“Are you very tired, Marilla?”
“Yes—no—I don’t know,” said Marilla wearily, looking up. “I suppose I am tired but I haven’t thought about it. It’s not that.”
“Yes, I saw him. He examined my eyes. He says that if I give up all reading and sewing entirely4 and any kind of work that strains the eyes, and if I’m careful not to cry, and if I wear the glasses he’s given me he thinks my eyes may not get any worse and my headaches will be cured. But if I don’t he says I’ll certainly be stone-blind in six months. Blind! Anne, just think of it!”
For a minute Anne, after her first quick exclamation5 of dismay, was silent. It seemed to her that she could not speak. Then she said bravely, but with a catch in her voice:
“Marilla, don’t think of it. You know he has given you hope. If you are careful you won’t lose your sight altogether; and if his glasses cure your headaches it will be a great thing.”
“I don’t call it much hope,” said Marilla bitterly. “What am I to live for if I can’t read or sew or do anything like that? I might as well be blind—or dead. And as for crying, I can’t help that when I get lonesome. But there, it’s no good talking about it. If you’ll get me a cup of tea I’ll be thankful. I’m about done out. Don’t say anything about this to any one for a spell yet, anyway. I can’t bear that folks should come here to question and sympathize and talk about it.”
When Marilla had eaten her lunch Anne persuaded her to go to bed. Then Anne went herself to the east gable and sat down by her window in the darkness alone with her tears and her heaviness of heart. How sadly things had changed since she had sat there the night after coming home! Then she had been full of hope and joy and the future had looked rosy6 with promise. Anne felt as if she had lived years since then, but before she went to bed there was a smile on her lips and peace in her heart. She had looked her duty courageously7 in the face and found it a friend—as duty ever is when we meet it frankly8.
One afternoon a few days later Marilla came slowly in from the front yard where she had been talking to a caller—a man whom Anne knew by sight as Sadler from Carmody. Anne wondered what he could have been saying to bring that look to Marilla’s face.
“What did Mr. Sadler want, Marilla?”
Marilla sat down by the window and looked at Anne. There were tears in her eyes in defiance9 of the oculist’s prohibition10 and her voice broke as she said:
“He heard that I was going to sell Green Gables and he wants to buy it.”
“Buy it! Buy Green Gables?” Anne wondered if she had heard aright. “Oh, Marilla, you don’t mean to sell Green Gables!”
“Anne, I don’t know what else is to be done. I’ve thought it all over. If my eyes were strong I could stay here and make out to look after things and manage, with a good hired man. But as it is I can’t. I may lose my sight altogether; and anyway I’ll not be fit to run things. Oh, I never thought I’d live to see the day when I’d have to sell my home. But things would only go behind worse and worse all the time, till nobody would want to buy it. Every cent of our money went in that bank; and there’s some notes Matthew gave last fall to pay. Mrs. Lynde advises me to sell the farm and board somewhere—with her I suppose. It won’t bring much—it’s small and the buildings are old. But it’ll be enough for me to live on I reckon. I’m thankful you’re provided for with that scholarship, Anne. I’m sorry you won’t have a home to come to in your vacations, that’s all, but I suppose you’ll manage somehow.”
Marilla broke down and wept bitterly.
“You mustn’t sell Green Gables,” said Anne resolutely11.
“Oh, Anne, I wish I didn’t have to. But you can see for yourself. I can’t stay here alone. I’d go crazy with trouble and loneliness. And my sight would go—I know it would.”
“You won’t have to stay here alone, Marilla. I’ll be with you. I’m not going to Redmond.”
“Not going to Redmond!” Marilla lifted her worn face from her hands and looked at Anne. “Why, what do you mean?”
“Just what I say. I’m not going to take the scholarship. I decided12 so the night after you came home from town. You surely don’t think I could leave you alone in your trouble, Marilla, after all you’ve done for me. I’ve been thinking and planning. Let me tell you my plans. Mr. Barry wants to rent the farm for next year. So you won’t have any bother over that. And I’m going to teach. I’ve applied13 for the school here—but I don’t expect to get it for I understand the trustees have promised it to Gilbert Blythe. But I can have the Carmody school—Mr. Blair told me so last night at the store. Of course that won’t be quite as nice or convenient as if I had the Avonlea school. But I can board home and drive myself over to Carmody and back, in the warm weather at least. And even in winter I can come home Fridays. We’ll keep a horse for that. Oh, I have it all planned out, Marilla. And I’ll read to you and keep you cheered up. You sha’n’t be dull or lonesome. And we’ll be real cozy14 and happy here together, you and I.”
Marilla had listened like a woman in a dream.
“Oh, Anne, I could get on real well if you were here, I know. But I can’t let you sacrifice yourself so for me. It would be terrible.”
“Nonsense!” Anne laughed merrily. “There is no sacrifice. Nothing could be worse than giving up Green Gables—nothing could hurt me more. We must keep the dear old place. My mind is quite made up, Marilla. I’m not going to Redmond; and I am going to stay here and teach. Don’t you worry about me a bit.”
“But your ambitions—and—”
“I’m just as ambitious as ever. Only, I’ve changed the object of my ambitions. I’m going to be a good teacher—and I’m going to save your eyesight. Besides, I mean to study at home here and take a little college course all by myself. Oh, I’ve dozens of plans, Marilla. I’ve been thinking them out for a week. I shall give life here my best, and I believe it will give its best to me in return. When I left Queen’s my future seemed to stretch out before me like a straight road. I thought I could see along it for many a milestone15. Now there is a bend in it. I don’t know what lies around the bend, but I’m going to believe that the best does. It has a fascination16 of its own, that bend, Marilla. I wonder how the road beyond it goes—what there is of green glory and soft, checkered17 light and shadows—what new landscapes—what new beauties—what curves and hills and valleys further on.”
“I don’t feel as if I ought to let you give it up,” said Marilla, referring to the scholarship.
“But you can’t prevent me. I’m sixteen and a half, ‘obstinate as a mule,’ as Mrs. Lynde once told me,” laughed Anne. “Oh, Marilla, don’t you go pitying me. I don’t like to be pitied, and there is no need for it. I’m heart glad over the very thought of staying at dear Green Gables. Nobody could love it as you and I do—so we must keep it.”
“You blessed girl!” said Marilla, yielding. “I feel as if you’d given me new life. I guess I ought to stick out and make you go to college—but I know I can’t, so I ain’t going to try. I’ll make it up to you though, Anne.”
When it became noised abroad in Avonlea that Anne Shirley had given up the idea of going to college and intended to stay home and teach there was a good deal of discussion over it. Most of the good folks, not knowing about Marilla’s eyes, thought she was foolish. Mrs. Allan did not. She told Anne so in approving words that brought tears of pleasure to the girl’s eyes. Neither did good Mrs. Lynde. She came up one evening and found Anne and Marilla sitting at the front door in the warm, scented18 summer dusk. They liked to sit there when the twilight19 came down and the white moths20 flew about in the garden and the odor of mint filled the dewy air.
Mrs. Rachel deposited her substantial person upon the stone bench by the door, behind which grew a row of tall pink and yellow hollyhocks, with a long breath of mingled21 weariness and relief.
“I declare I’m getting glad to sit down. I’ve been on my feet all day, and two hundred pounds is a good bit for two feet to carry round. It’s a great blessing22 not to be fat, Marilla. I hope you appreciate it. Well, Anne, I hear you’ve given up your notion of going to college. I was real glad to hear it. You’ve got as much education now as a woman can be comfortable with. I don’t believe in girls going to college with the men and cramming23 their heads full of Latin and Greek and all that nonsense.”
“But I’m going to study Latin and Greek just the same, Mrs. Lynde,” said Anne laughing. “I’m going to take my Arts course right here at Green Gables, and study everything that I would at college.”
Mrs. Lynde lifted her hands in holy horror.
“Anne Shirley, you’ll kill yourself.”
“Not a bit of it. I shall thrive on it. Oh, I’m not going to overdo24 things. As ‘Josiah Allen’s wife,’ says, I shall be ‘mejum’. But I’ll have lots of spare time in the long winter evenings, and I’ve no vocation25 for fancy work. I’m going to teach over at Carmody, you know.”
“I don’t know it. I guess you’re going to teach right here in Avonlea. The trustees have decided to give you the school.”
“Mrs. Lynde!” cried Anne, springing to her feet in her surprise. “Why, I thought they had promised it to Gilbert Blythe!”
“So they did. But as soon as Gilbert heard that you had applied for it he went to them—they had a business meeting at the school last night, you know—and told them that he withdrew his application, and suggested that they accept yours. He said he was going to teach at White Sands. Of course he knew how much you wanted to stay with Marilla, and I must say I think it was real kind and thoughtful in him, that’s what. Real self-sacrificing, too, for he’ll have his board to pay at White Sands, and everybody knows he’s got to earn his own way through college. So the trustees decided to take you. I was tickled26 to death when Thomas came home and told me.”
“I don’t feel that I ought to take it,” murmured Anne. “I mean—I don’t think I ought to let Gilbert make such a sacrifice for—for me.”
“I guess you can’t prevent him now. He’s signed papers with the White Sands trustees. So it wouldn’t do him any good now if you were to refuse. Of course you’ll take the school. You’ll get along all right, now that there are no Pyes going. Josie was the last of them, and a good thing she was, that’s what. There’s been some Pye or other going to Avonlea school for the last twenty years, and I guess their mission in life was to keep school teachers reminded that earth isn’t their home. Bless my heart! What does all that winking28 and blinking at the Barry gable mean?”
“Diana is signaling for me to go over,” laughed Anne. “You know we keep up the old custom. Excuse me while I run over and see what she wants.”
Anne ran down the clover slope like a deer, and disappeared in the firry shadows of the Haunted Wood. Mrs. Lynde looked after her indulgently.
“There’s a good deal of the child about her yet in some ways.”
“There’s a good deal more of the woman about her in others,” retorted Marilla, with a momentary29 return of her old crispness.
But crispness was no longer Marilla’s distinguishing characteristic. As Mrs. Lynde told her Thomas that night.
Anne went to the little Avonlea graveyard31 the next evening to put fresh flowers on Matthew’s grave and water the Scotch32 rosebush. She lingered there until dusk, liking33 the peace and calm of the little place, with its poplars whose rustle34 was like low, friendly speech, and its whispering grasses growing at will among the graves. When she finally left it and walked down the long hill that sloped to the Lake of Shining Waters it was past sunset and all Avonlea lay before her in a dreamlike afterlight—“a haunt of ancient peace.” There was a freshness in the air as of a wind that had blown over honey-sweet fields of clover. Home lights twinkled out here and there among the homestead trees. Beyond lay the sea, misty35 and purple, with its haunting, unceasing murmur27. The west was a glory of soft mingled hues36, and the pond reflected them all in still softer shadings. The beauty of it all thrilled Anne’s heart, and she gratefully opened the gates of her soul to it.
“Dear old world,” she murmured, “you are very lovely, and I am glad to be alive in you.”
Halfway37 down the hill a tall lad came whistling out of a gate before the Blythe homestead. It was Gilbert, and the whistle died on his lips as he recognized Anne. He lifted his cap courteously38, but he would have passed on in silence, if Anne had not stopped and held out her hand.
“Gilbert,” she said, with scarlet39 cheeks, “I want to thank you for giving up the school for me. It was very good of you—and I want you to know that I appreciate it.”
Gilbert took the offered hand eagerly.
“It wasn’t particularly good of me at all, Anne. I was pleased to be able to do you some small service. Are we going to be friends after this? Have you really forgiven me my old fault?”
Anne laughed and tried unsuccessfully to withdraw her hand.
“I forgave you that day by the pond landing, although I didn’t know it. What a stubborn little goose I was. I’ve been—I may as well make a complete confession—I’ve been sorry ever since.”
“We are going to be the best of friends,” said Gilbert, jubilantly. “We were born to be good friends, Anne. You’ve thwarted40 destiny enough. I know we can help each other in many ways. You are going to keep up your studies, aren’t you? So am I. Come, I’m going to walk home with you.”
“Who was that came up the lane with you, Anne?”
“I didn’t think you and Gilbert Blythe were such good friends that you’d stand for half an hour at the gate talking to him,” said Marilla with a dry smile.
“We haven’t been—we’ve been good enemies. But we have decided that it will be much more sensible to be good friends in the future. Were we really there half an hour? It seemed just a few minutes. But, you see, we have five years’ lost conversations to catch up with, Marilla.”
Anne sat long at her window that night companioned by a glad content. The wind purred softly in the cherry boughs43, and the mint breaths came up to her. The stars twinkled over the pointed44 firs in the hollow and Diana’s light gleamed through the old gap.
Anne’s horizons had closed in since the night she had sat there after coming home from Queen’s; but if the path set before her feet was to be narrow she knew that flowers of quiet happiness would bloom along it. The joy of sincere work and worthy45 aspiration46 and congenial friendship were to be hers; nothing could rob her of her birthright of fancy or her ideal world of dreams. And there was always the bend in the road!
“‘God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world,’” whispered Anne softly.
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1
orchard
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| n.果园，果园里的全部果树，(美俚)棒球场 | |
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inert
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| adj.无活动能力的，惰性的；迟钝的 | |
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oculist
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| n.眼科医生 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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exclamation
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| n.感叹号，惊呼，惊叹词 | |
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6
rosy
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| adj.美好的，乐观的，玫瑰色的 | |
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7
courageously
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| ad.勇敢地，无畏地 | |
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8
frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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9
defiance
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| n.挑战，挑衅，蔑视，违抗 | |
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10
prohibition
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| n.禁止；禁令，禁律 | |
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resolutely
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| adj.坚决地，果断地 | |
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12
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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13
applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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cozy
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| adj.亲如手足的，密切的，暖和舒服的 | |
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15
milestone
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| n.里程碑；划时代的事件 | |
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16
fascination
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| n.令人着迷的事物，魅力，迷恋 | |
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17
checkered
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| adj.有方格图案的 | |
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18
scented
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| adj.有香味的；洒香水的；有气味的v.嗅到(scent的过去分词) | |
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19
twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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20
moths
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| n.蛾( moth的名词复数 ) | |
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21
mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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22
blessing
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| n.祈神赐福；祷告；祝福，祝愿 | |
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23
cramming
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| n.塞满，填鸭式的用功v.塞入( cram的现在分词 )；填塞；塞满；（为考试而）死记硬背功课 | |
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24
overdo
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| vt.把...做得过头，演得过火 | |
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25
vocation
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| n.职业，行业 | |
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tickled
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| （使）发痒( tickle的过去式和过去分词 )； （使）愉快，逗乐 | |
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27
murmur
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| n.低语，低声的怨言；v.低语，低声而言 | |
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28
winking
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| n.瞬眼，目语v.使眼色( wink的现在分词 )；递眼色（表示友好或高兴等）；（指光）闪烁；闪亮 | |
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29
momentary
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| adj.片刻的，瞬息的；短暂的 | |
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30
mellow
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| adj.柔和的；熟透的；v.变柔和；(使)成熟 | |
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31
graveyard
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| n.坟场 | |
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32
scotch
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| n.伤口，刻痕；苏格兰威士忌酒；v.粉碎，消灭，阻止；adj.苏格兰(人)的 | |
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33
liking
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| n.爱好；嗜好；喜欢 | |
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34
rustle
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| v.沙沙作响；偷盗(牛、马等)；n.沙沙声声 | |
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35
misty
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| adj.雾蒙蒙的，有雾的 | |
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36
hues
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| 色彩( hue的名词复数 )； 色调； 信仰； 观点 | |
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37
halfway
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| adj.中途的，不彻底的，部分的；adv.半路地，在中途，在半途 | |
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38
courteously
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| adv.有礼貌地，亲切地 | |
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39
scarlet
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| n.深红色，绯红色，红衣；adj.绯红色的 | |
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40
thwarted
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| 阻挠( thwart的过去式和过去分词 )； 使受挫折； 挫败； 横过 | |
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41
curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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42
vexed
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| adj.争论不休的；（指问题等）棘手的；争论不休的问题；烦恼的v.使烦恼( vex的过去式和过去分词 )；使苦恼；使生气；详细讨论 | |
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43
boughs
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| 大树枝( bough的名词复数 ) | |
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44
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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45
worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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46
aspiration
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| n.志向，志趣抱负；渴望；(语)送气音；吸出 | |
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