約 5,123,695 件
https://w.atwiki.jp/pyopyo0124/pages/53.html
CHAPTER IX UP CHAPTER XI CHAPTER X Anne s Apology Marilla said nothing to Matthew about the affair that evening; but when Anne proved still refractory the next morning an explanation had to be made to account for her absence from the breakfast table. Marilla told Matthew the whole story, taking pains to impress him with a due sense of the enormity of Anne s behavior. "It s a good thing Rachel Lynde got a calling down; she s a meddlesome old gossip," was Matthew s consolatory rejoinder. "Matthew Cuthbert, I m astonished at you. You know that Anne s behavior was dreadful, and yet you take her part! I suppose you ll be saying next thing that she oughtn t to be punished at all!" "Well now--no--not exactly," said Matthew uneasily. "I reckon she ought to be punished a little. But don t be too hard on her, Marilla. Recollect she hasn t ever had anyone to teach her right. You re--you re going to give her something to eat, aren t you?" "When did you ever hear of me starving people into good behavior?" demanded Marilla indignantly. "She ll have her meals regular, and I ll carry them up to her myself. But she ll stay up there until she s willing to apologize to Mrs. Lynde, and that s final, Matthew." Breakfast, dinner, and supper were very silent meals--for Anne still remained obdurate. After each meal Marilla carried a well-filled tray to the east gable and brought it down later on not noticeably depleted. Matthew eyed its last descent with a troubled eye. Had Anne eaten anything at all? When Marilla went out that evening to bring the cows from the back pasture, Matthew, who had been hanging about the barns and watching, slipped into the house with the air of a burglar and crept upstairs. As a general thing Matthew gravitated between the kitchen and the little bedroom off the hall where he slept; once in a while he ventured uncomfortably into the parlor or sitting room when the minister came to tea. But he had never been upstairs in his own house since the spring he helped Marilla paper the spare bedroom, and that was four years ago. He tiptoed along the hall and stood for several minutes outside the door of the east gable before he summoned courage to tap on it with his fingers and then open the door to peep in. Anne was sitting on the yellow chair by the window gazing mournfully out into the garden. Very small and unhappy she looked, and Matthew s heart smote him. He softly closed the door and tiptoed over to her. "Anne," he whispered, as if afraid of being overheard, "how are you making it, Anne?" Anne smiled wanly. "Pretty well. I imagine a good deal, and that helps to pass the time. Of course, it s rather lonesome. But then, I may as well get used to that." Anne smiled again, bravely facing the long years of solitary imprisonment before her. Matthew recollected that he must say what he had come to say without loss of time, lest Marilla return prematurely. "Well now, Anne, don t you think you d better do it and have it over with?" he whispered. "It ll have to be done sooner or later, you know, for Marilla s a dreadful deter- mined woman--dreadful determined, Anne. Do it right off, I say, and have it over." "Do you mean apologize to Mrs. Lynde?" "Yes--apologize--that s the very word," said Matthew eagerly. "Just smooth it over so to speak. That s what I was trying to get at." "I suppose I could do it to oblige you," said Anne thoughtfully. "It would be true enough to say I am sorry, because I AM sorry now. I wasn t a bit sorry last night. I was mad clear through, and I stayed mad all night. I know I did because I woke up three times and I was just furious every time. But this morning it was over. I wasn t in a temper anymore--and it left a dreadful sort of goneness, too. I felt so ashamed of myself. But I just couldn t think of going and telling Mrs. Lynde so. It would be so humiliating. I made up my mind I d stay shut up here forever rather than do that. But still--I d do anything for you--if you really want me to--" "Well now, of course I do. It s terrible lonesome downstairs without you. Just go and smooth things over-- that s a good girl." "Very well," said Anne resignedly. "I ll tell Marilla as soon as she comes in I ve repented." "That s right--that s right, Anne. But don t tell Marilla I said anything about it. She might think I was putting my oar in and I promised not to do that." "Wild horses won t drag the secret from me," promised Anne solemnly. "How would wild horses drag a secret from a person anyhow?" But Matthew was gone, scared at his own success. He fled hastily to the remotest corner of the horse pasture lest Marilla should suspect what he had been up to. Marilla herself, upon her return to the house, was agreeably surprised to hear a plaintive voice calling, "Marilla" over the banisters. "Well?" she said, going into the hall. "I m sorry I lost my temper and said rude things, and I m willing to go and tell Mrs. Lynde so." "Very well." Marilla s crispness gave no sign of her relief. She had been wondering what under the canopy she should do if Anne did not give in. "I ll take you down after milking." Accordingly, after milking, behold Marilla and Anne walking down the lane, the former erect and triumphant, the latter drooping and dejected. But halfway down Anne s dejection vanished as if by enchantment. She lifted her head and stepped lightly along, her eyes fixed on the sunset sky and an air of subdued exhilaration about her. Marilla beheld the change disapprovingly. This was no meek penitent such as it behooved her to take into the presence of the offended Mrs. Lynde. "What are you thinking of, Anne?" she asked sharply. "I m imagining out what I must say to Mrs. Lynde," answered Anne dreamily. This was satisfactory--or should have been so. But Marilla could not rid herself of the notion that something in her scheme of punishment was going askew. Anne had no business to look so rapt and radiant. Rapt and radiant Anne continued until they were in the very presence of Mrs. Lynde, who was sitting knitting by her kitchen window. Then the radiance vanished. Mournful penitence appeared on every feature. Before a word was spoken Anne suddenly went down on her knees before the astonished Mrs. Rachel and held out her hands beseechingly. "Oh, Mrs. Lynde, I am so extremely sorry," she said with a quiver in her voice. "I could never express all my sorrow, no, not if I used up a whole dictionary. You must just imagine it. I behaved terribly to you--and I ve disgraced the dear friends, Matthew and Marilla, who have let me stay at Green Gables although I m not a boy. I m a dreadfully wicked and ungrateful girl, and I deserve to be punished and cast out by respectable people forever. It was very wicked of me to fly into a temper because you told me the truth. It WAS the truth; every word you said was true. My hair is red and I m freckled and skinny and ugly. What I said to you was true, too, but I shouldn t have said it. Oh, Mrs. Lynde, please, please, forgive me. If you refuse it will be a lifelong sorrow on a poor little orphan girl, would you, even if she had a dreadful temper? Oh, I am sure you wouldn t. Please say you forgive me, Mrs. Lynde." Anne clasped her hands together, bowed her head, and waited for the word of judgment. There was no mistaking her sincerity--it breathed in every tone of her voice. Both Marilla and Mrs. Lynde recognized its unmistakable ring. But the former under- stood in dismay that Anne was actually enjoying her valley of humiliation--was reveling in the thoroughness of her abasement. Where was the wholesome punishment upon which she, Marilla, had plumed herself? Anne had turned it into a species of positive pleasure. Good Mrs. Lynde, not being overburdened with perception, did not see this. She only perceived that Anne had made a very thorough apology and all resentment vanished from her kindly, if somewhat officious, heart. "There, there, get up, child," she said heartily. "Of course I forgive you. I guess I was a little too hard on you, anyway. But I m such an outspoken person. You just mustn t mind me, that s what. It can t be denied your hair is terrible red; but I knew a girl once--went to school with her, in fact--whose hair was every mite as red as yours when she was young, but when she grew up it darkened to a real handsome auburn. I wouldn t be a mite surprised if yours did, too--not a mite." "Oh, Mrs. Lynde!" Anne drew a long breath as she rose to her feet. "You have given me a hope. I shall always feel that you are a benefactor. Oh, I could endure anything if I only thought my hair would be a handsome auburn when I grew up. It would be so much easier to be good if one s hair was a handsome auburn, don t you think? And now may I go out into your garden and sit on that bench under the apple-trees while you and Marilla are talking? There is so much more scope for imagination out there." "Laws, yes, run along, child. And you can pick a bouquet of them white June lilies over in the corner if you like." As the door closed behind Anne Mrs. Lynde got briskly up to light a lamp. "She s a real odd little thing. Take this chair, Marilla; it s easier than the one you ve got; I just keep that for the hired boy to sit on. Yes, she certainly is an odd child, but there is something kind of taking about her after all. I don t feel so surprised at you and Matthew keeping her as I did--nor so sorry for you, either. She may turn out all right. Of course, she has a queer way of expressing herself-- a little too--well, too kind of forcible, you know; but she ll likely get over that now that she s come to live among civilized folks. And then, her temper s pretty quick, I guess; but there s one comfort, a child that has a quick temper, just blaze up and cool down, ain t never likely to be sly or deceitful. Preserve me from a sly child, that s what. On the whole, Marilla, I kind of like her." When Marilla went home Anne came out of the fragrant twilight of the orchard with a sheaf of white narcissi in her hands. "I apologized pretty well, didn t I?" she said proudly as they went down the lane. "I thought since I had to do it I might as well do it thoroughly." "You did it thoroughly, all right enough," was Marilla s comment. Marilla was dismayed at finding herself inclined to laugh over the recollection. She had also an uneasy feeling that she ought to scold Anne for apologizing so well; but then, that was ridiculous! She compromised with her conscience by saying severely "I hope you won t have occasion to make many more such apologies. I hope you ll try to control your temper now, Anne." "That wouldn t be so hard if people wouldn t twit me about my looks," said Anne with a sigh. "I don t get cross about other things; but I m SO tired of being twitted about my hair and it just makes me boil right over. Do you suppose my hair will really be a handsome auburn when I grow up?" "You shouldn t think so much about your looks, Anne. I m afraid you are a very vain little girl." "How can I be vain when I know I m homely?" protested Anne. "I love pretty things; and I hate to look in the glass and see something that isn t pretty. It makes me feel so sorrowful--just as I feel when I look at any ugly thing. I pity it because it isn t beautiful." "Handsome is as handsome does," quoted Marilla. "I ve had that said to me before, but I have my doubts about it," remarked skeptical Anne, sniffing at her narcissi. "Oh, aren t these flowers sweet! It was lovely of Mrs. Lynde to give them to me. I have no hard feelings against Mrs. Lynde now. It gives you a lovely, comfortable feeling to apologize and be forgiven, doesn t it? Aren t the stars bright tonight? If you could live in a star, which one would you pick? I d like that lovely clear big one away over there above that dark hill." "Anne, do hold your tongue." said Marilla, thoroughly worn out trying to follow the gyrations of Anne s thoughts. Anne said no more until they turned into their own lane. A little gypsy wind came down it to meet them, laden with the spicy perfume of young dew-wet ferns. Far up in the shadows a cheerful light gleamed out through the trees from the kitchen at Green Gables. Anne suddenly came close to Marilla and slipped her hand into the older woman s hard palm. "It s lovely to be going home and know it s home," she said. "I love Green Gables already, and I never loved any place before. No place ever seemed like home. Oh, Marilla, I m so happy. I could pray right now and not find it a bit hard." Something warm and pleasant welled up in Marilla s heart at touch of that thin little hand in her own--a throb of the maternity she had missed, perhaps. Its very unaccustomedness and sweetness disturbed her. She hastened to restore her sensations to their normal calm by inculcating a moral. "If you ll be a good girl you ll always be happy, Anne. And you should never find it hard to say your prayers." "Saying one s prayers isn t exactly the same thing as praying," said Anne meditatively. "But I m going to imagine that I m the wind that is blowing up there in those tree tops. When I get tired of the trees I ll imagine I m gently waving down here in the ferns--and then I ll fly over to Mrs. Lynde s garden and set the flowers dancing--and then I ll go with one great swoop over the clover field--and then I ll blow over the Lake of Shining Waters and ripple it all up into little sparkling waves. Oh, there s so much scope for imagination in a wind! So I ll not talk any more just now, Marilla." "Thanks be to goodness for that," breathed Marilla in devout relief. CHAPTER IX UP CHAPTER XI 今日 - | 昨日 - | Total - since 05 June 2007 last update 2007-06-05 01 29 12 (Tue)
https://w.atwiki.jp/pyopyo0124/pages/65.html
CHAPTER XXXV UP CHAPTER XXXVII CHAPTER XXXVI The Glory and the Dream 第36章 栄光と夢(松本訳) On the morning when the final results of all the examinations were to be posted on the bulletin board at Queen s, Anne and Jane walked down the street together. Jane was smiling and happy; examinations were over and she was comfortably sure she had made a pass at least; further considerations troubled Jane not at all; she had no soaring ambitions and consequently was not affected with the unrest attendant thereon. For we pay a price for everything we get or take in this world; and although ambitions are well worth having, they are not to be cheaply won, but exact their dues of work and self-denial, anxiety and discouragement. Anne was pale and quiet; in ten more minutes she would know who had won the medal and who the Avery. Beyond those ten minutes there did not seem, just then, to be anything worth being called Time. "Of course you ll win one of them anyhow," said Jane, who couldn t understand how the faculty could be so unfair as to order it otherwise. 「who couldn t understand how the faculty could be so unfair as to order it otherwise」(たぶん、とても英語的な表現だから、なのだと思いますが)とても難しい。仮定法過去として解釈するほうがいいと思います。なので……、「ほかの順位づけをするなどというフェアではないことを、教授陣ができるなんて、ジェーンには理解できなかった(ので、そのようなことはないと信じていた)」直訳するとこんな感じでしょうか "I have not hope of the Avery," said Anne. "Everybody says Emily Clay will win it. And I m not going to march up to that bulletin board and look at it before everybody. I haven t the moral courage. I m going straight to the girls dressing room. You must read the announcements and then come and tell me, Jane. And I implore you in the name of our old friendship to do it as quickly as possible. 「in the name of our old friendship」big words ではない?神の御名において(in the name of God (Heaven))を思い出すのですが If I have failed just say so, without trying to break it gently; and whatever you do DON T sympathize with me. Promise me this, Jane." Jane promised solemnly; but, as it happened, there was no necessity for such a promise. When they went up the entrance steps of Queen s they found the hall full of boys who were carrying Gilbert Blythe around on their shoulders and yelling at the tops of their voices, "Hurrah for Blythe, Medalist!" For a moment Anne felt one sickening pang of defeat and disappointment. So she had failed and Gilbert had won! Well, Matthew would be sorry--he had been so sure she would win. And then! Somebody called out "Three cheers for Miss Shirley, winner of the Avery!" 「Three cheers」何と3回言うのでしょう? このあたり、経験がないとわからない "Oh, Anne," gasped Jane, as they fled to the girls dressing room amid hearty cheers. "Oh, Anne I m so proud! Isn t it splendid?" 「splendid」この章では、連発されるコトバ And then the girls were around them and Anne was the center of a laughing, congratulating group. Her shoulders were thumped and her hands shaken vigorously. She was pushed and pulled and hugged and among it all she managed to whisper to Jane "Oh, won t Matthew and Marilla be pleased! I must write the news home right away." Commencement was the next important happening. The exercises were held in the big assembly hall of the Academy. 「The exercises」これは練習ではなく、『式』のこと Addresses were given, 「Addresses」(公式の)あいさつ。住所ではない essays read, songs sung, the public award of diplomas, prizes and medals made. 「essays read」論文が読み上げられる。日本ではあまりないようですが、英米ではあるような印象があります。具体例は出せませんが 「diplomas」 卒業証書。ここでは、大学の卒業である、Bachelor(学士)ではない。下のほうも参考に Matthew and Marilla were there, with eyes and ears for only one student on the platform--a tall girl in pale green, 「a tall girl in pale green」 背が高くなったのです。そして、この緑のドレスはマリラが持たせてくれたもの(one evening she went up to the east gable with her arms full of a delicate pale green material.-中略-The green dress was made up with as many tucks and frills and shirrings as Emily s taste permitted. CHAPTER XXXIV with impression A Queen s Girl with faintly flushed cheeks and starry eyes, who read the best essay and was pointed out and whispered about as the Avery winner. "Reckon you re glad we kept her, Marilla?" whispered Matthew, speaking for the first time since he had entered the hall, when Anne had finished her essay. "It s not the first time I ve been glad," retorted Marilla. "You do like to rub things in, Matthew Cuthbert." Miss Barry, who was sitting behind them, leaned forward and poked Marilla in the back with her parasol. "Aren t you proud of that Anne-girl? I am," she said. Anne went home to Avonlea with Matthew and Marilla that evening. 「that evening」説明はありませんが、汽車で帰ったのではないでしょうか。馬車は時間がかかるので She had not been home since April and she felt that she could not wait another day. The apple blossoms were out and the world was fresh and young. 「apple blossomls」りんごの花。この物語では、大切なときにはりんごの花が近くにあるときがある。CHAPTER VIII with impression? Anne s Bringing-up Is Begun では、グリーンゲイブルズに置いてもらえることになったアンはマリラと話すときには、アンが枝を折ってもってきたりんごの花がテーブルに生けてあった。なお、汽車で帰ったのなら、この日、White Way of Delight 歓びの白い路(松本訳)(CHAPTER II with impression Matthew Cuthbert is surprised )は通っていないのではないかと思います Diana was at Green Gables to meet her. In her own white room, where Marilla had set a flowering house rose on the window sill, 「Marilla had set a flowering house rose on the window sill」マリラも変わった。または、アンが花を好きだったのを知っているので、帰宅を大歓迎する気持ちの表れと考えるのがいいのかも。何せ、CHAPTER VIII with impression? Anne s Bringing-up Is Begun では、アンが部屋にりんごの花を持っていっていいかと尋ねたら、"No; you don t want your room cluttered up with flowers. You should have left them on the tree in the first place." と撥ねつけたのですから Anne looked about her and drew a long breath of happiness. "Oh, Diana, it s so good to be back again. It s so good to see those pointed firs coming out against the pink sky-- and that white orchard and the old Snow Queen. 「old Snow Queen」この old は、古いというよりは、親しみを表わしていると考えるのがいいでしょう。マシューもマリラも年を取ったとの話題が出てくるので、雪の女王さまも年を取ったというのでもいいのですが Isn t the breath of the mint delicious? And that tea rose--why, it s a song and a hope and a prayer all in one. And it s GOOD to see you again, Diana!" "I thought you liked that Stella Maynard better than me," said Diana reproachfully. "Josie Pye told me you did. Josie said you were INFATUATED with her." Anne laughed and pelted Diana with the faded "June lilies" of her bouquet. 「the faded "June lilies" of her bouquet」卒業式に花束をもらったのでしょう。faded というのがそれを表わしているのではないでしょうか "Stella Maynard is the dearest girl in the world except one and you are that one, Diana," she said. "I love you more than ever--and I ve so many things to tell you. But just now I feel as if it were joy enough to sit here and look at you. I m tired, I think--tired of being studious and ambitious. I mean to spend at least two hours tomorrow lying out in the orchard grass, thinking of absolutely nothing." "You ve done splendidly, Anne. I suppose you won t be teaching now that you ve won the Avery?" "No. I m going to Redmond in September. Doesn t it seem wonderful? I ll have a brand new stock of ambition laid in by that time after three glorious, golden months of vacation. Jane and Ruby are going to teach. Isn t it splendid to think we all got through even to Moody Spurgeon and Josie Pye?" "The Newbridge trustees have offered Jane their school already," said Diana. "Gilbert Blythe is going to teach, too. He has to. His father can t afford to send him to college next year, 「His father can t afford to send him to college next year」前章(CHAPTER XXXV with impression The Winter at Queen s)のジョージーの「My father can afford to send me」が思い起こされる after all, so he means to earn his own way through. I expect he ll get the school here if Miss Ames decides to leave." 「Miss Ames」ステイシー先生の後任も女の先生。ステイシー先生の評価は決して低いものではなかったようです。何せ、アヴォンリーでははじめての女性教師で(The trustees have hired a new teacher and it s a lady. Her name is Miss Muriel Stacy. -中略- they ve never had a female teacher in Avonlea before... CHAPTER XXII with impression? Anne is Invited Out to Tea )、批判の目に曝らされていたはずですから。 Anne felt a queer little sensation of dismayed surprise. She had not known this; she had expected that Gilbert would be going to Redmond also. What would she do without their inspiring rivalry? Would not work, even at a coeducational college with a real degree in prospect, be rather flat without her friend the enemy? 「coeducational college」共学の大学。高等教育は、まだ、女性には開かれていない場合が多かった時代 「a real degree in prospect」本当の学位を取ろうと、といった感じでしょうか。この degree は、アンにとってはBA(文学士)。モードは取れなかったもの、である The next morning at breakfast it suddenly struck Anne that Matthew was not looking well. Surely he was much grayer than he had been a year before. "Marilla," she said hesitatingly when he had gone out, "is Matthew quite well?" "No, he isn t," said Marilla in a troubled tone. "He s had some real bad spells with his heart this spring and he won t spare himself a mite. I ve been real worried about him, but he s some better this while back and we ve got a good hired man, so I m hoping he ll kind of rest and pick up. Maybe he will now you re home. You always cheer him up." Anne leaned across the table and took Marilla s face in her hands. "You are not looking as well yourself as I d like to see you, Marilla. You look tired. I m afraid you ve been working too hard. You must take a rest, now that I m home. I m just going to take this one day off to visit all the dear old spots and hunt up my old dreams, and then it will be your turn to be lazy while I do the work." Marilla smiled affectionately at her girl. 「Marilla smiled affectionately at her girl」マリラの表情がとてもよくなったのがここで好意的に描かれている "It s not the work--it s my head. I ve got a pain so often now--behind my eyes. Doctor Spencer s been fussing with glasses, but they don t do me any good. There is a distinguished oculist coming to the Island the last of June and the doctor says I must see him. I guess I ll have to. I can t read or sew with any comfort now. Well, Anne, you ve done real well at Queen s I must say. To take First Class License in one year and win the Avery scholarship--well, well, Mrs. Lynde says pride goes before a fall and she doesn t believe in the higher education of women at all; she says it unfits them for woman s true sphere. I don t believe a word of it. Speaking of Rachel reminds me--did you hear anything about the Abbey Bank lately, Anne?" "I heard it was shaky," answered Anne. "Why?" "That is what Rachel said. She was up here one day last week and said there was some talk about it. Matthew felt real worried. All we have saved is in that bank--every penny. I wanted Matthew to put it in the Savings Bank in the first place, 「the Savings Bank」貯蓄銀行、と訳すことはできますが、ほかの銀行との違いがよくわからない。文脈から安全性が高そうなのはわかりますが。ウィキペディアを読んではみたものの、よくわかりませんでした but old Mr. Abbey was a great friend of father s and he d always banked with him. 「he d always banked with him」主語の he は father、him は old Mr. Abbey。逆?? エイゴの代名詞は難しい Matthew said any bank with him at the head of it was good enough for anybody." "I think he has only been its nominal head for many years," said Anne. "He is a very old man; his nephews are really at the head of the institution." 「his nephews」複数形なので、アベイ銀行の経営に携わっている甥はひとりではない "Well, when Rachel told us that, I wanted Matthew to draw our money right out and he said he d think of it. But Mr. Russell told him yesterday that the bank was all right." 「Mr. Russell」この人は誰? ここにしか出てこない Anne had her good day in the companionship of the outdoor world. She never forgot that day; it was so bright and golden and fair, so free from shadow and so lavish of blossom. Anne spent some of its rich hours in the orchard; she went to the Dryad s Bubble and Willowmere and Violet Vale; she called at the manse and had a satisfying talk with Mrs. Allan; and finally in the evening she went with Matthew for the cows, through Lovers Lane to the back pasture. The woods were all gloried through with sunset and the warm splendor of it streamed down through the hill gaps in the west. Matthew walked slowly with bent head; Anne, tall and erect, suited her springing step to his. こういう、日常が凝縮された日だからこそ、忘れ難い日となる "You ve been working too hard today, Matthew," she said reproachfully. "Why won t you take things easier?" "Well now, I can t seem to," said Matthew, as he opened the yard gate to let the cows through. "It s only that I m getting old, Anne, and keep forgetting it. Well, well, I ve always worked pretty hard and I d rather drop in harness." 「drop in harness」 drop:命を失う、in harness:執務中に。drop in:立ち寄る、ではない "If I had been the boy you sent for," said Anne wistfully, "I d be able to help you so much now and spare you in a hundred ways. I could find it in my heart to wish I had been, just for that." "Well now, I d rather have you than a dozen boys, Anne," said Matthew patting her hand. "Just mind you that-- rather than a dozen boys. Well now, I guess it wasn t a boy that took the Avery scholarship, was it? 「it wasn t a boy」この it は a boy を指す。ここでは形式主語ともいえるかもしれませんが、すぐ後の「It was a girl」の It は主語。代名詞は、応用的な使い方になると難しい It was a girl--my girl--my girl that I m proud of." マシューは、アンを褒めるのは、はっきり口に出して伝えている。CHAPTER XXV with impression? Matthew Insists on Puffed Sleeves では、"Well now, I was proud of her and I did tell her so fore she went upstairs," said Matthew. こういう会話(手をたたかれて、話をされる)をしているので、アンにとって「She never forgot that day」となる。ちょっとわかりやすい演出ですが He smiled his shy smile at her as he went into the yard. Anne took the memory of it with her when she went to her room that night and sat for a long while at her open window, thinking of the past and dreaming of the future. Outside the Snow Queen was mistily white in the moonshine; the frogs were singing in the marsh beyond Orchard Slope. 「Outside the Snow Queen was mistily white in the moonshine; the frogs were singing in the marsh beyond Orchard Slope.」アンがマシューに連れられ、ブライトリバー駅からはじめてグリーンゲイブルズに行くとき、馬車の上からふたりが見た/聞いた光景が思い出される描写。この演出はニクい。CHAPTER II with impression Matthew Cuthbert is surprised では、From the marsh at the head of the pond came the clear, mournfully-sweet chorus of the frogs. There was a little gray house peering around a white apple orchard on a slope beyond -(ごっそり)中略- At last they (アンの eyes) lingered on one away to the left, far back from the road, dimly white with blossoming trees in the twilight of the surrounding woods. Over it, in the stainless southwest sky, a great crystal-white star was shining like a lamp of guidance and promise. こときは月ではなく、星ですが Anne always remembered the silvery, peaceful beauty and fragrant calm of that night. It was the last night before sorrow touched her life; and no life is ever quite the same again when once that cold, sanctifying touch has been laid upon it. CHAPTER XXXV UP CHAPTER XXXVII 04 August 2007 今日 - | 昨日 - | Total - since 04 August 2007 last update 2007-08-04 18 16 15 (Sat)
https://w.atwiki.jp/pyopyo0124/pages/11.html
もくじ 赤毛のアンに関するページ by いろんな人たち 赤毛のアンの電子図書館 赤毛のアン記念館・村岡花子文庫 Anne's Home Page Green Gables 赤毛のアン@ウィキペディア L. M. Montgomery Institute Junko of GreenVillas 赤毛のアンドットネット アニメーション 赤毛のアン アニメーション 赤毛のアン@ウィキペディア 赤毛のアンに関するページの特に面白いところ by いろんな人たち ぴょぴょのぶろぐ 赤毛のアンに関するページ by いろんな人たち 赤毛のアンの電子図書館 松本侑子さん(集英社版の翻訳者)による情報ページ 赤毛のアン記念館・村岡花子文庫 あの、村岡花子さんの、書斎と関連資料を公開している Anne s Home Page aerith さんのページ:充実してます must seeのページ 「I want to know」のコーナーでアンに関する質問や答えが書き込めます。 過去のものはNotebookデイビーのノートブックにまとめられていて、なるほど~の連続です。絵/図もあります。 Green Gables カナダのプリンスエドワード州の公式ページにあるグリーンゲイブルズの紹介ページ(モデルになったというモンゴメリのいとこの家:今は、アンの部屋とかマリラの部屋とか「赤毛のアン」の世界に合わせてあるようです)。QuickTime VRで部屋の中を見ることができる。部屋に入って、ぐる~んとひとまわりできる。 英語 アンの部屋は、壁紙が花柄なので、アンがクイーン学院に入るころかその後、ということになりそう。また、窓辺にある蝋燭の載っているテーブルは3本足だけども天板は丸。赤毛のアンの第3章の、マリラがアンをベッドまで連れていく場面では、蝋燭を置くのは三角形のテーブル(a three-legged, three-cornerd table:CHAPTER III Marilla Cuthbert Is Surprised)となっていますけど。 赤毛のアン@ウィキペディア ウィキペディアの赤毛のアンのページ もちろん書き換えもできます L. M. Montgomery Institute University of Prince Edward Islandにある、モンゴメリの研究をしているところ、らしい。 研究費がないとか、パートナーシップが必要とか書いてあって、彼の国も研究費獲得は大変なようです。 英語 クイーン学院(Queen s Academy)のモデルとなったPrince of Wales Collegeが、St. Dunstan’s University とともに1969年にUniversity of Prince Edward Islandとなったとhttp //welcome.upei.ca/html/faqs.html にある。ちなみに、Prince of Wales Collegeが共学になったのは1879年。 Junko of GreenVillas しらいじゅんこ さんのページ:アン年表がある 赤毛のアンドットネット 「2002年夏にプリンスエドワード島で結婚式を挙げました。」という、たぶん「さやか」さんだと思うのですが、のページ。プリンスエドワード島に、アンにかかわるところに行かれていて、細かいことも紹介されています アニメーション 赤毛のアン バンダイビジュアルの公式ホームページ 子供向けなので、物足りない感じあり。 アニメーションのアンが好きなひとには、ないよりはまし、かも オープニングの動画が見られる 「聞こえるかしら~♪」 アニメーション 赤毛のアン@ウィキペディア ウィキペディアのアニメーションの赤毛のアンのページ 赤毛のアンに関するページの特に面白いところ by いろんな人たち ★ 深い階層のページもあるので、もしかしたら、リンクが切れているかもしれません。その場合は、上にご紹介のトップページから見つけてみてください アンブックスの英語版:モンゴメリの持っていたもの:サイイン入り by L. M. Montgomery Institute すべてに猫マークが入っています。モードって大人になっても、おちゃめ ぴょぴょのぶろぐ 本を読む、映画を見る by ぴょぴょ @ あめーばぶろぐ 連絡がしたいという(奇特な)方は、右下にある「管理者に問合せ」からお願いします 今日 - | 昨日 - | Total - since 03 June 2007 last update 2007-06-09 18 16 07 (Sat)
https://w.atwiki.jp/pyopyo0124/pages/30.html
CHAPTER XV UP CHAPTER XVII CHAPTER XVI Diana Is Invited to Tea with Tragic Results OCTOBER was a beautiful month at Green Gables, when the birches in the hollow turned as golden as sunshine and the maples behind the orchard were royal crimson and the wild cherry trees along the lane put on the loveliest shades of dark red and bronzy green, while the fields sunned themselves in aftermaths. Anne reveled in the world of color about her. "Oh, Marilla," she exclaimed one Saturday morning, coming dancing in with her arms full of gorgeous boughs, "I m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers. It would be terrible if we just skipped from September to November, wouldn t it? Look at these maple branches. Don t they give you a thrill--several thrills? I m going to decorate my room with them." "Messy things," said Marilla, whose aesthetic sense was not noticeably developed. "You clutter up your room entirely too much with out-of-doors stuff, Anne. Bedrooms were made to sleep in." "Oh, and dream in too, Marilla. And you know one can dream so much better in a room where there are pretty things. I m going to put these boughs in the old blue jug and set them on my table." "Mind you don t drop leaves all over the stairs then. I m going on a meeting of the Aid Society at Carmody this afternoon, Anne, and I won t likely be home before dark. You ll have to get Matthew and Jerry their supper, so mind you don t forget to put the tea to draw until you sit down at the table as you did last time." "It was dreadful of me to forget," said Anne apologetically, "but that was the afternoon I was trying to think of a name for Violet Vale and it crowded other things out. Matthew was so good. He never scolded a bit. He put the tea down himself and said we could wait awhile as well as not. And I told him a lovely fairy story while we were waiting, so he didn t find the time long at all. It was a beautiful fairy story, Marilla. I forgot the end of it, so I made up an end for it myself and Matthew said he couldn t tell where the join came in." "Matthew would think it all right, Anne, if you took a notion to get up and have dinner in the middle of the night. But you keep your wits about you this time. And--I don t really know if I m doing right--it may make you more addlepated than ever--but you can ask Diana to come over and spend the afternoon with you and have tea here." "Oh, Marilla!" Anne clasped her hands. "How perfectly lovely! You ARE able to imagine things after all or else you d never have understood how I ve longed for that very thing. It will seem so nice and grown-uppish. No fear of my forgetting to put the tea to draw when I have company. Oh, Marilla, can I use the rosebud spray tea set?" "No, indeed! The rosebud tea set! Well, what next? You know I never use that except for the minister or the Aids. You ll put down the old brown tea set. But you can open the little yellow crock of cherry preserves. It s time it was being used anyhow--I believe it s beginning to work. And you can cut some fruit cake and have some of the cookies and snaps." "I can just imagine myself sitting down at the head of the table and pouring out the tea," said Anne, shutting her eyes ecstatically. "And asking Diana if she takes sugar! I know she doesn t but of course I ll ask her just as if I didn t know. And then pressing her to take another piece of fruit cake and another helping of preserves. Oh, Marilla, it s a wonderful sensation just to think of it. Can I take her into the spare room to lay off her hat when she comes? And then into the parlor to sit?" "No. The sitting room will do for you and your company. But there s a bottle half full of raspberry cordial that was left over from the church social the other night. It s on the second shelf of the sitting-room closet and you and Diana can have it if you like, and a cooky to eat with it along in the afternoon, for I daresay Matthew ll be late coming in to tea since he s hauling potatoes to the vessel." Anne flew down to the hollow, past the Dryad s Bubble and up the spruce path to Orchard Slope, to ask Diana to tea. As a result just after Marilla had driven off to Carmody, Diana came over, dressed in HER second-best dress and looking exactly as it is proper to look when asked out to tea. At other times she was wont to run into the kitchen without knocking; but now she knocked primly at the front door. And when Anne, dressed in her second best, as primly opened it, both little girls shook hands as gravely as if they had never met before. This unnatural solemnity lasted until after Diana had been taken to the east gable to lay off her hat and then had sat for ten minutes in the sitting room, toes in position. "How is your mother?" inquired Anne politely, just as if she had not seen Mrs. Barry picking apples that morning in excellent health and spirits. "She is very well, thank you. I suppose Mr. Cuthbert is hauling potatoes to the LILY SANDS this afternoon, is he?" said Diana, who had ridden down to Mr. Harmon Andrews s that morning in Matthew s cart. "Yes. Our potato crop is very good this year. I hope your father s crop is good too." "It is fairly good, thank you. Have you picked many of your apples yet?" "Oh, ever so many," said Anne forgetting to be dignified and jumping up quickly. "Let s go out to the orchard and get some of the Red Sweetings, Diana. Marilla says we can have all that are left on the tree. Marilla is a very generous woman. She said we could have fruit cake and cherry preserves for tea. But it isn t good manners to tell your company what you are going to give them to eat, so I won t tell you what she said we could have to drink. Only it begins with an R and a C and it s bright red color. I love bright red drinks, don t you? They taste twice as good as any other color." The orchard, with its great sweeping boughs that bent to the ground with fruit, proved so delightful that the little girls spent most of the afternoon in it, sitting in a grassy corner where the frost had spared the green and the mellow autumn sunshine lingered warmly, eating apples and talking as hard as they could. Diana had much to tell Anne of what went on in school. She had to sit with Gertie Pye and she hated it; Gertie squeaked her pencil all the time and it just made her--Diana s--blood run cold; Ruby Gillis had charmed all her warts away, true s you live, with a magic pebble that old Mary Joe from the Creek gave her. You had to rub the warts with the pebble and then throw it away over your left shoulder at the time of the new moon and the warts would all go. Charlie Sloane s name was written up with Em White s on the porch wall and Em White was AWFUL MAD about it; Sam Boulter had "sassed" Mr. Phillips in class and Mr. Phillips whipped him and Sam s father came down to the school and dared Mr. Phillips to lay a hand on one of his children again; and Mattie Andrews had a new red hood and a blue crossover with tassels on it and the airs she put on about it were perfectly sickening; and Lizzie Wright didn t speak to Mamie Wilson because Mamie Wilson s grown-up sister had cut out Lizzie Wright s grown-up sister with her beau; and everybody missed Anne so and wished she s come to school again; and Gilbert Blythe-- But Anne didn t want to hear about Gilbert Blythe. She jumped up hurriedly and said suppose they go in and have some raspberry cordial. Anne looked on the second shelf of the room pantry but there was no bottle of raspberry cordial there. Search revealed it away back on the top shelf. Anne put it on a tray and set it on the table with a tumbler. "Now, please help yourself, Diana," she said politely. "I don t believe I ll have any just now. I don t feel as if I wanted any after all those apples." Diana poured herself out a tumblerful, looked at its bright-red hue admiringly, and then sipped it daintily. "That s awfully nice raspberry cordial, Anne," she said. "I didn t know raspberry cordial was so nice." "I m real glad you like it. Take as much as you want. I m going to run out and stir the fire up. There are so many responsibilities on a person s mind when they re keeping house, isn t there?" When Anne came back from the kitchen Diana was drinking her second glassful of cordial; and, being entreated thereto by Anne, she offered no particular objection to the drinking of a third. The tumblerfuls were generous ones and the raspberry cordial was certainly very nice. "The nicest I ever drank," said Diana. "It s ever so much nicer than Mrs. Lynde s, although she brags of hers so much. It doesn t taste a bit like hers." "I should think Marilla s raspberry cordial would prob ly be much nicer than Mrs. Lynde s," said Anne loyally. "Marilla is a famous cook. She is trying to teach me to cook but I assure you, Diana, it is uphill work. There s so little scope for imagination in cookery. You just have to go by rules. The last time I made a cake I forgot to put the flour in. I was thinking the loveliest story about you and me, Diana. I thought you were desperately ill with smallpox and everybody deserted you, but I went boldly to your bedside and nursed you back to life; and then I took the smallpox and died and I was buried under those poplar trees in the graveyard and you planted a rosebush by my grave and watered it with your tears; and you never, never forgot the friend of your youth who sacrificed her life for you. Oh, it was such a pathetic tale, Diana. The tears just rained down over my cheeks while I mixed the cake. But I forgot the flour and the cake was a dismal failure. Flour is so essential to cakes, you know. Marilla was very cross and I don t wonder. I m a great trial to her. She was terribly mortified about the pudding sauce last week. We had a plum pudding for dinner on Tuesday and there was half the pudding and a pitcherful of sauce left over. Marilla said there was enough for another dinner and told me to set it on the pantry shelf and cover it. I meant to cover it just as much as could be, Diana, but when I carried it in I was imagining I was a nun--of course I m a Protestant but I imagined I was a Catholic--taking the veil to bury a broken heart in cloistered seclusion; and I forgot all about covering the pudding sauce. I thought of it next morning and ran to the pantry. Diana, fancy if you can my extreme horror at finding a mouse drowned in that pudding sauce! I lifted the mouse out with a spoon and threw it out in the yard and then I washed the spoon in three waters. Marilla was out milking and I fully intended to ask her when she came in if I d give the sauce to the pigs; but when she did come in I was imagining that I was a frost fairy going through the woods turning the trees red and yellow, whichever they wanted to be, so I never thought about the pudding sauce again and Marilla sent me out to pick apples. Well, Mr. and Mrs. Chester Ross from Spencervale came here that morning. You know they are very stylish people, especially Mrs. Chester Ross. When Marilla called me in dinner was all ready and everybody was at the table. I tried to be as polite and dignified as I could be, for I wanted Mrs. Chester Ross to think I was a ladylike little girl even if I wasn t pretty. Everything went right until I saw Marilla coming with the plum pudding in one hand and the pitcher of pudding sauce WARMED UP, in the other. Diana, that was a terrible moment. I remembered everything and I just stood up in my place and shrieked out `Marilla, you mustn t use that pudding sauce. There was a mouse drowned in it. I forgot to tell you before. Oh, Diana, I shall never forget that awful moment if I live to be a hundred. Mrs. Chester Ross just LOOKED at me and I thought I would sink through the floor with mortification. She is such a perfect housekeeper and fancy what she must have thought of us. Marilla turned red as fire but she never said a word--then. She just carried that sauce and pudding out and brought in some strawberry preserves. She even offered me some, but I couldn t swallow a mouthful. It was like heaping coals of fire on my head. After Mrs. Chester Ross went away, Marilla gave me a dreadful scolding. Why, Diana, what is the matter?" Diana had stood up very unsteadily; then she sat down again, putting her hands to her head. "I m--I m awful sick," she said, a little thickly. "I--I--must go right home." "Oh, you mustn t dream of going home without your tea," cried Anne in distress. "I ll get it right off--I ll go and put the tea down this very minute." "I must go home," repeated Diana, stupidly but determinedly. "Let me get you a lunch anyhow," implored Anne. "Let me give you a bit of fruit cake and some of the cherry preserves. Lie down on the sofa for a little while and you ll be better. Where do you feel bad?" "I must go home," said Diana, and that was all she would say. In vain Anne pleaded. "I never heard of company going home without tea," she mourned. "Oh, Diana, do you suppose that it s possible you re really taking the smallpox? If you are I ll go and nurse you, you can depend on that. I ll never forsake you. But I do wish you d stay till after tea. Where do you feel bad?" "I m awful dizzy," said Diana. And indeed, she walked very dizzily. Anne, with tears of disappointment in her eyes, got Diana s hat and went with her as far as the Barry yard fence. Then she wept all the way back to Green Gables, where she sorrowfully put the remainder of the raspberry cordial back into the pantry and got tea ready for Matthew and Jerry, with all the zest gone out of the performance. The next day was Sunday and as the rain poured down in torrents from dawn till dusk Anne did not stir abroad from Green Gables. Monday afternoon Marilla sent her down to Mrs. Lynde s on an errand. In a very short space of time Anne came flying back up the lane with tears rolling down her cheeks. Into the kitchen she dashed and flung herself face downward on the sofa in an agony. "Whatever has gone wrong now, Anne?" queried Marilla in doubt and dismay. "I do hope you haven t gone and been saucy to Mrs. Lynde again." No answer from Anne save more tears and stormier sobs! "Anne Shirley, when I ask you a question I want to be answered. Sit right up this very minute and tell me what you are crying about." Anne sat up, tragedy personified. "Mrs. Lynde was up to see Mrs. Barry today and Mrs. Barry was in an awful state," she wailed. "She says that I set Diana DRUNK Saturday and sent her home in a disgraceful condition. And she says I must be a thoroughly bad, wicked little girl and she s never, never going to let Diana play with me again. Oh, Marilla, I m just overcome with woe." Marilla stared in blank amazement. "Set Diana drunk!" she said when she found her voice. "Anne are you or Mrs. Barry crazy? What on earth did you give her?" "Not a thing but raspberry cordial," sobbed Anne. "I never thought raspberry cordial would set people drunk, Marilla--not even if they drank three big tumblerfuls as Diana did. Oh, it sounds so--so--like Mrs. Thomas s husband! But I didn t mean to set her drunk." "Drunk fiddlesticks!" said Marilla, marching to the sitting room pantry. There on the shelf was a bottle which she at once recognized as one containing some of her three-year-old homemade currant wine for which she was celebrated in Avonlea, although certain of the stricter sort, Mrs. Barry among them, disapproved strongly of it. And at the same time Marilla recollected that she had put the bottle of raspberry cordial down in the cellar instead of in the pantry as she had told Anne. She went back to the kitchen with the wine bottle in her hand. Her face was twitching in spite of herself. "Anne, you certainly have a genius for getting into trouble. You went and gave Diana currant wine instead of raspberry cordial. Didn t you know the difference yourself?" "I never tasted it," said Anne. "I thought it was the cordial. I meant to be so--so--hospitable. Diana got awfully sick and had to go home. Mrs. Barry told Mrs. Lynde she was simply dead drunk. She just laughed silly-like when her mother asked her what was the matter and went to sleep and slept for hours. Her mother smelled her breath and knew she was drunk. She had a fearful headache all day yesterday. Mrs. Barry is so indignant. She will never believe but what I did it on purpose." "I should think she would better punish Diana for being so greedy as to drink three glassfuls of anything," said Marilla shortly. "Why, three of those big glasses would have made her sick even if it had only been cordial. Well, this story will be a nice handle for those folks who are so down on me for making currant wine, although I haven t made any for three years ever since I found out that the minister didn t approve. I just kept that bottle for sickness. There, there, child, don t cry. I can t see as you were to blame although I m sorry it happened so." "I must cry," said Anne. "My heart is broken. The stars in their courses fight against me, Marilla. Diana and I are parted forever. Oh, Marilla, I little dreamed of this when first we swore our vows of friendship." "Don t be foolish, Anne. Mrs. Barry will think better of it when she finds you re not to blame. I suppose she thinks you ve done it for a silly joke or something of that sort. You d best go up this evening and tell her how it was." "My courage fails me at the thought of facing Diana s injured mother," sighed Anne. "I wish you d go, Marilla. You re so much more dignified than I am. Likely she d listen to you quicker than to me." "Well, I will," said Marilla, reflecting that it would probably be the wiser course. "Don t cry any more, Anne. It will be all right." Marilla had changed her mind about it being all right by the time she got back from Orchard Slope. Anne was watching for her coming and flew to the porch door to meet her. "Oh, Marilla, I know by your face that it s been no use," she said sorrowfully. "Mrs. Barry won t forgive me?" "Mrs. Barry indeed!" snapped Marilla. "Of all the unreasonable women I ever saw she s the worst. I told her it was all a mistake and you weren t to blame, but she just simply didn t believe me. And she rubbed it well in about my currant wine and how I d always said it couldn t have the least effect on anybody. I just told her plainly that currant wine wasn t meant to be drunk three tumblerfuls at a time and that if a child I had to do with was so greedy I d sober her up with a right good spanking." Marilla whisked into the kitchen, grievously disturbed, leaving a very much distracted little soul in the porch behind her. Presently Anne stepped out bareheaded into the chill autumn dusk; very determinedly and steadily she took her way down through the sere clover field over the log bridge and up through the spruce grove, lighted by a pale little moon hanging low over the western woods. Mrs. Barry, coming to the door in answer to a timid knock, found a white-lipped eager-eyed suppliant on the doorstep. Her face hardened. Mrs. Barry was a woman of strong prejudices and dislikes, and her anger was of the cold, sullen sort which is always hardest to overcome. To do her justice, she really believed Anne had made Diana drunk out of sheer malice prepense, and she was honestly anxious to preserve her little daughter from the contamination of further intimacy with such a child. "What do you want?" she said stiffly. Anne clasped her hands. "Oh, Mrs. Barry, please forgive me. I did not mean to--to--intoxicate Diana. How could I? Just imagine if you were a poor little orphan girl that kind people had adopted and you had just one bosom friend in all the world. Do you think you would intoxicate her on purpose? I thought it was only raspberry cordial. I was firmly convinced it was raspberry cordial. Oh, please don t say that you won t let Diana play with me any more. If you do you will cover my life with a dark cloud of woe." This speech which would have softened good Mrs. Lynde s heart in a twinkling, had no effect on Mrs. Barry except to irritate her still more. She was suspicious of Anne s big words and dramatic gestures and imagined that the child was making fun of her. So she said, coldly and cruelly "I don t think you are a fit little girl for Diana to associate with. You d better go home and behave yourself." Anne s lips quivered. "Won t you let me see Diana just once to say farewell?" she implored. "Diana has gone over to Carmody with her father," said Mrs. Barry, going in and shutting the door. Anne went back to Green Gables calm with despair. "My last hope is gone," she told Marilla. "I went up and saw Mrs. Barry myself and she treated me very insultingly. Marilla, I do NOT think she is a well-bred woman. There is nothing more to do except to pray and I haven t much hope that that ll do much good because, Marilla, I do not believe that God Himself can do very much with such an obstinate person as Mrs. Barry." "Anne, you shouldn t say such things" rebuked Marilla, striving to overcome that unholy tendency to laughter which she was dismayed to find growing upon her. And indeed, when she told the whole story to Matthew that night, she did laugh heartily over Anne s tribulations. But when she slipped into the east gable before going to bed and found that Anne had cried herself to sleep an unaccustomed softness crept into her face. "Poor little soul," she murmured, lifting a loose curl of hair from the child s tear-stained face. Then she bent down and kissed the flushed cheek on the pillow. CHAPTER XV UP CHAPTER XVII 今日 - | 昨日 - | Total - since 05 June 2007 last update 2007-06-05 01 24 29 (Tue)
https://w.atwiki.jp/pyopyo0124/pages/57.html
CHAPTER XXVII UP CHAPTER XXIX CHAPTER XXVIII An Unfortunate Lily Maid 第28章 不運な百合の乙女(松本訳) 「Lily Maid」松本訳注第28章(1) p. 512参照 "OF course you must be Elaine, Anne," said Diana. 「Elaine」松本訳注第28章(2) p. 512参照 "I could never have the courage to float down there." "Nor I," said Ruby Gillis, with a shiver. "I don t mind floating down when there s two or three of us in the flat and we can sit up. It s fun then. But to lie down and pretend I was dead--I just couldn t. I d die really of fright." "Of course it would be romantic," conceded Jane Andrews, "but I know I couldn t keep still. I d be popping up every minute or so to see where I was and if I wasn t drifting too far out. And you know, Anne, that would spoil the effect." "But it s so ridiculous to have a redheaded Elaine," mourned Anne. "I m not afraid to float down and I d love to be Elaine. But it s ridiculous just the same. Ruby ought to be Elaine because she is so fair and has such lovely long golden hair-- Elaine had `all her bright hair streaming down, you know. 「`all her bright hair streaming down 」松本訳注第28章(3) p. 512参照 And Elaine was the lily maid. Now, a red-haired person cannot be a lily maid." "Your complexion is just as fair as Ruby s," said Diana earnestly, "and your hair is ever so much darker than it used to be before you cut it." "Oh, do you really think so?" exclaimed Anne, flushing sensitively with delight. "I ve sometimes thought it was myself--but I never dared to ask anyone for fear she would tell me it wasn t. Do you think it could be called auburn now, Diana?" 「auburn」 金褐色(松本訳): 第10章(CHAPTER X、CHAPTER X with impression?)で、大人になったら金褐色になるとリンド夫人に言われて喜んだ色。第37章(CHAPTER XXXVII、CHAPTER XXXVII with impression)では、金褐色になったと自分で言っている "Yes, and I think it is real pretty," said Diana, 「pretty」もうすぐギルバートにも同じことを言われる looking admiringly at the short, silky curls that clustered over Anne s head and were held in place by a very jaunty black velvet ribbon and bow. 「short, silky curls」 midsummer(すぐ下)の話なので、髪を緑色に染めたlate April(CHAPTER XXVIICHAPTER XXVII with impression)から3ヶ月くらい経ったところ。1ヶ月に1~2cmくらい伸びるでしょうから(若いともっと伸びる?)、5cmくらい伸びたはず。ほんとに刈り上げてしまったほどの長さだったわけですね They were standing on the bank of the pond, below Orchard Slope, where a little headland fringed with birches ran out from the bank; at its tip was a small wooden platform built out into the water for the convenience of fishermen and duck hunters. Ruby and Jane were spending the midsummer afternoon with Diana, and Anne had come over to play with them. Anne and Diana had spent most of their playtime that summer on and about the pond. Idlewild was a thing of the past, Mr. Bell having ruthlessly cut down the little circle of trees in his back pasture in the spring. Anne had sat among the stumps and wept, not without an eye to the romance of it; but she was speedily consoled, for, after all, as she and Diana said, big girls of thirteen, going on fourteen, アンは3月生まれ、ダイアナは2月生まれなので、春は13歳になったばかりのはずなのに「big girls」で、もうじき14歳になる、と考えるあたりがかわいらしい were too old for such childish amusements as playhouses, and there were more fascinating sports to be found about the pond. It was splendid to fish for trout over the bridge and the two girls learned to row themselves about in the little flat-bottomed dory Mr. Barry kept for duck shooting. 「duck shooting」 プリンスエドワード島は寒いので、日本の本州のように越冬しにカモ類がやってくるのではなく、夏に子育てのためにやってくるはず。なので、この時期はオンシーズン It was Anne s idea that they dramatize Elaine. They had studied Tennyson s poem in school the preceding winter, 「Tennyson s poem」松本訳注第28章(4) p. 513参照 the Superintendent of Education having prescribed it in the English course for the Prince Edward Island schools. They had analyzed and parsed it and torn it to pieces in general until it was a wonder there was any meaning at all left in it for them, 大変批判的なご指摘です 「torn it to pieces」後で、船がtorn offされますが、単語の重なりは気のせいかしら but at least the fair lily maid and Lancelot and Guinevere and King Arthur had become very real people to them, and Anne was devoured by secret regret that she had not been born in Camelot. 「Lancelot」松本訳注第28章(5) p. 513参照 「Guinevere」松本訳注第28章(6) p. 513参照 「King Arthur」松本訳注第28章(7) p. 513参照 「Camelot」松本訳注第28章(8) p. 513参照 Those days, she said, were so much more romantic than the present. 「romantic」この章の最後に呼応している Anne s plan was hailed with enthusiasm. The girls had discovered that if the flat were pushed off from the landing place it would drift down with the current under the bridge and finally strand itself on another headland lower down which ran out at a curve in the pond. They had often gone down like this and nothing could be more convenient for playing Elaine. "Well, I ll be Elaine," said Anne, yielding reluctantly, for, although she would have been delighted to play the principal character, yet her artistic sense demanded fitness for it and this, she felt, her limitations made impossible. "Ruby, you must be King Arthur and Jane will be Guinevere and Diana must be Lancelot. But first you must be the brothers and the father. 「the brothers and the father」松本訳注第28章(9) p. 514参照 We can t have the old dumb servitor because there isn t room for two in the flat when one is lying down. 「the old dumb servitor」松本訳注第28章(10) p. 514参照 We must pall the barge all its length in blackest samite. That old black shawl of your mother s will be just the thing, Diana." 「 the barge all its length in blackest samite」松本訳注第28章(11) p. 514参照 The black shawl having been procured, Anne spread it over the flat and then lay down on the bottom, with closed eyes and hands folded over her breast. "Oh, she does look really dead," whispered Ruby Gillis nervously, watching the still, white little face under the flickering shadows of the birches. "It makes me feel frightened, girls. Do you suppose it s really right to act like this? 悪い予感がすでにある Mrs. Lynde says that all play-acting is abominably wicked." "Ruby, you shouldn t talk about Mrs. Lynde," said Anne severely. "It spoils the effect because this is hundreds of years before Mrs. Lynde was born. Jane, you arrange this. It s silly for Elaine to be talking when she s dead." Jane rose to the occasion. Cloth of gold for coverlet there was none, but an old piano scarf of yellow Japanese crepe was an excellent substitute. 「Japanese crepe」松本訳注第28章(12) p. 514参照 「crepe」Puffin Books版では、斜字体になっていて、ひとつめのeにはアクサンシルコンフレックスがついており(なので《クレープ》と発音)、フランス語からの借りものと主張している。縮緬 「Japanese crepe」松本訳注第28章(12) p. 514参照 A white lily was not obtainable just then, but the effect of a tall blue iris placed in one of Anne s folded hands was all that could be desired. "Now, she s all ready," said Jane. "We must kiss her quiet brows 「We must kiss her quiet brows」松本訳注第28章(13) p. 514参照 and, Diana, you say, `Sister, farewell forever, 「`Sister, farewell forever, 」松本訳注第28章(14) p. 514参照 「farewell」古風な! のは詩の言葉だから and Ruby, you say, `Farewell, sweet sister, both of you as sorrowfully as you possibly can. 「`Farewell, sweet sister, 」松本訳注第28章(15) p. 514参照 Anne, for goodness sake smile a little. You know Elaine `lay as though she smiled. 「`lay as though she smiled. 」松本訳注第28章(15) p. 514参照 That s better. Now push the flat off." The flat was accordingly pushed off, scraping roughly over an old embedded stake in the process. Diana and Jane and Ruby only waited long enough to see it caught in the current and headed for the bridge before scampering up through the woods, across the road, and down to the lower headland where, as Lancelot and Guinevere and the King, they were to be in readiness to receive the lily maid. For a few minutes Anne, drifting slowly down, enjoyed the romance of her situation to the full. Then something happened not at all romantic. The flat began to leak. In a very few moments it was necessary for Elaine to scramble to her feet, 「Elaine」まだ、ごっこしてる pick up her cloth of gold coverlet and pall of blackest samite and gaze blankly at a big crack in the bottom of her barge through which the water was literally pouring. That sharp stake at the landing had torn off the strip of batting nailed on the flat. 「batting」Webster s Revised Unabridged, 1913 Editionによると(OneLookで検索してみつけた)、Cotton in sheets, prepared for use in making quilts, etc.; as, cotton batting. Yahoo!やGoogleで「strip of batting」を検索するとたくさん出てくるのですが、やはり布。とすると、布切れを船底の隙間を埋めるために釘で打ち付けていたのでしょうか。何かしっくり来ないのですが。もとからボロ船なのかもしれませんけど。 松本訳では「板切れ」。でも、英語で板切れならば「batting」ではなく、「batten」ではないでしょうか。battenは船舶の防水用の当て木という意味があるのでぴったりです。しかし、「strip of batten」はYahoo!やGoogleであまり引っかかりませんでした。Puffin Books版でもbattingなので、ここは謎です Anne did not know this, but it did not take her long to realize that she was in a dangerous plight. 「plight」苦境、(悪い)状態。この普通の意味に加え、[古]で誓約、婚約の意味もあるようです。すぐあとで、ギルバートに助けてもらうことが、dangerous plight=危険な約束(友達になんかなる気がない)ということを暗示している、もしくは、アンがギルバートに対してどきどきすることを暗示している、と考えてしまうのは、深読みすぎかしら At this rate the flat would fill and sink long before it could drift to the lower headland. Where were the oars? Left behind at the landing! Anne gave one gasping little scream which nobody ever heard; she was white to the lips, but she did not lose her self-possession. There was one chance--just one. "I was horribly frightened," she told Mrs. Allan the next day, "and it seemed like years while the flat was drifting down to the bridge and the water rising in it every moment. I prayed, Mrs. Allan, most earnestly, but I didn t shut my eyes to pray, for I knew the only way God could save me was to let the flat float close enough to one of the bridge piles for me to climb up on it. You know the piles are just old tree trunks and there are lots of knots and old branch stubs on them. It was proper to pray, but I had to do my part by watching out and right well I knew it. I just said, `Dear God, please take the flat close to a pile and I ll do the rest, over and over again. Under such circumstances you don t think much about making a flowery prayer. But mine was answered, for the flat bumped right into a pile for a minute and I flung the scarf and the shawl over my shoulder and scrambled up on a big providential stub. And there I was, Mrs. Allan, clinging to that slippery old pile with no way of getting up or down. It was a very unromantic position, but I didn t think about that at the time. You don t think much about romance when you have just escaped from a watery grave. 「`a watery grave 」松本訳注第28章(17) p. 515参照 I said a grateful prayer at once and then I gave all my attention to holding on tight, for I knew I should probably have to depend on human aid to get back to dry land." 「dry land」:「watery grave」と対比的 The flat drifted under the bridge and then promptly sank in midstream. Ruby, Jane, and Diana, already awaiting it on the lower headland, saw it disappear before their very eyes and had not a doubt but that Anne had gone down with it. For a moment they stood still, white as sheets, frozen with horror at the tragedy; then, shrieking at the tops of their voices, they started on a frantic run up through the woods, never pausing as they crossed the main road to glance the way of the bridge. Anne, clinging desperately to her precarious foothold, saw their flying forms and heard their shrieks. Help would soon come, but meanwhile her position was a very uncomfortable one. The minutes passed by, each seeming an hour to the unfortunate lily maid. Why didn t somebody come? Where had the girls gone? Suppose they had fainted, one and all! 「fainted」 まだ、気絶することにロマンチックなあこがれがあるのでしょうか Suppose nobody ever came! Suppose she grew so tired and cramped that she could hold on no longer! Anne looked at the wicked green depths below her, wavering with long, oily shadows, and shivered. Her imagination began to suggest all manner of gruesome possibilities to her. Then, just as she thought she really could not endure the ache in her arms and wrists another moment, Gilbert Blythe came rowing under the bridge in Harmon Andrews s dory! 「dory」松本訳注第28章(18) p. 515参照 Gilbert glanced up and, much to his amazement, beheld a little white scornful face looking down upon him with big, frightened but also scornful gray eyes. 「behold」 [雅]見る。芝居じみている。ギルバートが、なので、意味あがある、のかも "Anne Shirley! How on earth did you get there?" he exclaimed. Without waiting for an answer he pulled close to the pile and extended his hand. There was no help for it; Anne, clinging to Gilbert Blythe s hand, scrambled down into the dory, where she sat, drabbled and furious, in the stern with her arms full of dripping shawl and wet crepe. It was certainly extremely difficult to be dignified under the circumstances! "What has happened, Anne?" asked Gilbert, taking up his oars. "We were playing Elaine" explained Anne frigidly, without even looking at her rescuer, "and I had to drift down to Camelot in the barge--I mean the flat. The flat began to leak and I climbed out on the pile. The girls went for help. Will you be kind enough to row me to the landing?" Gilbert obligingly rowed to the landing and Anne, 「obligingly」 disdaining assistance, sprang nimbly on shore. "I m very much obliged to you," 「obliged」 上に呼応。「I m very much obliged to you」堅い感謝のコトバ she said haughtily as she turned away. But Gilbert had also sprung from the boat and now laid a detaining hand on her arm. "Anne," he said hurriedly, "look here. Can t we be good friends? I m awfully sorry I made fun of your hair that time. I didn t mean to vex you and I only meant it for a joke. Besides, it s so long ago. I think your hair is awfully pretty now--honest I do. 「awfully pretty」 最大限に褒めてる! Let s be friends." For a moment Anne hesitated. She had an odd, newly awakened consciousness under all her outraged dignity that the half-shy, half-eager expression in Gilbert s hazel eyes was something that was very good to see. Her heart gave a quick, queer little beat. But the bitterness of her old grievance promptly stiffened up her wavering determination. That scene of two years before flashed back into her recollection as vividly as if it had taken place yesterday. Gilbert had called her "carrots" and had brought about her disgrace before the whole school. Her resentment, which to other and older people might be as laughable as its cause, was in no whit allayed and softened by time seemingly. She hated Gilbert Blythe! She would never forgive him! "No," she said coldly, "I shall never be friends with you, Gilbert Blythe; and I don t want to be!" "All right!" Gilbert sprang into his skiff with an angry color in his cheeks. 「skiff」 さっきはdoryと書いてたのに…… "I ll never ask you to be friends again, Anne Shirley. And I don t care either!" He pulled away with swift defiant strokes, and Anne went up the steep, ferny little path under the maples. She held her head very high, but she was conscious of an odd feeling of regret. She almost wished she had answered Gilbert differently. Of course, he had insulted her terribly, but still--! Altogether, Anne rather thought it would be a relief to sit down and have a good cry. She was really quite unstrung, for the reaction from her fright and cramped clinging was making itself felt. Halfway up the path she met Jane and Diana rushing back to the pond in a state narrowly removed from positive frenzy. They had found nobody at Orchard Slope, both Mr. and Mrs. Barry being away. Here Ruby Gillis had succumbed to hysterics, and was left to recover from them as best she might, while Jane and Diana flew through the Haunted Wood and across the brook to Green Gables. There they had found nobody either, for Marilla had gone to Carmody and Matthew was making hay in the back field. "Oh, Anne," gasped Diana, fairly falling on the former s neck and weeping with relief and delight, "oh, Anne--we thought--you were--drowned--and we felt like murderers--because we had made--you be--Elaine. And Ruby is in hysterics--oh, Anne, how did you escape?" "I climbed up on one of the piles," explained Anne wearily, "and Gilbert Blythe came along in Mr. Andrews s dory and brought me to land." "Oh, Anne, how splendid of him! Why, it s so romantic!" said Jane, 「it s so romantic!」アヴォンリーにもあるのです finding breath enough for utterance at last. "Of course you ll speak to him after this." "Of course I won t," flashed Anne, with a momentary return of her old spirit. "And I don t want ever to hear the word `romantic again, Jane Andrews. I m awfully sorry you were so frightened, girls. It is all my fault. I feel sure I was born under an unlucky star. Everything I do gets me or my dearest friends into a scrape. We ve gone and lost your father s flat, Diana, and I have a presentiment that we ll not be allowed to row on the pond any more." Anne s presentiment proved more trustworthy than presentiments are apt to do. Great was the consternation in the Barry and Cuthbert households when the events of the afternoon became known. "Will you ever have any sense, Anne?" groaned Marilla. "Oh, yes, I think I will, Marilla," returned Anne optimistically. A good cry, indulged in the grateful solitude of the east gable, had soothed her nerves and restored her to her wonted cheerfulness. "I think my prospects of becoming sensible are brighter now than ever." "I don t see how," said Marilla. "Well," explained Anne, "I ve learned a new and valuable lesson today. Ever since I came to Green Gables I ve been making mistakes, and each mistake has helped to cure me of some great shortcoming. The affair of the amethyst brooch cured me of meddling with things that didn t belong to me. The Haunted Wood mistake cured me of letting my imagination run away with me. The liniment cake mistake cured me of carelessness in cooking. Dyeing my hair cured me of vanity. I never think about my hair and nose now--at least, very seldom. And today s mistake is going to cure me of being too romantic. I have come to the conclusion that it is no use trying to be romantic in Avonlea. It was probably easy enough in towered Camelot hundreds of years ago, 「towered Camelot」松本訳注第28章(19) p. 515参照 but romance is not appreciated now. I feel quite sure that you will soon see a great improvement in me in this respect, Marilla." "I m sure I hope so," said Marilla skeptically. But Matthew, who had been sitting mutely in his corner, laid a hand on Anne s shoulder when Marilla had gone out. "Don t give up all your romance, Anne," he whispered shyly, "a little of it is a good thing--not too much, of course--but keep a little of it, Anne, keep a little of it." CHAPTER XXVII UP CHAPTER XXIX 2007年6月14日 2007年6月17日(リンクのミスを修正) 今日 - | 昨日 - | Total - since 14 June 2007 last update 2007-06-17 17 37 34 (Sun)
https://w.atwiki.jp/pyopyo0124/pages/36.html
CHAPTER XXI UP CHAPTER XXIII CHAPTER XXII Anne is Invited Out to Tea "And what are your eyes popping out of your head about. Now?" asked Marilla, when Anne had just come in from a run to the post office. "Have you discovered another kindred spirit?" Excitement hung around Anne like a garment, shone in her eyes, kindled in every feature. She had come dancing up the lane, like a wind-blown sprite, through the mellow sunshine and lazy shadows of the August evening. "No, Marilla, but oh, what do you think? I am invited to tea at the manse tomorrow afternoon! Mrs. Allan left the letter for me at the post office. Just look at it, Marilla. `Miss Anne Shirley, Green Gables. That is the first time I was ever called `Miss. Such a thrill as it gave me! I shall cherish it forever among my choicest treasures." "Mrs. Allan told me she meant to have all the members of her Sunday-school class to tea in turn," said Marilla, regarding the wonderful event very coolly. "You needn t get in such a fever over it. Do learn to take things calmly, child." For Anne to take things calmly would have been to change her nature. All "spirit and fire and dew," as she was, the pleasures and pains of life came to her with trebled intensity. Marilla felt this and was vaguely troubled over it, realizing that the ups and downs of existence would probably bear hardly on this impulsive soul and not sufficiently understanding that the equally great capacity for delight might more than compensate. Therefore Marilla conceived it to be her duty to drill Anne into a tranquil uniformity of disposition as impossible and alien to her as to a dancing sunbeam in one of the brook shallows. She did not make much headway, as she sorrowfully admitted to herself. The downfall of some dear hope or plan plunged Anne into "deeps of affliction." The fulfillment thereof exalted her to dizzy realms of delight. Marilla had almost begun to despair of ever fashioning this waif of the world into her model little girl of demure manners and prim deportment. Neither would she have believed that she really liked Anne much better as she was. Anne went to bed that night speechless with misery because Matthew had said the wind was round northeast and he feared it would be a rainy day tomorrow. The rustle of the poplar leaves about the house worried her, it sounded so like pattering raindrops, and the full, faraway roar of the gulf, to which she listened delightedly at other times, loving its strange, sonorous, haunting rhythm, now seemed like a prophecy of storm and disaster to a small maiden who particularly wanted a fine day. Anne thought that the morning would never come. But all things have an end, even nights before the day on which you are invited to take tea at the manse. The morning, in spite of Matthew s predictions, was fine and Anne s spirits soared to their highest. "Oh, Marilla, there is something in me today that makes me just love everybody I see," she exclaimed as she washed the breakfast dishes. "You don t know how good I feel! Wouldn t it be nice if it could last? I believe I could be a model child if I were just invited out to tea every day. But oh, Marilla, it s a solemn occasion too. I feel so anxious. What if I shouldn t behave properly? You know I never had tea at a manse before, and I m not sure that I know all the rules of etiquette, although I ve been studying the rules given in the Etiquette Department of the Family Herald ever since I came here. I m so afraid I ll do something silly or forget to do something I should do. Would it be good manners to take a second helping of anything if you wanted to VERY much?" "The trouble with you, Anne, is that you re thinking too much about yourself. You should just think of Mrs. Allan and what would be nicest and most agreeable to her," said Marilla, hitting for once in her life on a very sound and pithy piece of advice. Anne instantly realized this. "You are right, Marilla. I ll try not to think about myself at all." Anne evidently got through her visit without any serious breach of "etiquette," for she came home through the twilight, under a great, high-sprung sky gloried over with trails of saffron and rosy cloud, in a beatified state of mind and told Marilla all about it happily, sitting on the big red-sandstone slab at the kitchen door with her tired curly head in Marilla s gingham lap. A cool wind was blowing down over the long harvest fields from the rims of firry western hills and whistling through the poplars. One clear star hung over the orchard and the fireflies were flitting over in Lover s Lane, in and out among the ferns and rustling boughs. Anne watched them as she talked and somehow felt that wind and stars and fireflies were all tangled up together into something unutterably sweet and enchanting. "Oh, Marilla, I ve had a most FASCINATING time. I feel that I have not lived in vain and I shall always feel like that even if I should never be invited to tea at a manse again. When I got there Mrs. Allan met me at the door. She was dressed in the sweetest dress of pale-pink organdy, with dozens of frills and elbow sleeves, and she looked just like a seraph. I really think I d like to be a minister s wife when I grow up, Marilla. A minister mightn t mind my red hair because he wouldn t be thinking of such worldly things. But then of course one would have to be naturally good and I ll never be that, so I suppose there s no use in thinking about it. Some people are naturally good, you know, and others are not. I m one of the others. Mrs. Lynde says I m full of original sin. No matter how hard I try to be good I can never make such a success of it as those who are naturally good. It s a good deal like geometry, I expect. But don t you think the trying so hard ought to count for something? Mrs. Allan is one of the naturally good people. I love her passionately. You know there are some people, like Matthew and Mrs. Allan that you can love right off without any trouble. And there are others, like Mrs. Lynde, that you have to try very hard to love. You know you OUGHT to love them because they know so much and are such active workers in the church, but you have to keep reminding yourself of it all the time or else you forget. There was another little girl at the manse to tea, from the White Sands Sunday school. Her name was Laurette Bradley, and she was a very nice little girl. Not exactly a kindred spirit, you know, but still very nice. We had an elegant tea, and I think I kept all the rules of etiquette pretty well. After tea Mrs. Allan played and sang and she got Lauretta and me to sing too. Mrs. Allan says I have a good voice and she says I must sing in the Sunday-school choir after this. You can t think how I was thrilled at the mere thought. I ve longed so to sing in the Sunday-school choir, as Diana does, but I feared it was an honor I could never aspire to. Lauretta had to go home early because there is a big concert in the White Sands Hotel tonight and her sister is to recite at it. Lauretta says that the Americans at the hotel give a concert every fortnight in aid of the Charlottetown hospital, and they ask lots of the White Sands people to recite. Lauretta said she expected to be asked herself someday. I just gazed at her in awe. After she had gone Mrs. Allan and I had a heart-to-heart talk. I told her everything--about Mrs. Thomas and the twins and Katie Maurice and Violetta and coming to Green Gables and my troubles over geometry. And would you believe it, Marilla? Mrs. Allan told me she was a dunce at geometry too. You don t know how that encouraged me. Mrs. Lynde came to the manse just before I left, and what do you think, Marilla? The trustees have hired a new teacher and it s a lady. Her name is Miss Muriel Stacy. Isn t that a romantic name? Mrs. Lynde says they ve never had a female teacher in Avonlea before and she thinks it is a dangerous innovation. But I think it will be splendid to have a lady teacher, and I really don t see how I m going to live through the two weeks before school begins. I m so impatient to see her." CHAPTER XXI UP CHAPTER XXIII 今日 - | 昨日 - | Total - since 05 June 2007 last update 2007-06-05 01 21 35 (Tue)
https://w.atwiki.jp/pyopyo0124/pages/44.html
CHAPTER XXIX UP CHAPTER XXXI CHAPTER XXX The Queens Class Is Organized Marilla laid her knitting on her lap and leaned back in her chair. Her eyes were tired, and she thought vaguely that she must see about having her glasses changed the next time she went to town, for her eyes had grown tired very often of late. It was nearly dark, for the full November twilight had fallen around Green Gables, and the only light in the kitchen came from the dancing red flames in the stove. Anne was curled up Turk-fashion on the hearthrug, gazing into that joyous glow where the sunshine of a hundred summers was being distilled from the maple cordwood. She had been reading, but her book had slipped to the floor, and now she was dreaming, with a smile on her parted lips. Glittering castles in Spain were shaping themselves out of the mists and rainbows of her lively fancy; adventures wonderful and enthralling were happening to her in cloudland--adventures that always turned out triumphantly and never involved her in scrapes like those of actual life. Marilla looked at her with a tenderness that would never have been suffered to reveal itself in any clearer light than that soft mingling of fireshine and shadow. The lesson of a love that should display itself easily in spoken word and open look was one Marilla could never learn. But she had learned to love this slim, gray-eyed girl with an affection all the deeper and stronger from its very undemonstrativeness. Her love made her afraid of being unduly indulgent, indeed. She had an uneasy feeling that it was rather sinful to set one s heart so intensely on any human creature as she had set hers on Anne, and perhaps she performed a sort of unconscious penance for this by being stricter and more critical than if the girl had been less dear to her. Certainly Anne herself had no idea how Marilla loved her. She sometimes thought wistfully that Marilla was very hard to please and distinctly lacking in sympathy and understanding. But she always checked the thought reproachfully, remembering what she owed to Marilla. "Anne," said Marilla abruptly, "Miss Stacy was here this afternoon when you were out with Diana." Anne came back from her other world with a start and a sigh. "Was she? Oh, I m so sorry I wasn t in. Why didn t you call me, Marilla? Diana and I were only over in the Haunted Wood. It s lovely in the woods now. All the little wood things--the ferns and the satin leaves and the crackerberries--have gone to sleep, just as if somebody had tucked them away until spring under a blanket of leaves. I think it was a little gray fairy with a rainbow scarf that came tiptoeing along the last moonlight night and did it. Diana wouldn t say much about that, though. Diana has never forgotten the scolding her mother gave her about imagining ghosts into the Haunted Wood. It had a very bad effect on Diana s imagination. It blighted it. Mrs. Lynde says Myrtle Bell is a blighted being. I asked Ruby Gillis why Myrtle was blighted, and Ruby said she guessed it was because her young man had gone back on her. Ruby Gillis thinks of nothing but young men, and the older she gets the worse she is. Young men are all very well in their place, but it doesn t do to drag them into everything, does it? Diana and I are thinking seriously of promising each other that we will never marry but be nice old maids and live together forever. Diana hasn t quite made up her mind though, because she thinks perhaps it would be nobler to marry some wild, dashing, wicked young man and reform him. Diana and I talk a great deal about serious subjects now, you know. We feel that we are so much older than we used to be that it isn t becoming to talk of childish matters. It s such a solemn thing to be almost fourteen, Marilla. Miss Stacy took all us girls who are in our teens down to the brook last Wednesday, and talked to us about it. She said we couldn t be too careful what habits we formed and what ideals we acquired in our teens, because by the time we were twenty our characters would be developed and the foundation laid for our whole future life. And she said if the foundation was shaky we could never build anything really worth while on it. Diana and I talked the matter over coming home from school. We felt extremely solemn, Marilla. And we decided that we would try to be very careful indeed and form respectable habits and learn all we could and be as sensible as possible, so that by the time we were twenty our characters would be properly developed. It s perfectly appalling to think of being twenty, Marilla. It sounds so fearfully old and grown up. But why was Miss Stacy here this afternoon?" "That is what I want to tell you, Anne, if you ll ever give me a chance to get a word in edgewise. She was talking about you." "About me?" Anne looked rather scared. Then she flushed and exclaimed "Oh, I know what she was saying. I meant to tell you, Marilla, honestly I did, but I forgot. Miss Stacy caught me reading Ben Hur in school yesterday afternoon when I should have been studying my Canadian history. Jane Andrews lent it to me. I was reading it at dinner hour, and I had just got to the chariot race when school went in. I was simply wild to know how it turned out-- although I felt sure Ben Hur must win, because it wouldn t be poetical justice if he didn t--so I spread the history open on my desk lid and then tucked Ben Hur between the desk and my knee. I just looked as if I were studying Canadian history, you know, while all the while I was reveling in Ben Hur. I was so interested in it that I never noticed Miss Stacy coming down the aisle until all at once I just looked up and there she was looking down at me, so reproachful-like. I can t tell you how ashamed I felt, Marilla, especially when I heard Josie Pye giggling. Miss Stacy took Ben Hur away, but she never said a word then. She kept me in at recess and talked to me. She said I had done very wrong in two respects. First, I was wasting the time I ought to have put on my studies; and secondly, I was deceiving my teacher in trying to make it appear I was reading a history when it was a storybook instead. I had never realized until that moment, Marilla, that what I was doing was deceitful. I was shocked. I cried bitterly, and asked Miss Stacy to forgive me and I d never do such a thing again; and I offered to do penance by never so much as looking at Ben Hur for a whole week, not even to see how the chariot race turned out. But Miss Stacy said she wouldn t require that, and she forgave me freely. So I think it wasn t very kind of her to come up here to you about it after all." "Miss Stacy never mentioned such a thing to me, Anne, and its only your guilty conscience that s the matter with you. You have no business to be taking storybooks to school. You read too many novels anyhow. When I was a girl I wasn t so much as allowed to look at a novel." "Oh, how can you call Ben Hur a novel when it s really such a religious book?" protested Anne. "Of course it s a little too exciting to be proper reading for Sunday, and I only read it on weekdays. And I never read ANY book now unless either Miss Stacy or Mrs. Allan thinks it is a proper book for a girl thirteen and three-quarters to read. Miss Stacy made me promise that. She found me reading a book one day called, The Lurid Mystery of the Haunted Hall. It was one Ruby Gillis had lent me, and, oh, Marilla, it was so fascinating and creepy. It just curdled the blood in my veins. But Miss Stacy said it was a very silly, unwholesome book, and she asked me not to read any more of it or any like it. I didn t mind promising not to read any more like it, but it was AGONIZING to give back that book without knowing how it turned out. But my love for Miss Stacy stood the test and I did. It s really wonderful, Marilla, what you can do when you re truly anxious to please a certain person." "Well, I guess I ll light the lamp and get to work," said Marilla. "I see plainly that you don t want to hear what Miss Stacy had to say. You re more interested in the sound of your own tongue than in anything else." "Oh, indeed, Marilla, I do want to hear it," cried Anne contritely. "I won t say another word--not one. I know I talk too much, but I am really trying to overcome it, and although I say far too much, yet if you only knew how many things I want to say and don t, you d give me some credit for it. Please tell me, Marilla." "Well, Miss Stacy wants to organize a class among her advanced students who mean to study for the entrance examination into Queen s. She intends to give them extra lessons for an hour after school. And she came to ask Matthew and me if we would like to have you join it. What do you think about it yourself, Anne? Would you like to go to Queen s and pass for a teacher?" "Oh, Marilla!" Anne straightened to her knees and clasped her hands. "It s been the dream of my life--that is, for the last six months, ever since Ruby and Jane began to talk of studying for the Entrance. But I didn t say anything about it, because I supposed it would be perfectly useless. I d love to be a teacher. But won t it be dreadfully expensive? Mr. Andrews says it cost him one hundred and fifty dollars to put Prissy through, and Prissy wasn t a dunce in geometry." "I guess you needn t worry about that part of it. When Matthew and I took you to bring up we resolved we would do the best we could for you and give you a good education. I believe in a girl being fitted to earn her own living whether she ever has to or not. You ll always have a home at Green Gables as long as Matthew and I are here, but nobody knows what is going to happen in this uncertain world, and it s just as well to be prepared. So you can join the Queen s class if you like, Anne." "Oh, Marilla, thank you." Anne flung her arms about Marilla s waist and looked up earnestly into her face. "I m extremely grateful to you and Matthew. And I ll study as hard as I can and do my very best to be a credit to you. I warn you not to expect much in geometry, but I think I can hold my own in anything else if I work hard." "I dare say you ll get along well enough. Miss Stacy says you are bright and diligent." Not for worlds would Marilla have told Anne just what Miss Stacy had said about her; that would have been to pamper vanity. "You needn t rush to any extreme of killing yourself over your books. There is no hurry. You won t be ready to try the Entrance for a year and a half yet. But it s well to begin in time and be thoroughly grounded, Miss Stacy says." "I shall take more interest than ever in my studies now," said Anne blissfully, "because I have a purpose in life. Mr. Allan says everybody should have a purpose in life and pursue it faithfully. Only he says we must first make sure that it is a worthy purpose. I would call it a worthy purpose to want to be a teacher like Miss Stacy, wouldn t you, Marilla? I think it s a very noble profession." The Queen s class was organized in due time. Gilbert Blythe, Anne Shirley, Ruby Gillis, Jane Andrews, Josie Pye, Charlie Sloane, and Moody Spurgeon MacPherson joined it. Diana Barry did not, as her parents did not intend to send her to Queen s. This seemed nothing short of a calamity to Anne. Never, since the night on which Minnie May had had the croup, had she and Diana been separated in anything. On the evening when the Queen s class first remained in school for the extra lessons and Anne saw Diana go slowly out with the others, to walk home alone through the Birch Path and Violet Vale, it was all the former could do to keep her seat and refrain from rushing impulsively after her chum. A lump came into her throat, and she hastily retired behind the pages of her uplifted Latin grammar to hide the tears in her eyes. Not for worlds would Anne have had Gilbert Blythe or Josie Pye see those tears. "But, oh, Marilla, I really felt that I had tasted the bitterness of death, as Mr. Allan said in his sermon last Sunday, when I saw Diana go out alone," she said mournfully that night. "I thought how splendid it would have been if Diana had only been going to study for the Entrance, too. But we can t have things perfect in this imperfect world, as Mrs. Lynde says. Mrs. Lynde isn t exactly a comforting person sometimes, but there s no doubt she says a great many very true things. And I think the Queen s class is going to be extremely interesting. Jane and Ruby are just going to study to be teachers. That is the height of their ambition. Ruby says she will only teach for two years after she gets through, and then she intends to be married. Jane says she will devote her whole life to teaching, and never, never marry, because you are paid a salary for teaching, but a husband won t pay you anything, and growls if you ask for a share in the egg and butter money. I expect Jane speaks from mournful experience, for Mrs. Lynde says that her father is a perfect old crank, and meaner than second skimmings. Josie Pye says she is just going to college for education s sake, because she won t have to earn her own living; she says of course it is different with orphans who are living on charity--THEY have to hustle. Moody Spurgeon is going to be a minister. Mrs. Lynde says he couldn t be anything else with a name like that to live up to. I hope it isn t wicked of me, Marilla, but really the thought of Moody Spurgeon being a minister makes me laugh. He s such a funny-looking boy with that big fat face, and his little blue eyes, and his ears sticking out like flaps. But perhaps he will be more intellectual looking when he grows up. Charlie Sloane says he s going to go into politics and be a member of Parliament, but Mrs. Lynde says he ll never succeed at that, because the Sloanes are all honest people, and it s only rascals that get on in politics nowadays." "What is Gilbert Blythe going to be?" queried Marilla, seeing that Anne was opening her Caesar. "I don t happen to know what Gilbert Blythe s ambition in life is-- if he has any," said Anne scornfully. There was open rivalry between Gilbert and Anne now. Previously the rivalry had been rather onesided, but there was no longer any doubt that Gilbert was as determined to be first in class as Anne was. He was a foeman worthy of her steel. The other members of the class tacitly acknowledged their superiority, and never dreamed of trying to compete with them. Since the day by the pond when she had refused to listen to his plea for forgiveness, Gilbert, save for the aforesaid determined rivalry, had evinced no recognition whatever of the existence of Anne Shirley. He talked and jested with the other girls, exchanged books and puzzles with them, discussed lessons and plans, sometimes walked home with one or the other of them from prayer meeting or Debating Club. But Anne Shirley he simply ignored, and Anne found out that it is not pleasant to be ignored. It was in vain that she told herself with a toss of her head that she did not care. Deep down in her wayward, feminine little heart she knew that she did care, and that if she had that chance of the Lake of Shining Waters again she would answer very differently. All at once, as it seemed, and to her secret dismay, she found that the old resentment she had cherished against him was gone--gone just when she most needed its sustaining power. It was in vain that she recalled every incident and emotion of that memorable occasion and tried to feel the old satisfying anger. That day by the pond had witnessed its last spasmodic flicker. Anne realized that she had forgiven and forgotten without knowing it. But it was too late. And at least neither Gilbert nor anybody else, not even Diana, should ever suspect how sorry she was and how much she wished she hadn t been so proud and horrid! She determined to "shroud her feelings in deepest oblivion," and it may be stated here and now that she did it, so successfully that Gilbert, who possibly was not quite so indifferent as he seemed, could not console himself with any belief that Anne felt his retaliatory scorn. The only poor comfort he had was that she snubbed Charlie Sloane, unmercifully, continually, and undeservedly. Otherwise the winter passed away in a round of pleasant duties and studies. For Anne the days slipped by like golden beads on the necklace of the year. She was happy, eager, interested; there were lessons to be learned and honor to be won; delightful books to read; new pieces to be practiced for the Sunday-school choir; pleasant Saturday afternoons at the manse with Mrs. Allan; and then, almost before Anne realized it, spring had come again to Green Gables and all the world was abloom once more. Studies palled just a wee bit then; the Queen s class, left behind in school while the others scattered to green lanes and leafy wood cuts and meadow byways, looked wistfully out of the windows and discovered that Latin verbs and French exercises had somehow lost the tang and zest they had possessed in the crisp winter months. Even Anne and Gilbert lagged and grew indifferent. Teacher and taught were alike glad when the term was ended and the glad vacation days stretched rosily before them. "But you ve done good work this past year," Miss Stacy told them on the last evening, "and you deserve a good, jolly vacation. Have the best time you can in the out-of-door world and lay in a good stock of health and vitality and ambition to carry you through next year. It will be the tug of war, you know--the last year before the Entrance." "Are you going to be back next year, Miss Stacy?" asked Josie Pye. Josie Pye never scrupled to ask questions; in this instance the rest of the class felt grateful to her; none of them would have dared to ask it of Miss Stacy, but all wanted to, for there had been alarming rumors running at large through the school for some time that Miss Stacy was not coming back the next year--that she had been offered a position in the grade school of her own home district and meant to accept. The Queen s class listened in breathless suspense for her answer. "Yes, I think I will," said Miss Stacy. "I thought of taking another school, but I have decided to come back to Avonlea. To tell the truth, I ve grown so interested in my pupils here that I found I couldn t leave them. So I ll stay and see you through." "Hurrah!" said Moody Spurgeon. Moody Spurgeon had never been so carried away by his feelings before, and he blushed uncomfortably every time he thought about it for a week. "Oh, I m so glad," said Anne, with shining eyes. "Dear Stacy, it would be perfectly dreadful if you didn t come back. I don t believe I could have the heart to go on with my studies at all if another teacher came here." When Anne got home that night she stacked all her textbooks away in an old trunk in the attic, locked it, and threw the key into the blanket box. "I m not even going to look at a schoolbook in vacation," she told Marilla. "I ve studied as hard all the term as I possibly could and I ve pored over that geometry until I know every proposition in the first book off by heart, even when the letters ARE changed. I just feel tired of everything sensible and I m going to let my imagination run riot for the summer. Oh, you needn t be alarmed, Marilla. I ll only let it run riot within reasonable limits. But I want to have a real good jolly time this summer, for maybe it s the last summer I ll be a little girl. Mrs. Lynde says that if I keep stretching out next year as I ve done this I ll have to put on longer skirts. She says I m all running to legs and eyes. And when I put on longer skirts I shall feel that I have to live up to them and be very dignified. It won t even do to believe in fairies then, I m afraid; so I m going to believe in them with all my whole heart this summer. I think we re going to have a very gay vacation. Ruby Gillis is going to have a birthday party soon and there s the Sunday school picnic and the missionary concert next month. And Mr. Barry says that some evening he ll take Diana and me over to the White Sands Hotel and have dinner there. They have dinner there in the evening, you know. Jane Andrews was over once last summer and she says it was a dazzling sight to see the electric lights and the flowers and all the lady guests in such beautiful dresses. Jane says it was her first glimpse into high life and she ll never forget it to her dying day." Mrs. Lynde came up the next afternoon to find out why Marilla had not been at the Aid meeting on Thursday. When Marilla was not at Aid meeting people knew there was something wrong at Green Gables. "Matthew had a bad spell with his heart Thursday," Marilla explained, "and I didn t feel like leaving him. Oh, yes, he s all right again now, but he takes them spells oftener than he used to and I m anxious about him. The doctor says he must be careful to avoid excitement. That s easy enough, for Matthew doesn t go about looking for excitement by any means and never did, but he s not to do any very heavy work either and you might as well tell Matthew not to breathe as not to work. Come and lay off your things, Rachel. You ll stay to tea?" "Well, seeing you re so pressing, perhaps I might as well, stay" said Mrs. Rachel, who had not the slightest intention of doing anything else. Mrs. Rachel and Marilla sat comfortably in the parlor while Anne got the tea and made hot biscuits that were light and white enough to defy even Mrs. Rachel s criticism. "I must say Anne has turned out a real smart girl," admitted Mrs. Rachel, as Marilla accompanied her to the end of the lane at sunset. "She must be a great help to you." "She is," said Marilla, "and she s real steady and reliable now. I used to be afraid she d never get over her featherbrained ways, but she has and I wouldn t be afraid to trust her in anything now." "I never would have thought she d have turned out so well that first day I was here three years ago," said Mrs. Rachel. "Lawful heart, shall I ever forget that tantrum of hers! When I went home that night I says to Thomas, says I, `Mark my words, Thomas, Marilla Cuthbert ll live to rue the step she s took. But I was mistaken and I m real glad of it. I ain t one of those kind of people, Marilla, as can never be brought to own up that they ve made a mistake. No, that never was my way, thank goodness. I did make a mistake in judging Anne, but it weren t no wonder, for an odder, unexpecteder witch of a child there never was in this world, that s what. There was no ciphering her out by the rules that worked with other children. It s nothing short of wonderful how she s improved these three years, but especially in looks. She s a real pretty girl got to be, though I can t say I m overly partial to that pale, big-eyed style myself. I like more snap and color, like Diana Barry has or Ruby Gillis. Ruby Gillis s looks are real showy. But somehow--I don t know how it is but when Anne and them are together, though she ain t half as handsome, she makes them look kind of common and overdone-- something like them white June lilies she calls narcissus alongside of the big, red peonies, that s what." CHAPTER XXIX UP CHAPTER XXXI 今日 - | 昨日 - | Total - since 05 June 2007 last update 2007-06-05 01 18 36 (Tue)
https://w.atwiki.jp/pyopyo0124/pages/42.html
CHAPTER XXVII UP CHAPTER XXIX CHAPTER XXVIII An Unfortunate Lily Maid "OF course you must be Elaine, Anne," said Diana. "I could never have the courage to float down there." "Nor I," said Ruby Gillis, with a shiver. "I don t mind floating down when there s two or three of us in the flat and we can sit up. It s fun then. But to lie down and pretend I was dead--I just couldn t. I d die really of fright." "Of course it would be romantic," conceded Jane Andrews, "but I know I couldn t keep still. I d be popping up every minute or so to see where I was and if I wasn t drifting too far out. And you know, Anne, that would spoil the effect." "But it s so ridiculous to have a redheaded Elaine," mourned Anne. "I m not afraid to float down and I d love to be Elaine. But it s ridiculous just the same. Ruby ought to be Elaine because she is so fair and has such lovely long golden hair-- Elaine had `all her bright hair streaming down, you know. And Elaine was the lily maid. Now, a red-haired person cannot be a lily maid." "Your complexion is just as fair as Ruby s," said Diana earnestly, "and your hair is ever so much darker than it used to be before you cut it." "Oh, do you really think so?" exclaimed Anne, flushing sensitively with delight. "I ve sometimes thought it was myself--but I never dared to ask anyone for fear she would tell me it wasn t. Do you think it could be called auburn now, Diana?" "Yes, and I think it is real pretty," said Diana, looking admiringly at the short, silky curls that clustered over Anne s head and were held in place by a very jaunty black velvet ribbon and bow. They were standing on the bank of the pond, below Orchard Slope, where a little headland fringed with birches ran out from the bank; at its tip was a small wooden platform built out into the water for the convenience of fishermen and duck hunters. Ruby and Jane were spending the midsummer afternoon with Diana, and Anne had come over to play with them. Anne and Diana had spent most of their playtime that summer on and about the pond. Idlewild was a thing of the past, Mr. Bell having ruthlessly cut down the little circle of trees in his back pasture in the spring. Anne had sat among the stumps and wept, not without an eye to the romance of it; but she was speedily consoled, for, after all, as she and Diana said, big girls of thirteen, going on fourteen, were too old for such childish amusements as playhouses, and there were more fascinating sports to be found about the pond. It was splendid to fish for trout over the bridge and the two girls learned to row themselves about in the little flat-bottomed dory Mr. Barry kept for duck shooting. It was Anne s idea that they dramatize Elaine. They had studied Tennyson s poem in school the preceding winter, the Superintendent of Education having prescribed it in the English course for the Prince Edward Island schools. They had analyzed and parsed it and torn it to pieces in general until it was a wonder there was any meaning at all left in it for them, but at least the fair lily maid and Lancelot and Guinevere and King Arthur had become very real people to them, and Anne was devoured by secret regret that she had not been born in Camelot. Those days, she said, were so much more romantic than the present. Anne s plan was hailed with enthusiasm. The girls had discovered that if the flat were pushed off from the landing place it would drift down with the current under the bridge and finally strand itself on another headland lower down which ran out at a curve in the pond. They had often gone down like this and nothing could be more convenient for playing Elaine. "Well, I ll be Elaine," said Anne, yielding reluctantly, for, although she would have been delighted to play the principal character, yet her artistic sense demanded fitness for it and this, she felt, her limitations made impossible. "Ruby, you must be King Arthur and Jane will be Guinevere and Diana must be Lancelot. But first you must be the brothers and the father. We can t have the old dumb servitor because there isn t room for two in the flat when one is lying down. We must pall the barge all its length in blackest samite. That old black shawl of your mother s will be just the thing, Diana." The black shawl having been procured, Anne spread it over the flat and then lay down on the bottom, with closed eyes and hands folded over her breast. "Oh, she does look really dead," whispered Ruby Gillis nervously, watching the still, white little face under the flickering shadows of the birches. "It makes me feel frightened, girls. Do you suppose it s really right to act like this? Mrs. Lynde says that all play-acting is abominably wicked." "Ruby, you shouldn t talk about Mrs. Lynde," said Anne severely. "It spoils the effect because this is hundreds of years before Mrs. Lynde was born. Jane, you arrange this. It s silly for Elaine to be talking when she s dead." Jane rose to the occasion. Cloth of gold for coverlet there was none, but an old piano scarf of yellow Japanese crepe was an excellent substitute. A white lily was not obtainable just then, but the effect of a tall blue iris placed in one of Anne s folded hands was all that could be desired. "Now, she s all ready," said Jane. "We must kiss her quiet brows and, Diana, you say, `Sister, farewell forever, and Ruby, you say, `Farewell, sweet sister, both of you as sorrowfully as you possibly can. Anne, for goodness sake smile a little. You know Elaine `lay as though she smiled. That s better. Now push the flat off." The flat was accordingly pushed off, scraping roughly over an old embedded stake in the process. Diana and Jane and Ruby only waited long enough to see it caught in the current and headed for the bridge before scampering up through the woods, across the road, and down to the lower headland where, as Lancelot and Guinevere and the King, they were to be in readiness to receive the lily maid. For a few minutes Anne, drifting slowly down, enjoyed the romance of her situation to the full. Then something happened not at all romantic. The flat began to leak. In a very few moments it was necessary for Elaine to scramble to her feet, pick up her cloth of gold coverlet and pall of blackest samite and gaze blankly at a big crack in the bottom of her barge through which the water was literally pouring. That sharp stake at the landing had torn off the strip of batting nailed on the flat. Anne did not know this, but it did not take her long to realize that she was in a dangerous plight. At this rate the flat would fill and sink long before it could drift to the lower headland. Where were the oars? Left behind at the landing! Anne gave one gasping little scream which nobody ever heard; she was white to the lips, but she did not lose her self-possession. There was one chance--just one. "I was horribly frightened," she told Mrs. Allan the next day, "and it seemed like years while the flat was drifting down to the bridge and the water rising in it every moment. I prayed, Mrs. Allan, most earnestly, but I didn t shut my eyes to pray, for I knew the only way God could save me was to let the flat float close enough to one of the bridge piles for me to climb up on it. You know the piles are just old tree trunks and there are lots of knots and old branch stubs on them. It was proper to pray, but I had to do my part by watching out and right well I knew it. I just said, `Dear God, please take the flat close to a pile and I ll do the rest, over and over again. Under such circumstances you don t think much about making a flowery prayer. But mine was answered, for the flat bumped right into a pile for a minute and I flung the scarf and the shawl over my shoulder and scrambled up on a big providential stub. And there I was, Mrs. Allan, clinging to that slippery old pile with no way of getting up or down. It was a very unromantic position, but I didn t think about that at the time. You don t think much about romance when you have just escaped from a watery grave. I said a grateful prayer at once and then I gave all my attention to holding on tight, for I knew I should probably have to depend on human aid to get back to dry land." The flat drifted under the bridge and then promptly sank in midstream. Ruby, Jane, and Diana, already awaiting it on the lower headland, saw it disappear before their very eyes and had not a doubt but that Anne had gone down with it. For a moment they stood still, white as sheets, frozen with horror at the tragedy; then, shrieking at the tops of their voices, they started on a frantic run up through the woods, never pausing as they crossed the main road to glance the way of the bridge. Anne, clinging desperately to her precarious foothold, saw their flying forms and heard their shrieks. Help would soon come, but meanwhile her position was a very uncomfortable one. The minutes passed by, each seeming an hour to the unfortunate lily maid. Why didn t somebody come? Where had the girls gone? Suppose they had fainted, one and all! Suppose nobody ever came! Suppose she grew so tired and cramped that she could hold on no longer! Anne looked at the wicked green depths below her, wavering with long, oily shadows, and shivered. Her imagination began to suggest all manner of gruesome possibilities to her. Then, just as she thought she really could not endure the ache in her arms and wrists another moment, Gilbert Blythe came rowing under the bridge in Harmon Andrews s dory! Gilbert glanced up and, much to his amazement, beheld a little white scornful face looking down upon him with big, frightened but also scornful gray eyes. "Anne Shirley! How on earth did you get there?" he exclaimed. Without waiting for an answer he pulled close to the pile and extended his hand. There was no help for it; Anne, clinging to Gilbert Blythe s hand, scrambled down into the dory, where she sat, drabbled and furious, in the stern with her arms full of dripping shawl and wet crepe. It was certainly extremely difficult to be dignified under the circumstances! "What has happened, Anne?" asked Gilbert, taking up his oars. "We were playing Elaine" explained Anne frigidly, without even looking at her rescuer, "and I had to drift down to Camelot in the barge--I mean the flat. The flat began to leak and I climbed out on the pile. The girls went for help. Will you be kind enough to row me to the landing?" Gilbert obligingly rowed to the landing and Anne, disdaining assistance, sprang nimbly on shore. "I m very much obliged to you," she said haughtily as she turned away. But Gilbert had also sprung from the boat and now laid a detaining hand on her arm. "Anne," he said hurriedly, "look here. Can t we be good friends? I m awfully sorry I made fun of your hair that time. I didn t mean to vex you and I only meant it for a joke. Besides, it s so long ago. I think your hair is awfully pretty now--honest I do. Let s be friends." For a moment Anne hesitated. She had an odd, newly awakened consciousness under all her outraged dignity that the half-shy, half-eager expression in Gilbert s hazel eyes was something that was very good to see. Her heart gave a quick, queer little beat. But the bitterness of her old grievance promptly stiffened up her wavering determination. That scene of two years before flashed back into her recollection as vividly as if it had taken place yesterday. Gilbert had called her "carrots" and had brought about her disgrace before the whole school. Her resentment, which to other and older people might be as laughable as its cause, was in no whit allayed and softened by time seemingly. She hated Gilbert Blythe! She would never forgive him! "No," she said coldly, "I shall never be friends with you, Gilbert Blythe; and I don t want to be!" "All right!" Gilbert sprang into his skiff with an angry color in his cheeks. "I ll never ask you to be friends again, Anne Shirley. And I don t care either!" He pulled away with swift defiant strokes, and Anne went up the steep, ferny little path under the maples. She held her head very high, but she was conscious of an odd feeling of regret. She almost wished she had answered Gilbert differently. Of course, he had insulted her terribly, but still--! Altogether, Anne rather thought it would be a relief to sit down and have a good cry. She was really quite unstrung, for the reaction from her fright and cramped clinging was making itself felt. Halfway up the path she met Jane and Diana rushing back to the pond in a state narrowly removed from positive frenzy. They had found nobody at Orchard Slope, both Mr. and Mrs. Barry being away. Here Ruby Gillis had succumbed to hysterics, and was left to recover from them as best she might, while Jane and Diana flew through the Haunted Wood and across the brook to Green Gables. There they had found nobody either, for Marilla had gone to Carmody and Matthew was making hay in the back field. "Oh, Anne," gasped Diana, fairly falling on the former s neck and weeping with relief and delight, "oh, Anne--we thought--you were--drowned--and we felt like murderers--because we had made--you be--Elaine. And Ruby is in hysterics--oh, Anne, how did you escape?" "I climbed up on one of the piles," explained Anne wearily, "and Gilbert Blythe came along in Mr. Andrews s dory and brought me to land." "Oh, Anne, how splendid of him! Why, it s so romantic!" said Jane, finding breath enough for utterance at last. "Of course you ll speak to him after this." "Of course I won t," flashed Anne, with a momentary return of her old spirit. "And I don t want ever to hear the word `romantic again, Jane Andrews. I m awfully sorry you were so frightened, girls. It is all my fault. I feel sure I was born under an unlucky star. Everything I do gets me or my dearest friends into a scrape. We ve gone and lost your father s flat, Diana, and I have a presentiment that we ll not be allowed to row on the pond any more." Anne s presentiment proved more trustworthy than presentiments are apt to do. Great was the consternation in the Barry and Cuthbert households when the events of the afternoon became known. "Will you ever have any sense, Anne?" groaned Marilla. "Oh, yes, I think I will, Marilla," returned Anne optimistically. A good cry, indulged in the grateful solitude of the east gable, had soothed her nerves and restored her to her wonted cheerfulness. "I think my prospects of becoming sensible are brighter now than ever." "I don t see how," said Marilla. "Well," explained Anne, "I ve learned a new and valuable lesson today. Ever since I came to Green Gables I ve been making mistakes, and each mistake has helped to cure me of some great shortcoming. The affair of the amethyst brooch cured me of meddling with things that didn t belong to me. The Haunted Wood mistake cured me of letting my imagination run away with me. The liniment cake mistake cured me of carelessness in cooking. Dyeing my hair cured me of vanity. I never think about my hair and nose now--at least, very seldom. And today s mistake is going to cure me of being too romantic. I have come to the conclusion that it is no use trying to be romantic in Avonlea. It was probably easy enough in towered Camelot hundreds of years ago, but romance is not appreciated now. I feel quite sure that you will soon see a great improvement in me in this respect, Marilla." "I m sure I hope so," said Marilla skeptically. But Matthew, who had been sitting mutely in his corner, laid a hand on Anne s shoulder when Marilla had gone out. "Don t give up all your romance, Anne," he whispered shyly, "a little of it is a good thing--not too much, of course--but keep a little of it, Anne, keep a little of it." CHAPTER XXVII UP CHAPTER XXIX 今日 - | 昨日 - | Total - since 05 June 2007 last update 2007-06-05 01 19 22 (Tue)
https://w.atwiki.jp/pyopyo0124/pages/28.html
CHAPTER XIII UP CHAPTER XV CHAPTER XIV Anne s Confession ON the Monday evening before the picnic Marilla came down from her room with a troubled face. "Anne," she said to that small personage, who was shelling peas by the spotless table and singing, "Nelly of the Hazel Dell" with a vigor and expression that did credit to Diana s teaching, "did you see anything of my amethyst brooch? I thought I stuck it in my pincushion when I came home from church yesterday evening, but I can t find it anywhere." "I--I saw it this afternoon when you were away at the Aid Society," said Anne, a little slowly. "I was passing your door when I saw it on the cushion, so I went in to look at it." "Did you touch it?" said Marilla sternly. "Y-e-e-s," admitted Anne, "I took it up and I pinned it on my breast just to see how it would look." "You had no business to do anything of the sort. It s very wrong in a little girl to meddle. You shouldn t have gone into my room in the first place and you shouldn t have touched a brooch that didn t belong to you in the second. Where did you put it?" "Oh, I put it back on the bureau. I hadn t it on a minute. Truly, I didn t mean to meddle, Marilla. I didn t think about its being wrong to go in and try on the brooch; but I see now that it was and I ll never do it again. That s one good thing about me. I never do the same naughty thing twice." "You didn t put it back," said Marilla. "That brooch isn t anywhere on the bureau. You ve taken it out or something, Anne." "I did put it back," said Anne quickly--pertly, Marilla thought. "I don t just remember whether I stuck it on the pincushion or laid it in the china tray. But I m perfectly certain I put it back." "I ll go and have another look," said Marilla, determining to be just. "If you put that brooch back it s there still. If it isn t I ll know you didn t, that s all!" Marilla went to her room and made a thorough search, not only over the bureau but in every other place she thought the brooch might possibly be. It was not to be found and she returned to the kitchen. "Anne, the brooch is gone. By your own admission you were the last person to handle it. Now, what have you done with it? Tell me the truth at once. Did you take it out and lose it?" "No, I didn t," said Anne solemnly, meeting Marilla s angry gaze squarely. "I never took the brooch out of your room and that is the truth, if I was to be led to the block for it--although I m not very certain what a block is. So there, Marilla." Anne s "so there" was only intended to emphasize her assertion, but Marilla took it as a display of defiance. "I believe you are telling me a falsehood, Anne," she said sharply. "I know you are. There now, don t say anything more unless you are prepared to tell the whole truth. Go to your room and stay there until you are ready to confess." "Will I take the peas with me?" said Anne meekly. "No, I ll finish shelling them myself. Do as I bid you." When Anne had gone Marilla went about her evening tasks in a very disturbed state of mind. She was worried about her valuable brooch. What if Anne had lost it? And how wicked of the child to deny having taken it, when anybody could see she must have! With such an innocent face, too! "I don t know what I wouldn t sooner have had happen," thought Marilla, as she nervously shelled the peas. "Of course, I don t suppose she meant to steal it or anything like that. She s just taken it to play with or help along that imagination of hers. She must have taken it, that s clear, for there hasn t been a soul in that room since she was in it, by her own story, until I went up tonight. And the brooch is gone, there s nothing surer. I suppose she has lost it and is afraid to own up for fear she ll be punished. It s a dreadful thing to think she tells falsehoods. It s a far worse thing than her fit of temper. It s a fearful responsibility to have a child in your house you can t trust. Slyness and untruthfulness--that s what she has displayed. I declare I feel worse about that than about the brooch. If she d only have told the truth about it I wouldn t mind so much." Marilla went to her room at intervals all through the evening and searched for the brooch, without finding it. A bedtime visit to the east gable produced no result. Anne persisted in denying that she knew anything about the brooch but Marilla was only the more firmly convinced that she did. She told Matthew the story the next morning. Matthew was confounded and puzzled; he could not so quickly lose faith in Anne but he had to admit that circumstances were against her. "You re sure it hasn t fell down behind the bureau?" was the only suggestion he could offer. "I ve moved the bureau and I ve taken out the drawers and I ve looked in every crack and cranny" was Marilla s positive answer. "The brooch is gone and that child has taken it and lied about it. That s the plain, ugly truth, Matthew Cuthbert, and we might as well look it in the face." "Well now, what are you going to do about it?" Matthew asked forlornly, feeling secretly thankful that Marilla and not he had to deal with the situation. He felt no desire to put his oar in this time. "She ll stay in her room until she confesses," said Marilla grimly, remembering the success of this method in the former case. "Then we ll see. Perhaps we ll be able to find the brooch if she ll only tell where she took it; but in any case she ll have to be severely punished, Matthew." "Well now, you ll have to punish her," said Matthew, reaching for his hat. "I ve nothing to do with it, remember. You warned me off yourself." Marilla felt deserted by everyone. She could not even go to Mrs. Lynde for advice. She went up to the east gable with a very serious face and left it with a face more serious still. Anne steadfastly refused to confess. She persisted in asserting that she had not taken the brooch. The child had evidently been crying and Marilla felt a pang of pity which she sternly repressed. By night she was, as she expressed it, "beat out." "You ll stay in this room until you confess, Anne. You can make up your mind to that," she said firmly. "But the picnic is tomorrow, Marilla," cried Anne. "You won t keep me from going to that, will you? You ll just let me out for the afternoon, won t you? Then I ll stay here as long as you like AFTERWARDS cheerfully. But I MUST go to the picnic." "You ll not go to picnics nor anywhere else until you ve confessed, Anne." "Oh, Marilla," gasped Anne. But Marilla had gone out and shut the door. Wednesday morning dawned as bright and fair as if expressly made to order for the picnic. Birds sang around Green Gables; the Madonna lilies in the garden sent out whiffs of perfume that entered in on viewless winds at every door and window, and wandered through halls and rooms like spirits of benediction. The birches in the hollow waved joyful hands as if watching for Anne s usual morning greeting from the east gable. But Anne was not at her window. When Marilla took her breakfast up to her she found the child sitting primly on her bed, pale and resolute, with tight-shut lips and gleaming eyes. "Marilla, I m ready to confess." "Ah!" Marilla laid down her tray. Once again her method had succeeded; but her success was very bitter to her. "Let me hear what you have to say then, Anne." "I took the amethyst brooch," said Anne, as if repeating a lesson she had learned. "I took it just as you said. I didn t mean to take it when I went in. But it did look so beautiful, Marilla, when I pinned it on my breast that I was overcome by an irresistible temptation. I imagined how perfectly thrilling it would be to take it to Idlewild and play I was the Lady Cordelia Fitzgerald. It would be so much easier to imagine I was the Lady Cordelia if I had a real amethyst brooch on. Diana and I make necklaces of roseberries but what are roseberries compared to amethysts? So I took the brooch. I thought I could put it back before you came home. I went all the way around by the road to lengthen out the time. When I was going over the bridge across the Lake of Shining Waters I took the brooch off to have another look at it. Oh, how it did shine in the sunlight! And then, when I was leaning over the bridge, it just slipped through my fingers--so--and went down--down--down, all purply-sparkling, and sank forevermore beneath the Lake of Shining Waters. And that s the best I can do at confessing, Marilla." Marilla felt hot anger surge up into her heart again. This child had taken and lost her treasured amethyst brooch and now sat there calmly reciting the details thereof without the least apparent compunction or repentance. "Anne, this is terrible," she said, trying to speak calmly. "You are the very wickedest girl I ever heard of." "Yes, I suppose I am," agreed Anne tranquilly. "And I know I ll have to be punished. It ll be your duty to punish me, Marilla. Won t you please get it over right off because I d like to go to the picnic with nothing on my mind." "Picnic, indeed! You ll go to no picnic today, Anne Shirley. That shall be your punishment. And it isn t half severe enough either for what you ve done!" "Not go to the picnic!" Anne sprang to her feet and clutched Marilla s hand. "But you PROMISED me I might! Oh, Marilla, I must go to the picnic. That was why I confessed. Punish me any way you like but that. Oh, Marilla, please, please, let me go to the picnic. Think of the ice cream! For anything you know I may never have a chance to taste ice cream again." Marilla disengaged Anne s clinging hands stonily. "You needn t plead, Anne. You are not going to the picnic and that s final. No, not a word." Anne realized that Marilla was not to be moved. She clasped her hands together, gave a piercing shriek, and then flung herself face downward on the bed, crying and writhing in an utter abandonment of disappointment and despair. "For the land s sake!" gasped Marilla, hastening from the room. "I believe the child is crazy. No child in her senses would behave as she does. If she isn t she s utterly bad. Oh dear, I m afraid Rachel was right from the first. But I ve put my hand to the plow and I won t look back." That was a dismal morning. Marilla worked fiercely and scrubbed the porch floor and the dairy shelves when she could find nothing else to do. Neither the shelves nor the porch needed it--but Marilla did. Then she went out and raked the yard. When dinner was ready she went to the stairs and called Anne. A tear-stained face appeared, looking tragically over the banisters. "Come down to your dinner, Anne." "I don t want any dinner, Marilla," said Anne, sobbingly. "I couldn t eat anything. My heart is broken. You ll feel remorse of conscience someday, I expect, for breaking it, Marilla, but I forgive you. Remember when the time comes that I forgive you. But please don t ask me to eat anything, especially boiled pork and greens. Boiled pork and greens are so unromantic when one is in affliction." Exasperated, Marilla returned to the kitchen and poured out her tale of woe to Matthew, who, between his sense of justice and his unlawful sympathy with Anne, was a miserable man. "Well now, she shouldn t have taken the brooch, Marilla, or told stories about it," he admitted, mournfully surveying his plateful of unromantic pork and greens as if he, like Anne, thought it a food unsuited to crises of feeling, "but she s such a little thing--such an interesting little thing. Don t you think it s pretty rough not to let her go to the picnic when she s so set on it?" "Matthew Cuthbert, I m amazed at you. I think I ve let her off entirely too easy. And she doesn t appear to realize how wicked she s been at all--that s what worries me most. If she d really felt sorry it wouldn t be so bad. And you don t seem to realize it, neither; you re making excuses for her all the time to yourself--I can see that." "Well now, she s such a little thing," feebly reiterated Matthew. "And there should be allowances made, Marilla. You know she s never had any bringing up." "Well, she s having it now" retorted Marilla. The retort silenced Matthew if it did not convince him. That dinner was a very dismal meal. The only cheerful thing about it was Jerry Buote, the hired boy, and Marilla resented his cheerfulness as a personal insult. When her dishes were washed and her bread sponge set and her hens fed Marilla remembered that she had noticed a small rent in her best black lace shawl when she had taken it off on Monday afternoon on returning from the Ladies Aid. She would go and mend it. The shawl was in a box in her trunk. As Marilla lifted it out, the sunlight, falling through the vines that clustered thickly about the window, struck upon something caught in the shawl--something that glittered and sparkled in facets of violet light. Marilla snatched at it with a gasp. It was the amethyst brooch, hanging to a thread of the lace by its catch! "Dear life and heart," said Marilla blankly, "what does this mean? Here s my brooch safe and sound that I thought was at the bottom of Barry s pond. Whatever did that girl mean by saying she took it and lost it? I declare I believe Green Gables is bewitched. I remember now that when I took off my shawl Monday afternoon I laid it on the bureau for a minute. I suppose the brooch got caught in it somehow. Well!" Marilla betook herself to the east gable, brooch in hand. Anne had cried herself out and was sitting dejectedly by the window. "Anne Shirley," said Marilla solemnly, "I ve just found my brooch hanging to my black lace shawl. Now I want to know what that rigmarole you told me this morning meant." "Why, you said you d keep me here until I confessed," returned Anne wearily, "and so I decided to confess because I was bound to get to the picnic. I thought out a confession last night after I went to bed and made it as interesting as I could. And I said it over and over so that I wouldn t forget it. But you wouldn t let me go to the picnic after all, so all my trouble was wasted." Marilla had to laugh in spite of herself. But her conscience pricked her. "Anne, you do beat all! But I was wrong--I see that now. I shouldn t have doubted your word when I d never known you to tell a story. Of course, it wasn t right for you to confess to a thing you hadn t done--it was very wrong to do so. But I drove you to it. So if you ll forgive me, Anne, I ll forgive you and we ll start square again. And now get yourself ready for the picnic." Anne flew up like a rocket. "Oh, Marilla, isn t it too late?" "No, it s only two o clock. They won t be more than well gathered yet and it ll be an hour before they have tea. Wash your face and comb your hair and put on your gingham. I ll fill a basket for you. There s plenty of stuff baked in the house. And I ll get Jerry to hitch up the sorrel and drive you down to the picnic ground." "Oh, Marilla," exclaimed Anne, flying to the washstand. "Five minutes ago I was so miserable I was wishing I d never been born and now I wouldn t change places with an angel!" That night a thoroughly happy, completely tired-out Anne returned to Green Gables in a state of beatification impossible to describe. "Oh, Marilla, I ve had a perfectly scrumptious time. Scrumptious is a new word I learned today. I heard Mary Alice Bell use it. Isn t it very expressive? Everything was lovely. We had a splendid tea and then Mr. Harmon Andrews took us all for a row on the Lake of Shining Waters--six of us at a time. And Jane Andrews nearly fell overboard. She was leaning out to pick water lilies and if Mr. Andrews hadn t caught her by her sash just in the nick of time she d fallen in and prob ly been drowned. I wish it had been me. It would have been such a romantic experience to have been nearly drowned. It would be such a thrilling tale to tell. And we had the ice cream. Words fail me to describe that ice cream. Marilla, I assure you it was sublime." That evening Marilla told the whole story to Matthew over her stocking basket. "I m willing to own up that I made a mistake," she concluded candidly, "but I ve learned a lesson. I have to laugh when I think of Anne s `confession, although I suppose I shouldn t for it really was a falsehood. But it doesn t seem as bad as the other would have been, somehow, and anyhow I m responsible for it. That child is hard to understand in some respects. But I believe she ll turn out all right yet. And there s one thing certain, no house will ever be dull that she s in." CHAPTER XIII UP CHAPTER XV 今日 - | 昨日 - | Total - since 05 June 2007 last update 2007-06-05 01 25 11 (Tue)
https://w.atwiki.jp/pyopyo0124/pages/49.html
CHAPTER XXXIV UP CHAPTER XXXVI CHAPTER XXXV The Winter at Queen s Anne s homesickness wore off, greatly helped in the wearing by her weekend visits home. As long as the open weather lasted the Avonlea students went out to Carmody on the new branch railway every Friday night. Diana and several other Avonlea young folks were generally on hand to meet them and they all walked over to Avonlea in a merry party. Anne thought those Friday evening gypsyings over the autumnal hills in the crisp golden air, with the homelights of Avonlea twinkling beyond, were the best and dearest hours in the whole week. Gilbert Blythe nearly always walked with Ruby Gillis and carried her satchel for her. Ruby was a very handsome young lady, now thinking herself quite as grown up as she really was; she wore her skirts as long as her mother would let her and did her hair up in town, though she had to take it down when she went home. She had large, bright-blue eyes, a brilliant complexion, and a plump showy figure. She laughed a great deal, was cheerful and good-tempered, and enjoyed the pleasant things of life frankly. "But I shouldn t think she was the sort of girl Gilbert would like," whispered Jane to Anne. Anne did not think so either, but she would not have said so for the Avery scholarship. She could not help thinking, too, that it would be very pleasant to have such a friend as Gilbert to jest and chatter with and exchange ideas about books and studies and ambitions. Gilbert had ambitions, she knew, and Ruby Gillis did not seem the sort of person with whom such could be profitably discussed. There was no silly sentiment in Anne s ideas concerning Gilbert. Boys were to her, when she thought about them at all, merely possible good comrades. If she and Gilbert had been friends she would not have cared how many other friends he had nor with whom he walked. She had a genius for friendship; girl friends she had in plenty; but she had a vague consciousness that masculine friendship might also be a good thing to round out one s conceptions of companionship and furnish broader standpoints of judgment and comparison. Not that Anne could have put her feelings on the matter into just such clear definition. But she thought that if Gilbert had ever walked home with her from the train, over the crisp fields and along the ferny byways, they might have had many and merry and interesting conversations about the new world that was opening around them and their hopes and ambitions therein. Gilbert was a clever young fellow, with his own thoughts about things and a determination to get the best out of life and put the best into it. Ruby Gillis told Jane Andrews that she didn t understand half the things Gilbert Blythe said; he talked just like Anne Shirley did when she had a thoughtful fit on and for her part she didn t think it any fun to be bothering about books and that sort of thing when you didn t have to. Frank Stockley had lots more dash and go, but then he wasn t half as good-looking as Gilbert and she really couldn t decide which she liked best! In the Academy Anne gradually drew a little circle of friends about her, thoughtful, imaginative, ambitious students like herself. With the "rose-red" girl, Stella Maynard, and the "dream girl," Priscilla Grant, she soon became intimate, finding the latter pale spiritual-looking maiden to be full to the brim of mischief and pranks and fun, while the vivid, black-eyed Stella had a heartful of wistful dreams and fancies, as aerial and rainbow-like as Anne s own. After the Christmas holidays the Avonlea students gave up going home on Fridays and settled down to hard work. By this time all the Queen s scholars had gravitated into their own places in the ranks and the various classes had assumed distinct and settled shadings of individuality. Certain facts had become generally accepted. It was admitted that the medal contestants had practically narrowed down to three--Gilbert Blythe, Anne Shirley, and Lewis Wilson; the Avery scholarship was more doubtful, any one of a certain six being a possible winner. The bronze medal for mathematics was considered as good as won by a fat, funny little up-country boy with a bumpy forehead and a patched coat. Ruby Gillis was the handsomest girl of the year at the Academy; in the Second Year classes Stella Maynard carried off the palm for beauty, with small but critical minority in favor of Anne Shirley. Ethel Marr was admitted by all competent judges to have the most stylish modes of hair-dressing, and Jane Andrews--plain, plodding, conscientious Jane--carried off the honors in the domestic science course. Even Josie Pye attained a certain preeminence as the sharpest- tongued young lady in attendance at Queen s. So it may be fairly stated that Miss Stacy s old pupil s held their own in the wider arena of the academical course. Anne worked hard and steadily. Her rivalry with Gilbert was as intense as it had ever been in Avonlea school, although it was not known in the class at large, but somehow the bitterness had gone out of it. Anne no longer wished to win for the sake of defeating Gilbert; rather, for the proud consciousness of a well-won victory over a worthy foeman. It would be worth while to win, but she no longer thought life would be insupportable if she did not. In spite of lessons the students found opportunities for pleasant times. Anne spent many of her spare hours at Beechwood and generally ate her Sunday dinners there and went to church with Miss Barry. The latter was, as she admitted, growing old, but her black eyes were not dim nor the vigor of her tongue in the least abated. But she never sharpened the latter on Anne, who continued to be a prime favorite with the critical old lady. "That Anne-girl improves all the time," she said. "I get tired of other girls--there is such a provoking and eternal sameness about them. Anne has as many shades as a rainbow and every shade is the prettiest while it lasts. I don t know that she is as amusing as she was when she was a child, but she makes me love her and I like people who make me love them. It saves me so much trouble in making myself love them." Then, almost before anybody realized it, spring had come; out in Avonlea the Mayflowers were peeping pinkly out on the sere barrens where snow-wreaths lingered; and the "mist of green" was on the woods and in the valleys. But in Charlottetown harassed Queen s students thought and talked only of examinations. "It doesn t seem possible that the term is nearly over," said Anne. "Why, last fall it seemed so long to look forward to--a whole winter of studies and classes. And here we are, with the exams looming up next week. Girls, sometimes I feel as if those exams meant everything, but when I look at the big buds swelling on those chestnut trees and the misty blue air at the end of the streets they don t seem half so important." Jane and Ruby and Josie, who had dropped in, did not take this view of it. To them the coming examinations were constantly very important indeed--far more important than chestnut buds or Maytime hazes. It was all very well for Anne, who was sure of passing at least, to have her moments of belittling them, but when your whole future depended on them--as the girls truly thought theirs did-- you could not regard them philosophically. "I ve lost seven pounds in the last two weeks," sighed Jane. "It s no use to say don t worry. I WILL worry. Worrying helps you some--it seems as if you were doing something when you re worrying. It would be dreadful if I failed to get my license after going to Queen s all winter and spending so much money." "_I_ don t care," said Josie Pye. "If I don t pass this year I m coming back next. My father can afford to send me. Anne, Frank Stockley says that Professor Tremaine said Gilbert Blythe was sure to get the medal and that Emily Clay would likely win the Avery scholarship." "That may make me feel badly tomorrow, Josie," laughed Anne, "but just now I honestly feel that as long as I know the violets are coming out all purple down in the hollow below Green Gables and that little ferns are poking their heads up in Lovers Lane, it s not a great deal of difference whether I win the Avery or not. I ve done my best and I begin to understand what is meant by the `joy of the strife. Next to trying and winning, the best thing is trying and failing. Girls, don t talk about exams! Look at that arch of pale green sky over those houses and picture to yourself what it must look like over the purply-dark beech-woods back of Avonlea." "What are you going to wear for commencement, Jane?" asked Ruby practically. Jane and Josie both answered at once and the chatter drifted into a side eddy of fashions. But Anne, with her elbows on the window sill, her soft cheek laid against her clasped hands, and her eyes filled with visions, looked out unheedingly across city roof and spire to that glorious dome of sunset sky and wove her dreams of a possible future from the golden tissue of youth s own optimism. All the Beyond was hers with its possibilities lurking rosily in the oncoming years--each year a rose of promise to be woven into an immortal chaplet. CHAPTER XXXIV UP CHAPTER XXXVI 今日 - | 昨日 - | Total - since 05 June 2007 last update 2007-06-05 01 16 38 (Tue)