Emily didn’t know she was being pitied and didn’t know what lonesomeness meant. She had plenty of company. There was Father—and Mike—and Saucy5 Sal. The Wind Woman was always around; and there were the trees—Adam-and-Eve, and the Rooster Pine, and all the friendly lady-birches.
And there was “the flash,” too. She never knew when it might come, and the possibility of it kept her a-thrill and expectant.
Emily had slipped away in the chilly6 twilight7 for a walk. She remembered that walk very vividly8 all her life—perhaps because of a certain eerie9 beauty that was in it—perhaps because “the flash” came for the first time
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in weeks—more likely because of what happened after she came back from it.
It had been a dull, cold day in early May, threatening to rain but never raining. Father had lain on the sitting-room10 lounge all day. He had coughed a good deal and he had not talked much to Emily, which was a very unusual thing for him. Most of the time he lay with his hands clasped under his head and his large, sunken, dark-blue eyes fixed11 dreamily and unseeingly on the cloudy sky that was visible between the boughs12 of the two big spruces in the front yard—Adam-and-Eve, they always called those spruces, because of a whimsical resemblance Emily had traced between their position, with reference to a small apple-tree between them, and that of Adam and Eve and the Tree of Knowledge in an old-fashioned picture in one of Ellen Greene’s books. The Tree of Knowledge looked exactly like the squat13 little apple-tree, and Adam and Eve stood up on either side as stiffly and rigidly14 as did the spruces.
Emily wondered what Father was thinking of, but she never bothered him with questions when his cough was bad. She only wished she had somebody to talk to. Ellen Greene wouldn’t talk that day either. She did nothing but grunt15, and grunts16 meant that Ellen was disturbed about something. She had grunted17 last night after the doctor had whispered to her in the kitchen, and she had grunted when she gave Emily a bedtime snack of bread and molasses. Emily did not like bread and molasses, but she ate it because she did not want to hurt Ellen’s feelings. It was not often that Ellen allowed her anything to eat before going to bed, and when she did it meant that for some reason or other she wanted to confer a special favor.
Emily expected the grunting18 attack would wear off over night, as it generally did; but it had not, so no company was to be found in Ellen. Not that there was a great deal to be found at any time. Douglas Starr
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had once, in a fit of exasperation19, told Emily that “Ellen Greene was a fat, lazy old thing of no importance,” and Emily, whenever she looked at Ellen after that, thought the description fitted her to a hair.
So Emily had curled herself up in the ragged20, comfortable old wing-chair and read The Pilgrim’s Progress all the afternoon. Emily loved The Pilgrim’s Progress. Many a time had she walked the straight and narrow path with Christian21 and Christiana—although she never liked Christiana’s adventures half as well as Christian’s. For one thing, there was always such a crowd with Christiana. She had not half the fascination22 of that solitary23, intrepid24 figure who faced all alone the shadows of the Dark Valley and the encounter with Apollyon. Darkness and hobgoblins were nothing when you had plenty of company. But to be alone—ah, Emily shivered with the delicious horror of it!
When Ellen announced that supper was ready Douglas Starr told Emily to go out to it.
“I don’t want anything tonight. I’ll just lie here and rest. And when you come in again we’ll have a real talk, Elfkin.”
He smiled up at her his old, beautiful smile, with the love behind it, that Emily always found so sweet. She ate her supper quite happily—though it wasn’t a good supper. The bread was soggy and her egg was underdone, but for a wonder she was allowed to have both Saucy Sal and Mike sitting, one on each side of her, and Ellen only grunted when Emily fed them wee bits of bread and butter.
Mike had such a cute way of sitting up on his haunches and catching25 the bits in his paws, and Saucy Sal had her trick of touching26 Emily’s ankle with an almost human touch when her turn was too long in coming. Emily loved them both, but Mike was her favourite. He was a handsome, dark-grey cat with huge owl-like eyes, and he was so soft and fat and fluffy27. Sal was always thin;
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no amount of feeding put any flesh on her bones. Emily liked her, but never cared to cuddle or stroke her because of her thinness. Yet there was a sort of weird28 beauty about her that appealed to Emily. She was grey-and-white—very white and very sleek29, with a long, pointed30 face, very long ears and very green eyes. She was a redoubtable31 fighter, and strange cats were vanquished32 in one round. The fearless little spitfire would even attack dogs and rout33 them utterly34.
Emily loved her pussies35. She had brought them up herself, as she proudly said. They had been given to her when they were kittens by her Sunday School teacher.
“A living present is so nice,” she told Ellen, “because it keeps on getting nicer all the time.”
But she worried considerably36 because Saucy Sal didn’t have kittens.
“I don’t know why she doesn’t,” she complained to Ellen Greene. “Most cats seem to have more kittens than they know what to do with.”
After supper Emily went in and found that her father had fallen asleep. She was very glad of this; she knew he had not slept much for two nights; but she was a little disappointed that they were not going to have that “real talk.” “Real” talks with Father were always such delightful37 things. But next best would be a walk—a lovely all-by-your-lonesome walk through the grey evening of the young spring. It was so long since she had had a walk.
“You put on your hood38 and mind you scoot back if it starts to rain,” warned Ellen. “You can’t monkey with colds the way some kids can.”
“Why can’t I?” Emily asked rather indignantly. Why must she be debarred from “monkeying with colds” if other children could? It wasn’t fair.
But Ellen only grunted. Emily muttered under her breath for her own satisfaction, “You are a fat old thing of no importance!” and slipped upstairs to get her hood
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—rather reluctantly, for she loved to run bareheaded. She put the faded blue hood on over her long, heavy braid of glossy39, jet-black hair, and smiled chummily at her reflection in the little greenish glass. The smile began at the corners of her lips and spread over her face in a slow, subtle, very wonderful way, as Douglas Starr often thought. It was her dead mother’s smile—the thing that had caught and held him long ago when he had first seen Juliet Murray. It seemed to be Emily’s only physical inheritance from her mother. In all else, he thought, she was like the Starrs—in her large, purplish-grey eyes with their very long lashes40 and black brows, in her high, white forehead—too high for beauty—in the delicate modeling of her pale oval face and sensitive mouth, in the little ears that were pointed just a wee bit to show that she was kin3 to tribes of elfland.
“I’m going for a walk with the Wind Woman, dear,” said Emily. “I wish I could take you too. Do you ever get out of that room, I wonder. The Wind Woman is going to be out in the fields to-night. She is tall and misty41, with thin, grey, silky clothes blowing all about her—and wings like a bat’s—only you can see through them—and shining eyes like stars looking through her long, loose hair. She can fly—but to-night she will walk with me all over the fields. She’s a great friend of mine—the Wind Woman is. I’ve known her ever since I was six. We’re old, old friends—but not quite so old as you and I, little Emily-in-the-glass. We’ve been friends always, haven’t we?”
With a blown kiss to little Emily-in-the-glass, Emily-out-of-the-glass was off.
The Wind Woman was waiting for her outside—ruffling the little spears of striped grass that were sticking up stiffly in the bed under the sitting-room window—tossing the big boughs of Adam-and-Eve—whispering among the misty green branches of the birches—teasing the “Rooster Pine” behind the house—it really did look
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like an enormous, ridiculous rooster, with a huge, bunchy tail and a head thrown back to crow.
It was so long since Emily had been out for a walk that she was half crazy with the joy of it. The winter had been so stormy and the snow so deep that she was never allowed out; April had been a month of rain and wind; so on this May evening she felt like a released prisoner. Where should she go? Down the brook—or over the fields to the spruce barrens? Emily chose the latter.
She loved the spruce barrens, away at the further end of the long, sloping pasture. That was a place where magic was made. She came more fully42 into her fairy birthright there than in any other place. Nobody who saw Emily skimming over the bare field would have envied her. She was little and pale and poorly clad; sometimes she shivered in her thin jacket; yet a queen might have gladly given a crown for her visions—her dreams of wonder. The brown, frosted grasses under her feet were velvet43 piles. The old, mossy, gnarled half-dead spruce-tree, under which she paused for a moment to look up into the sky, was a marble column in a palace of the gods; the far dusky hills were the ramparts of a city of wonder. And for companions she had all the fairies of the countryside—for she could believe in them here—the fairies of the white clover and satin catkins, the little green folk of the grass, the elves of the young fir-trees, sprites of wind and wild fern and thistledown. Anything might happen there—everything might come true.
And the barrens were such a splendid place in which to play hide and seek with the Wind Woman. She was so very real there; if you could just spring quickly enough around a little cluster of spruces—only you never could—you would see her as well as feel her and hear her. There she was—that was the sweep of her grey cloak—no, she was laughing up in the very top of the
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taller trees—and the chase was on again—till, all at once, it seemed as if the Wind Woman were gone—and the evening was bathed in a wonderful silence—and there was a sudden rift44 in the curdled45 clouds westward46, and a lovely, pale, pinky-green lake of sky with a new moon in it.
Emily stood and looked at it with clasped hands and her little black head upturned. She must go home and write down a description of it in the yellow account book, where the last thing written had been, “Mike’s Biograffy.” It would hurt her with its beauty until she wrote it down. Then she would read it to Father. She must not forget how the tips of the trees on the hill came out like fine black lace across the edge of the pinky-green sky.
And then, for one glorious, supreme47 moment, came “the flash.”
Emily called it that, although she felt that the name didn’t exactly describe it. It couldn’t be described—not even to Father, who always seemed a little puzzled by it. Emily never spoke48 of it to any one else.
It had always seemed to Emily, ever since she could remember, that she was very, very near to a world of wonderful beauty. Between it and herself hung only a thin curtain; she could never draw the curtain aside—but sometimes, just for a moment, a wind fluttered it and then it was as if she caught a glimpse of the enchanting49 realm beyond—only a glimpse—and heard a note of unearthly music.
This moment came rarely—went swiftly, leaving her breathless with the inexpressible delight of it. She could never recall it—never summon it—never pretend it; but the wonder of it stayed with her for days. It never came twice with the same thing. To-night the dark boughs against that far-off sky had given it. It had come with a high, wild note of wind in the night, with a shadow wave over a ripe field, with a greybird
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lighting on her window-sill in a storm, with the singing of “Holy, holy, holy” in church, with a glimpse of the kitchen fire when she had come home on a dark autumn night, with the spirit-like blue of ice palms on a twilit pane50, with a felicitous51 new word when she was writing down a “description” of something. And always when the flash came to her Emily felt that life was a wonderful, mysterious thing of persistent52 beauty.
She scuttled53 back to the house in the hollow, through the gathering54 twilight, all agog55 to get home and write down her “description” before the memory picture of what she had seen grew a little blurred56. She knew just how she would begin it—the sentence seemed to shape itself in her mind: “The hill called to me and something in me called back to it.”
She found Ellen Greene waiting for her on the sunken front-doorstep. Emily was so full of happiness that she loved everything at that moment, even fat things of no importance. She flung her arms around Ellen’s knees and hugged them. Ellen looked down gloomily into the rapt little face, where excitement had kindled57 a faint wild-rose flush, and said, with a ponderous58 sigh:
“Do you know that your pa has only a week or two more to live?”
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1
situated
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| adj.坐落在...的，处于某种境地的 | |
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grassy
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| adj.盖满草的；长满草的 | |
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kin
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| n.家族，亲属，血缘关系；adj.亲属关系的，同类的 | |
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vowed
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| 起誓，发誓（vow的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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saucy
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| adj.无礼的；俊俏的；活泼的 | |
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chilly
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| adj.凉快的，寒冷的 | |
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twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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8
vividly
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| adv.清楚地，鲜明地，生动地 | |
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eerie
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| adj.怪诞的；奇异的；可怕的；胆怯的 | |
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sitting-room
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| n.（BrE）客厅，起居室 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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boughs
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| 大树枝( bough的名词复数 ) | |
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squat
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| v.蹲坐，蹲下；n.蹲下；adj.矮胖的，粗矮的 | |
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rigidly
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| adv.刻板地，僵化地 | |
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grunt
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| v.嘟哝；作呼噜声；n.呼噜声，嘟哝 | |
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16
grunts
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| （猪等）作呼噜声( grunt的第三人称单数 )； （指人）发出类似的哼声； 咕哝着说； 石鲈 | |
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grunted
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| （猪等）作呼噜声( grunt的过去式和过去分词 )； （指人）发出类似的哼声； 咕哝着说 | |
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grunting
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| 咕哝的，呼噜的 | |
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exasperation
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| n.愤慨 | |
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ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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fascination
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| n.令人着迷的事物，魅力，迷恋 | |
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solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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intrepid
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| adj.无畏的，刚毅的 | |
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catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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fluffy
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| adj.有绒毛的，空洞的 | |
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weird
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| adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的 | |
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sleek
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| adj.光滑的，井然有序的；v.使光滑，梳拢 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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redoubtable
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| adj.可敬的；可怕的 | |
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vanquished
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| v.征服( vanquish的过去式和过去分词 )；战胜；克服；抑制 | |
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rout
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| n.溃退，溃败；v.击溃，打垮 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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pussies
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| n.（粗俚） 女阴( pussy的名词复数 )；（总称）（作为性对象的）女人；（主要北美使用，非正式）软弱的；小猫咪 | |
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considerably
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| adv.极大地；相当大地；在很大程度上 | |
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delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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hood
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| n.头巾，兜帽，覆盖；v.罩上，以头巾覆盖 | |
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glossy
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| adj.平滑的；有光泽的 | |
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40
lashes
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| n.鞭挞( lash的名词复数 )；鞭子；突然猛烈的一击；急速挥动v.鞭打( lash的第三人称单数 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥 | |
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misty
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| adj.雾蒙蒙的，有雾的 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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velvet
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| n.丝绒，天鹅绒；adj.丝绒制的，柔软的 | |
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44
rift
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| n.裂口，隙缝，切口；v.裂开，割开，渗入 | |
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45
curdled
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| v.（使）凝结( curdle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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westward
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| n.西方，西部；adj.西方的，向西的；adv.向西 | |
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47
supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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48
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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49
enchanting
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| a.讨人喜欢的 | |
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50
pane
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| n.窗格玻璃，长方块 | |
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51
felicitous
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| adj.恰当的，巧妙的；n.恰当，贴切 | |
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52
persistent
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| adj.坚持不懈的，执意的；持续的 | |
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53
scuttled
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| v.使船沉没( scuttle的过去式和过去分词 )；快跑，急走 | |
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54
gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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55
agog
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| adj.兴奋的，有强烈兴趣的； adv.渴望地 | |
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56
blurred
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| v.（使）变模糊( blur的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）难以区分；模模糊糊；迷离 | |
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57
kindled
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| （使某物）燃烧，着火( kindle的过去式和过去分词 )； 激起（感情等）； 发亮，放光 | |
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ponderous
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| adj.沉重的，笨重的，(文章)冗长的 | |
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