One Basket(一个篮子)

VIP免费

2024-12-26 0 0 488.03KB 131 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

ONE BASKET

THIRTY-ONE SHORT STORIES

EDNA FERBER

ONE BASKET

The Woman Who Tried to Be Good

[1913]

Before she tried to be a good woman she had been a very bad

woman--so bad that she could trail her wonderful apparel up and down

Main Street, from the Elm Tree Bakery to the railroad tracks, without once

having a man doff his hat to her or a woman bow. You passed her on the

street with a surreptitious glance, though she was well worth looking at--

in her furs and laces and plumes. She had the only full-length mink coat

in our town, and Ganz's shoe store sent to Chicago for her shoes. Hers

were the miraculously small feet you frequently see in stout women.

Usually she walked alone; but on rare occasions, especially round

Christmastime, she might have been seen accompanied by some silent,

dull-eyed, stupid-looking girl, who would follow her dumbly in and out of

stores, stopping now and then to admire a cheap comb or a chain set with

flashy imitation stones--or, queerly enough, a doll with yellow hair and

blue eyes and very pink cheeks. But, alone or in company, her

appearance in the stores of our town was the signal for a sudden jump in

the cost of living. The storekeepers mulcted her; and she knew it and paid

in silence, for she was of the class that has no redress. She owned the

House with the Closed Shutters, near the freight depot--did Blanche

Devine.

In a larger town than ours she would have passed unnoticed. She did

not look like a bad woman. Of course she used too much make-up, and

as she passed you caught the oversweet breath of a certain heavy scent.

Then, too, her diamond eardrops would have made any woman's features

look hard; but her plump face, in spite of its heaviness, wore an expression

of good-humored intelligence, and her eyeglasses gave her somehow a

look of respectability. We do not associate vice with eyeglasses. So in

a large city she would have passed for a well-dressed, prosperous,

comfortable wife and mother who was in danger of losing her figure from

an overabundance of good living; but with us she was a town character,

like Old Man Givins, the drunkard, or the weak-minded Binns girl.

ONE BASKET

When she passed the drug- store corner there would be a sniggering

among the vacant-eyed loafers idling there, and they would leer at each

other and jest in undertones.

So, knowing Blanche Devine as we did, there was something

resembling a riot in one of our most respectable neighborhoods when it

was learned that she had given up her interest in the house near the freight

depot and was going to settle down in the white cottage on the corner and

be good. All the husbands in the block, urged on by righteously

indignant wives, dropped in on Alderman Mooney after supper to see if

the thing could not be stopped. The fourth of the protesting husbands to

arrive was the Very Young Husband who lived next door to the corner

cottage that Blanche Devine had bought. The Very Young Husband had a

Very Young Wife, and they were the joint owners of Snooky. Snooky

was three-going- on-four, and looked something like an angel--only

healthier and with grimier hands. The whole neighborhood borrowed her

and tried to spoil her; but Snooky would not spoil.

Alderman Mooney was down in the cellar, fooling with the furnace.

He was in his furnace overalls; a short black pipe in his mouth.

Three protesting husbands had just left. As the Very Young Husband,

following Mrs. Mooney's directions, descended the cellar stairs, Alderman

Mooney looked up from his tinkering. He peered through a haze of pipe

smoke.

"Hello!" he called, and waved the haze away with his open palm.

"Come on down! Been tinkering with this blamed furnace since

supper. She don't draw like she ought. 'Long toward spring a furnace

always gets balky. How many tons you used this winter?"

"Oh-five," said the Very Young Husband shortly. Alderman Mooney

considered it thoughtfully. The Young Husband leaned up against the

side of the water tank, his hands in his pockets. "Say, Mooney, is that

right about Blanche Devine's having bought the house on the corner?"

"You're the fourth man that's been in to ask me that this evening. I'm

expecting the rest of the block before bedtime. She bought it all right."

The Young Husband flushed and kicked at a piece of coal with the toe

of his boot.

ONE BASKET

"Well, it's a darned shame!" he began hotly. "Jen was ready to cry at

supper. This'll be a fine neighborhood for Snooky to grow up in!

What's a woman like that want to come into a respectable street for,

anyway? I own my home and pay my taxes--"

Alderman Mooney looked up.

"So does she," he interrupted. "She's going to improve the place--

paint it, and put in a cellar and a furnace, and build a porch, and lay a

cement walk all round."

The Young Husband took his hands out of his pockets in order to

emphasize his remarks with gestures.

"Whati's that got to do with it? I don't care if she puts in diamonds

for windows and sets out Italian gardens and a terrace with peacocks on it.

You're the alderman of this ward, aren't you? Well, it was up to you to

keep her out of this block! You could have fixed it with an injunction or

somethng. I'm going to get up a petition--that's what I'm going----"

Alderman Mooney closed the furnace door with a bang that drowned

the rest of the threat. He turned the draft in a pipe overhead and brushed

his sooty palms briskly together like one who would put an end to a

profitless conversation.

"She's bought the house," he said mildly, "and paid for it. And it's

hers. She's got a right to live in this neighborhood as long as she acts

respectable."

The Very Young Husband laughed.

"She won't last! They never do."

Alderman Mooney had taken his pipe out of his mouth and was

rubbing his thumb over the smooth bowl, looking down at it with unseeing

eyes. On his face was a queer look--the look of one who is embarrassed

because he is about to say something honest.

"Look here! I want to tell you something: I happened to be up in

the mayor's office the day Blanche signed for the place. She had to go

through a lot of red tape before she got it--had quite a time of it, she did!

And say, kid, that woman ain't so--bad."

The Very Young Husband exclaimed impatiently:

"Oh, don't give me any of that, Mooney! Blanche Devine's a town

ONE BASKET

character. Even the kids know what she is. If she's got religion or

something, and wants to quit and be decent, why doesn't she go to another

town-- Chicago or someplace--where nobody knows her?"

That motion of Alderman Mooney's thumb against the smooth pipe

bowl stopped. He looked up slowly.

"That's what I said--the mayor too. But Blanche Devine said she

wanted to try it here. She said this was home to her. Funny--ain't it?

Said she wouldn't be fooling anybody here. They know her. And if she

moved away, she said, it'd leak out some way sooner or later. It does, she

said. Always! Seems she wants to live like--well, like other women.

She put it like this: she says she hasn't got religion, or any of that. She

says she's no different than she was when she was twenty. She says that

for the last ten years the ambition of her life has been to be able to go into

a grocery store and ask the price of, say, celery; and, if the clerk charged

her ten when it ought to be seven, to be able to sass him with a regular

piece of her mind-- and then sail out and trade somewhere else until he

saw that she didn't have to stand anything from storekeepers, any more

than any other woman that did her own marketing. She's a smart woman,

Blanche is! God knows I ain't taking her part--exactly; but she talked a

little, and the mayor and me got a little of her history."

A sneer appeared on the face of the Very Young Husband. He had

been known before he met Jen as a rather industrious sower of wild oats.

He knew a thing or two, did the Very Young Husband, in spite of his youth!

He always fussed when Jen wore even a V-necked summer gown on the

street.

"Oh, she wasn't playing for sympathy," went on Alderman Mooney in

answer to the sneer. "She said she'd always paid her way and always

expected to. Seems her husband left her without a cent when she was

eighteen--with a baby. She worked for four dollars a week in a cheap

eating house. The two of 'em couldn't live on that. Then the baby----"

"Good night!" said the Very Young Husband. "I suppose Mrs.

Mooney's going to call?"

"Minnie! It was her scolding all through supper that drove me down

to monkey with the furnace. She's wild--Minnie is." He peeled off his

ONE BASKET

overalls and hung them on a nail. The Young Husband started to ascend

the cellar stairs. Alderman Mooney laid a detaining finger on his sleeve.

"Don't say anything in front of Minnie! She's boiling! Minnie and the

kids are going to visit her folks out West this summer; so I wouldn't so

much as dare to say `Good morning!' to the Devine woman. Anyway, a

person wouldn't talk to her, I suppose. But I kind of thought I'd tell you

about her.

"Thanks!" said the Very Young Husband dryly.

In the early spring, before Blanche Devine moved in, there came

stone- masons, who began to build something. It was a great stone

fireplace that rose in massive incongruity at the side of the little white

cottage. Blanche Devine was trying to make a home for herself.

Blanche Devine used to come and watch them now and then as the

work progressed. She had a way of walking round and round the house,

looking up at it and poking at plaster and paint with her umbrella or finger

tip. One day she brought with her a man with a spade. He spaded up a

neat square of ground at the side of the cottage and a long ridge near the

fence that separated her yard from that of the Very Young Couple next

door. The ridge spelled sweet peas and nasturtiums to our small-town

eyes.

On the day that Blanche Devine moved in there was wild agitation

among the white-ruffed bedroom curtains of the neighborhood. Later on

certain odors, as of burning dinners, pervaded the atmosphere. Blanche

Devine, flushed and excited, her hair slightly askew, her diamond eardrops

flashing, directed the moving, wrapped in her great fur coat; but on the

third morning we gasped when she appeared out-of-doors, carrying a little

household ladder, a pail of steaming water, and sundry voluminous white

cloths. She reared the little ladder against the side of the house, mounted

it cautiously, and began to wash windows with housewifely thoroughness.

Her stout figure was swathed in a gray sweater and on her head was a

battered felt hat--the sort of window--washing costume that has been worn

by women from time immemorial. We noticed that she used plenty of

hot water and clean rags, and that she rubbed the glass until it sparkled,

leaning perilously sideways on the ladder to detect elusive streaks. Our

ONE BASKET

keenest housekeeping eye could find no fault with the way Blanche

Devine washed windows.

By May, Blanche Devine had left off her diamond eardrops--perhaps it

was their absence that gave her face a new expression. When she went

downtown we noticed that her hats were more like the hats the other

women in our town wore; but she still affected extravagant footgear, as is

right and proper for a stout woman who has cause to be vain of her feet.

We noticed that her trips downtown were rare that spring and summer. She

used to come home laden with little bundles; and before supper she would

change her street clothes for a neat, washable housedress, as is our thrifty

custom. Through her bright windows we could see her moving briskly

about from kitchen to sitting room; and from the smells that floated out

from her kitchen door, she seemed to be preparing for her solitary supper

the same homely viands that were frying or stewing or baking in our

kitchens. Sometimes you could detect the delectable scent of browning,

hot tea biscuit. It takes a determined woman to make tea biscuit for no

one but herself.

Blanche Devine joined the church. On the first Sunday morning she

came to the service there was a little flurry among the ushers at the

vestibule door. They seated her well in the rear. The second Sunday

morning a dreadful thing happened. The woman next to whom they

seated her turned, regarded her stonily for a moment, then rose agitatedly

and moved to a pew across the aisle.

Blanche Devine's face went a dull red beneath her white powder. She

never came again--though we saw the minister visit her once or twice.

She always accompanied him to the door pleasantly, holding it well open

until he was down the little flight of steps and on the sidewalk. The

minister's wife did not call.

She rose early, like the rest of us; and as summer came on we used to

see her moving about in her little garden patch in the dewy, golden

morning. She wore absurd pale-blue negligees that made her stout figure

loom immense against the greenery of garden and apple tree. The

neighborhood women viewed these negligees with Puritan disapproval as

they smoothed down their own prim, starched gingham skirts. They said

ONE BASKET

it was disgusting --and perhaps it was; but the habit of years is not easily

overcome. Blanche Devine--snipping her sweet peas, peering anxiously

at the Virginia creeper that clung with such fragile fingers to the trellis,

watering the flower baskets that hung from her porch--was blissfully

unconscious of the disapproving eyes. I wish one of us had just stopped

to call good morning to her over the fence, and to say in our neighborly,

small-town way: "My, ain't this a scorcher! So early too! It'll be

fierce by noon!"

But we did not.

I think perhaps the evenings must have been the loneliest for her.

The summer evenings in our little town are filled with intimate, human,

neighborly sounds. After the heat of the day it is pleasant to relax in the

cool comfort of the front porch, with the life of the town eddying about us.

We sew and read out there until it grows dusk. We call across lots to our

next- door neighbor. The men water the lawns and the flower boxes and

get together in little, quiet groups to discuss the new street paving. I have

even known Mrs. Hines to bring her cherries out there when she had

canning to do, and pit them there on the front porch partially shielded by

her porch vine, but not so effectually that she was deprived of the sights

and sounds about her. The kettle in her lap and the dishpan full of great

ripe cherries on the porch floor by her chair, she would pit and chat and

peer out through the vines, the red juice staining her plump bare arms.

I have wondered since what Blanche Devine thought of us those

lonesome evenings--those evenings filled with friendly sights and sounds.

It must have been difficult for her, who had dwelt behind closed shutters

so long, to seat herself on the new front porch for all the world to stare at;

but she did sit there--resolutely--watching us in silence.

She seized hungrily upon the stray crumbs of conversation that fell to

her. The milkman and the iceman and the butcher boy used to hold daily

conversation with her. They--sociable gentlemen--would stand on her

door- step, one grimy hand resting against the white of her doorpost,

exchanging the time of day with Blanche in the doorway--a tea towel in

one hand, perhaps, and a plate in the other. Her little house was a miracle

of cleanliness. It was no uncommon sight to see her down on her knees

ONE BASKET

on the kitchen floor, wielding her brush and rag like the rest of us. In

canning and preserving time there floated out from her kitchen the

pungent scent of pickled crab apples; the mouth-watering smell that meant

sweet pickles; or the cloying, divinely sticky odor that meant raspberry

jam. Snooky, from her side of the fence, often used to peer through the

pickets, gazing in the direction of the enticing smells next door.

Early one September morning there floated out from Blanche Devine's

kitchen that fragrant, sweet scent of fresh-baked cookies--cookies with

butter in them, and spice, and with nuts on top. Just by the smell of them

your mind's eye pictured them coming from the oven-crisp brown circlets,

crumbly, delectable. Snooky, in her scarlet sweater and cap, sniffed them

from afar and straightway deserted her sand pile to take her stand at the

fence. She peered through the restraining bars, standing on tiptoe.

Blanche Devine, glancing up from her board and rolling pin, saw the eager

golden head. And Snooky, with guile in her heart, raised one fat,

dimpled hand above the fence and waved it friendlily. Blanche Devine

waved back. Thus encouraged, Snooky's two hands wigwagged

frantically above the pickets. Blanche Devine hesitated a moment, her

floury hand on her hip. Then she went to the pantry shelf and took out a

clean white saucer. She selected from the brown jar on the table three of

the brownest, crumbliest, most perfect cookies, with a walnut meat

perched atop of each, placed them temptingly on the saucer and,

descending the steps, came swiftly across the grass to the triumphant

Snooky. Blanche Devine held out the saucer, her lips smiling, her eyes

tender. Snooky reached up with one plump white arm.

"Snooky!" shrilled a high voice. "Snooky!" A voice of horror and

of wrath. "Come here to me this minute! And don't you dare to touch

those!" Snooky hesitated rebelliously, one pink finger in her pouting

mouth.

"Snooky! Do you hear me?"

And the Very Young Wife began to descend the steps of her back porch.

Snooky, regretful eyes on the toothsome dainties, turned away aggrieved.

The Very Young Wife, her lips set, her eyes flashing, advanced and seized

the shrieking Snooky by one arm and dragged her away toward home and

ONE BASKET

safety.

Blanche Devine stood there at the fence, holding the saucer in her

hand. The saucer tipped slowly, and the three cookies slipped off and fell

to the grass. Blanche Devine stood staring at them a moment. Then she

turned quickly, went into the house, and shut the door.

It was about this time we noticed that Blanche Devine was away much

of the time. The little white cottage would be empty for weeks. We

knew she was out of town because the expressman would come for her

trunk. We used to lift our eyebrows significantly. The newspapers and

handbills would accumulate in a dusty little heap on the porch; but when

she returned there was always a grand cleaning, with the windows open,

and Blanche--her head bound turbanwise in a towel--appearing at a

window every few minutes to shake out a dustcloth. She seemed to put

an enormous amount of energy into those cleanings--as if they were a sort

of safety valve.

As winter came on she used to sit up before her grate fire long, long

after we were asleep in our beds. When she neglected to pull down the

shades we could see the flames of her cosy fire dancing gnomelike on the

wall. There came a night of sleet and snow, and wind and rattling hail--

one of those blustering, wild nights that are followed by morning-paper

reports of trains stalled in drifts, mail delayed, telephone and telegraph

wires down. It must have been midnight or past when there came a

hammering at Blanche Devine's door--a persistent, clamorous rapping.

Blanche Devine, sitting before her dying fire half asleep, started and

cringed when she heard it, then jumped to her feet, her hand at her breast--

her eyes darting this way and that, as though seeking escape.

She had heard a rapping like that before. It had meant bluecoats

swarming up the stairway, and frightened cries and pleadings, and wild

confusion. So she started forward now, quivering. And then she

remembered, being wholly awake now--she remembered, and threw up

her head and smiled a little bitterly and walked toward the door. The

hammering continued, louder than ever. Blanche Devine flicked on the

porch light and opened the door. The half-clad figure of the Very Young

Wife next door staggered into the room. She seized Blanche Devine's

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

ONEBASKET1ONEBASKETTHIRTY-ONESHORTSTORIESEDNAFERBERONEBASKET2TheWomanWhoTriedtoBeGood[1913]Beforeshetriedtobeagoodwomanshehadbeenaverybadwoman--sobadthatshecouldtrailherwonderfulapparelupanddownMainStreet,fromtheElmTreeBakerytotherailroadtracks,withoutoncehavingamandoffhishattoherorawomanbow.Youpass...

展开>> 收起<<

One Basket(一个篮子).pdf

共131页,预览27页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

One Basket(一个篮子)

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: