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1、【英文读物】Emily of New Moon新月艾米莉CHAPTER I The House in the HollowTHE house in the hollow was “a mile from anywhere”so Maywood people said. It was situated in a grassy little dale, looking as if it had never been built like other houses but had grown up there like a big, brown mushroom. It was reached by
2、 a long, green lane and almost hidden from view by an encircling growth of young birches. No other house could be seen from it although the village was just over the hill. Ellen Greene said it was the lonesomest place in the world and vowed that she wouldnt stay there a day if it wasnt that she piti
3、ed the child.Emily didnt know she was being pitied and didnt know what lonesomeness meant. She had plenty of company. There was Fatherand Mikeand Saucy Sal. The Wind Woman was always around; and there were the treesAdam-and-Eve, and the Rooster Pine, and all the friendly lady-birches.And there was “
4、the flash,” too. She never knew when it might come, and the possibility of it kept her a-thrill and expectant.Emily had slipped away in the chilly twilight for a walk. She remembered that walk very vividly all her lifeperhaps because of a certain eerie beauty that was in itperhaps because “the flash
5、” came for the first time2 in weeksmore likely because of what happened after she came back from it.It had been a dull, cold day in early May, threatening to rain but never raining. Father had lain on the sitting-room lounge all day. He had coughed a good deal and he had not talked much to Emily, wh
6、ich was a very unusual thing for him. Most of the time he lay with his hands clasped under his head and his large, sunken, dark-blue eyes fixed dreamily and unseeingly on the cloudy sky that was visible between the boughs of the two big spruces in the front yardAdam-and-Eve, they always called those
7、 spruces, because of a whimsical resemblance Emily had traced between their position, with reference to a small apple-tree between them, and that of Adam and Eve and the Tree of Knowledge in an old-fashioned picture in one of Ellen Greenes books. The Tree of Knowledge looked exactly like the squat l
8、ittle apple-tree, and Adam and Eve stood up on either side as stiffly and rigidly as did the spruces.Emily wondered what Father was thinking of, but she never bothered him with questions when his cough was bad. She only wished she had somebody to talk to. Ellen Greene wouldnt talk that day either. S
9、he did nothing but grunt, and grunts meant that Ellen was disturbed about something. She had grunted last night after the doctor had whispered to her in the kitchen, and she had grunted when she gave Emily a bedtime snack of bread and molasses. Emily did not like bread and molasses, but she ate it b
10、ecause she did not want to hurt Ellens feelings. It was not often that Ellen allowed her anything to eat before going to bed, and when she did it meant that for some reason or other she wanted to confer a special favor.Emily expected the grunting attack would wear off over night, as it generally did
11、; but it had not, so no company was to be found in Ellen. Not that there was a great deal to be found at any time. Douglas Starr3 had once, in a fit of exasperation, told Emily that “Ellen Greene was a fat, lazy old thing of no importance,” and Emily, whenever she looked at Ellen after that, thought
12、 the description fitted her to a hair.So Emily had curled herself up in the ragged, comfortable old wing-chair and read The Pilgrims Progress all the afternoon. Emily loved The Pilgrims Progress. Many a time had she walked the straight and narrow path with Christian and Christianaalthough she never
13、liked Christianas adventures half as well as Christians. For one thing, there was always such a crowd with Christiana. She had not half the fascination of that solitary, intrepid figure who faced all alone the shadows of the Dark Valley and the encounter with Apollyon. Darkness and hobgoblins were n
14、othing when you had plenty of company. But to be aloneah, Emily shivered with the delicious horror of it!When Ellen announced that supper was ready Douglas Starr told Emily to go out to it.“I dont want anything tonight. Ill just lie here and rest. And when you come in again well have a real talk, El
15、fkin.”He smiled up at her his old, beautiful smile, with the love behind it, that Emily always found so sweet. She ate her supper quite happilythough it wasnt a good supper. The bread was soggy and her egg was underdone, but for a wonder she was allowed to have both Saucy Sal and Mike sitting, one o
16、n each side of her, and Ellen only grunted when Emily fed them wee bits of bread and butter.Mike had such a cute way of sitting up on his haunches and catching the bits in his paws, and Saucy Sal had her trick of touching Emilys ankle with an almost human touch when her turn was too long in coming.
17、Emily loved them both, but Mike was her favourite. He was a handsome, dark-grey cat with huge owl-like eyes, and he was so soft and fat and fluffy. Sal was always thin;4 no amount of feeding put any flesh on her bones. Emily liked her, but never cared to cuddle or stroke her because of her thinness.
18、 Yet there was a sort of weird beauty about her that appealed to Emily. She was grey-and-whitevery white and very sleek, with a long, pointed face, very long ears and very green eyes. She was a redoubtable fighter, and strange cats were vanquished in one round. The fearless little spitfire would eve
19、n attack dogs and rout them utterly.Emily loved her pussies. She had brought them up herself, as she proudly said. They had been given to her when they were kittens by her Sunday School teacher.“A living present is so nice,” she told Ellen, “because it keeps on getting nicer all the time.”But she wo
20、rried considerably because Saucy Sal didnt have kittens.“I dont know why she doesnt,” she complained to Ellen Greene. “Most cats seem to have more kittens than they know what to do with.”After supper Emily went in and found that her father had fallen asleep. She was very glad of this; she knew he ha
21、d not slept much for two nights; but she was a little disappointed that they were not going to have that “real talk.” “Real” talks with Father were always such delightful things. But next best would be a walka lovely all-by-your-lonesome walk through the grey evening of the young spring. It was so l
22、ong since she had had a walk.“You put on your hood and mind you scoot back if it starts to rain,” warned Ellen. “You cant monkey with colds the way some kids can.”“Why cant I?” Emily asked rather indignantly. Why must she be debarred from “monkeying with colds” if other children could? It wasnt fair
23、.But Ellen only grunted. Emily muttered under her breath for her own satisfaction, “You are a fat old thing of no importance!” and slipped upstairs to get her hood5rather reluctantly, for she loved to run bareheaded. She put the faded blue hood on over her long, heavy braid of glossy, jet-black hair
24、, and smiled chummily at her reflection in the little greenish glass. The smile began at the corners of her lips and spread over her face in a slow, subtle, very wonderful way, as Douglas Starr often thought. It was her dead mothers smilethe thing that had caught and held him long ago when he had fi
25、rst seen Juliet Murray. It seemed to be Emilys only physical inheritance from her mother. In all else, he thought, she was like the Starrsin her large, purplish-grey eyes with their very long lashes and black brows, in her high, white foreheadtoo high for beautyin the delicate modeling of her pale o
26、val face and sensitive mouth, in the little ears that were pointed just a wee bit to show that she was kin to tribes of elfland.“Im going for a walk with the Wind Woman, dear,” said Emily. “I wish I could take you too. Do you ever get out of that room, I wonder. The Wind Woman is going to be out in
27、the fields to-night. She is tall and misty, with thin, grey, silky clothes blowing all about herand wings like a batsonly you can see through themand shining eyes like stars looking through her long, loose hair. She can flybut to-night she will walk with me all over the fields. Shes a great friend o
28、f minethe Wind Woman is. Ive known her ever since I was six. Were old, old friendsbut not quite so old as you and I, little Emily-in-the-glass. Weve been friends always, havent we?”With a blown kiss to little Emily-in-the-glass, Emily-out-of-the-glass was off.The Wind Woman was waiting for her outsi
29、deruffling the little spears of striped grass that were sticking up stiffly in the bed under the sitting-room windowtossing the big boughs of Adam-and-Evewhispering among the misty green branches of the birchesteasing the “Rooster Pine” behind the houseit really did look6 like an enormous, ridiculou
30、s rooster, with a huge, bunchy tail and a head thrown back to crow.It was so long since Emily had been out for a walk that she was half crazy with the joy of it. The winter had been so stormy and the snow so deep that she was never allowed out; April had been a month of rain and wind; so on this May
31、 evening she felt like a released prisoner. Where should she go? Down the brookor over the fields to the spruce barrens? Emily chose the latter.She loved the spruce barrens, away at the further end of the long, sloping pasture. That was a place where magic was made. She came more fully into her fair
32、y birthright there than in any other place. Nobody who saw Emily skimming over the bare field would have envied her. She was little and pale and poorly clad; sometimes she shivered in her thin jacket; yet a queen might have gladly given a crown for her visionsher dreams of wonder. The brown, frosted
33、 grasses under her feet were velvet piles. The old, mossy, gnarled half-dead spruce-tree, under which she paused for a moment to look up into the sky, was a marble column in a palace of the gods; the far dusky hills were the ramparts of a city of wonder. And for companions she had all the fairies of
34、 the countrysidefor she could believe in them herethe fairies of the white clover and satin catkins, the little green folk of the grass, the elves of the young fir-trees, sprites of wind and wild fern and thistledown. Anything might happen thereeverything might come true.And the barrens were such a
35、splendid place in which to play hide and seek with the Wind Woman. She was so very real there; if you could just spring quickly enough around a little cluster of sprucesonly you never couldyou would see her as well as feel her and hear her. There she wasthat was the sweep of her grey cloakno, she wa
36、s laughing up in the very top of the7 taller treesand the chase was on againtill, all at once, it seemed as if the Wind Woman were goneand the evening was bathed in a wonderful silenceand there was a sudden rift in the curdled clouds westward, and a lovely, pale, pinky-green lake of sky with a new m
37、oon in it.Emily stood and looked at it with clasped hands and her little black head upturned. She must go home and write down a description of it in the yellow account book, where the last thing written had been, “Mikes Biograffy.” It would hurt her with its beauty until she wrote it down. Then she
38、would read it to Father. She must not forget how the tips of the trees on the hill came out like fine black lace across the edge of the pinky-green sky.And then, for one glorious, supreme moment, came “the flash.”Emily called it that, although she felt that the name didnt exactly describe it. It cou
39、ldnt be describednot even to Father, who always seemed a little puzzled by it. Emily never spoke of it to any one else.It had always seemed to Emily, ever since she could remember, that she was very, very near to a world of wonderful beauty. Between it and herself hung only a thin curtain; she could
40、 never draw the curtain asidebut sometimes, just for a moment, a wind fluttered it and then it was as if she caught a glimpse of the enchanting realm beyondonly a glimpseand heard a note of unearthly music.This moment came rarelywent swiftly, leaving her breathless with the inexpressible delight of
41、it. She could never recall itnever summon itnever pretend it; but the wonder of it stayed with her for days. It never came twice with the same thing. To-night the dark boughs against that far-off sky had given it. It had come with a high, wild note of wind in the night, with a shadow wave over a rip
42、e field, with a greybird8 lighting on her window-sill in a storm, with the singing of “Holy, holy, holy” in church, with a glimpse of the kitchen fire when she had come home on a dark autumn night, with the spirit-like blue of ice palms on a twilit pane, with a felicitous new word when she was writi
43、ng down a “description” of something. And always when the flash came to her Emily felt that life was a wonderful, mysterious thing of persistent beauty.She scuttled back to the house in the hollow, through the gathering twilight, all agog to get home and write down her “description” before the memor
44、y picture of what she had seen grew a little blurred. She knew just how she would begin itthe sentence seemed to shape itself in her mind: “The hill called to me and something in me called back to it.”She found Ellen Greene waiting for her on the sunken front-doorstep. Emily was so full of happiness
45、 that she loved everything at that moment, even fat things of no importance. She flung her arms around Ellens knees and hugged them. Ellen looked down gloomily into the rapt little face, where excitement had kindled a faint wild-rose flush, and said, with a ponderous sigh:“Do you know that your pa h
46、as only a week or two more to live?”CHAPTER II A Watch in the NightEMILY stood quite still and looked up at Ellens broad, red faceas still as if she had been suddenly turned to stone. She felt as if she had. She was as stunned as if Ellen had struck her a physical blow. The colour faded out of her l
47、ittle face and her pupils dilated9 until they swallowed up the irides and turned her eyes into pools of blackness. The effect was so startling that even Ellen Greene felt uncomfortable.“Im telling you this because I think its high time you was told,” she said. “Ive been at your pa for months to tell
48、 you, but hes kept putting it off and off. I says to him, says I, You know how hard she takes things, and if you drop off suddent some day itll most kill her if she hasnt been prepared. Its your duty to prepare her, and he says, says he, Theres time enough yet, Ellen. But hes never said a word, and
49、when the doctor told me last night that the end might come any time now, I just made up my mind that Id do what was right and drop a hint to prepare you. Laws-a-massy, child, dont look like that! Youll be looked after. Your mas people will see to thaton account of the Murray pride, if for no other reason. They wont let one of their own blood starve or go to strangerseven if th