章节正文
visit, something happened that had a lasting effect
on his mind.
David had come back into town with one of the
hired men. The man was in a hurry to go about his
own affairs and left the boy at the head of the street
in which the Hardy house stood. It was early dusk
of a fall evening and the sky was overcast with
clouds. Something happened to David. He could not
bear to go into the house where his mother and
father lived, and on an impulse he decided to run
away from home. He intended to go back to the
farm and to his grandfather, but lost his way and
for hours he wandered weeping and frightened on
country roads. It started to rain and lightning
flashed in the sky. The boy's imagination was ex-
cited and he fancied that he could see and hear
strange things in the darkness. Into his mind came
the conviction that he was walking and running in
some terrible void where no one had ever been be-
fore. The darkness about him seemed limitless. The
sound of the wind blowing in trees was terrifying.
When a team of horses approached along the road
in which he walked he was frightened and climbed
a fence. Through a field he ran until he came into
another road and getting upon his knees felt of the
soft ground with his fingers. But for the figure of
his grandfather, whom he was afraid he would
never find in the darkness, he thought the world
must be altogether empty. When his cries were
heard by a farmer who was walking home from
town and he was brought back to his father's house,
he was so tired and excited that he did not know
what was happening to him.
By chance David's father knew that he had disap-
peared. On the street he had met the farm hand
from the Bentley place and knew of his son's return
to town. When the boy did not come home an alarm
was set up and John Hardy with several men of the
town went to search the country. The report that
David had been kidnapped ran about through the
streets of Winesburg. When he came home there
were no lights in the house, but his mother ap-
peared and clutched him eagerly in her arms. David
thought she had suddenly become another woman.
He could not believe that so delightful a thing had
happened. With her own hands Louise Hardy bathed
his tired young body and cooked him food. She
would not let him go to bed but, when he had put
on his nightgown, blew out the lights and sat down
in a chair to hold him in her arms. For an hour the
woman sat in the darkness and held her boy. All
the time she kept talking in a low voice. David could
not understand what had so changed her. Her habit-
ually dissatisfied face had become, he thought, the
most peaceful and lovely thing he had ever seen.
When he began to weep she held him more and
more tightly. On and on went her voice. It was not
harsh or shrill as when she talked to her husband,
but was like rain falling on trees. Presently men
began coming to the door to report that he had not
been found, but she made him hide and be silent
until she had sent them away. He thought it must
be a game his mother and the men of the town were
playing with him and laughed joyously. Into his
mind came the thought that his having been lost
and frightened in the darkness was an altogether
unimportant matter. He thought that he would have
been willing to go through the frightful experience
a thousand times to be sure of finding at the end of
the long black road a thing so lovely as his mother
had suddenly become.
During the last years of young David's boyhood
he saw his mother but seldom and she became for
him just a woman with whom he had once lived.
Still he could not get her figure out of his mind and
as he grew older it became more definite. When he
was twelve years old he went to the Bentley farm
to live. Old Jesse came into town and fairly de-
manded that he be given charge of the boy. The old
man was excited and determined on having his own
way. He talked to John Hardy in the office of the
Winesburg Savings Bank and then the two men
went to the house on Elm Street to talk with Louise.
They both expected her to make trouble but were
mistaken. She was very quiet and when Jesse had
explained his mission and had gone on at some
length about the advantages to come through having
the boy out of doors and in the quiet atmosphere of
the old farmhouse, she nodded her head in ap-
proval. "It is an atmosphere not corrupted by my
presence," she said sharply. Her shoulders shook
and she seemed about to fly into a fit of temper. "It
is a place for a man child, although it was never a
place for me," she went on. "You never wanted me
there and of course the air of your house did me no
good. It was like poison in my blood but it will be
different with him."
Louise turned and went out of the room, leaving
the two men to sit in embarrassed silence. As very
often happened she later stayed in her room for
days. Even when the boy's clothes were packed and
he was taken away she did not appear. The loss of
her son made a sharp break in her life and she
seemed less inclined to quarrel with her husband.
John Hardy thought it had all turned out very well
indeed.
And so young David went to live in the Bentley
farmhouse with Jesse. Two of the old farmer's sisters
were alive and still lived in the house. They were
afraid of Jesse and rarely spoke when he was about.
One of the women who had been noted for her
flaming red hair when she was younger was a born
mother and became the boy's caretaker. Every night
when he had gone to bed she went into his room
and sat on the floor until he fell asleep. When he
became drowsy she became bold and whispered
things that he later thought he must have dreamed.
Her soft low voice called him endearing names
and he dreamed that his mother had come to him
and that she had changed so that she was always
as she had been that time after he ran away. He also
grew bold and reaching out his hand stroked the
face of the woman on the floor so that she was ec-
statically happy. Everyone in the old house became
happy after the boy went there. The hard insistent
thing in Jesse Bentley that had kept the people in
the house silent and timid and that had never been
dispelled by the presence of the girl Louise was ap-
parently swept away by the coming of the boy. It
was as though God had relented and sent a son to
the man.
The man who had proclaimed himself the only
true servant of God in all the valley of Wine Creek,
and who had wanted God to send him a sign of
approval by way of a son out of the womb of Kather-
ine, began to think that at last his prayers had been
answered. Although he was at that time only fifty-
five years old he looked seventy and was worn out
with much thinking and scheming. The effort he
had made to extend his land holdings had been suc-
cessful and there were few farms in the valley that
did not belong to him, but until David came he was
a bitterly disappointed man.
There were two influences at work in Jesse Bent-
ley and all his life his mind had been a battleground
for these influences. First there was the old thing in
him. He wanted to be a man of God and a leader
among men of God. His walking in the fields and
through the forests at night had brought him close
to nature and there were forces in the passionately
religious man that ran out to the forces in nature.
The disappointment that had come to him when a
daughter and not a son had been born to Katherine
had fallen upon him like a blow struck by some
unseen hand and the blow had somewhat softened
his egotism. He still believed that God might at any
moment make himself manifest out of the winds or
the clouds, but he no longer demanded such recog-
nition. Instead he prayed for it. Sometimes he was
altogetherdoubtful and thought God had deserted
the world. He regretted the fate that had not let
him live in a simpler and sweeter time when at the
beckoning of some strange cloud in the sky men
left their lands and houses and went forth into the
wilderness to create new races. While he worked
night and day to make his farms more productive
and to extend his holdings of land, he regretted that
he could not use his own restlessenergy in the
building of temples, the slaying of unbelievers and
in general in the work of glorifying God's name on
earth.
That is what Jesse hungered for and then also he
hungered for something else. He had grown into
maturity in America in the years after the Civil War
and he, like all men of his time, had been touched
by the deep influences that were at work in the
country during those years when modem industrial-
ism was being born. He began to buy machines that
would permit him to do the work of the farms while
employing fewer men and he sometimes thought
that if he were a younger man he would give up
farming altogether and start a factory in Winesburg
for the making of machinery. Jesse formed the habit
of reading newspapers and magazines. He invented
a machine for the making of fence out of wire.
Faintly he realized that the atmosphere of old times
and places that he had always cultivated in his own
mind was strange and foreign to the thing that was
growing up in the minds of others. The beginning
of the most materialistic age in the history of the
world, when wars would be fought without patrio-
tism, when men would forget God and only pay
attention to moral standards, when the will to power
would replace the will to serve and beauty would
be well-nigh forgotten in the terrible headlong rush
of mankind toward the acquiring of possessions,
was telling its story to Jesse the man of God as it
was to the men about him. The greedy thing in him
wanted to make money faster than it could be made
by tilling the land. More than once he went into
Winesburg to talk with his son-in-law John Hardy
on his mind.
David had come back into town with one of the
hired men. The man was in a hurry to go about his
own affairs and left the boy at the head of the street
in which the Hardy house stood. It was early dusk
of a fall evening and the sky was overcast with
clouds. Something happened to David. He could not
bear to go into the house where his mother and
father lived, and on an impulse he decided to run
away from home. He intended to go back to the
farm and to his grandfather, but lost his way and
for hours he wandered weeping and frightened on
country roads. It started to rain and lightning
flashed in the sky. The boy's imagination was ex-
cited and he fancied that he could see and hear
strange things in the darkness. Into his mind came
the conviction that he was walking and running in
some terrible void where no one had ever been be-
fore. The darkness about him seemed limitless. The
sound of the wind blowing in trees was terrifying.
When a team of horses approached along the road
in which he walked he was frightened and climbed
a fence. Through a field he ran until he came into
another road and getting upon his knees felt of the
soft ground with his fingers. But for the figure of
his grandfather, whom he was afraid he would
never find in the darkness, he thought the world
must be altogether empty. When his cries were
heard by a farmer who was walking home from
town and he was brought back to his father's house,
he was so tired and excited that he did not know
what was happening to him.
By chance David's father knew that he had disap-
peared. On the street he had met the farm hand
from the Bentley place and knew of his son's return
to town. When the boy did not come home an alarm
was set up and John Hardy with several men of the
town went to search the country. The report that
David had been kidnapped ran about through the
streets of Winesburg. When he came home there
were no lights in the house, but his mother ap-
peared and clutched him eagerly in her arms. David
thought she had suddenly become another woman.
He could not believe that so delightful a thing had
happened. With her own hands Louise Hardy bathed
his tired young body and cooked him food. She
would not let him go to bed but, when he had put
on his nightgown, blew out the lights and sat down
in a chair to hold him in her arms. For an hour the
woman sat in the darkness and held her boy. All
the time she kept talking in a low voice. David could
not understand what had so changed her. Her habit-
ually dissatisfied face had become, he thought, the
most peaceful and lovely thing he had ever seen.
When he began to weep she held him more and
more tightly. On and on went her voice. It was not
harsh or shrill as when she talked to her husband,
but was like rain falling on trees. Presently men
began coming to the door to report that he had not
been found, but she made him hide and be silent
until she had sent them away. He thought it must
be a game his mother and the men of the town were
playing with him and laughed joyously. Into his
mind came the thought that his having been lost
and frightened in the darkness was an altogether
unimportant matter. He thought that he would have
been willing to go through the frightful experience
a thousand times to be sure of finding at the end of
the long black road a thing so lovely as his mother
had suddenly become.
During the last years of young David's boyhood
he saw his mother but seldom and she became for
him just a woman with whom he had once lived.
Still he could not get her figure out of his mind and
as he grew older it became more definite. When he
was twelve years old he went to the Bentley farm
to live. Old Jesse came into town and fairly de-
manded that he be given charge of the boy. The old
man was excited and determined on having his own
way. He talked to John Hardy in the office of the
Winesburg Savings Bank and then the two men
went to the house on Elm Street to talk with Louise.
They both expected her to make trouble but were
mistaken. She was very quiet and when Jesse had
explained his mission and had gone on at some
length about the advantages to come through having
the boy out of doors and in the quiet atmosphere of
the old farmhouse, she nodded her head in ap-
proval. "It is an atmosphere not corrupted by my
presence," she said sharply. Her shoulders shook
and she seemed about to fly into a fit of temper. "It
is a place for a man child, although it was never a
place for me," she went on. "You never wanted me
there and of course the air of your house did me no
good. It was like poison in my blood but it will be
different with him."
Louise turned and went out of the room, leaving
the two men to sit in embarrassed silence. As very
often happened she later stayed in her room for
days. Even when the boy's clothes were packed and
he was taken away she did not appear. The loss of
her son made a sharp break in her life and she
seemed less inclined to quarrel with her husband.
John Hardy thought it had all turned out very well
indeed.
And so young David went to live in the Bentley
farmhouse with Jesse. Two of the old farmer's sisters
were alive and still lived in the house. They were
afraid of Jesse and rarely spoke when he was about.
One of the women who had been noted for her
flaming red hair when she was younger was a born
mother and became the boy's caretaker. Every night
when he had gone to bed she went into his room
and sat on the floor until he fell asleep. When he
became drowsy she became bold and whispered
things that he later thought he must have dreamed.
Her soft low voice called him endearing names
and he dreamed that his mother had come to him
and that she had changed so that she was always
as she had been that time after he ran away. He also
grew bold and reaching out his hand stroked the
face of the woman on the floor so that she was ec-
statically happy. Everyone in the old house became
happy after the boy went there. The hard insistent
thing in Jesse Bentley that had kept the people in
the house silent and timid and that had never been
dispelled by the presence of the girl Louise was ap-
parently swept away by the coming of the boy. It
was as though God had relented and sent a son to
the man.
The man who had proclaimed himself the only
true servant of God in all the valley of Wine Creek,
and who had wanted God to send him a sign of
approval by way of a son out of the womb of Kather-
ine, began to think that at last his prayers had been
answered. Although he was at that time only fifty-
five years old he looked seventy and was worn out
with much thinking and scheming. The effort he
had made to extend his land holdings had been suc-
cessful and there were few farms in the valley that
did not belong to him, but until David came he was
a bitterly disappointed man.
There were two influences at work in Jesse Bent-
ley and all his life his mind had been a battleground
for these influences. First there was the old thing in
him. He wanted to be a man of God and a leader
among men of God. His walking in the fields and
through the forests at night had brought him close
to nature and there were forces in the passionately
religious man that ran out to the forces in nature.
The disappointment that had come to him when a
daughter and not a son had been born to Katherine
had fallen upon him like a blow struck by some
unseen hand and the blow had somewhat softened
his egotism. He still believed that God might at any
moment make himself manifest out of the winds or
the clouds, but he no longer demanded such recog-
nition. Instead he prayed for it. Sometimes he was
altogetherdoubtful and thought God had deserted
the world. He regretted the fate that had not let
him live in a simpler and sweeter time when at the
beckoning of some strange cloud in the sky men
left their lands and houses and went forth into the
wilderness to create new races. While he worked
night and day to make his farms more productive
and to extend his holdings of land, he regretted that
he could not use his own restlessenergy in the
building of temples, the slaying of unbelievers and
in general in the work of glorifying God's name on
earth.
That is what Jesse hungered for and then also he
hungered for something else. He had grown into
maturity in America in the years after the Civil War
and he, like all men of his time, had been touched
by the deep influences that were at work in the
country during those years when modem industrial-
ism was being born. He began to buy machines that
would permit him to do the work of the farms while
employing fewer men and he sometimes thought
that if he were a younger man he would give up
farming altogether and start a factory in Winesburg
for the making of machinery. Jesse formed the habit
of reading newspapers and magazines. He invented
a machine for the making of fence out of wire.
Faintly he realized that the atmosphere of old times
and places that he had always cultivated in his own
mind was strange and foreign to the thing that was
growing up in the minds of others. The beginning
of the most materialistic age in the history of the
world, when wars would be fought without patrio-
tism, when men would forget God and only pay
attention to moral standards, when the will to power
would replace the will to serve and beauty would
be well-nigh forgotten in the terrible headlong rush
of mankind toward the acquiring of possessions,
was telling its story to Jesse the man of God as it
was to the men about him. The greedy thing in him
wanted to make money faster than it could be made
by tilling the land. More than once he went into
Winesburg to talk with his son-in-law John Hardy
- impulse [´impʌls]
n.推动(力)；冲动；刺激 (初中英语单词) - grandfather [´grænd,fɑ:ðə] n.(外)祖父；祖先 (初中英语单词)
- imagination [i,mædʒi´neiʃən] n.想象(力) (初中英语单词)
- conviction [kən´vikʃən] n.定罪；确信，信服 (初中英语单词)
- running [´rʌniŋ] a.奔跑的；流动的 (初中英语单词)
- altogether [,ɔ:ltə´geðə] ad.完全；总而言之 (初中英语单词)
- eagerly [´i:gəli] ad.渴望地，急切地 (初中英语单词)
- delightful [di´laitful] a.讨人喜欢的 (初中英语单词)
- peaceful [´pi:sfəl] a.和平的；平静的 (初中英语单词)
- presently [´prezəntli] ad.不久；目前 (初中英语单词)
- willing [´wiliŋ] a.情愿的，乐意的 (初中英语单词)
- definite [´definit] a.确定的，明确的 (初中英语单词)
- charge [tʃɑ:dʒ] v.收费；冲锋 n.费用 (初中英语单词)
- mission [´miʃən] n.代表团；使馆vt.派遣 (初中英语单词)
- atmosphere [´ætməsfiə] n.大气；空气；气氛 (初中英语单词)
- sharply [´ʃɑ:pli] ad.锋利地；剧烈地 (初中英语单词)
- temper [´tempə] n.韧度 v.锻炼；调和 (初中英语单词)
- poison [´pɔizən] n.毒物 v.毒害 a.有毒的 (初中英语单词)
- rarely [´reəli] ad.难得；非凡地 (初中英语单词)
- everyone [´evriwʌn] pron.=everybody 每人 (初中英语单词)
- valley [´væli] n.谷；河谷；流域 (初中英语单词)
- scheming [´ski:miŋ] a.计划的；诡计多端 (初中英语单词)
- bitterly [´bitəli] ad.悲痛地；憎恨地 (初中英语单词)
- disappointment [,disə´pɔintmənt] n.失望；挫折 (初中英语单词)
- restless [´restləs] a.没有休息的 (初中英语单词)
- energy [´enədʒi] n.活力，精力；能力 (初中英语单词)
- reading [´ri:diŋ] n.(阅)读；朗读；读物 (初中英语单词)
- replace [ri´pleis] vt.放回；复置；取代 (初中英语单词)
- greedy [´gri:di] a.贪婪的；馋的 (初中英语单词)
- lasting [´lɑ:stiŋ] a.持久的；永远的 (高中英语单词)
- decided [di´saidid] a.明显的；决定的 (高中英语单词)
- tightly [´taitli] ad.紧，紧密地 (高中英语单词)
- shrill [ʃril] a.(声音)尖锐的 (高中英语单词)
- frightful [´fraitfəl] a.可怕的；不愉快的 (高中英语单词)
- finding [´faindiŋ] n.发现物；判断；结果 (高中英语单词)
- farmhouse [´fɑ:mhaus] n.农场住房，农舍 (高中英语单词)
- drowsy [´drauzi] a.困倦的；催眠的 (高中英语单词)
- manifest [´mænifest] a.明显的 v.表明 (高中英语单词)
- doubtful [´dautful] a.怀疑的，可疑的 (高中英语单词)
- headlong [´hedlɔŋ] ad.&a.轻率地(的) (高中英语单词)
- happening [´hæpəniŋ] n.事件，偶然发生的事 (英语四级单词)
- weeping [´wi:piŋ] a.&n.哭泣(的) (英语六级单词)
- dissatisfied [´dis,sætis´fækʃən] a.不满的；显出不满的 (英语六级单词)
- joyously [´dʒɔiəsli] ad.快乐地，高兴地 (英语六级单词)
- cultivated [´kʌltiveitid] a.在耕作的；有教养的 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
章节正文
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