Tressa Torrance's outlook on life was a comfortable one, born of her own sunny nature. Its foundation was love, the keystone of its arch peace. The blood of a gentle mother had effectually subdued1 in her the fierce impetuosity of her father--as in life the frail2 little wife had dominated the boisterous3 husband. Tressa wanted most to be loved. It was food to her self-respect, to her easy and appealing ways, even to the laugh bubbling so readily to her rosy4 lips. Most of all she wanted to be loved by Adrian Conrad; her father--well, his love was impervious5 to influence.
In her gentle love of peace the bickerings that surrounded her made her shrink within herself, wondering, staunch in her faith that her daddy and Adrian were right--without these blundering, uneducated foreigners being quite as bad as their masters thought.
Desiring to escape it all for a time, she crept away one late afternoon when Adrian and her father were in conference with the two Policemen. They did not seem to notice. Less than a week ahead was the commencement of the last operation on the trestle before handing over to the big contractors6 complete; and the anxiety of the moment spoke7 in the firmness of their tone and the grimness of their measures. Tressa stole away, troubled at heart.
In her favourite retreat, a cluster of slender birch trees deep in the forest, she seated herself on a fallen trunk and unrolled her crocheting8. Through the thin foliage9 the sun filtered over her hair and spangled the ground at her feet. A breeze as gentle as herself whispered above her head in friendly commune with the great rustle10 of the forest. Secluded11 without being closed in from the light, she felt that she might untangle there more clearly the trifling12 problems of her sheltered life.
As she worked she hummed. Into the network of woven threads she was weaving the future--a month hence--a year--two years--five. And the pictures pleased her progressively. Adrian, laughing into her eyes after the season's hard struggle, was at her side . . . a happy husband then . . . a beaming and foolishly proud father; and little tots with their father's fair hair--
Something--more a feeling than a sound--arrested her. She flushed at the thought that some one was looking at the pictures of her imagination. Abashed13, perhaps a trifle annoyed, but without a thought of fear, she lifted her eyes. But when she beheld14 Koppy, hat in hand, standing15 at the edge of her retreat with head bowed, his humility16 seemed to call only for the sympathy always denied him. With maidenly17 modesty18 she gathered her work to tighter compass, but no other restraint did she feel in the presence of the man her friends accused of unthinkable crimes. The inheritance of her femininity assured her that she was in no danger. Koppy had always liked her--she knew that also by virtue19 of that inheritance; and every woman loves the strong thing that bends to her--loves, but perhaps does not respect.
Unconscious of the challenging coyness of words and manner, she spoke:
"You didn't frighten me a bit, Koppy."
"I didn't want to," he replied in a low voice.
"I don't think I heard you. I guess I must have--felt you."
He moved swiftly in among the trees and stood before her, soiled hat turning in grimy hands.
"You--felt me?"
A vague and sudden sense of discomfort20 made her raise puzzled eyes to his, but she dismissed it firmly as born of her father's suspicions. Still she wished he would not stand so close, stooping over her, with that funny look in his eyes. Suggestively she glanced at the white trunk on which she was seated, and moved further along.
"I suppose it's an instinct," she said. "Animals must feel like that about things they can't see or hear. Haven't you often been conscious of being watched when you couldn't see the watcher?"
He smiled from a world of superior knowledge; the unseen watcher was the foundation of the big game he was ever playing. The smile ended in a short laugh, and somehow it startled her--she seemed so naked in thought before this strange foreigner.
"You know what I mean," she went on lamely21. "I suppose a gopher peering from its hole in the ground would disturb me sooner or later."
"Don't explain," he almost pleaded, "don't try to explain." He seated himself far up the trunk.
Again her puzzled eyes were on him. In some indefinite way he was so different, so--so human and equal. Outwardly there was no evidence of the change--the same nondescript clothes, the same grimy hands and face, the same coarse boots and clumsiness.
He seemed to read her thoughts, for with a gesture of long-suppressed protest he threw out his hands.
"Yes," he cried, "they're gnarled and dirty, and these old overalls22 are the mark of my degradation23." He flung his hat passionately24 on the ground. "But I'm not always this way. Back in Chicago I dress--sometimes. There I'm what I like to be, what I can be. Not often--it is not that way I rule."
Her eyes were wide with surprise. "You--you speak--"
He shrugged25 his shoulders. "I speak English as well as you or any one else. I think in English. But it pays me to look foreign, to fight outwardly the 'civilising' influences of the country of my adoption26." A slight sneer27 twisted his lips. "I must look like a cut-throat, because in that way I've reached the height I've attained28 in my organisation29. It shocks you, because you don't understand, because you've never had to plough the row I've toiled30 along. . . . I'm not as bad as I seem."
She picked up her work to cover the beating of her heart.
"If you're out of sympathy--"
"But I'm not out of sympathy," he interrupted earnestly. "I'm a Worker of the World, and always will be. I would prefer not to have to dress like this, but not because I deplore31 our aims. It is the misfortune of the class of men for whom I fight. Miss Torrance"--he slid abruptly32 down the trunk and leaned forward to look in her eyes--"I'm talking to you as I never talked before, as I scarcely dared to think. Any one else would hand me over to the Police. You won't. And to talk like this to a fellow-worker would mean a knife slid in here. No, you won't tell. I've known a lot of women, most of them bad ones because that's the only kind I have a chance to meet, but I never knew one to sell a man she did not hate . . . and a woman never hates till she first loves. You've never loved more than one."
"And not likely to," she put in quietly, even as she thrilled to the completeness of his trust.
He laughed harshly. "They all say that--that is, all but the kind any man can buy. But you know nothing of them--forgive me for mentioning them. . . . There aren't many women stick to their first love."
"Oh?" she said indifferently. "I haven't thought it worth discussing."
"No? Perhaps you're right. Many a time I've thought the same of woman, all women--until I learned that every woman, good or bad, is worth it."
His eyes had gone to the tree tops; they returned now so suddenly that she started. A curious smile moved his lips.
"Do you know, you've disturbed all my convictions of women? I really know so little of you that it may be foolish, but you've made me feel that woman in the singular may be so much more to a man than the whole mass of the sex. For you, or one of the very few like you, a man might give up every other ambition without regret . . . and I've had many--women and ambitions--in my day."
She was flushing, though she knew from the utter frankness of it that he was not making love, not even being impertinent. She had no fear of him, only of her inexperience in handling so strange a situation.
"You make a man feel there is everything in tossing aside all I've attained, merely to settle down as a respectable citizen." He was staring through the tree-tops again, hands clasped over one knee. "I could make a way for myself, a good way, without all this fever, with a woman like you to hold me straight. I know what I can do." A forlorn smile wrinkled his face not unpleasantly. "But there are two insuperable obstacles. The Workers wouldn't let me--and the woman wouldn't have me. . . . That's why I grow desperate sometimes, why I--"
She questioned with her eyes his continued silence. "I won't tell," she promised gently, "but perhaps you'd better say no more."
He did not seem to hear her, and she was cudgelling her inexperience for some smooth retreat, when he broke out explosively:
"I'm the product of over-sudden civilisation33, like a thin-blooded man plunging34 into cold water. From the crude half-lights of my own country I leaped at one bound into the brilliance35 of civilisation's beam, as it is found in America. And I couldn't stand it--few of us can. We get numb36 to everything but our own discomfort. And knowing we're bound for life, we struggle and beat our wings against things as we find them, in a panic because they differ so from things we were born to. We're like a bird in a room. It may be a cosy37, warm and friendly room, but the bird wants only to get out in the cold. . . . The human tide we're plunged38 in from the very first day ignores us, or tramples40 us, or drives us like cattle, forgetting that we are numb and bewildered, panic stricken, unable to think beyond primal41 emotions. . . .
"If we could only have a year's apprenticeship42 where sympathy holds our hands! If only we could enter the new state by a gradient instead of a plunge39! But there is no isle43 between, no one to lead us gently to the light. . . . And few of us would pause to be led. And so we struggle, and in the struggling hurt ourselves or are hurt. We strike out--and are struck back by stronger force than ourselves. And so we tumble back to sullen44 silence, watching and planning to beat that force as we may. . . . And there I am."
The hopelessness of his tone held appealing hands to her. She longed to help him, yet knew not how. And suddenly it came to her that perhaps it lay within her power to build up the structure of dissatisfaction that he was exposing to her.
"You know how foolish it is," she said. "You have intelligence, you see where fighting leads. Why strike back? Go with the tide; it is not trying to overwhelm you, only to do you good. There'd be few knocks then."
"Ah," he cried bitterly, "but it's too late. The poison of resistance has flooded our veins45, and as yet there is no antidote46. Slowly it has been weaving itself into the very fibre of my character; I can't help it. At moments like this I see, for my mind still retains some of its sense of proportion . . . but part of the poison of it is that we do more with our hands, these hands you hate, than with our minds. Ten years it has been coursing through me. Can I alter my stature47 by a thought? As I talk to you I'm able to stand aside and watch the horrible thing, but gnawing48 always at me is the memory of those early days of panic."
She shook her head. "You'll never understand," she sighed. "I hoped you would."
"But I do understand. It's you can't, because you never stood on foreign shore--alone."
"Yet it is better than home, or you wouldn't come in your thousands."
"Better than home, yes, but worse than we hoped. Only those who flee the rude traditions, the heartless laws, the ignorance and comfortless life of worn-out Europe can see the pictures the very word 'America' rouses in us. I don't know whether it is not more the fault of our ignorance than of the boasts of those who have already gone, of those who would profit by our going, that we land with hopes nothing on earth could justify49. And, not finding the milk and honey flow out to lave our ship, we start depressed50 and resentful. We land in a strange country with only a word of its language. No one greets us, no one holds our fumbling51 hands. By dirty ways we slink to dirty tenement52 houses to hide ourselves--where disloyalty is the air we breath, discomfort our bed, and robbery our experience--robbed by the very friends who preceded us. Half-cowed, lonely, cursing in silence the drudgery53 that faces us, we learn to live for ourselves alone. Helpless, we drift into the hands of our own kind, who wax rich on the sale of us in herds54 to work no one else would undertake. Sullen, keen to the injustice55 of things, but ignorant of the simplicity56 of redress57, we fall victims to our own morbid58 hatreds59, to anything that promises to feed our fury. . . .
"That is where the Independent Workers of the World gets its recruits. And once its clutches close on us--" He stopped suddenly and clambered to his feet. "Miss Torrance, you'd better go home. You shouldn't come here. Go--right away!" His fists were clenched60, his under lip gripped between his teeth.
She had dropped from her seat and was staring at him, alarmed at last. Over his face, into his very clothes and manner, had passed something that tumbled her rudely back to the Koppy she knew best, the malignant61, sneering62, mesmeric, uncouth63 underforeman her father and Adrian suspected. He stooped and lifted his hat jerkily.
"Workers strong," he said in his broken English. "They see big things, they do them. I, a vice-president--just a Pole, but big man--I order. Go home!"
Yet he turned his back before she did, and even as she started away she knew he knew that he could not harm her. She ran as she had never run before, clutching her work in a grim little fist, not from fear of Koppy but of the strange thing she had seen.
Within sight of the grade she sank on the forest floor and lay looking up through tangled64 pictures, as through the woven ceiling of green leaves that sprinkled the sky. Then she sat up, smoothed her hair, wiped from her face every mark of agitation65, and sauntered back to the shack66.
"Just getting away from you cold-blooded schemers," she laughed. "There's peace in the woods tonight, anyway." And she went past him to the kitchen to boil the kettle.
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1
subdued
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| adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
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frail
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| adj.身体虚弱的；易损坏的 | |
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boisterous
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| adj.喧闹的，欢闹的 | |
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rosy
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| adj.美好的，乐观的，玫瑰色的 | |
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impervious
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| adj.不能渗透的，不能穿过的，不易伤害的 | |
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6
contractors
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| n.（建筑、监造中的）承包人( contractor的名词复数 ) | |
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7
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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8
crocheting
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| v.用钩针编织( crochet的现在分词 )；钩编 | |
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foliage
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| n.叶子，树叶，簇叶 | |
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rustle
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| v.沙沙作响；偷盗(牛、马等)；n.沙沙声声 | |
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11
secluded
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| adj.与世隔绝的；隐退的；偏僻的v.使隔开，使隐退( seclude的过去式和过去分词) | |
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12
trifling
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| adj.微不足道的；没什么价值的 | |
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13
abashed
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| adj.窘迫的，尴尬的v.使羞愧，使局促，使窘迫( abash的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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14
beheld
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| v.看，注视( behold的过去式和过去分词 )；瞧；看呀；（叙述中用于引出某人意外的出现）哎哟 | |
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15
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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humility
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| n.谦逊，谦恭 | |
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maidenly
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| adj. 像处女的, 谨慎的, 稳静的 | |
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modesty
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| n.谦逊，虚心，端庄，稳重，羞怯，朴素 | |
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virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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20
discomfort
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| n.不舒服，不安，难过，困难，不方便 | |
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21
lamely
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| 一瘸一拐地，不完全地 | |
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22
overalls
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| n.（复）工装裤；长罩衣 | |
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23
degradation
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| n.降级；低落；退化；陵削；降解；衰变 | |
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24
passionately
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| ad.热烈地，激烈地 | |
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25
shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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26
adoption
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| n.采用，采纳，通过；收养 | |
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27
sneer
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| v.轻蔑；嘲笑；n.嘲笑，讥讽的言语 | |
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28
attained
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| （通常经过努力）实现( attain的过去式和过去分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况） | |
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organisation
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| n.组织，安排，团体，有机休 | |
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30
toiled
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| 长时间或辛苦地工作( toil的过去式和过去分词 )； 艰难缓慢地移动，跋涉 | |
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deplore
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| vt.哀叹，对...深感遗憾 | |
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32
abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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33
civilisation
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| n.文明，文化，开化，教化 | |
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34
plunging
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| adj.跳进的，突进的v.颠簸( plunge的现在分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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35
brilliance
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| n.光辉，辉煌，壮丽，（卓越的）才华，才智 | |
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36
numb
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| adj.麻木的，失去感觉的；v.使麻木 | |
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37
cosy
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| adj.温暖而舒适的，安逸的 | |
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38
plunged
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| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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39
plunge
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| v.跳入，(使)投入，(使)陷入；猛冲 | |
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40
tramples
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| 踩( trample的第三人称单数 )； 践踏； 无视； 侵犯 | |
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41
primal
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| adj.原始的；最重要的 | |
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42
apprenticeship
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| n.学徒身份；学徒期 | |
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43
isle
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| n.小岛，岛 | |
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44
sullen
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| adj.愠怒的，闷闷不乐的，(天气等)阴沉的 | |
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45
veins
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| n.纹理；矿脉( vein的名词复数 )；静脉；叶脉；纹理 | |
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46
antidote
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| n.解毒药，解毒剂 | |
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47
stature
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| n.（高度）水平，（高度）境界，身高，身材 | |
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48
gnawing
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| a.痛苦的，折磨人的 | |
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49
justify
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| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
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50
depressed
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| adj.沮丧的，抑郁的，不景气的，萧条的 | |
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51
fumbling
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| n. 摸索,漏接 v. 摸索,摸弄,笨拙的处理 | |
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52
tenement
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| n.公寓；房屋 | |
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drudgery
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| n.苦工，重活，单调乏味的工作 | |
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54
herds
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| 兽群( herd的名词复数 )； 牧群； 人群； 群众 | |
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55
injustice
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| n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利 | |
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56
simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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57
redress
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| n.赔偿，救济，矫正；v.纠正，匡正，革除 | |
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58
morbid
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| adj.病的；致病的；病态的；可怕的 | |
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59
hatreds
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| n.仇恨，憎恶( hatred的名词复数 )；厌恶的事 | |
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60
clenched
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| v.紧握，抓紧，咬紧( clench的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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61
malignant
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| adj.恶性的，致命的；恶意的，恶毒的 | |
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62
sneering
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| 嘲笑的，轻蔑的 | |
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63
uncouth
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| adj.无教养的，粗鲁的 | |
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64
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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65
agitation
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| n.搅动；搅拌；鼓动，煽动 | |
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66
shack
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| adj.简陋的小屋，窝棚 | |
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67
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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