematically   

adv.有系统地

参考例句：

• This government has systematically run down public services since it took office.这一屆政府自上台以来系统地削减了公共服务。
• The rainforest is being systematically destroyed.雨林正被系统地毀灭。

3 economize   

v.节约，节省

参考例句：

• We're going to have to economize from now on. 从现在开始，我们不得不节约开支。
• We have to economize on water during the dry season. 我们在旱季不得不节约用水。

4 prohibition   

n.禁止；禁令，禁律

参考例句：

• The prohibition against drunken driving will save many lives.禁止酒后开车将会减少许多死亡事故。
• They voted in favour of the prohibition of smoking in public areas.他们投票赞成禁止在公共场所吸烟。

5 solicitous   

adj.热切的，挂念的

参考例句：

• He was so solicitous of his guests.他对他的客人们非常关切。
• I am solicitous of his help.我渴得到他的帮助。

6 inflicted   

把…强加给，使承受，遭受( inflict的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• They inflicted a humiliating defeat on the home team. 他们使主队吃了一场很没面子的败仗。
• Zoya heroically bore the torture that the Fascists inflicted upon her. 卓娅英勇地承受法西斯匪徒加在她身上的酷刑。

7 transgression   

n.违背；犯规；罪过

参考例句：

• The price can make an action look more like a transaction than a transgression.罚款让一个行为看起来更像是一笔交易而不是一次违法行为。
• The areas of transgression are indicated by wide spacing of the thickness contours.那幢摩天大楼高耸入云。

8 repugnance   

n.嫌恶

参考例句：

• He fought down a feelings of repugnance.他抑制住了厌恶感。
• She had a repugnance to the person with whom she spoke.她看不惯这个和她谈话的人。

9 tranquillity   

n. 平静, 安静

参考例句：

• The phenomenon was so striking and disturbing that his philosophical tranquillity vanished. 这个令人惶惑不安的现象，扰乱了他的旷达宁静的心境。
• My value for domestic tranquillity should much exceed theirs. 我应该远比他们重视家庭的平静生活。

10 lenient   

adj.宽大的，仁慈的

参考例句：

• The judge was lenient with him.法官对他很宽大。
• It's a question of finding the means between too lenient treatment and too severe punishment.问题是要找出处理过宽和处罚过严的折中办法。

11 annoyance   

n.恼怒，生气，烦恼

参考例句：

• Why do you always take your annoyance out on me?为什么你不高兴时总是对我出气？
• I felt annoyance at being teased.我恼恨别人取笑我。

12 hideous   

adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的

参考例句：

• The whole experience had been like some hideous nightmare.整个经历就像一场可怕的噩梦。
• They're not like dogs,they're hideous brutes.它们不像狗，是丑陋的畜牲。

13 grudging   

adj.勉强的，吝啬的

参考例句：

• He felt a grudging respect for her talents as an organizer.他勉强地对她的组织才能表示尊重。
• After a pause he added"sir."in a dilatory,grudging way.停了一会他才慢吞吞地、勉勉强强地加了一声“先生”。

14 drooping   

adj. 下垂的，无力的 动词droop的现在分词

参考例句：

• The drooping willows are waving gently in the morning breeze. 晨风中垂柳袅袅。
• The branches of the drooping willows were swaying lightly. 垂柳轻飘飘地摆动。

15 rigidity   

adj.钢性，坚硬

参考例句：

• The rigidity of the metal caused it to crack.这金属因刚度强而产生裂纹。
• He deplored the rigidity of her views.他痛感她的观点僵化。

16 vegetarian   

n.素食者；adj.素食的

参考例句：

• She got used gradually to the vegetarian diet.她逐渐习惯吃素食。
• I didn't realize you were a vegetarian.我不知道你是个素食者。

17 applied   

adj.应用的；v.应用，适用

参考例句：

• She plans to take a course in applied linguistics.她打算学习应用语言学课程。
• This cream is best applied to the face at night.这种乳霜最好晚上擦脸用。

18 scourge   

n.灾难，祸害；v.蹂躏

参考例句：

• Smallpox was once the scourge of the world.天花曾是世界的大患。
• The new boss was the scourge of the inefficient.新老板来了以后，不称职的人就遭殃了。

19 indifference   

n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎

参考例句：

• I was disappointed by his indifference more than somewhat.他的漠不关心使我很失望。
• He feigned indifference to criticism of his work.他假装毫不在意别人批评他的作品。

20 grassy   

adj.盖满草的；长满草的

参考例句：

• They sat and had their lunch on a grassy hillside.他们坐在长满草的山坡上吃午饭。
• Cattle move freely across the grassy plain.牛群自由自在地走过草原。

21 stainless   

adj.无瑕疵的，不锈的

参考例句：

• I have a set of stainless knives and forks.我有一套不锈钢刀叉。
• Before the recent political scandal,her reputation had been stainless.在最近的政治丑闻之前，她的名声是无懈可击的。

22 rustle   

v.沙沙作响；偷盗(牛、马等)；n.沙沙声声

参考例句：

• She heard a rustle in the bushes.她听到灌木丛中一阵沙沙声。
• He heard a rustle of leaves in the breeze.他听到树叶在微风中发出的沙沙声。