章节正文
were like heaven."
"Only like a part of heaven. In the other parts there would be
summer and autumn. . .yes, and a bit of winter, too. I think I
want glittering snowy fields and white frosts in heaven sometimes.
Don't you, Jane?"
"I. . .I don't know," said Jane uncomfortably. Jane was a good girl,
a member of the church, who tried conscientiously to live up to her
profession and believed everything she had been taught. But she
never thought about heaven any more than she could help, for all that.
"Minnie May asked me the other day if we would wear our best
dresses every day in heaven," laughed Diana.
"And didn't you tell her we would?" asked Anne.
"Mercy, no! I told her we wouldn't be thinking of dresses at all there."
"Oh, I think we will. . .a LITTLE," said Anne earnestly.
"There'll be plenty of time in all eternity for it without
neglecting more important things. I believe we'll all wear
beautiful dresses. . .or I suppose RAIMENT would be a more
suitable way of speaking. I shall want to wear pink for a few
centuries at firSt. . .it would take me that long to get tired of it,
I feel sure. I do love pink so and I can never wear it in THIS world."
Past the spruces the lane dipped down into a sunny little open
where a log bridge spanned a brook; and then came the glory of a
sunlit beechwood where the air was like transparent golden wine,
and the leaves fresh and green, and the wood floor a mosaic of
tremulous sunshine. Then more wild cherries, and a little valley
of lissome firs, and then a hill so steep that the girls lost their
breath climbing it; but when they reached the top and came out into
the open the prettiest surprise of all awaited them.
Beyond were the "back fields" of the farms that ran out to the
upper Carmody road. Just before them, hemmed in by beeches and
firs but open to the south, was a little corner and in it a garden
. . .or what had once been a garden. A tumbledown stone dyke,
overgrown with mosses and grass, surrounded it. Along the eastern
side ran a row of garden cherry trees, white as a snowdrift.
There were traces of old paths still and a double line of rosebushes
through the middle; but all the rest of the space was a sheet of
yellow and white narcissi, in their airiest, most lavish, wind-swayed
bloom above the lush green grasses.
"Oh, how perfectly lovely!" three of the girls cried. Anne only
gazed in eloquent silence.
"How in the world does it happen that there ever was a garden back here?"
said Priscilla in amazement.
"It must be Hester Gray's garden," said Diana. "I've heard mother
speak of it but I never saw it before, and I wouldn't have supposed
that it could be in existence still. You've heard the story, Anne?"
"No, but the name seems familiar to me."
"Oh, you've seen it in the graveyard. She is buried down there in
the poplar corner. You know the little brown stone with the
opening gates carved on it and `Sacred to the memory of Hester
Gray, aged twenty-two.' Jordan Gray is buried right beside her
but there's no stone to him. It's a wonder Marilla never told
you about it, Anne. To be sure, it happened thirty years ago
and everybody has forgotten."
"Well, if there's a story we must have it," said Anne. "Let's sit
right down here among the narcissi and Diana will tell it. Why, girls,
there are hundreds of them. . .they've spread over everything.
It looks as if the garden were carpeted with moonshine and
sunshine combined. This is a discovery worth making.
To think that I've lived within a mile of this place for
six years and have never seen it before! Now, Diana."
"Long ago," began Diana, "this farm belonged to old Mr. David Gray.
He didn't live on it. . .he lived where Silas Sloane lives now.
He had one son, Jordan, and he went up to Boston one winter to work
and while he was there he fell in love with a girl named Hester Murray.
She was working in a store and she hated it. She'd been brought up
in the country and she always wanted to get back. When Jordan asked
her to marry him she said she would if he'd take her away to some
quiet spot where she'd see nothing but fields and trees. So he
brought her to Avonlea. Mrs. Lynde said he was taking a fearful
risk in marrying a Yankee, and it's certain that Hester was very
delicate and a very poor housekeeper; but mother says she was
very pretty and sweet and Jordan just worshipped the ground
she walked on. Well, Mr. Gray gave Jordan this farm and he built
a little house back here and Jordan and Hester lived in it for
four years. She never went out much and hardly anybody went
to see her except mother and Mrs. Lynde. Jordan made her this
garden and she was crazy about it and spent most of her time in it.
She wasn't much of a housekeeper but she had a knack with flowers.
And then she got sick. Mother says she thinks she was in consumption
before she ever came here. She never really laid up but just grew
weaker and weaker all the time. Jordan wouldn't have anybody to
wait on her. He did it all himself and mother says he was as
tender and gentle as a woman. Every day he'd wrap her in a shawl
and carry her out to the garden and she'd lie there on a bench
quite happy. They say she used to make Jordan kneel down by her
every night and morning and pray with her that she might die out in
the garden when the time came. And her prayer was answered. One
day Jordan carried her out to the bench and then he picked all the
roses that were out and heaped them over her; and she just smiled
up at him. . .and closed her eyes. . .and that," concluded Diana softly,
"was the end."
"Oh, what a dear story," sighed Anne, wiping away her tears.
"What became of Jordan?" asked Priscilla.
"He sold the farm after Hester died and went back to Boston.
Mr. Jabez Sloane bought the farm and hauled the little house
out to the road. Jordan died about ten years after and he was
brought home and buried beside Hester."
"I can't understand how she could have wanted to live back here,
away from everything," said Jane.
"Oh, I can easily understand THAT," said Anne thoughtfully. "I
wouldn't want it myself for a steady thing, because, although I
love the fields and woods, I love people too. But I can understand
it in Hester. She was tired to death of the noise of the big city
and the crowds of people always coming and going and caring nothing
for her. She just wanted to escape from it all to some still, green,
friendly place where she could reSt. And she got just what she wanted,
which is something very few people do, I believe. She had four
beautiful years before she died. . .four years of perfect happiness,
so I think she was to be envied more than pitied. And then to shut
your eyes and fall asleep among roses, with the one you loved best
on earth smiling down at you. . .oh, I think it was beautiful!"
"She set out those cherry trees over there," said Diana. "She told
mother she'd never live to eat their fruit, but she wanted to think
that something she had planted would go on living and helping to
make the world beautiful after she was dead."
"I'm so glad we came this way," said Anne, the shining-eyed.
"This is my adopted birthday, you know, and this garden and
its story is the birthday gift it has given me. Did your mother
ever tell you what Hester Gray looked like, Diana?"
"No. . .only just that she was pretty."
"I'm rather glad of that, because I can imagine what she looked like,
without being hampered by facts. I think she was very slight and small,
with softly curling dark hair and big, sweet, timid brown eyes, and a
little wistful, pale face."
The girls left their baskets in Hester's garden and spent the rest
of the afternoon rambling in the woods and fields surrounding it,
discovering many pretty nooks and lanes. When they got hungry they
had lunch in the prettiest spot of all. . .on the steep bank of a
gurgling brook where white birches shot up out of long feathery
grasses. The girls sat down by the roots and did full justice to
Anne's dainties, even the unpoetical sandwiches being greatly
appreciated by hearty, unspoiled appetites sharpened by all the
fresh air and exercise they had enjoyed. Anne had brought glasses
and lemonade for her guests, but for her own part drank cold brook
water from a cup fashioned out of birch bark. The cup leaked,
and the water tasted of earth, as brook water is apt to do in spring;
but Anne thought it more appropriate to the occasion than lemonade.
"Look do you see that poem?" she said suddenly, pointing.
"Where?" Jane and Diana stared, as if expecting to see Runic rhymes
on the birch trees.
"There. . .down in the brook. . .that old green, mossy log with
the water flowing over it in those smooth ripples that look as if
they'd been combed, and that single shaft of sunshine falling right
athwart it, far down into the pool. Oh, it's the most beautiful
poem I ever saw."
"I should rather call it a picture," said Jane. "A poem is lines
and verses."
"Oh dear me, no." Anne shook her head with its fluffy wild cherry
coronal positively. "The lines and verses are only the outward
garments of the poem and are no more really it than your ruffles
and flounces are YOU, Jane. The real poem is the soul within them
. . .and that beautiful bit is the soul of an unwritten poem.
It is not every day one sees a soul. . .even of a poem."
"I wonder what a soul. . .a person's soul. . .would look like,"
said Priscilla dreamily.
"Like that, I should think," answered Anne, pointing to a radiance
of sifted sunlight streaming through a birch tree. "Only with shape
and features of course. I like to fancy souls as being made of light.
And some are all shot through with rosy stains and quivers. . .and
some have a soft glitter like moonlight on the sea. . .and some are
pale and transparent like mist at dawn."
"I read somewhere once that souls were like flowers," said Priscilla.
"Then your soul is a golden narcissus," said Anne, "and Diana's is like
a red, red rose. Jane's is an apple blossom, pink and wholesome and sweet."
"And your own is a white violet, with purple streaks in its heart,"
finished Priscilla.
Jane whispered to Diana that she really could not understand what
they were talking about. Could she?
The girls went home by the light of a calm golden sunset, their
baskets filled with narcissus blossoms from Hester's garden,
some of which Anne carried to the cemetery next day and laid
upon Hester's grave. Minstrel robins were whistling in the firs
and the frogs were singing in the marshes. All the basins among
the hills were brimmed with topaz and emerald light.
"Well, we have had a lovely time after all," said Diana, as if she
had hardly expected to have it when she set out.
"It has been a truly golden day," said Priscilla.
"I'm really awfully fond of the woods myself," said Jane.
Anne said nothing. She was looking afar into the western sky and
thinking of little Hester Gray.
XIV
A Danger Averted
Anne, walking home from the post office one Friday evening,
was joined by Mrs. Lynde, who was as usual cumbered with
all the cares of church and state.
"I've just been down to Timothy Cotton's to see if I could get
Alice Louise to help me for a few days," she said. "I had her last
week, for, though she's too slow to stop quick, she's better than
nobody. But she's sick and can't come. Timothy's sitting there,
too, coughing and complaining. He's been dying for ten years and
he'll go on dying for ten years more. That kind can't even die and
have done with it. . .they can't stick to anything, even to being sick,
long enough to finish it. They're a terrible shiftless family and
what is to become of them I don't know, but perhaps Providence does."
Mrs. Lynde sighed as if she rather doubted the extent of Providential
knowledge on the subject.
"Marilla was in about her eyes again Tuesday, wasn't she?
What did the specialist think of them?" she continued.
"He was much pleased," said Anne brightly. "He says there is a
great improvement in them and he thinks the danger of her losing
her sight completely is past. But he says she'll never be able to
"Only like a part of heaven. In the other parts there would be
summer and autumn. . .yes, and a bit of winter, too. I think I
want glittering snowy fields and white frosts in heaven sometimes.
Don't you, Jane?"
"I. . .I don't know," said Jane uncomfortably. Jane was a good girl,
a member of the church, who tried conscientiously to live up to her
profession and believed everything she had been taught. But she
never thought about heaven any more than she could help, for all that.
"Minnie May asked me the other day if we would wear our best
dresses every day in heaven," laughed Diana.
"And didn't you tell her we would?" asked Anne.
"Mercy, no! I told her we wouldn't be thinking of dresses at all there."
"Oh, I think we will. . .a LITTLE," said Anne earnestly.
"There'll be plenty of time in all eternity for it without
neglecting more important things. I believe we'll all wear
beautiful dresses. . .or I suppose RAIMENT would be a more
suitable way of speaking. I shall want to wear pink for a few
centuries at firSt. . .it would take me that long to get tired of it,
I feel sure. I do love pink so and I can never wear it in THIS world."
Past the spruces the lane dipped down into a sunny little open
where a log bridge spanned a brook; and then came the glory of a
sunlit beechwood where the air was like transparent golden wine,
and the leaves fresh and green, and the wood floor a mosaic of
tremulous sunshine. Then more wild cherries, and a little valley
of lissome firs, and then a hill so steep that the girls lost their
breath climbing it; but when they reached the top and came out into
the open the prettiest surprise of all awaited them.
Beyond were the "back fields" of the farms that ran out to the
upper Carmody road. Just before them, hemmed in by beeches and
firs but open to the south, was a little corner and in it a garden
. . .or what had once been a garden. A tumbledown stone dyke,
overgrown with mosses and grass, surrounded it. Along the eastern
side ran a row of garden cherry trees, white as a snowdrift.
There were traces of old paths still and a double line of rosebushes
through the middle; but all the rest of the space was a sheet of
yellow and white narcissi, in their airiest, most lavish, wind-swayed
bloom above the lush green grasses.
"Oh, how perfectly lovely!" three of the girls cried. Anne only
gazed in eloquent silence.
"How in the world does it happen that there ever was a garden back here?"
said Priscilla in amazement.
"It must be Hester Gray's garden," said Diana. "I've heard mother
speak of it but I never saw it before, and I wouldn't have supposed
that it could be in existence still. You've heard the story, Anne?"
"No, but the name seems familiar to me."
"Oh, you've seen it in the graveyard. She is buried down there in
the poplar corner. You know the little brown stone with the
opening gates carved on it and `Sacred to the memory of Hester
Gray, aged twenty-two.' Jordan Gray is buried right beside her
but there's no stone to him. It's a wonder Marilla never told
you about it, Anne. To be sure, it happened thirty years ago
and everybody has forgotten."
"Well, if there's a story we must have it," said Anne. "Let's sit
right down here among the narcissi and Diana will tell it. Why, girls,
there are hundreds of them. . .they've spread over everything.
It looks as if the garden were carpeted with moonshine and
sunshine combined. This is a discovery worth making.
To think that I've lived within a mile of this place for
six years and have never seen it before! Now, Diana."
"Long ago," began Diana, "this farm belonged to old Mr. David Gray.
He didn't live on it. . .he lived where Silas Sloane lives now.
He had one son, Jordan, and he went up to Boston one winter to work
and while he was there he fell in love with a girl named Hester Murray.
She was working in a store and she hated it. She'd been brought up
in the country and she always wanted to get back. When Jordan asked
her to marry him she said she would if he'd take her away to some
quiet spot where she'd see nothing but fields and trees. So he
brought her to Avonlea. Mrs. Lynde said he was taking a fearful
risk in marrying a Yankee, and it's certain that Hester was very
delicate and a very poor housekeeper; but mother says she was
very pretty and sweet and Jordan just worshipped the ground
she walked on. Well, Mr. Gray gave Jordan this farm and he built
a little house back here and Jordan and Hester lived in it for
four years. She never went out much and hardly anybody went
to see her except mother and Mrs. Lynde. Jordan made her this
garden and she was crazy about it and spent most of her time in it.
She wasn't much of a housekeeper but she had a knack with flowers.
And then she got sick. Mother says she thinks she was in consumption
before she ever came here. She never really laid up but just grew
weaker and weaker all the time. Jordan wouldn't have anybody to
wait on her. He did it all himself and mother says he was as
tender and gentle as a woman. Every day he'd wrap her in a shawl
and carry her out to the garden and she'd lie there on a bench
quite happy. They say she used to make Jordan kneel down by her
every night and morning and pray with her that she might die out in
the garden when the time came. And her prayer was answered. One
day Jordan carried her out to the bench and then he picked all the
roses that were out and heaped them over her; and she just smiled
up at him. . .and closed her eyes. . .and that," concluded Diana softly,
"was the end."
"Oh, what a dear story," sighed Anne, wiping away her tears.
"What became of Jordan?" asked Priscilla.
"He sold the farm after Hester died and went back to Boston.
Mr. Jabez Sloane bought the farm and hauled the little house
out to the road. Jordan died about ten years after and he was
brought home and buried beside Hester."
"I can't understand how she could have wanted to live back here,
away from everything," said Jane.
"Oh, I can easily understand THAT," said Anne thoughtfully. "I
wouldn't want it myself for a steady thing, because, although I
love the fields and woods, I love people too. But I can understand
it in Hester. She was tired to death of the noise of the big city
and the crowds of people always coming and going and caring nothing
for her. She just wanted to escape from it all to some still, green,
friendly place where she could reSt. And she got just what she wanted,
which is something very few people do, I believe. She had four
beautiful years before she died. . .four years of perfect happiness,
so I think she was to be envied more than pitied. And then to shut
your eyes and fall asleep among roses, with the one you loved best
on earth smiling down at you. . .oh, I think it was beautiful!"
"She set out those cherry trees over there," said Diana. "She told
mother she'd never live to eat their fruit, but she wanted to think
that something she had planted would go on living and helping to
make the world beautiful after she was dead."
"I'm so glad we came this way," said Anne, the shining-eyed.
"This is my adopted birthday, you know, and this garden and
its story is the birthday gift it has given me. Did your mother
ever tell you what Hester Gray looked like, Diana?"
"No. . .only just that she was pretty."
"I'm rather glad of that, because I can imagine what she looked like,
without being hampered by facts. I think she was very slight and small,
with softly curling dark hair and big, sweet, timid brown eyes, and a
little wistful, pale face."
The girls left their baskets in Hester's garden and spent the rest
of the afternoon rambling in the woods and fields surrounding it,
discovering many pretty nooks and lanes. When they got hungry they
had lunch in the prettiest spot of all. . .on the steep bank of a
gurgling brook where white birches shot up out of long feathery
grasses. The girls sat down by the roots and did full justice to
Anne's dainties, even the unpoetical sandwiches being greatly
appreciated by hearty, unspoiled appetites sharpened by all the
fresh air and exercise they had enjoyed. Anne had brought glasses
and lemonade for her guests, but for her own part drank cold brook
water from a cup fashioned out of birch bark. The cup leaked,
and the water tasted of earth, as brook water is apt to do in spring;
but Anne thought it more appropriate to the occasion than lemonade.
"Look do you see that poem?" she said suddenly, pointing.
"Where?" Jane and Diana stared, as if expecting to see Runic rhymes
on the birch trees.
"There. . .down in the brook. . .that old green, mossy log with
the water flowing over it in those smooth ripples that look as if
they'd been combed, and that single shaft of sunshine falling right
athwart it, far down into the pool. Oh, it's the most beautiful
poem I ever saw."
"I should rather call it a picture," said Jane. "A poem is lines
and verses."
"Oh dear me, no." Anne shook her head with its fluffy wild cherry
coronal positively. "The lines and verses are only the outward
garments of the poem and are no more really it than your ruffles
and flounces are YOU, Jane. The real poem is the soul within them
. . .and that beautiful bit is the soul of an unwritten poem.
It is not every day one sees a soul. . .even of a poem."
"I wonder what a soul. . .a person's soul. . .would look like,"
said Priscilla dreamily.
"Like that, I should think," answered Anne, pointing to a radiance
of sifted sunlight streaming through a birch tree. "Only with shape
and features of course. I like to fancy souls as being made of light.
And some are all shot through with rosy stains and quivers. . .and
some have a soft glitter like moonlight on the sea. . .and some are
pale and transparent like mist at dawn."
"I read somewhere once that souls were like flowers," said Priscilla.
"Then your soul is a golden narcissus," said Anne, "and Diana's is like
a red, red rose. Jane's is an apple blossom, pink and wholesome and sweet."
"And your own is a white violet, with purple streaks in its heart,"
finished Priscilla.
Jane whispered to Diana that she really could not understand what
they were talking about. Could she?
The girls went home by the light of a calm golden sunset, their
baskets filled with narcissus blossoms from Hester's garden,
some of which Anne carried to the cemetery next day and laid
upon Hester's grave. Minstrel robins were whistling in the firs
and the frogs were singing in the marshes. All the basins among
the hills were brimmed with topaz and emerald light.
"Well, we have had a lovely time after all," said Diana, as if she
had hardly expected to have it when she set out.
"It has been a truly golden day," said Priscilla.
"I'm really awfully fond of the woods myself," said Jane.
Anne said nothing. She was looking afar into the western sky and
thinking of little Hester Gray.
XIV
A Danger Averted
Anne, walking home from the post office one Friday evening,
was joined by Mrs. Lynde, who was as usual cumbered with
all the cares of church and state.
"I've just been down to Timothy Cotton's to see if I could get
Alice Louise to help me for a few days," she said. "I had her last
week, for, though she's too slow to stop quick, she's better than
nobody. But she's sick and can't come. Timothy's sitting there,
too, coughing and complaining. He's been dying for ten years and
he'll go on dying for ten years more. That kind can't even die and
have done with it. . .they can't stick to anything, even to being sick,
long enough to finish it. They're a terrible shiftless family and
what is to become of them I don't know, but perhaps Providence does."
Mrs. Lynde sighed as if she rather doubted the extent of Providential
knowledge on the subject.
"Marilla was in about her eyes again Tuesday, wasn't she?
What did the specialist think of them?" she continued.
"He was much pleased," said Anne brightly. "He says there is a
great improvement in them and he thinks the danger of her losing
her sight completely is past. But he says she'll never be able to
- sunshine [´sʌnʃain]
n.日光，阳光 (初中英语单词) - existence [ig´zistəns] n.存在；生存；生活 (初中英语单词)
- working [´wə:kiŋ] a.工人的；劳动的 (初中英语单词)
- yankee [´jæŋki] n.美国佬；美国公民 (初中英语单词)
- softly [´sɔftli] ad.软化地；柔和地 (初中英语单词)
- sunlight [´sʌnlait] n.日光 (初中英语单词)
- glitter [´glitə] n.光辉 vi.闪烁，炫耀 (初中英语单词)
- moonlight [´mu:nlait] n.&a.月光(的) (初中英语单词)
- blossom [´blɔsəm] n.花；开花期 vi.开花 (初中英语单词)
- violet [´vaiələt] n.&a.紫罗兰(的)；紫色 (初中英语单词)
- purple [´pə:pl] n.紫色 a.紫(红)的 (初中英语单词)
- sunset [´sʌnset] n.日落；晚霞 (初中英语单词)
- western [´westən] a.西的；西方的 (初中英语单词)
- extent [ik´stent] n.长度；程度；范围 (初中英语单词)
- improvement [im´pru:vmənt] n.改进，改善，进步 (初中英语单词)
- eternity [i´tə:niti] n.永恒，来世，无穷 (高中英语单词)
- transparent [træns´peərənt] a.透明的；显而易见的 (高中英语单词)
- cherry [´tʃeri] n.樱桃(树) (高中英语单词)
- perfectly [´pə:fiktli] ad.理想地；完美地 (高中英语单词)
- housekeeper [´haus,ki:pə] n.主妇，女管家 (高中英语单词)
- thoughtfully [´θɔ:tfuli] ad.深思地；体贴地 (高中英语单词)
- surrounding [sə´raundiŋ] n.周围的事物 (高中英语单词)
- hearty [´hɑ:ti] a.热忱的；强健的 (高中英语单词)
- appropriate [ə´prəupri-it, ə´prəuprieit] a.适宜的 vt.私占；拨给 (高中英语单词)
- positively [´pɔzətivli] ad.确实；断然；绝对 (高中英语单词)
- wholesome [´həulsəm] a.有益于健康的 (高中英语单词)
- cemetery [´semitri] n.墓地，公墓 (高中英语单词)
- minstrel [´minstrəl] n.吟游诗人；音乐家 (高中英语单词)
- awfully [´ɔ:fuli] ad.令人畏惧地 (高中英语单词)
- brightly [´braitli] ad.明亮地；聪明地 (高中英语单词)
- raiment [´reimənt] n.衣饰 (英语四级单词)
- bridge [bridʒ] n.桥(梁)；鼻梁；桥牌 (英语四级单词)
- lavish [´læviʃ] a.慷慨的；浪费的 (英语四级单词)
- eloquent [´eləkwənt] a.流利的；雄辩的 (英语四级单词)
- poplar [´pɔplə] n.白杨；杨木 (英语四级单词)
- jordan [´dʒɔ:dn] n.约旦 (英语四级单词)
- wistful [´wistfəl] a.渴望的；不满足的 (英语四级单词)
- lemonade [,lemə´neid] n.柠檬水 (英语四级单词)
- emerald [´emərəld] n.纯绿宝石；翠绿色 (英语四级单词)
- providence [´prɔvidəns] n.天意，天命，上帝 (英语四级单词)
- specialist [´speʃəlist] n.专家 (英语四级单词)
- speaking [´spi:kiŋ] n.说话 a.发言的 (英语六级单词)
- taking [´teikiŋ] a.迷人的 n.捕获物 (英语六级单词)
- fluffy [´flʌfi] a.绒毛似的 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
章节正文
京公网安备 11011202003401号
