章节正文
"If I hadn't seen him for a hundred years it wouldn't make any
difference that way," laughed the Story Girl.
"S-s-h-s-s-h--they're coming," whispered Felicity excitedly.
And then they came--Beautiful Alice blushing and lovely, in the
prettiest of pretty blue dresses, and the Awkward Man, so
fervently happy that he quite forgot to be awkward. He lifted her
out of the buggy gallantly and led her forward to us, smiling. We
retreated before them, scattering our flowers lavishly on the
path, and Alice Dale walked to the very doorstep of her new home
over a carpet of blossoms. On the step they both paused and
turned towards us, and we shyly did the proper thing in the way of
congratulations and good wishes.
"It was so sweet of you to do this," said the smiling bride.
"It was lovely to be able to do it for you, dearest," whispered
the Story Girl, "and oh, Miss Reade--Mrs. Dale, I mean--we all
hope you'll be so, so happy for ever."
"I am sure I shall," said Alice Dale, turning to her husband. He
looked down into her eyes--and we were quite forgotten by both of
them. We saw it, and slipped away, while Jasper Dale drew his
wife into their home and shut the world out.
We scampered joyously away through the moonlit dusk. Uncle Blair
joined us at the gate and the Story Girl asked him what he thought
of the bride.
"When she dies white violets will grow out of her dust," he
answered.
"Uncle Blair says even queerer things than the Story Girl,"
Felicity whispered to me.
And so that beautiful day went away from us, slipping through our
fingers as we tried to hold it. It hooded itself in shadows and
fared forth on the road that is lighted by the white stars of
evening. It had been a gift of Paradise. Its hours had all been
fair and beloved. From dawn flush to fall of night there had been
naught to mar it. It took with it its smiles and laughter. But
it left the boon of memory.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH
"I am going away with father when he goes. He is going to spend
the winter in Paris, and I am to go to school there."
The Story Girl told us this one day in the orchard. There was a
little elation in her tone, but more regret. The news was not a
great surprise to us. We had felt it in the air ever since Uncle
Blair's arrival. Aunt Janet had been very willing" target="_blank" title="a.不愿意的；不情愿的">unwilling to let the
Story Girl go. But Uncle Blair was inexorable. It was time, he
said, that she should go to a better school than the little
country one in Carlisle; and besides, he did not want her to grow
into womanhood a stranger to him. So it was finally decided that
she was to go.
"Just think, you are going to Europe," said Sara Ray in an awe-
struck tone. "Won't that be splendid!"
"I suppose I'll like it after a while," said the Story Girl
slowly, "but I know I'll be dreadfully" target="_blank" title="ad.可怕地；糟透地">dreadfullyhomesick at first. Of
course, it will be lovely to be with father, but oh, I'll miss the
rest of you so much!"
"Just think how WE'LL miss YOU," sighed Cecily. "It will be so
lonesome here this winter, with you and Peter both gone. Oh,
dear, I do wish things didn't have to change."
Felicity said nothing. She kept looking down at the grass on
which she sat, absently pulling at the slender blades. Presently
we saw two big tears roll down over her cheeks. The Story Girl
looked surprised.
"Are you crying because I'm going away, Felicity?" she asked.
"Of course I am," answered Felicity, with a big sob. "Do you
think I've no f-f-eeling?"
"I didn't think you'd care much," said the Story Girl frankly.
"You've never seemed to like me very much."
"I d-don't wear my h-heart on my sleeve," said poor Felicity, with
an attempt at dignity. "I think you m-might stay. Your father
would let you s-stay if you c-coaxed him."
"Well, you see I'd have to go some time," sighed the Story Girl,
"and the longer it was put off the harder it would be. But I do
feel dreadfully" target="_blank" title="ad.可怕地；糟透地">dreadfully about it. I can't even take poor Paddy. I'll
have to leave him behind, and oh, I want you all to promise to be
kind to him for my sake."
We all solemnlyassured her that we would.
"I'll g-give him cream every m-morning and n-night," sobbed
Felicity, "but I'll never be able to look at him without crying.
He'll make me think of you."
"Well, I'm not going right away," said the Story Girl, more
cheerfully. "Not till the last of October. So we have over a
month yet to have a good time in. Let's all just determine to
make it a splendid month for the last. We won't think about my
going at all till we have to, and we won't have any quarrels among
us, and we'll just enjoy ourselves all we possibly can. So don't
cry any more, Felicity. I'm awfully glad you do like me and am
sorry I'm going away, but let's all forget it for a month."
Felicity sighed, and tucked away her damp handkerchief.
"It isn't so easy for me to forget things, but I'll try," she said
disconsolately, "and if you want any more cooking lessons before
you go I'll be real glad to teach you anything I know."
This was a high plane of self-sacrifice for Felicity to attain.
But the Story Girl shook her head.
"No, I'm not going to bother my head about cooking lessons this
last month. It's too vexing."
"Do you remember the time you made the pudding--" began Peter, and
suddenly stopped.
"Out of sawdust?" finished the Story Girl cheerfully. "You
needn't be afraid to mention it to me after this. I don't mind
any more. I begin to see the fun of it now. I should think I do
remember it--and the time I baked the bread before it was raised
enough."
"People have made worse mistakes than that," said Felicity kindly.
"Such as using tooth-powd--" but here Dan stopped abruptly,
remembering the Story Girl's plea for a beautiful month. Felicity
coloured, but said nothing--did not even LOOK anything.
"We HAVE had lots of fun together one way or another," said
Cecily, retrospectively.
"Just think how much we've laughed this last year or so," said the
Story Girl. "We've had good times together; but I think we'll
have lots more splendid years ahead."
"Eden is always behind us--Paradise always before," said Uncle
Blair, coming up in time to hear her. He said it with a sigh that
was immediately lost in one of his delightful smiles.
"I like Uncle Blair so much better than I expected to," Felicity
confided to me. "Mother says he's a rolling stone, but there
really is something very nice about him, although he says a great
many things I don't understand. I suppose the Story Girl will
have a very gay time in Paris."
"She's going to school and she'll have to study hard," I said.
"She says she's going to study for the stage," said Felicity.
"Uncle Roger thinks it is all right, and says she'll be very
famous some day. But mother thinks it's dreadful, and so do I."
"Aunt Julia is a concert singer," I said.
"Oh, that's very different. But I hope poor Sara will get on all
right," sighed Felicity. "You never know what may happen to a
person in those foreign countries. And everybody says Paris is
such a wicked place. But we must hope for the best," she
concluded in a resigned tone.
That evening the Story Girl and I drove the cows to pasture after
milking, and when we came home we sought out Uncle Blair in the
orchard. He was sauntering up and down Uncle Stephen's Walk, his
hands clasped behind him and his beautiful, youthful face uplifted
to the western sky where waves of night were breaking on a dim
primrose shore of sunset.
"See that star over there in the south-west?" he said, as we
joined him. "The one just above that pine? An evening star
shining over a dark pine tree is the whitest thing in the
universe--because it is LIVING whiteness--whiteness possessing a
soul. How full this old orchard is of twilight! Do you know, I
have been trysting here with ghosts."
"The Family Ghost?" I asked, very stupidly.
"No, not the Family Ghost. I never saw beautiful, broken-hearted
Emily yet. Your mother saw her once, Sara--that was a strange
thing," he added absently, as if to himself.
"Did mother really see her?" whispered the Story Girl.
"Well, she always believed she did. Who knows?"
"Do you think there are such things as ghosts, Uncle Blair?"
I asked curiously.
"I never saw any, Beverley."
"But you said you were trysting with ghosts here this evening,"
said the Story Girl.
"Oh, yes--the ghosts of the old years. I love this orchard
because of its many ghosts. We are good comrades, those ghosts
and I; we walk and talk--we even laugh together--sorrowful
laughter that has sorrow's own sweetness. And always there comes
to me one dear phantom and wanders hand in hand with me--a lost
lady of the old years."
"My mother?" said the Story Girl very softly.
"Yes, your mother. Here, in her old haunts, it is impossible for
me to believe that she can be dead--that her LAUGHTER can be dead.
She was the gayest, sweetest thing--and so young--only three years
older than you, Sara. Yonder old house had been glad because of
her for eighteen years when I met her first."
"I wish I could remember her," said the Story Girl, with a little
sigh. "I haven't even a picture of her. Why didn't you paint
one, father?"
"She would never let me. She had some queer, funny, half-playful,
half-earnest superstition about it. But I always meant to when
she would become willing to let me. And then--she died. Her twin
brother Felix died the same day. There was something strange
about that, too. I was holding her in my arms and she was looking
up at me; suddenly she looked past me and gave a little start.
'Felix!' she said. For a moment she trembled and then she smiled
and looked up at me again a little beseechingly. 'Felix has come
for me, dear,' she said. 'We were always together before you
came--you must not mind--you must be glad I do not have to go
alone.' Well, who knows? But she left me, Sara--she left me."
There was that in Uncle Blair's voice that kept us silent for a
time. Then the Story Girl said, still very softly:
"What did mother look like, father? I don't look the least little
bit like her, do I?"
"No, I wish you did, you brown thing. Your mother's face was as
white as a wood-lily, with only a faint dream of rose in her
cheeks. She had the eyes of one who always had a song in her
heart--blue as a mist, those eyes were. She had dark lashes, and
a little red mouth that quivered when she was very sad or very
happy like a crimson rose too rudelyshaken by the wind. She was
as slim and lithe as a young, white-stemmed birch tree. How I
loved her! How happy we were! But he who accepts human love must
bind it to his soul with pain, and she is not lost to me. Nothing
is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it."
Uncle Blair looked up at the evening star. We saw that he had
forgotten us, and we slipped away, hand in hand, leaving him alone
in the memory-haunted shadows of the old orchard.
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE PATH TO ARCADY
October that year gathered up all the spilled sunshine of the
summer and clad herself in it as in a garment. The Story Girl had
asked us to try to make the last month together beautiful, and
Nature seconded our efforts, giving us that most beautiful of
beautiful things--a gracious and perfect moon of falling leaves.
There was not in all that vanished October one day that did not
difference that way," laughed the Story Girl.
"S-s-h-s-s-h--they're coming," whispered Felicity excitedly.
And then they came--Beautiful Alice blushing and lovely, in the
prettiest of pretty blue dresses, and the Awkward Man, so
fervently happy that he quite forgot to be awkward. He lifted her
out of the buggy gallantly and led her forward to us, smiling. We
retreated before them, scattering our flowers lavishly on the
path, and Alice Dale walked to the very doorstep of her new home
over a carpet of blossoms. On the step they both paused and
turned towards us, and we shyly did the proper thing in the way of
congratulations and good wishes.
"It was so sweet of you to do this," said the smiling bride.
"It was lovely to be able to do it for you, dearest," whispered
the Story Girl, "and oh, Miss Reade--Mrs. Dale, I mean--we all
hope you'll be so, so happy for ever."
"I am sure I shall," said Alice Dale, turning to her husband. He
looked down into her eyes--and we were quite forgotten by both of
them. We saw it, and slipped away, while Jasper Dale drew his
wife into their home and shut the world out.
We scampered joyously away through the moonlit dusk. Uncle Blair
joined us at the gate and the Story Girl asked him what he thought
of the bride.
"When she dies white violets will grow out of her dust," he
answered.
"Uncle Blair says even queerer things than the Story Girl,"
Felicity whispered to me.
And so that beautiful day went away from us, slipping through our
fingers as we tried to hold it. It hooded itself in shadows and
fared forth on the road that is lighted by the white stars of
evening. It had been a gift of Paradise. Its hours had all been
fair and beloved. From dawn flush to fall of night there had been
naught to mar it. It took with it its smiles and laughter. But
it left the boon of memory.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH
"I am going away with father when he goes. He is going to spend
the winter in Paris, and I am to go to school there."
The Story Girl told us this one day in the orchard. There was a
little elation in her tone, but more regret. The news was not a
great surprise to us. We had felt it in the air ever since Uncle
Blair's arrival. Aunt Janet had been very willing" target="_blank" title="a.不愿意的；不情愿的">unwilling to let the
Story Girl go. But Uncle Blair was inexorable. It was time, he
said, that she should go to a better school than the little
country one in Carlisle; and besides, he did not want her to grow
into womanhood a stranger to him. So it was finally decided that
she was to go.
"Just think, you are going to Europe," said Sara Ray in an awe-
struck tone. "Won't that be splendid!"
"I suppose I'll like it after a while," said the Story Girl
slowly, "but I know I'll be dreadfully" target="_blank" title="ad.可怕地；糟透地">dreadfullyhomesick at first. Of
course, it will be lovely to be with father, but oh, I'll miss the
rest of you so much!"
"Just think how WE'LL miss YOU," sighed Cecily. "It will be so
lonesome here this winter, with you and Peter both gone. Oh,
dear, I do wish things didn't have to change."
Felicity said nothing. She kept looking down at the grass on
which she sat, absently pulling at the slender blades. Presently
we saw two big tears roll down over her cheeks. The Story Girl
looked surprised.
"Are you crying because I'm going away, Felicity?" she asked.
"Of course I am," answered Felicity, with a big sob. "Do you
think I've no f-f-eeling?"
"I didn't think you'd care much," said the Story Girl frankly.
"You've never seemed to like me very much."
"I d-don't wear my h-heart on my sleeve," said poor Felicity, with
an attempt at dignity. "I think you m-might stay. Your father
would let you s-stay if you c-coaxed him."
"Well, you see I'd have to go some time," sighed the Story Girl,
"and the longer it was put off the harder it would be. But I do
feel dreadfully" target="_blank" title="ad.可怕地；糟透地">dreadfully about it. I can't even take poor Paddy. I'll
have to leave him behind, and oh, I want you all to promise to be
kind to him for my sake."
We all solemnlyassured her that we would.
"I'll g-give him cream every m-morning and n-night," sobbed
Felicity, "but I'll never be able to look at him without crying.
He'll make me think of you."
"Well, I'm not going right away," said the Story Girl, more
cheerfully. "Not till the last of October. So we have over a
month yet to have a good time in. Let's all just determine to
make it a splendid month for the last. We won't think about my
going at all till we have to, and we won't have any quarrels among
us, and we'll just enjoy ourselves all we possibly can. So don't
cry any more, Felicity. I'm awfully glad you do like me and am
sorry I'm going away, but let's all forget it for a month."
Felicity sighed, and tucked away her damp handkerchief.
"It isn't so easy for me to forget things, but I'll try," she said
disconsolately, "and if you want any more cooking lessons before
you go I'll be real glad to teach you anything I know."
This was a high plane of self-sacrifice for Felicity to attain.
But the Story Girl shook her head.
"No, I'm not going to bother my head about cooking lessons this
last month. It's too vexing."
"Do you remember the time you made the pudding--" began Peter, and
suddenly stopped.
"Out of sawdust?" finished the Story Girl cheerfully. "You
needn't be afraid to mention it to me after this. I don't mind
any more. I begin to see the fun of it now. I should think I do
remember it--and the time I baked the bread before it was raised
enough."
"People have made worse mistakes than that," said Felicity kindly.
"Such as using tooth-powd--" but here Dan stopped abruptly,
remembering the Story Girl's plea for a beautiful month. Felicity
coloured, but said nothing--did not even LOOK anything.
"We HAVE had lots of fun together one way or another," said
Cecily, retrospectively.
"Just think how much we've laughed this last year or so," said the
Story Girl. "We've had good times together; but I think we'll
have lots more splendid years ahead."
"Eden is always behind us--Paradise always before," said Uncle
Blair, coming up in time to hear her. He said it with a sigh that
was immediately lost in one of his delightful smiles.
"I like Uncle Blair so much better than I expected to," Felicity
confided to me. "Mother says he's a rolling stone, but there
really is something very nice about him, although he says a great
many things I don't understand. I suppose the Story Girl will
have a very gay time in Paris."
"She's going to school and she'll have to study hard," I said.
"She says she's going to study for the stage," said Felicity.
"Uncle Roger thinks it is all right, and says she'll be very
famous some day. But mother thinks it's dreadful, and so do I."
"Aunt Julia is a concert singer," I said.
"Oh, that's very different. But I hope poor Sara will get on all
right," sighed Felicity. "You never know what may happen to a
person in those foreign countries. And everybody says Paris is
such a wicked place. But we must hope for the best," she
concluded in a resigned tone.
That evening the Story Girl and I drove the cows to pasture after
milking, and when we came home we sought out Uncle Blair in the
orchard. He was sauntering up and down Uncle Stephen's Walk, his
hands clasped behind him and his beautiful, youthful face uplifted
to the western sky where waves of night were breaking on a dim
primrose shore of sunset.
"See that star over there in the south-west?" he said, as we
joined him. "The one just above that pine? An evening star
shining over a dark pine tree is the whitest thing in the
universe--because it is LIVING whiteness--whiteness possessing a
soul. How full this old orchard is of twilight! Do you know, I
have been trysting here with ghosts."
"The Family Ghost?" I asked, very stupidly.
"No, not the Family Ghost. I never saw beautiful, broken-hearted
Emily yet. Your mother saw her once, Sara--that was a strange
thing," he added absently, as if to himself.
"Did mother really see her?" whispered the Story Girl.
"Well, she always believed she did. Who knows?"
"Do you think there are such things as ghosts, Uncle Blair?"
I asked curiously.
"I never saw any, Beverley."
"But you said you were trysting with ghosts here this evening,"
said the Story Girl.
"Oh, yes--the ghosts of the old years. I love this orchard
because of its many ghosts. We are good comrades, those ghosts
and I; we walk and talk--we even laugh together--sorrowful
laughter that has sorrow's own sweetness. And always there comes
to me one dear phantom and wanders hand in hand with me--a lost
lady of the old years."
"My mother?" said the Story Girl very softly.
"Yes, your mother. Here, in her old haunts, it is impossible for
me to believe that she can be dead--that her LAUGHTER can be dead.
She was the gayest, sweetest thing--and so young--only three years
older than you, Sara. Yonder old house had been glad because of
her for eighteen years when I met her first."
"I wish I could remember her," said the Story Girl, with a little
sigh. "I haven't even a picture of her. Why didn't you paint
one, father?"
"She would never let me. She had some queer, funny, half-playful,
half-earnest superstition about it. But I always meant to when
she would become willing to let me. And then--she died. Her twin
brother Felix died the same day. There was something strange
about that, too. I was holding her in my arms and she was looking
up at me; suddenly she looked past me and gave a little start.
'Felix!' she said. For a moment she trembled and then she smiled
and looked up at me again a little beseechingly. 'Felix has come
for me, dear,' she said. 'We were always together before you
came--you must not mind--you must be glad I do not have to go
alone.' Well, who knows? But she left me, Sara--she left me."
There was that in Uncle Blair's voice that kept us silent for a
time. Then the Story Girl said, still very softly:
"What did mother look like, father? I don't look the least little
bit like her, do I?"
"No, I wish you did, you brown thing. Your mother's face was as
white as a wood-lily, with only a faint dream of rose in her
cheeks. She had the eyes of one who always had a song in her
heart--blue as a mist, those eyes were. She had dark lashes, and
a little red mouth that quivered when she was very sad or very
happy like a crimson rose too rudelyshaken by the wind. She was
as slim and lithe as a young, white-stemmed birch tree. How I
loved her! How happy we were! But he who accepts human love must
bind it to his soul with pain, and she is not lost to me. Nothing
is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it."
Uncle Blair looked up at the evening star. We saw that he had
forgotten us, and we slipped away, hand in hand, leaving him alone
in the memory-haunted shadows of the old orchard.
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE PATH TO ARCADY
October that year gathered up all the spilled sunshine of the
summer and clad herself in it as in a garment. The Story Girl had
asked us to try to make the last month together beautiful, and
Nature seconded our efforts, giving us that most beautiful of
beautiful things--a gracious and perfect moon of falling leaves.
There was not in all that vanished October one day that did not
- carpet [´kɑ:pit]
n.地毯 vt.铺地毯 (初中英语单词) - paradise [´pærədais] n.天堂；乐园 (初中英语单词)
- beloved [bi´lʌvd] a.为....所爱的 n.爱人 (初中英语单词)
- laughter [´lɑ:ftə] n.笑，笑声 (初中英语单词)
- orchard [´ɔ:tʃəd] n.果园 (初中英语单词)
- arrival [ə´raivəl] n.到达；到达的人(物) (初中英语单词)
- dreadfully [dredfuli] ad.可怕地；糟透地 (初中英语单词)
- slender [´slendə] a.细长的；微薄的 (初中英语单词)
- dignity [´digniti] n.尊严，尊贵；高官显贵 (初中英语单词)
- bother [´bɔðə] v.打扰 n.麻烦(事) (初中英语单词)
- delightful [di´laitful] a.讨人喜欢的 (初中英语单词)
- dreadful [´dredful] a.可怕的；讨厌的 (初中英语单词)
- wicked [´wikid] a.邪恶的；不道德的 (初中英语单词)
- pasture [´pɑ:stʃə] n.牧场；放牧 v.吃(草) (初中英语单词)
- youthful [´ju:θfəl] a.年轻的；青年的 (初中英语单词)
- western [´westən] a.西的；西方的 (初中英语单词)
- willing [´wiliŋ] a.情愿的，乐意的 (初中英语单词)
- shaken [´ʃeikən] shake的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
- sunshine [´sʌnʃain] n.日光，阳光 (初中英语单词)
- garment [´gɑ:mənt] n.衣服，外衣 (初中英语单词)
- gracious [´greiʃəs] a.和蔼可亲的；任慈的 (初中英语单词)
- awkward [´ɔ:kwəd] a.笨拙的；为难的 (高中英语单词)
- decided [di´saidid] a.明显的；决定的 (高中英语单词)
- solemnly [´sɔləmli] ad.严肃地，庄严地 (高中英语单词)
- awfully [´ɔ:fuli] ad.令人畏惧地 (高中英语单词)
- cheerfully [´tʃiəfuli] ad.高兴地，愉快地 (高中英语单词)
- sweetness [´swi:tnis] n.甜蜜；芳香；亲切 (高中英语单词)
- superstition [,su:pə´stiʃən, ,sju:-] n.迷信(行为) (高中英语单词)
- crimson [´krimzən] a.&n.深(紫)红(的) (高中英语单词)
- unwilling [ʌn´wiliŋ] a.不愿意的；不情愿的 (英语四级单词)
- felicity [fi´lisiti] n.幸福；(措词)适当 (英语六级单词)
- lavishly [´læviʃli] ad.大方地；慷慨地 (英语六级单词)
- doorstep [´dɔ:step] n.门阶 (英语六级单词)
- joyously [´dʒɔiəsli] ad.快乐地，高兴地 (英语六级单词)
- moonlit [´mu:n,lit] a.月光普照的 (英语六级单词)
- homesick [´həum,sik] n.思乡的 (英语六级单词)
- absently [´æbsəntli] ad.心不在焉地 (英语六级单词)
- assured [ə´ʃuəd] a.确实的 n.被保险人 (英语六级单词)
- phantom [´fæntəm] n.幽灵；幻影 a.幻想的 (英语六级单词)
- holding [´həuldiŋ] n.保持，固定，存储 (英语六级单词)
- rudely [´ru:dli] ad.粗鲁地；粗略地 (英语六级单词)
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章节正文
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