“I’ll run you over home. Which house, the old? How did you get out of Louie’s party?”
“I had classes.”
“It was some lunch! Louie’s a good host. First-rate cigars, and plenty of them,” Scott tapped his breast pocket. “We had poor Tom served up again. It was all right, of course — the scientific men were interested, didn’t know much about him. Louie called on me for personal recollections; he was very polite about it. I didn’t express myself very well. I’m not much of a speaker, anyhow, and this time I seemed to be talking uphill. You know, Tom isn’t very real to me any more. Sometimes I think he was just a — a glittering idea. Here we are, Doctor.”
Scott’s remark rather troubled the Professor. He went up the two flights of stairs and sat down in his shadowy crypt at the top of the house. With his right elbow on the table, his eyes on the floor, he began recalling as clearly and definitely as he could every incident of that bright, windy spring day when he first saw Tom Outland.
He was working in his garden one Saturday morning, when a young man in a heavy winter suit and a Stetson hat, carrying a grey canvas telescope, came in at the green door that led from the street.
“Are you Professor St. Peter?” he inquired.
Upon being assured, he set down his bag on the gravel2, took out a blue cotton handkerchief, and wiped his face, which was covered with beads3 of moisture. The first thing the Professor noticed about the visitor was his manly4, mature voice — low, calm, experienced, very different from the thin ring or the hoarse5 shouts of boyish voices about the campus. The next thing he observed was the strong line of contrast below the young man’s sandy hair — the very fair forehead which had been protected by his hat, and the reddish brown of his face, which had evidently been exposed to a stronger sun than the spring sun of Hamilton. The boy was fine-looking, he saw — tall and presumably well built, though the shoulders of his stiff, heavy coat were so preposterously6 padded that the upper part of him seemed shut up in a case.
“I want to go to school here, Professor St. Peter, and I’ve come to ask you advice. I don’t know anybody in the town.”
“You want to enter the university, I take it? What high school are you from?”
“I’ve never been to high school, sir. That’s the trouble.”
“Why, yes. I hardly see how you can enter the university. Where are you from?”
“New Mexico. I haven’t been to school, but I’ve studied. I read Latin with a priest down there.”
St. Peter smiled incredulously. “How much Latin?”
“I read Caesar and Virgil, the AEneid.”
“How many books?”
“We went right through.” He met the Professor’s questions squarely, his eyes were resolute7, like his voice.
“Oh, you did.” St. Peter stood his spade against the wall. He had been digging around his red-fruited thorn-trees. “Can you repeat any of it?”
The boy began: Infandum, regina, jubes renovare dolorem and steadily8 continued for fifty lines or more, until St. Peter held up a checking hand.
“Excellent. Your priest was a thorough Latinist. You have a good pronunciation and good intonation9. Was the Father by any chance a Frenchman?”
“Yes, sir. He was a missionary10 priest, from Belgium.”
“Did you learn any French from him?”
“No, sir. He wanted to practise his Spanish.”
“You speak Spanish?”
“Not very well, Mexican Spanish.”
The Professor tried him out in Spanish and told him he thought he knew enough to get credit for a modern language. “And what are your deficiencies?”
“I’ve never had any mathematics or science, and I write very bad hand.”
“That’s not unusual,” St. Peter told him. “But, by the way, how did you happen to come to me instead of the registrar11?”
“I just got in this morning, and your name was the only one here I knew. I read an article by you in a magazine, about Fray12 Marcos. Father Duchene said it was the only thing with any truth in it he’d read about our country down there.”
The Professor had noticed before that whenever he wrote for popular periodicals it got him into trouble. “Well, what are your plans, young man? And, by the way, what is your name?”
“Tom Outland.”
The Professor repeated it. It seemed to suit the boy exactly.
“How old are you?”
“I’m twenty.” He blushed, and St. Peter supposed he was dropping off a few years, but he found afterward13 that the boy didn’t know exactly how old he was. “I thought I might get a tutor and make up my mathematics this summer.”
“Yes, that could be managed. How are you fixed14 for money?”
Outland’s face grew grave. “I’m rather awkwardly fixed. If you were to write to Tarpin, New Mexico, to inquire about me, you’d find I have money in the bank there, and you’d think I had been deceiving you. But it’s money I can’t touch while I’m able-bodied. It’s in trust for someone else. But I’ve got three hundred dollars without any string on it, and I’m hoping to get work here. I’ve been bossing a section gang all winter, and I’m in good condition. I’ll do anything but wait table. I won’t do that.” On this point he seemed to feel strongly.
The Professor learned some of his story that morning. His parents, he said, were “mover people,” and both died when they were crossing southern Kansas in a prairie schooner15. He was a baby and had been informally adopted by some kind people who took care of his mother in her last hours, — a locomotive engineer named O’Brien, and his wife. This engineer was transferred to New Mexico and took the foundling boy along with his own children. As soon as Tom was old enough to work, he got a job as call boy and did his share toward supporting the family.
“What’s a call boy, a messenger boy?”
“No, sir. It’s a more responsible position. Our town was an important freight division on the Santa Fé, and a lot of train men live there. The freight schedule is always changing because it’s a single track road and the dispatcher has to get the freights through when he can. Suppose you’re a brakeman, and your train is due out at two A.M.; well, like as not, it will be changed to midnight, or to four in the morning. You go to bed as if you were going to sleep all night, with nothing on your mind. The call boy watches the schedule board, and half an hour before your train goes out, he comes and taps on your window and gets you up in time to make it. The call boy has to be on to things in the town. He must know when there’s a poker16 game on, and how to slip in easy. You can’t tell when there’s a spotter about, and if a man’s reported for gambling17, he’s fired. Sometimes you have to get a man when he isn’t where he ought to be. I found there was usually a reason at home for that.” The boy spoke18 with gravity, as if he had reflected deeply upon irregular behaviour.
Just then Mrs. St. Peter came out into the garden and asked her husband if he wouldn’t bring his young friend in to lunch. Outland started and looked with panic toward the door by which he had come in; but the Professor wouldn’t hear of his going, and picked up his telescope to prevent his escape. As he carried it into the house and put it down in the hall, he noticed that it was strangely light for its bulk. Mrs. St. Peter introduced the guest to her two little girls, and asked him if he didn’t want to go upstairs to wash his hands. He disappeared; as he came back something disconcerting happened. The front hall and the front staircase were the only hard wood in the house, but as Tom came down the waxed steps, his heavy new shoes shot out from under him, and he sat down on the end of his spine19 with a thump20. Little Kathleen burst into a giggle21, and her elder sister looked at her reprovingly; Mrs. St. Peter apologized for the stairs.
“I’m not much used to stairs, living mostly in ‘dobe houses,” Tom explained, as he picked himself up.
At luncheon the boy was very silent at first. He sat looking admiringly at Mrs. St. Peter and the little girls. The day had grown warm, and the Professor thought this was the hottest boy he had ever seen. His stiff white collar began to melt, and his handkerchief, as he kept wiping his face with it, became a rag. “I didn’t know it would be so warm up here, or I’d have picked a lighter22 suit,” he said, embarrassed by the activity of his skin.
“We would like to hear more about your life in the Southwest,” said his host. “How long were you a call boy?”
“Two years. Then I had pneumonia23, and the doctor said I ought to go on the range, so I went to work for a big cattle firm.”
Mrs. St. Peter began to question him about the Indian pueblos24. He was reticent25 at first, but he presently warmed up in defence of Indian housewifery. He forgot his shyness so far, indeed, that having made a neat heap of mashed26 potato beside his chop, he conveyed it to his mouth on the blade of his knife, at which sight the little girls were not able to conceal27 their astonishment28. Mrs. St. Peter went on quietly talking about Indian pottery29 and asking him where they made the best.
“I think the very best is the old, — the cliff-dweller pottery,” he said. “Do you take an interest in pottery, Ma’am? Maybe you’d like to see some I have brought along.” As they rose from the table he went to his telescope underneath30 the hat-rack, knelt beside it, and undid31 the straps32. When he lifted the cover, it seemed full of bulky objects wrapped in newspapers. After feeling among them, he unwrapped one and displayed an earthen water jar, shaped like those common in Greek sculpture, and ornamented33 with a geometrical pattern in black and white.
“That’s one of the real old ones. I know, for I got it out myself. I don’t know just how old, but there’s pin>on trees three hundred years old by their rings, growing up in the stone trail that leads to the ruins where I got it.”
“Stone trail . . . pi?ons?” she asked.
“Yes, deep, narrow trails in white rock, worn by their moccasin feet coming and going for generations. And these old pi?on trees have come up in the trails since the race died off. You can tell something about how long ago it was by them.” He showed her a coating of black on the under side of the jar.
“That’s not from the firing. See, I can scratch it off. It’s soot34, from when it was on the cook-fire last — and that was before Columbus landed, I guess. Nothing makes those people seem so real to me as their old pots, with the fire-black on them.” As she gave it back to him, he shook his head. “That one’s for you, Ma’am, if you like it.”
“Oh, I couldn’t think of letting you give it to me! You must keep it for yourself, or put it in a museum.” But that seemed to touch a sore spot.
“Museums,” he said bitterly, “they don’t care about our things. The want something that came from Crete or Egypt. I’d break my jars sooner than they should get them. But I’d like this one to have a good home, among your nice things” — he looked about appreciatively. “I’ve no place to keep them. They’re in my way, especially that big one. My trunk is at the station, but I was afraid to leave the pottery. You don’t get them out whole like that very often.”
“But get them out of what, from where? I want to know all about it.”
“Maybe some day, Ma’am, I can tell you,” he said, wiping his sooty fingers on his handkerchief. His reply was courteous35 but final. He strapped36 his bag and picked up his hat, then hesitated and smiled. Taking a buckskin bag from his pocket, he walked over to the window-seat where the children were, and held out his hand to them, saying: “These I would like to give to the little girls.” In his palm lay two lumps of soft blue stone, the colour of robins’ eggs, or of the sea on halcyon37 days of summer.
The children marvelled38. “Oh, what are they?”
“Turquoises39, just the way they come out of the mine, before the jewellers have tampered40 with them and made them look green. The Indians like them this way.”
Again Mrs. St. Peter demurred41. She told him very kindly42 that she couldn’t let him give his stones to the children. “They are worth a lot of money.”
“I’d never sell them. They were given to me by a friend. I have a lot, and they’re no use to me, but they’ll make pretty playthings for little girls.” His voice was so wistful and winning that there was nothing to do.
“Hold them still a moment,” said the Professor, looking down, not at the turquoises, but at the hand that held them: the muscular, many-lined palm, the long, strong fingers with soft ends, the straight little finger, the flexible, beautifully shaped thumb that curved back from the rest of the hand as if it were its own master. What a hand! He could see it yet, with the blue stones lying in it.
In a moment the stranger was gone, and the St. Peter family sat down and looked at one another. He remembered just what his wife had said on that occasion.
“Well, this is something new in students, Godfrey. We ask a poor perspiring43 tramp boy to lunch, to save his pennies, and he departs leaving princely gifts.”
Yes, the Professor reflected, after all these years, that was still true. Fellows like Outland don’t carry much luggage, yet one of the things you know them by is their sumptuous44 generosity45 — and when they are gone, all you can say of them is that they departed leaving princely gifts.
With a good tutor, young Outland had no difficulty in making up three years’ mathematics in four months. Latin, he owned, had been hard for him. But in mathematics, he didn’t have to work, he had merely to give his attention. His tutor had never known anything like it. But St. Peter held the boy at arm’s length. As a young teacher full of zeal46, he had been fooled more than once. He knew that the wonderful seldom holds water, that brilliancy has no staying power, and the unusual becomes commonplace by a natural law.
In those first months Mrs. St. Peter saw more of their protégé than her husband did. She found him a good boarding-place, took care that he had proper summer clothes and that he no longer addressed her as “Ma’am.” He came often to the house that summer, to play with the little girls. He would spend hours with them in the garden, making Hopi villages with sand and pebbles47, drawing maps of the Painted Desert and the Rio Grande country in the gravel, telling them stories, when there was no one by to listen, about the adventures he had had with his friend Roddy.
“Mother,” Kathleen broke out one evening at dinner, “what do you think! Tom hasn’t any birthday.”
“How is that?”
“When his mother died in the mover wagon48, and Tom was a baby, she forgot to tell the O’Briens when his birthday was. She even forgot to tell them how old he was. They thought he must be a year and a half, because he was so big, but Mrs. O’Brien always said he didn’t have enough teeth for that.”
St. Peter asked her whether Tom had ever said how it happened that his mother died in a wagon.
“Well, you see, she was very sick, and they were going West for her health. And one day, when they were camped beside a river, Tom’s father went in to swim, and had a cramp49 or something, and was drowned. Tom’s mother saw it, and it made her worse. She was there all alone, till some people found her and drove her on to the next town to a doctor. But when they got her there, she was too sick to leave the wagon. They drove her into the O’Briens’ yard, because that was nearest the doctor’s and Mrs. O’Brien was a kind woman. And she died in a few hours.”
“Does Tom know anything about his father?”
“Nothing except that he was a school-teacher in Missouri. His mother told the O’Briens that much. But the O’Briens were just lovely to him.”
St. Peter had noticed that in the stories Tom told the children there were no shadows. Kathleen and Rosamond regarded his free-lance childhood as a gay adventure they would gladly have shared. They loved to play at being Tom and Roddy. Roddy was the remarkable50 friend, ten years older than Tom, who knew everything about snakes and panthers and deserts and Indians. “And he gave up a fine job firing on the Santa Fé, and went off with Tom to ride after cattle for hardly any wages, just to be with Tom and take care of him after he’d had pneumonia,” Kathleen told them.
“That wasn’t the only reason,” Rosamond added dreamily. “Roddy was proud. He didn’t like taking orders and living on pay cheques. He liked to be free, and to sit in his saddle all day and use it for a pillow at night. You know Tom said that, Kitty.”
“Anyhow, he was noble. He was always noble, noble Roddy!” Kathleen finished it off.
After the first day, when he had walked into the garden and introduced himself, Tom never took up the story of his own life again, either with the Professor or Mrs. St. Peter, though he was often encouraged to do so. He would talk about the New Mexico country when questioned, about Father Duchene, the missionary priest who had been his teacher, about the Indians; but only with the two little girls did he ever speak freely and confidentially51 about himself. St. Peter used to wonder how the boy could afford to spend so much time with the children. All through that summer and fall he used to come in the afternoon and join them in the garden. In the winter he dropped in two or three evenings a week to play Five Hundred or to take a dancing-lesson.
There was evidently something enchanting52 about the atmosphere of the house to a boy who had always lived a rough life. He enjoyed the prettiness and freshness and gaiety of the little girls as if they were flowers. Probably, too, he liked being so attractive to them. A flush of pleasure would come over Tom’s face — so much fairer now than when he first arrived in Hamilton — if Kathleen caught his hand and tried to squeeze it hard enough to hurt, crying: “Oh, Tom, tell us about the time you and Roddy found the water hole dry, and then afterward tell us about when the rattlesnake bit Henry!” He would whisper: “Pretty soon,” and after a while, through the open windows, the Professor would hear them in the garden: the laughter and exclamations53 of the little girls, and that singularly individual voice of Tom’s — mature, confident, seldom varying in pitch, but full of slight, very moving modulations.
He couldn’t have wished for a better companion for his daughters, and they were teaching Tom things that he needed more than mathematics.
Sitting thus in his study, long afterward, St. Peter reflected that those first years, before Outland had done anything remarkable, were really the best of all. He liked to remember the charming groups of three he was always coming upon, — in the hammock swung between the linden-trees, in the window-seat, or before the dining-room fire. Oh, there had been fine times in this old house then: family festivals and hospitalities, little girls dancing in and out, Augusta coming and going, gay dresses hanging in his study at night, Christmas shopping and secrets and smothered54 laughter on the stairs. When a man had lovely children in his house, fragrant55 and happy, full of pretty fancies and generous impulses, why couldn’t he keep them? Was there no way but Medea’s, he wondered?
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1
luncheon
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| n.午宴，午餐，便宴 | |
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gravel
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| n.砂跞；砂砾层；结石 | |
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beads
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| n.（空心）小珠子( bead的名词复数 )；水珠；珠子项链 | |
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manly
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| adj.有男子气概的；adv.男子般地，果断地 | |
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hoarse
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| adj.嘶哑的，沙哑的 | |
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preposterously
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| adv.反常地；荒谬地；荒谬可笑地；不合理地 | |
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resolute
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| adj.坚决的，果敢的 | |
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steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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intonation
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| n.语调，声调；发声 | |
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missionary
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| adj.教会的，传教(士)的；n.传教士 | |
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registrar
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| n.记录员，登记员；(大学的)注册主任 | |
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fray
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| v.争吵；打斗；磨损，磨破；n.吵架；打斗 | |
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afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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schooner
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poker
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| n.扑克；vt.烙制 | |
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gambling
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| n.赌博；投机 | |
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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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spine
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| n.脊柱，脊椎；(动植物的)刺；书脊 | |
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thump
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giggle
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| n.痴笑，咯咯地笑；v.咯咯地笑着说 | |
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lighter
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| n.打火机，点火器；驳船；v.用驳船运送；light的比较级 | |
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pneumonia
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pueblos
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| n.印第安人村庄( pueblo的名词复数 ) | |
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reticent
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mashed
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conceal
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astonishment
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| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
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pottery
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underneath
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Undid
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| v. 解开, 复原 | |
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straps
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| n.带子( strap的名词复数 )；挎带；肩带；背带v.用皮带捆扎( strap的第三人称单数 )；用皮带抽打；包扎；给…打绷带 | |
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ornamented
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| adj.花式字体的v.装饰，点缀，美化( ornament的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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soot
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courteous
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strapped
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| adj.用皮带捆住的，用皮带装饰的；身无分文的；缺钱；手头紧v.用皮带捆扎(strap的过去式和过去分词)；用皮带抽打；包扎；给…打绷带 | |
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halcyon
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| n.平静的，愉快的 | |
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marvelled
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| v.惊奇，对…感到惊奇( marvel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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turquoises
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| n.绿松石( turquoise的名词复数 )；青绿色 | |
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tampered
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| v.窜改( tamper的过去式 )；篡改；（用不正当手段）影响；瞎摆弄 | |
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demurred
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| v.表示异议，反对( demur的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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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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perspiring
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| v.出汗，流汗( perspire的现在分词 ) | |
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sumptuous
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| adj.豪华的，奢侈的，华丽的 | |
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generosity
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| n.大度，慷慨，慷慨的行为 | |
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zeal
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| n.热心，热情，热忱 | |
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pebbles
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| [复数]鹅卵石； 沙砾； 卵石，小圆石( pebble的名词复数 ) | |
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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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cramp
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| n.痉挛；[pl.](腹)绞痛；vt.限制，束缚 | |
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50
remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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51
confidentially
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| ad.秘密地，悄悄地 | |
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52
enchanting
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| a.讨人喜欢的 | |
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53
exclamations
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| n.呼喊( exclamation的名词复数 )；感叹；感叹语；感叹词 | |
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54
smothered
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| （使）窒息， （使）透不过气( smother的过去式和过去分词 )； 覆盖； 忍住； 抑制 | |
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55
fragrant
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| adj.芬香的，馥郁的，愉快的 | |
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