“Matthew—Matthew—what is the matter? Matthew, are you sick?”
It was Marilla who spoke, alarm in every jerky word. Anne came through the hall, her hands full of white narcissus,—it was long before Anne could love the sight or odor of white narcissus again,—in time to hear her and to see Matthew standing in the porch doorway, a folded paper in his hand, and his face strangely drawn and gray. Anne dropped her flowers and sprang across the kitchen to him at the same moment as Marilla. They were both too late; before they could reach him Matthew had fallen across the threshold.
“He’s fainted,” gasped Marilla. “Anne, run for Martin—quick, quick! He’s at the barn.”
Martin, the hired man, who had just driven home from the post office, started at once for the doctor, calling at Orchard Slope on his way to send Mr. and Mrs. Barry over. Mrs. Lynde, who was there on an errand, came too. They found Anne and Marilla distractedly trying to restore Matthew to consciousness.
Mrs. Lynde pushed them gently aside, tried his pulse, and then laid her ear over his heart. She looked at their anxious faces sorrowfully and the tears came into her eyes.
“Oh, Marilla,” she said gravely. “I don’t think—we can do anything for him.”
“Mrs. Lynde, you don’t think—you can’t think Matthew is—is—” Anne could not say the dreadful word; she turned sick and pallid.
“Child, yes, I’m afraid of it. Look at his face. When you’ve seen that look as often as I have you’ll know what it means.”
Anne looked at the still face and there beheld the seal of the Great Presence.
When the doctor came he said that death had been instantaneous and probably painless, caused in all likelihood by some sudden shock. The secret of the shock was discovered to be in the paper Matthew had held and which Martin had brought from the office that morning. It contained an account of the failure of the Abbey Bank.
The news spread quickly through Avonlea, and all day friends and neighbors thronged Green Gables and came and went on errands of kindness for the dead and living. For the first time shy, quiet Matthew Cuthbert was a person of central importance; the white majesty of death had fallen on him and set him apart as one crowned.
When the calm night came softly down over Green Gables the old house was hushed and tranquil. In the parlor lay Matthew Cuthbert in his coffin, his long gray hair framing his placid face on which there was a little kindly smile as if he but slept, dreaming pleasant dreams. There were flowers about him—sweet old-fashioned flowers which his mother had planted in the homestead garden in her bridal days and for which Matthew had always had a secret, wordless love. Anne had gathered them and brought them to him, her anguished, tearless eyes burning in her white face. It was the last thing she could do for him.
The Barrys and Mrs. Lynde stayed with them that night. Diana, going to the east gable, where Anne was standing at her window, said gently:
“Anne dear, would you like to have me sleep with you tonight?”
“Thank you, Diana.” Anne looked earnestly into her friend’s face. “I think you won’t misunderstand me when I say I want to be alone. I’m not afraid. I haven’t been alone one minute since it happened—and I want to be. I want to be quite silent and quiet and try to realize it. I can’t realize it. Half the time it seems to me that Matthew can’t be dead; and the other half it seems as if he must have been dead for a long time and I’ve had this horrible dull ache ever since.”
Diana did not quite understand. Marilla’s impassioned grief, breaking all the bounds of natural reserve and lifelong habit in its stormy rush, she could comprehend better than Anne’s tearless agony. But she went away kindly, leaving Anne alone to keep her first vigil with sorrow.
Anne hoped that the tears would come in solitude. It seemed to her a terrible thing that she could not shed a tear for Matthew, whom she had loved so much and who had been so kind to her, Matthew who had walked with her last evening at sunset and was now lying in the dim room below with that awful peace on his brow. But no tears came at first, even when she knelt by her window in the darkness and prayed, looking up to the stars beyond the hills—no tears, only the same horrible dull ache of misery that kept on aching until she fell asleep, worn out with the day’s pain and excitement.
In the night she awakened, with the stillness and the darkness about her, and the recollection of the day came over her like a wave of sorrow. She could see Matthew’s face smiling at her as he had smiled when they parted at the gate that last evening—she could hear his voice saying, “My girl—my girl that I’m proud of.” Then the tears came and Anne wept her heart out. Marilla heard her and crept in to comfort her.
“There—there—don’t cry so, dearie. It can’t bring him back. It—it—isn’t right to cry so. I knew that today, but I couldn’t help it then. He’d always been such a good, kind brother to me—but God knows best.”
“Oh, just let me cry, Marilla,” sobbed Anne. “The tears don’t hurt me like that ache did. Stay here for a little while with me and keep your arm round me—so. I couldn’t have Diana stay, she’s good and kind and sweet—but it’s not her sorrow—she’s outside of it and she couldn’t come close enough to my heart to help me. It’s our sorrow—yours and mine. Oh, Marilla, what will we do without him?”
“We’ve got each other, Anne. I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t here—if you’d never come. Oh, Anne, I know I’ve been kind of strict and harsh with you maybe—but you mustn’t think I didn’t love you as well as Matthew did, for all that. I want to tell you now when I can. It’s never been easy for me to say things out of my heart, but at times like this it’s easier. I love you as dear as if you were my own flesh and blood and you’ve been my joy and comfort ever since you came to Green Gables.”
Two days afterwards they carried Matthew Cuthbert over his homestead threshold and away from the fields he had tilled and the orchards he had loved and the trees he had planted; and then Avonlea settled back to its usual placidity and even at Green Gables affairs slipped into their old groove and work was done and duties fulfilled with regularity as before, although always with the aching sense of “loss in all familiar things.” Anne, new to grief, thought it almost sad that it could be so—that they COULD go on in the old way without Matthew. She felt something like shame and remorse when she discovered that the sunrises behind the firs and the pale pink buds opening in the garden gave her the old inrush of gladness when she saw them—that Diana’s visits were pleasant to her and that Diana’s merry words and ways moved her to laughter and smiles—that, in brief, the beautiful world of blossom and love and friendship had lost none of its power to please her fancy and thrill her heart, that life still called to her with many insistent voices.
“It seems like disloyalty to Matthew, somehow, to find pleasure in these things now that he has gone,” she said wistfully to Mrs. Allan one evening when they were together in the manse garden. “I miss him so much—all the time—and yet, Mrs. Allan, the world and life seem very beautiful and interesting to me for all. Today Diana said something funny and I found myself laughing. I thought when it happened I could never laugh again. And it somehow seems as if I oughtn’t to.”
“When Matthew was here he liked to hear you laugh and he liked to know that you found pleasure in the pleasant things around you,” said Mrs. Allan gently. “He is just away now; and he likes to know it just the same. I am sure we should not shut our hearts against the healing influences that nature offers us. But I can understand your feeling. I think we all experience the same thing. We resent the thought that anything can please us when someone we love is no longer here to share the pleasure with us, and we almost feel as if we were unfaithful to our sorrow when we find our interest in life returning to us.”
“I was down to the graveyard to plant a rosebush on Matthew’s grave this afternoon,” said Anne dreamily. “I took a slip of the little white Scotch rosebush his mother brought out from Scotland long ago; Matthew always liked those roses the best—they were so small and sweet on their thorny stems. It made me feel glad that I could plant it by his grave—as if I were doing something that must please him in taking it there to be near him. I hope he has roses like them in heaven. Perhaps the souls of all those little white roses that he has loved so many summers were all there to meet him. I must go home now. Marilla is all alone and she gets lonely at twilight.”
“She will be lonelier still, I fear, when you go away again to college,” said Mrs. Allan.
Anne did not reply; she said good night and went slowly back to green Gables. Marilla was sitting on the front door-steps and Anne sat down beside her. The door was open behind them, held back by a big pink conch shell with hints of sea sunsets in its smooth inner convolutions.
Anne gathered some sprays of pale-yellow honeysuckle and put them in her hair. She liked the delicious hint of fragrance, as some aerial benediction, above her every time she moved.
“Doctor Spencer was here while you were away,” Marilla said. “He says that the specialist will be in town tomorrow and he insists that I must go in and have my eyes examined. I suppose I’d better go and have it over. I’ll be more than thankful if the man can give me the right kind of glasses to suit my eyes. You won’t mind staying here alone while I’m away, will you? Martin will have to drive me in and there’s ironing and baking to do.”
“I shall be all right. Diana will come over for company for me. I shall attend to the ironing and baking beautifully—you needn’t fear that I’ll starch the handkerchiefs or flavor the cake with liniment.”
Marilla laughed.
“What a girl you were for making mistakes in them days, Anne. You were always getting into scrapes. I did use to think you were possessed. Do you mind the time you dyed your hair?”
“Yes, indeed. I shall never forget it,” smiled Anne, touching the heavy braid of hair that was wound about her shapely head. “I laugh a little now sometimes when I think what a worry my hair used to be to me—but I don’t laugh MUCH, because it was a very real trouble then. I did suffer terribly over my hair and my freckles. My freckles are really gone; and people are nice enough to tell me my hair is auburn now—all but Josie Pye. She informed me yesterday that she really thought it was redder than ever, or at least my black dress made it look redder, and she asked me if people who had red hair ever got used to having it. Marilla, I’ve almost decided to give up trying to like Josie Pye. I’ve made what I would once have called a heroic effort to like her, but Josie Pye won’t BE liked.”
“Josie is a Pye,” said Marilla sharply, “so she can’t help being disagreeable. I suppose people of that kind serve some useful purpose in society, but I must say I don’t know what it is any more than I know the use of thistles. Is Josie going to teach?”
“No, she is going back to Queen’s next year. So are Moody Spurgeon and Charlie Sloane. Jane and Ruby are going to teach and they have both got schools—Jane at Newbridge and Ruby at some place up west.”
“Gilbert Blythe is going to teach too, isn’t he?”
“Yes”—briefly.
“What a nice-looking fellow he is,” said Marilla absently. “I saw him in church last Sunday and he seemed so tall and manly. He looks a lot like his father did at the same age. John Blythe was a nice boy. We used to be real good friends, he and I. People called him my beau.”
Anne looked up with swift interest.
“Oh, Marilla—and what happened?—why didn’t you—”
“We had a quarrel. I wouldn’t forgive him when he asked me to. I meant to, after awhile—but I was sulky and angry and I wanted to punish him first. He never came back—the Blythes were all mighty independent. But I always felt—rather sorry. I’ve always kind of wished I’d forgiven him when I had the chance.”
“So you’ve had a bit of romance in your life, too,” said Anne softly.
“Yes, I suppose you might call it that. You wouldn’t think so to look at me, would you? But you never can tell about people from their outsides. Everybody has forgot about me and John. I’d forgotten myself. But it all came back to me when I saw Gilbert last Sunday.”
背景介紹與作者簡介
這段文字選自《綠山牆的安妮》，這是一部深受喜愛的經典小說，由加拿大作家露西·莫德·蒙哥馬利所著。這部小說於1908年出版，故事講述了安妮·雪莉，一個富有想像力和活力的孤兒女孩，她被誤送到馬里拉和馬修·卡斯伯特那裡，這對兄妹原本打算收養一個男孩來幫助他們在愛德華王子島虛構的艾凡里村莊的農場工作。這部小說以其對鄉村生活的生動描繪、人際關係的溫暖以及一個年輕女孩成長為成熟女性的過程而聞名。
露西·莫德·蒙哥馬利從她自己的童年和愛德華王子島的風景中汲取靈感。她的寫作風格結合了幽默、情感深度和強烈的地域感，這使得《綠山牆的安妮》成為一個深受世界各地讀者喜愛的永恆故事。
詳細解讀與意義
這段摘錄描繪了故事中一個關鍵且充滿情感的時刻：馬修·卡斯伯特的突然去世，他是安妮深愛的監護人，也是一個溫柔、善良的人，默默地支持著安妮的夢想和成長。他的去世震驚了整個社區，讓安妮和馬里拉深感悲痛。這段文字探討了失去、悲傷和療癒的過程。
馬修的去世是突然的，是由於受到震驚——銀行倒閉的消息，這象徵著生命的脆弱和悲劇的意外性。安妮最初無法哭泣，以及她最終的情感釋放，突出了人們體驗悲傷的複雜方式。故事也觸及了在悲傷時陪伴和理解的重要性，這體現在安妮、馬里拉、黛安娜和林德太太之間的互動中。
儘管痛苦，生活仍在繼續，安妮了解到再次找到快樂和歡笑並不是對逝者的不忠，而是療癒的自然組成部分。這種認識是關於韌性和希望的有力訊息。
給學生的教訓和見解
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理解悲傷： 這段文字教導我們，悲傷是一種個人且常常複雜的體驗。它不一定總是在第一時間就伴隨著眼淚；有時，它感覺像一種沉悶的疼痛。認識到這一點可以幫助學生理解他們自己和他人在面對失去時的情緒。
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同情心的價值： 馬里拉和林德太太對安妮的支持表明，善良和陪伴可以安慰那些正在受苦的人。學生可以學習同情心的重要性，並在困難時期陪伴朋友和家人。
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韌性和前進： 安妮從震驚到接受的旅程說明了韌性。它鼓勵年輕讀者在內心找到力量，去面對挑戰並繼續充實地生活，通過擁抱生活的真諦來紀念所愛的人。
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欣賞自然和簡單的快樂： 安妮對花朵和自然的熱愛，即使在悲傷中，也提醒學生在自然世界和日常時刻中尋找慰藉和靈感。
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誠實和情感表達： 安妮和馬里拉之間的對話強調了公開和誠實地表達感受的重要性，而不是將它們壓抑在心裡。
在日常生活中應用這些教訓
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在學校： 學生可以通過提供傾聽的耳朵或簡單的善行來支持可能正在經歷艱難時期的同學。他們也可以反思自己的感受，並在不堪重負時尋求幫助。
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在友誼中： 理解每個人悲傷的方式不同，這有助於在友誼中保持耐心和同情心。在場並尊重他人的情感可以增強彼此之間的聯繫。
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在家庭中： 與家人分享感受，就像安妮和馬里拉所做的那樣，可以建立信任和相互支持，這在困境中至關重要。
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個人成長： 擁抱韌性意味著從困難中學習，並繼續充滿希望和勇氣地追求目標，就像安妮所做的那樣。
從故事中培養積極的價值觀
- 善良： 馬修的溫柔天性和安妮的感激之情突出了善良在建立有意義的關係中的力量。
- 勇氣： 面對失去並繼續充實地生活需要勇氣，這是年輕人需要培養的重要特質。
- 希望： 安妮最終的歡笑和喜悅象徵著希望在療癒中的作用。
- 友誼： 黛安娜和其他人的支持表明，朋友在快樂和悲傷的時刻都至關重要。
- 自我反思： 安妮對自己的感受和經歷的內省鼓勵學生深入思考自己的生活和情感。
結論
這段摘自《綠山牆的安妮》的文字提供了對悲傷、愛和韌性的豐富探索。它邀請學生理解人類情感的複雜性以及同情心、希望和友誼的重要性。通過從安妮的經歷中學習，年輕讀者可以培養情商和積極的價值觀，這將幫助他們以力量和善良的方式駕馭自己的生活。
