章节正文
Anne's House of Dreams
by Lucy Maud Montgomery
"To Laura, in memory of the olden time."
CHAPTER 1
IN THE GARRET OF GREEN GABLES
"Thanks be, I'm done with geometry, learning or teaching it,"
said Anne Shirley, a trifle vindictively, as she thumped
a somewhat battered volume of Euclid into a big chest of books,
banged the lid in triumph, and sat down upon it, looking at
Diana Wright across the Green Gables garret, with gray eyes
that were like a morning sky.
The garret was a shadowy, suggestive, delightful place,
as all garrets should be. Through the open window, by
which Anne sat, blew the sweet, scented, sun-warm air
of the August afternoon; outside, poplar boughs rustled
and tossed in the wind; beyond them were the woods,
where Lover's Lane wound its enchanted path, and the
old apple orchard which still bore its rosy harvests
munificently. And, over all, was a great mountain
range of snowy clouds in the blue southern sky.
Through the other window was glimpsed a distant,
white-capped, blue sea--the beautiful St. Lawrence
Gulf, on which floats, like a jewel, Abegweit, whose
softer, sweeter Indian name has long been forsaken for
the more prosaic one of Prince Edward Island.
Diana Wright, three years older than when we last saw
her, had grown somewhat matronly in the intervening
time. But her eyes were as black and brilliant, her
cheeks as rosy, and her dimples as enchanting, as in
the long-ago days when she and Anne Shirley had vowed
eternal friendship in the garden at Orchard Slope. In
her arms she held a small, sleeping, black-curled
creature, who for two happy years had been known to the
world of Avonlea as "Small Anne Cordelia." Avonlea
folks knew why Diana had called her Anne, of course,
but Avonlea folks were puzzled by the Cordelia. There
had never been a Cordelia in the Wright or Barry
connections. Mrs. Harmon Andrews said she supposed
Diana had found the name in some trashy novel, and
wondered that Fred hadn't more sense than to allow it.
But Diana and Anne smiled at each other. They knew how
Small Anne Cordelia had come by her name.
"You always hated geometry," said Diana with a
retrospective smile. "I should think you'd be real
glad to be through with teaching, anyhow."
"Oh, I've always liked teaching, apart from geometry.
These past three years in Summerside have been very
pleasant ones. Mrs. Harmon Andrews told me when I came
home that I wouldn't likely find married life as much
better than teaching as I expected. Evidently Mrs.
Harmon is of Hamlet's opinion that it may be better to
bear the ills that we have than fly to others that we
know not of."
Anne's laugh, as blithe and irresistible as of yore,
with an added note of sweetness and maturity, rang
through the garret. Marilla in the kitchen below,
compounding blue plum preserve, heard it and smiled;
then sighed to think how seldom that dear laugh would
echo through Green Gables in the years to come.
Nothing in her life had ever given Marilla so much
happiness as the knowledge that Anne was going to marry
Gilbert Blythe; but every joy must bring with it its
little shadow of sorrow. During the three Summerside
years Anne had been home often for vacations and
weekends; but, after this, a bi-annual visit would be
as much as could be hoped for.
"You needn't let what Mrs. Harmon says worry you,"
said Diana, with the calm assurance of the four-years
matron. "Married life has its ups and downs, of
course. You mustn't expect that everything will always
go smoothly. But I can assure you, Anne, that it's a
happy life, when you're married to the right man."
Anne smothered a smile. Diana's airs of vast
experience always amused her a little.
"I daresay I'll be putting them on too, when I've been
married four years," she thought. "Surely my sense of
humor will preserve me from it, though."
"Is it settled yet where you are going to live?" asked
Diana, cuddling Small Anne Cordelia with the
inimitable gesture of motherhood which always sent
through Anne's heart, filled with sweet, unuttered
dreams and hopes, a thrill that was half pure pleasure
and half a strange, ethereal pain.
"Yes. That was what I wanted to tell you when I
'phoned to you to come down today. By the way, I can't
realize that we really have telephones in Avonlea now.
It sounds so preposterously up-to-date and modernish
for this darling, leisurely old place."
"We can thank the A. V. I. S. for them," said Diana.
"We should never have got the line if they hadn't
taken the matter up and carried it through. There was
enough cold water thrown to discourage any society.
But they stuck to it, nevertheless. You did a splendid
thing for Avonlea when you founded that society, Anne.
What fun we did have at our meetings! Will you ever
forget the blue hall and Judson Parker's scheme for
painting medicine advertisements on his fence?"
"I don't know that I'm whollygrateful to the A. V. I.
S. in the matter of the telephone," said Anne. "Oh, I
know it's most convenient-- even more so than our old
device of signalling to each other by flashes of
candlelight! And, as Mrs. Rachel says, `Avonlea must
keep up with the procession, that's what.' But somehow
I feel as if I didn't want Avonlea spoiled by what Mr.
Harrison, when he wants to be witty, calls `modern
inconveniences.' I should like to have it kept always
just as it was in the dear old years. That's
foolish--and sentimental--and impossible. So I shall
immediately become wise and practical and possible.
The telephone, as Mr. Harrison concedes, is `a buster
of a good thing'--even if you do know that probably
half a dozen interested people are listening along the
line."
"That's the worst of it," sighed Diana. "It's so
annoying to hear the receivers going down whenever you
ring anyone up. They say Mrs. Harmon Andrews insisted
that their `phone should be put in their kitchen just
so that she could listen whenever it rang and keep an
eye on the dinner at the same time. Today, when you
called me, I distinctly heard that queer clock of the
Pyes' striking. So no doubt Josie or Gertie was
listening."
"Oh, so that is why you said, `You've got a new clock
at Green Gables, haven't you?' I couldn't imagine what
you meant. I heard a vicious click as soon as you had
spoken. I suppose it was the Pye receiver being hung
up with profaneenergy. Well, never mind the Pyes. As
Mrs. Rachel says, `Pyes they always were and Pyes they
always will be, world without end, amen.' I want to
talk of pleasanter things. It's all settled as to
where my new home shall be."
"Oh, Anne, where? I do hope it's near here."
"No-o-o, that's the drawback. Gilbert is going to
settle at Four Winds Harbor--sixty miles from here."
"Sixty! It might as well be six hundred," sighed
Diana. "I never can get further from home now than
Charlottetown."
"You'll have to come to Four Winds. It's the most
beautiful harbor on the Island. There's a little
village called Glen St. Mary at its head, and Dr. David
Blythe has been practicing there for fifty years. He
is Gilbert's great-uncle, you know. He is going to
retire, and Gilbert is to take over his practice. Dr.
Blythe is going to keep his house, though, so we shall
have to find a habitation for ourselves. I don't know
yet what it is, or where it will be in reality, but I
have a little house o'dreams all furnished in my
imagination--a tiny, delightful castle in Spain."
"Where are you going for your wedding tour?" asked
Diana.
"Nowhere. Don't look horrified, Diana dearest. You
suggest Mrs. Harmon Andrews. She, no doubt, will
remark condescendingly that people who can't afford
wedding `towers' are real sensible not to take them;
and then she'll remind me that Jane went to Europe for
hers. I want to spend MY honeymoon at Four Winds in my
own dear house of dreams."
"And you've decided not to have any bridesmaid?"
"There isn't any one to have. You and Phil and
Priscilla and Jane all stole a march on me in the
matter of marriage; and Stella is teaching in
Vancouver. I have no other `kindred soul' and I won't
have a bridesmaid who isn't."
"But you are going to wear a veil, aren't you?" asked
Diana, anxiously.
"Yes, indeedy. I shouldn't feel like a bride without
one. I remember telling Matthew, that evening when he
brought me to Green Gables, that I never expected to be
a bride because I was so homely no one would ever want
to marry me--unless some foreign missionary did. I had
an idea then that foreign missionaries couldn't afford
to be finicky in the matter of looks if they wanted a
girl to risk her life among cannibals. You should have
seen the foreign missionary Priscilla married. He was
as handsome and inscrutable as those daydreams we once
planned to marry ourselves, Diana; he was the best
dressed man I ever met, and he raved over Priscilla's
`ethereal, golden beauty.' But of course there are no
cannibals in Japan."
"Your wedding dress is a dream, anyhow," sighed Diana
rapturously. "You'll look like a perfect queen in
it--you're so tall and slender. How DO you keep so
slim, Anne? I'm fatter than ever--I'll soon have no
waist at all."
"Stoutness and slimness seem to be matters of
predestination," said Anne. "At all events, Mrs.
Harmon Andrews can't say to you what she said to me
when I came home from Summerside, `Well, Anne, you're
just about as skinny as ever.' It sounds quite
romantic to be `slender,' but `skinny' has a very
different tang."
"Mrs. Harmon has been talking about your trousseau.
She admits it's as nice as Jane's, although she says
Jane married a millionaire and you are only marrying a
`poor young doctor without a cent to his name.'"
Anne laughed.
"My dresses ARE nice. I love pretty things. I
remember the first pretty dress I ever had--the brown
gloria Matthew gave me for our school concert. Before
that everything I had was so ugly. It seemed to me
that I stepped into a new world that night."
by Lucy Maud Montgomery
"To Laura, in memory of the olden time."
CHAPTER 1
IN THE GARRET OF GREEN GABLES
"Thanks be, I'm done with geometry, learning or teaching it,"
said Anne Shirley, a trifle vindictively, as she thumped
a somewhat battered volume of Euclid into a big chest of books,
banged the lid in triumph, and sat down upon it, looking at
Diana Wright across the Green Gables garret, with gray eyes
that were like a morning sky.
The garret was a shadowy, suggestive, delightful place,
as all garrets should be. Through the open window, by
which Anne sat, blew the sweet, scented, sun-warm air
of the August afternoon; outside, poplar boughs rustled
and tossed in the wind; beyond them were the woods,
where Lover's Lane wound its enchanted path, and the
old apple orchard which still bore its rosy harvests
munificently. And, over all, was a great mountain
range of snowy clouds in the blue southern sky.
Through the other window was glimpsed a distant,
white-capped, blue sea--the beautiful St. Lawrence
Gulf, on which floats, like a jewel, Abegweit, whose
softer, sweeter Indian name has long been forsaken for
the more prosaic one of Prince Edward Island.
Diana Wright, three years older than when we last saw
her, had grown somewhat matronly in the intervening
time. But her eyes were as black and brilliant, her
cheeks as rosy, and her dimples as enchanting, as in
the long-ago days when she and Anne Shirley had vowed
eternal friendship in the garden at Orchard Slope. In
her arms she held a small, sleeping, black-curled
creature, who for two happy years had been known to the
world of Avonlea as "Small Anne Cordelia." Avonlea
folks knew why Diana had called her Anne, of course,
but Avonlea folks were puzzled by the Cordelia. There
had never been a Cordelia in the Wright or Barry
connections. Mrs. Harmon Andrews said she supposed
Diana had found the name in some trashy novel, and
wondered that Fred hadn't more sense than to allow it.
But Diana and Anne smiled at each other. They knew how
Small Anne Cordelia had come by her name.
"You always hated geometry," said Diana with a
retrospective smile. "I should think you'd be real
glad to be through with teaching, anyhow."
"Oh, I've always liked teaching, apart from geometry.
These past three years in Summerside have been very
pleasant ones. Mrs. Harmon Andrews told me when I came
home that I wouldn't likely find married life as much
better than teaching as I expected. Evidently Mrs.
Harmon is of Hamlet's opinion that it may be better to
bear the ills that we have than fly to others that we
know not of."
Anne's laugh, as blithe and irresistible as of yore,
with an added note of sweetness and maturity, rang
through the garret. Marilla in the kitchen below,
compounding blue plum preserve, heard it and smiled;
then sighed to think how seldom that dear laugh would
echo through Green Gables in the years to come.
Nothing in her life had ever given Marilla so much
happiness as the knowledge that Anne was going to marry
Gilbert Blythe; but every joy must bring with it its
little shadow of sorrow. During the three Summerside
years Anne had been home often for vacations and
weekends; but, after this, a bi-annual visit would be
as much as could be hoped for.
"You needn't let what Mrs. Harmon says worry you,"
said Diana, with the calm assurance of the four-years
matron. "Married life has its ups and downs, of
course. You mustn't expect that everything will always
go smoothly. But I can assure you, Anne, that it's a
happy life, when you're married to the right man."
Anne smothered a smile. Diana's airs of vast
experience always amused her a little.
"I daresay I'll be putting them on too, when I've been
married four years," she thought. "Surely my sense of
humor will preserve me from it, though."
"Is it settled yet where you are going to live?" asked
Diana, cuddling Small Anne Cordelia with the
inimitable gesture of motherhood which always sent
through Anne's heart, filled with sweet, unuttered
dreams and hopes, a thrill that was half pure pleasure
and half a strange, ethereal pain.
"Yes. That was what I wanted to tell you when I
'phoned to you to come down today. By the way, I can't
realize that we really have telephones in Avonlea now.
It sounds so preposterously up-to-date and modernish
for this darling, leisurely old place."
"We can thank the A. V. I. S. for them," said Diana.
"We should never have got the line if they hadn't
taken the matter up and carried it through. There was
enough cold water thrown to discourage any society.
But they stuck to it, nevertheless. You did a splendid
thing for Avonlea when you founded that society, Anne.
What fun we did have at our meetings! Will you ever
forget the blue hall and Judson Parker's scheme for
painting medicine advertisements on his fence?"
"I don't know that I'm whollygrateful to the A. V. I.
S. in the matter of the telephone," said Anne. "Oh, I
know it's most convenient-- even more so than our old
device of signalling to each other by flashes of
candlelight! And, as Mrs. Rachel says, `Avonlea must
keep up with the procession, that's what.' But somehow
I feel as if I didn't want Avonlea spoiled by what Mr.
Harrison, when he wants to be witty, calls `modern
inconveniences.' I should like to have it kept always
just as it was in the dear old years. That's
foolish--and sentimental--and impossible. So I shall
immediately become wise and practical and possible.
The telephone, as Mr. Harrison concedes, is `a buster
of a good thing'--even if you do know that probably
half a dozen interested people are listening along the
line."
"That's the worst of it," sighed Diana. "It's so
annoying to hear the receivers going down whenever you
ring anyone up. They say Mrs. Harmon Andrews insisted
that their `phone should be put in their kitchen just
so that she could listen whenever it rang and keep an
eye on the dinner at the same time. Today, when you
called me, I distinctly heard that queer clock of the
Pyes' striking. So no doubt Josie or Gertie was
listening."
"Oh, so that is why you said, `You've got a new clock
at Green Gables, haven't you?' I couldn't imagine what
you meant. I heard a vicious click as soon as you had
spoken. I suppose it was the Pye receiver being hung
up with profaneenergy. Well, never mind the Pyes. As
Mrs. Rachel says, `Pyes they always were and Pyes they
always will be, world without end, amen.' I want to
talk of pleasanter things. It's all settled as to
where my new home shall be."
"Oh, Anne, where? I do hope it's near here."
"No-o-o, that's the drawback. Gilbert is going to
settle at Four Winds Harbor--sixty miles from here."
"Sixty! It might as well be six hundred," sighed
Diana. "I never can get further from home now than
Charlottetown."
"You'll have to come to Four Winds. It's the most
beautiful harbor on the Island. There's a little
village called Glen St. Mary at its head, and Dr. David
Blythe has been practicing there for fifty years. He
is Gilbert's great-uncle, you know. He is going to
retire, and Gilbert is to take over his practice. Dr.
Blythe is going to keep his house, though, so we shall
have to find a habitation for ourselves. I don't know
yet what it is, or where it will be in reality, but I
have a little house o'dreams all furnished in my
imagination--a tiny, delightful castle in Spain."
"Where are you going for your wedding tour?" asked
Diana.
"Nowhere. Don't look horrified, Diana dearest. You
suggest Mrs. Harmon Andrews. She, no doubt, will
remark condescendingly that people who can't afford
wedding `towers' are real sensible not to take them;
and then she'll remind me that Jane went to Europe for
hers. I want to spend MY honeymoon at Four Winds in my
own dear house of dreams."
"And you've decided not to have any bridesmaid?"
"There isn't any one to have. You and Phil and
Priscilla and Jane all stole a march on me in the
matter of marriage; and Stella is teaching in
Vancouver. I have no other `kindred soul' and I won't
have a bridesmaid who isn't."
"But you are going to wear a veil, aren't you?" asked
Diana, anxiously.
"Yes, indeedy. I shouldn't feel like a bride without
one. I remember telling Matthew, that evening when he
brought me to Green Gables, that I never expected to be
a bride because I was so homely no one would ever want
to marry me--unless some foreign missionary did. I had
an idea then that foreign missionaries couldn't afford
to be finicky in the matter of looks if they wanted a
girl to risk her life among cannibals. You should have
seen the foreign missionary Priscilla married. He was
as handsome and inscrutable as those daydreams we once
planned to marry ourselves, Diana; he was the best
dressed man I ever met, and he raved over Priscilla's
`ethereal, golden beauty.' But of course there are no
cannibals in Japan."
"Your wedding dress is a dream, anyhow," sighed Diana
rapturously. "You'll look like a perfect queen in
it--you're so tall and slender. How DO you keep so
slim, Anne? I'm fatter than ever--I'll soon have no
waist at all."
"Stoutness and slimness seem to be matters of
predestination," said Anne. "At all events, Mrs.
Harmon Andrews can't say to you what she said to me
when I came home from Summerside, `Well, Anne, you're
just about as skinny as ever.' It sounds quite
romantic to be `slender,' but `skinny' has a very
different tang."
"Mrs. Harmon has been talking about your trousseau.
She admits it's as nice as Jane's, although she says
Jane married a millionaire and you are only marrying a
`poor young doctor without a cent to his name.'"
Anne laughed.
"My dresses ARE nice. I love pretty things. I
remember the first pretty dress I ever had--the brown
gloria Matthew gave me for our school concert. Before
that everything I had was so ugly. It seemed to me
that I stepped into a new world that night."
- learning [´lə:niŋ]
n.学习；学问；知识 (初中英语单词) - trifle [´traifəl] n.琐事，小事；少量 (初中英语单词)
- volume [´vɔlju:m, ´vɑljəm] n.卷；书籍；体积；容量 (初中英语单词)
- triumph [´traiəmf] n.胜利 vi.得胜，战胜 (初中英语单词)
- delightful [di´laitful] a.讨人喜欢的 (初中英语单词)
- orchard [´ɔ:tʃəd] n.果园 (初中英语单词)
- indian [´indiən] a.印度的 n.印度人 (初中英语单词)
- prince [´prins] n.王子；亲王；君主 (初中英语单词)
- brilliant [´briliənt] a.灿烂的；杰出的 (初中英语单词)
- sleeping [´sli:piŋ] n.&a.睡着(的) (初中英语单词)
- evidently [´evidəntli] ad.明显地 (初中英语单词)
- preserve [pri´zə:v] v.保藏 n.保藏物 (初中英语单词)
- gesture [´dʒestʃə] n.手势 v.打手势 (初中英语单词)
- thrill [θril] v.震惊；激动；刺激 (初中英语单词)
- darling [´dɑ:liŋ] n.爱人 a.亲爱的 (初中英语单词)
- discourage [dis´kʌridʒ] vt.使泄气，使沮丧 (初中英语单词)
- nevertheless [,nevəðə´les] conj.&ad.然而；不过 (初中英语单词)
- scheme [ski:m] n.计划；阴谋，诡计 (初中英语单词)
- wholly [´həul-li] ad.完全，十足；统统 (初中英语单词)
- grateful [´greitful] a.感谢的；令人愉快的 (初中英语单词)
- procession [prə´seʃən] n.队伍 v.列队行进 (初中英语单词)
- whenever [wen´evə] conj.&ad.无论何时 (初中英语单词)
- distinctly [di´stiŋktli] ad.清楚地，明晰地 (初中英语单词)
- striking [´straikiŋ] a.显著的，明显的 (初中英语单词)
- energy [´enədʒi] n.活力，精力；能力 (初中英语单词)
- reality [ri´æliti] n.现实(性)；真实；逼真 (初中英语单词)
- wedding [´wediŋ] n.婚礼，结婚 (初中英语单词)
- sensible [´sensəbəl] a.感觉得到的 (初中英语单词)
- remind [ri´maind] vt.提醒；使记(想)起 (初中英语单词)
- slender [´slendə] a.细长的；微薄的 (初中英语单词)
- shadowy [´ʃædəui] a.有阴影的；模糊的 (高中英语单词)
- sweetness [´swi:tnis] n.甜蜜；芳香；亲切 (高中英语单词)
- assurance [ə´ʃuərəns] n.保证；自信；信任 (高中英语单词)
- smoothly [´smu:ðli] ad.光滑地；顺利地 (高中英语单词)
- receiver [ri´si:və] n.接收者；接待人 (高中英语单词)
- decided [di´saidid] a.明显的；决定的 (高中英语单词)
- homely [´həumli] a.朴素的；不漂亮的 (高中英语单词)
- missionary [´miʃənəri] a.传教(士)的 n.传教士 (高中英语单词)
- millionaire [,miljə´neə] n.百万富翁 (高中英语单词)
- garret [´gærit] n.阁楼，顶楼 (英语四级单词)
- poplar [´pɔplə] n.白杨；杨木 (英语四级单词)
- irresistible [,iri´zistəbəl] a.不可抵抗的 (英语四级单词)
- maturity [mə´tjuəriti] n.成熟；完备 (英语四级单词)
- leisurely [´leʒəli] a.从容地，慢慢地 (英语四级单词)
- vicious [´viʃəs] a.不道德的；刻毒的 (英语四级单词)
- profane [prə´fein] a.亵渎的 vt.玷污 (英语四级单词)
- habitation [,hæbi´teiʃən] n.居住；住所 (英语四级单词)
- honeymoon [´hʌnimu:n] n.蜜月 (英语四级单词)
- suggestive [sə´dʒestiv] a.暗示的；启发的 (英语六级单词)
- august [ɔ:´gʌst] a.尊严的；威严的 (英语六级单词)
- forsaken [fə´seik] forsake的过去分词 (英语六级单词)
- blithe [´blaið] a.快乐的；冒失的 (英语六级单词)
- ethereal [i´θiəriəl] a.飘渺的；稀薄的 (英语六级单词)
- drawback [´drɔ:bæk] n.不利；缺陷；退税 (英语六级单词)
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