章节正文
"How did you know?" cried Anne, too aghast at this
instance of Miss Cornelia's uncanny prescience to make
a polite denial.
"I saw him sitting beside you when I came up the lane,
and I know men's tricks," retorted Miss Cornelia.
"There, I've finished my little dress, dearie, and the
eighth baby can come as soon as it pleases."
CHAPTER 9
AN EVENING AT FOUR WINDS POINT
It was late September when Anne and Gilbert were able
to pay Four Winds light their promised visit. They had
often planned to go, but something always occurred to
prevent them. Captain Jim had "dropped in" several
times at the little house.
"I don't stand on ceremony, Mistress Blythe," he told
Anne. "It's a real pleasure to me to come here, and
I'm not going to deny myself jest because you haven't
got down to see me. There oughtn't to be no
bargaining like that among the race that knows Joseph.
I'll come when I can, and you come when you can, and so
long's we have our pleasant little chat it don't matter
a mite what roof's over us."
Captain Jim took a great fancy to Gog and Magog, who
were presiding over the destinies of the hearth in the
little house with as much dignity and aplomb as they
had done at Patty's Place.
"Aren't they the cutest little cusses?" he would say
delightedly; and he bade them greeting and farewell as
gravely and invariably as he did his host and hostess.
Captain Jim was not going to offend household deities
by any lack of reverence and ceremony.
"You've made this little house just about perfect," he
told Anne. "It never was so nice before. Mistress
Selwyn had your taste and she did wonders; but folks in
those days didn't have the pretty little curtains and
pictures and nicknacks you have. As for Elizabeth, she
lived in the past. You've kinder brought the future
into it, so to speak. I'd be real happy even if we
couldn't talk at all, when I come here--jest to sit and
look at you and your pictures and your flowers would be
enough of a treat. It's beautiful--beautiful."
Captain Jim was a passionate worshipper of beauty.
Every lovely thing heard or seen gave him a deep,
subtle, inner joy that irradiated his life. He was
quite keenly aware of his own lack of outward
comeliness and lamented it.
"Folks say I'm good," he remarked whimsically upon one
occasion, "but I sometimes wish the Lord had made me
only half as good and put the rest of it into looks.
But there, I reckon He knew what He was about, as a
good Captain should. Some of us have to be homely, or
the purty ones--like Mistress Blythe here--wouldn't
show up so well."
One evening Anne and Gilbert finally walked down to the
Four Winds light. The day had begun sombrely in gray
cloud and mist, but it had ended in a pomp of scarlet
and gold. Over the western hills beyond the harbor
were amber deeps and crystalline shallows, with the
fire of sunset below. The north was a mackerel sky of
little, fiery golden clouds. The red light flamed on
the white sails of a vessel gliding down the channel,
bound to a southern port in a land of palms. Beyond
her, it smote upon and incarnadined the shining, white,
grassless faces of the sand dunes. To the right, it
fell on the old house among the willows up the brook,
and gave it for a fleeting space casements more
splendid than those of an old cathedral. They glowed
out of its quiet and grayness like the throbbing,
blood-red thoughts of a vivid soul imprisoned in a dull
husk of environment.
"That old house up the brook always seems so lonely,"
said Anne. "I never see visitors there. Of course,
its lane opens on the upper road--but I don't think
there's much coming and going. It seems odd we've
never met the Moores yet, when they live within fifteen
minutes' walk of us. I may have seen them in church,
of course, but if so I didn't know them. I'm sorry
they are so unsociable, when they are our only near
neighbors."
"Evidently they don't belong to the race that knows
Joseph," laughed Gilbert. "Have you ever found out
who that girl was whom you thought so beautiful?"
"No. Somehow I have never remembered to ask about her.
But I've never seen her anywhere, so I suppose she must
have been a stranger. Oh, the sun has just
vanished--and there's the light."
As the dusk deepened, the great beacon cut swathes of
light through it, sweeping in a circle over the fields
and the harbor, the sandbar and the gulf.
"I feel as if it might catch me and whisk me leagues
out to sea," said Anne, as one drenched them with
radiance; and she felt rather relieved when they got so
near the Point that they were inside the range of those
dazzling, recurrent flashes.
As they turned into the little lane that led across the
fields to the Point they met a man coming out of it--a
man of such extraordinary appearance that for a moment
they both frankly stared. He was a decidedly
fine-looking person-tall, broad-shouldered, well-
featured, with a Roman nose and frank gray eyes; he was
dressed in a prosperous farmer's Sunday best; in so far
he might have been any inhabitant of Four Winds or the
Glen. But, flowing over his breast nearly to his
knees, was a river of crinkly brown beard; and adown
his back, beneath his commonplace felt hat, was a
corresponding cascade of thick, wavy, brown hair.
"Anne," murmured Gilbert, when they were out of
earshot, "you didn't put what Uncle Dave calls `a
little of the Scott Act' in that lemonade you gave me
just before we left home, did you?"
"No, I didn't," said Anne, stifling her laughter, lest
the retreating enigma should hear here. "Who in the
world can he be?"
"I don't know; but if Captain Jim keeps apparitions
like that down at this Point I'm going to carry cold
iron in my pocket when I come here. He wasn't a
sailor, or one might pardon his eccentricity of
appearance; he must belong to the over-harbor clans.
Uncle Dave says they have several freaks over there."
"Uncle Dave is a little prejudiced, I think. You know
all the over-harbor people who come to the Glen Church
seem very nice. Oh, Gilbert, isn't this beautiful?"
The Four Winds light was built on a spur of red
sand-stone cliff jutting out into the gulf. On one
side, across the channel, stretched the silvery sand
shore of the bar; on the other, extended a long,
curving beach of red cliffs, rising steeply from the
pebbled coves. It was a shore that knew the magic and
mystery of storm and star. There is a great solitude
about such a shore. The woods are never solitary--
they are full of whispering, beckoning, friendly life.
But the sea is a mighty soul, forever moaning of some
great, unshareable sorrow, which shuts it up into
itself for all eternity. We can never pierce its
infinite mystery--we may only wander, awed and
spellbound, on the outer fringe of it. The woods call
to us with a hundred voices, but the sea has one
only--a mighty voice that drowns our souls in its
majestic music. The woods are human, but the sea is of
the company of the archangels.
Anne and Gilbert found Uncle Jim sitting on a bench
outside the lighthouse, putting the finishing touches
to a wonderful, full-rigged, toy schooner. He rose and
welcomed them to his abode with the gentle,
unconscious courtesy that became him so well.
"This has been a purty nice day all through, Mistress
Blythe, and now, right at the last, it's brought its
best. Would you like to sit down here outside a bit,
while the light lasts? I've just finished this bit of
a plaything for my little grand nephew, Joe, up at the
Glen. After I promised to make it for him I was kinder
sorry, for his mother was vexed. She's afraid he'll be
wanting to go to sea later on and she doesn't want the
notion encouraged in him. But what could I do,
Mistress Blythe? I'd PROMISED him, and I think it's
sorter real dastardly to break a promise you make to a
child. Come, sit down. It won't take long to stay an
hour."
The wind was off shore, and only broke the sea's
surface into long, silvery ripples, and sent sheeny
shadows flying out across it, from every point and
headland, like transparent wings. The dusk was
hanging a curtain of violet gloom over the sand dunes
and the headlands where gulls were huddling. The sky
was faintly filmed over with scarfs of silken vapor.
Cloud fleets rode at anchor along the horizons. An
evening star was watching over the bar.
"Isn't that a view worth looking at?" said Captain
Jim, with a loving, proprietary pride. "Nice and far
from the market-place, ain't it? No buying and selling
and getting gain. You don't have to pay anything--all
that sea and sky free--`without money and without
price.' There's going to be a moonrise purty soon,
too--I'm never tired of finding out what a moonrise can
be over them rocks and sea and harbor. There's a
surprise in it every time."
They had their moonrise, and watched its marvel and
magic in a silence that asked nothing of the world or
each other. Then they went up into the tower, and
Captain Jim showed and explained the mechanism of the
great light. Finally they found themselves in the
dining room, where a fire of driftwood was weaving
flames of wavering, elusive, sea-born hues in the open
fireplace.
"I put this fireplace in myself," remarked Captain
Jim. "The Government don't give lighthouse keepers
such luxuries. Look at the colors that wood makes. If
you'd like some driftwood for your fire, Mistress
Blythe, I'll bring you up a load some day. Sit down.
I'm going to make you a cup of tea."
Captain Jim placed a chair for Anne, having first
removed therefrom a huge, orange-colored cat and a
newspaper.
"Get down, Matey. The sofa is your place. I must put
this paper away safe till I can find time to finish the
story in it. It's called A Mad Love. 'Tisn't my
favorite brand of fiction, but I'm reading it jest to
see how long she can spin it out. It's at the
sixty-second chapter now, and the wedding ain't any
nearer than when it begun, far's I can see. When
little Joe comes I have to read him pirate yarns.
instance of Miss Cornelia's uncanny prescience to make
a polite denial.
"I saw him sitting beside you when I came up the lane,
and I know men's tricks," retorted Miss Cornelia.
"There, I've finished my little dress, dearie, and the
eighth baby can come as soon as it pleases."
CHAPTER 9
AN EVENING AT FOUR WINDS POINT
It was late September when Anne and Gilbert were able
to pay Four Winds light their promised visit. They had
often planned to go, but something always occurred to
prevent them. Captain Jim had "dropped in" several
times at the little house.
"I don't stand on ceremony, Mistress Blythe," he told
Anne. "It's a real pleasure to me to come here, and
I'm not going to deny myself jest because you haven't
got down to see me. There oughtn't to be no
bargaining like that among the race that knows Joseph.
I'll come when I can, and you come when you can, and so
long's we have our pleasant little chat it don't matter
a mite what roof's over us."
Captain Jim took a great fancy to Gog and Magog, who
were presiding over the destinies of the hearth in the
little house with as much dignity and aplomb as they
had done at Patty's Place.
"Aren't they the cutest little cusses?" he would say
delightedly; and he bade them greeting and farewell as
gravely and invariably as he did his host and hostess.
Captain Jim was not going to offend household deities
by any lack of reverence and ceremony.
"You've made this little house just about perfect," he
told Anne. "It never was so nice before. Mistress
Selwyn had your taste and she did wonders; but folks in
those days didn't have the pretty little curtains and
pictures and nicknacks you have. As for Elizabeth, she
lived in the past. You've kinder brought the future
into it, so to speak. I'd be real happy even if we
couldn't talk at all, when I come here--jest to sit and
look at you and your pictures and your flowers would be
enough of a treat. It's beautiful--beautiful."
Captain Jim was a passionate worshipper of beauty.
Every lovely thing heard or seen gave him a deep,
subtle, inner joy that irradiated his life. He was
quite keenly aware of his own lack of outward
comeliness and lamented it.
"Folks say I'm good," he remarked whimsically upon one
occasion, "but I sometimes wish the Lord had made me
only half as good and put the rest of it into looks.
But there, I reckon He knew what He was about, as a
good Captain should. Some of us have to be homely, or
the purty ones--like Mistress Blythe here--wouldn't
show up so well."
One evening Anne and Gilbert finally walked down to the
Four Winds light. The day had begun sombrely in gray
cloud and mist, but it had ended in a pomp of scarlet
and gold. Over the western hills beyond the harbor
were amber deeps and crystalline shallows, with the
fire of sunset below. The north was a mackerel sky of
little, fiery golden clouds. The red light flamed on
the white sails of a vessel gliding down the channel,
bound to a southern port in a land of palms. Beyond
her, it smote upon and incarnadined the shining, white,
grassless faces of the sand dunes. To the right, it
fell on the old house among the willows up the brook,
and gave it for a fleeting space casements more
splendid than those of an old cathedral. They glowed
out of its quiet and grayness like the throbbing,
blood-red thoughts of a vivid soul imprisoned in a dull
husk of environment.
"That old house up the brook always seems so lonely,"
said Anne. "I never see visitors there. Of course,
its lane opens on the upper road--but I don't think
there's much coming and going. It seems odd we've
never met the Moores yet, when they live within fifteen
minutes' walk of us. I may have seen them in church,
of course, but if so I didn't know them. I'm sorry
they are so unsociable, when they are our only near
neighbors."
"Evidently they don't belong to the race that knows
Joseph," laughed Gilbert. "Have you ever found out
who that girl was whom you thought so beautiful?"
"No. Somehow I have never remembered to ask about her.
But I've never seen her anywhere, so I suppose she must
have been a stranger. Oh, the sun has just
vanished--and there's the light."
As the dusk deepened, the great beacon cut swathes of
light through it, sweeping in a circle over the fields
and the harbor, the sandbar and the gulf.
"I feel as if it might catch me and whisk me leagues
out to sea," said Anne, as one drenched them with
radiance; and she felt rather relieved when they got so
near the Point that they were inside the range of those
dazzling, recurrent flashes.
As they turned into the little lane that led across the
fields to the Point they met a man coming out of it--a
man of such extraordinary appearance that for a moment
they both frankly stared. He was a decidedly
fine-looking person-tall, broad-shouldered, well-
featured, with a Roman nose and frank gray eyes; he was
dressed in a prosperous farmer's Sunday best; in so far
he might have been any inhabitant of Four Winds or the
Glen. But, flowing over his breast nearly to his
knees, was a river of crinkly brown beard; and adown
his back, beneath his commonplace felt hat, was a
corresponding cascade of thick, wavy, brown hair.
"Anne," murmured Gilbert, when they were out of
earshot, "you didn't put what Uncle Dave calls `a
little of the Scott Act' in that lemonade you gave me
just before we left home, did you?"
"No, I didn't," said Anne, stifling her laughter, lest
the retreating enigma should hear here. "Who in the
world can he be?"
"I don't know; but if Captain Jim keeps apparitions
like that down at this Point I'm going to carry cold
iron in my pocket when I come here. He wasn't a
sailor, or one might pardon his eccentricity of
appearance; he must belong to the over-harbor clans.
Uncle Dave says they have several freaks over there."
"Uncle Dave is a little prejudiced, I think. You know
all the over-harbor people who come to the Glen Church
seem very nice. Oh, Gilbert, isn't this beautiful?"
The Four Winds light was built on a spur of red
sand-stone cliff jutting out into the gulf. On one
side, across the channel, stretched the silvery sand
shore of the bar; on the other, extended a long,
curving beach of red cliffs, rising steeply from the
pebbled coves. It was a shore that knew the magic and
mystery of storm and star. There is a great solitude
about such a shore. The woods are never solitary--
they are full of whispering, beckoning, friendly life.
But the sea is a mighty soul, forever moaning of some
great, unshareable sorrow, which shuts it up into
itself for all eternity. We can never pierce its
infinite mystery--we may only wander, awed and
spellbound, on the outer fringe of it. The woods call
to us with a hundred voices, but the sea has one
only--a mighty voice that drowns our souls in its
majestic music. The woods are human, but the sea is of
the company of the archangels.
Anne and Gilbert found Uncle Jim sitting on a bench
outside the lighthouse, putting the finishing touches
to a wonderful, full-rigged, toy schooner. He rose and
welcomed them to his abode with the gentle,
unconscious courtesy that became him so well.
"This has been a purty nice day all through, Mistress
Blythe, and now, right at the last, it's brought its
best. Would you like to sit down here outside a bit,
while the light lasts? I've just finished this bit of
a plaything for my little grand nephew, Joe, up at the
Glen. After I promised to make it for him I was kinder
sorry, for his mother was vexed. She's afraid he'll be
wanting to go to sea later on and she doesn't want the
notion encouraged in him. But what could I do,
Mistress Blythe? I'd PROMISED him, and I think it's
sorter real dastardly to break a promise you make to a
child. Come, sit down. It won't take long to stay an
hour."
The wind was off shore, and only broke the sea's
surface into long, silvery ripples, and sent sheeny
shadows flying out across it, from every point and
headland, like transparent wings. The dusk was
hanging a curtain of violet gloom over the sand dunes
and the headlands where gulls were huddling. The sky
was faintly filmed over with scarfs of silken vapor.
Cloud fleets rode at anchor along the horizons. An
evening star was watching over the bar.
"Isn't that a view worth looking at?" said Captain
Jim, with a loving, proprietary pride. "Nice and far
from the market-place, ain't it? No buying and selling
and getting gain. You don't have to pay anything--all
that sea and sky free--`without money and without
price.' There's going to be a moonrise purty soon,
too--I'm never tired of finding out what a moonrise can
be over them rocks and sea and harbor. There's a
surprise in it every time."
They had their moonrise, and watched its marvel and
magic in a silence that asked nothing of the world or
each other. Then they went up into the tower, and
Captain Jim showed and explained the mechanism of the
great light. Finally they found themselves in the
dining room, where a fire of driftwood was weaving
flames of wavering, elusive, sea-born hues in the open
fireplace.
"I put this fireplace in myself," remarked Captain
Jim. "The Government don't give lighthouse keepers
such luxuries. Look at the colors that wood makes. If
you'd like some driftwood for your fire, Mistress
Blythe, I'll bring you up a load some day. Sit down.
I'm going to make you a cup of tea."
Captain Jim placed a chair for Anne, having first
removed therefrom a huge, orange-colored cat and a
newspaper.
"Get down, Matey. The sofa is your place. I must put
this paper away safe till I can find time to finish the
story in it. It's called A Mad Love. 'Tisn't my
favorite brand of fiction, but I'm reading it jest to
see how long she can spin it out. It's at the
sixty-second chapter now, and the wedding ain't any
nearer than when it begun, far's I can see. When
little Joe comes I have to read him pirate yarns.
- polite [pə´lait]
a.有礼貌的；温和的 (初中英语单词) - ceremony [´seriməni] n.典礼；礼仪；客气 (初中英语单词)
- mistress [´mistris] n.女主人；情妇；女能手 (初中英语单词)
- dignity [´digniti] n.尊严，尊贵；高官显贵 (初中英语单词)
- farewell [feə´wel] int.再见 n.&a.告别 (初中英语单词)
- offend [ə´fend] v.犯错误；违犯；犯罪 (初中英语单词)
- keenly [´ki:nli] ad.敏锐地；强烈地 (初中英语单词)
- reckon [´rekən] v.计算；认为；估计 (初中英语单词)
- western [´westən] a.西的；西方的 (初中英语单词)
- sunset [´sʌnset] n.日落；晚霞 (初中英语单词)
- vessel [´vesəl] n.容器；船；脉管 (初中英语单词)
- cathedral [kə´θi:drəl] n.大教堂 (初中英语单词)
- anywhere [´eniweə] ad.无论何处；任何地方 (初中英语单词)
- circle [´sə:kəl] n.圆圈 v.环绕；盘旋 (初中英语单词)
- extraordinary [ik´strɔ:dinəri] a.非常的；额外的 (初中英语单词)
- frankly [´fræŋkli] ad.直率地；慷慨地 (初中英语单词)
- prosperous [´prɔspərəs] a.繁荣的；顺利的 (初中英语单词)
- laughter [´lɑ:ftə] n.笑，笑声 (初中英语单词)
- pardon [´pɑ:dən] n.&vt.原谅；饶恕；赦免 (初中英语单词)
- channel [´tʃænəl] n.海峡；航道；途径 (初中英语单词)
- pierce [piəs] v.刺穿；突破；洞察 (初中英语单词)
- wander [´wɔndə, ´wɑ:n:dər] v.徘徊；流浪 (初中英语单词)
- nephew [´nevju:, ´nɛfju] n.侄子；外甥 (初中英语单词)
- violet [´vaiələt] n.&a.紫罗兰(的)；紫色 (初中英语单词)
- anchor [´æŋkə] n.锚 v.抛锚 (初中英语单词)
- marvel [´mɑ:vəl] n.令人惊异的事；奇迹 (初中英语单词)
- reading [´ri:diŋ] n.(阅)读；朗读；读物 (初中英语单词)
- wedding [´wediŋ] n.婚礼，结婚 (初中英语单词)
- hearth [hɑ:θ] n.炉边；家庭(生活) (高中英语单词)
- invariably [in´veəriəbli] ad.不变地；永恒地 (高中英语单词)
- reverence [´revərəns] n.尊敬；敬畏；尊严 (高中英语单词)
- passionate [´pæʃənit] a.易动情的；易怒的 (高中英语单词)
- homely [´həumli] a.朴素的；不漂亮的 (高中英语单词)
- sweeping [´swi:piŋ] a.掠过的 n.扫除；清除 (高中英语单词)
- mighty [´maiti] a.强有力的 ad.很 (高中英语单词)
- eternity [i´tə:niti] n.永恒，来世，无穷 (高中英语单词)
- fringe [´frindʒ] n.穗；边缘；刘海 (高中英语单词)
- schooner [´sku:nə] n.纵帆船 (高中英语单词)
- courtesy [´kə:tisi] n.礼貌；殷勤；好意 (高中英语单词)
- transparent [træns´peərənt] a.透明的；显而易见的 (高中英语单词)
- faintly [´feintli] ad.微弱地，软弱无力的 (高中英语单词)
- silken [´silkən] a.丝制的；柔软光滑的 (高中英语单词)
- loving [´lʌviŋ] a.爱的，有爱情的 (高中英语单词)
- finding [´faindiŋ] n.发现物；判断；结果 (高中英语单词)
- fireplace [´faiəpleis] n.壁炉，炉灶 (高中英语单词)
- fiction [´fikʃən] n.小说；虚构；谎言 (高中英语单词)
- pirate [´paiərət] n.海盗 v.做海盗；掠夺 (高中英语单词)
- commonplace [´kɔmənpleis] a.平凡的；常见的 (英语四级单词)
- cascade [kæ´skeid] n.小瀑布；喷流 (英语四级单词)
- lemonade [,lemə´neid] n.柠檬水 (英语四级单词)
- silvery [´silvəri] a.银一般的 (英语四级单词)
- lighthouse [´laithaus] n.灯塔 (英语四级单词)
- plaything [´plei,θiŋ] n.玩具；玩物 (英语四级单词)
- mechanism [´mekənizəm] n.机械装置；机制 (英语四级单词)
- aghast [ə´gɑ:st] a.吓呆的，吃惊的 (英语六级单词)
- uncanny [ʌn´kæni] a.神秘的；离奇的 (英语六级单词)
- crystalline [´kristəlain] a.水晶(般)的；透明的 (英语六级单词)
- fleeting [´fli:tiŋ] a.飞逝的，疾驰的 (英语六级单词)
- beacon [´bi:kən] n.灯塔；信标 v.照亮 (英语六级单词)
- extended [iks´tendid] a.伸长的；广大的 (英语六级单词)
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章节正文
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