Chapter 27 In The GardenWord文档格式.docx

1、creatures, therewas no room left for the disagreeable thoughts which affectedher liver and her digestion and made her yellow and tired.So long as Colin shut himself up in his room and thoughtonly of his fears and weakness and his detestationof people who looked at him and reflected hourly onhumps an

2、d early death, he was a hysterical half-crazylittle hypochondriac who knew nothing of the sunshineand the spring and also did not know that he could getwell and could stand upon his feet if he tried to do it.When new beautiful thoughts began to push out the oldhideous ones, life began to come back t

3、o him, his blood ranhealthily through his veins and strength poured into himlike a flood. His scientific experiment was quite practicaland simple and there was nothing weird about it at all.Much more surprising things can happen to any one who,when a disagreeable or discouraged thought comes into hi

4、s mind,just has the sense to remember in time and push it outby putting in an agreeable determinedly courageous one.Two things cannot be in one place.Where, you tend a rose, my lad,A thistle cannot grow.While the secret garden was coming alive and two childrenwere coming alive with it, there was a m

5、an wandering aboutcertain far-away beautiful places in the Norwegian fiordsand the valleys and mountains of Switzerland and he wasa man who for ten years had kept his mind filled with darkand heart-broken thinking. He had not been courageous;he had never tried to put any other thoughts in the place

6、ofthe dark ones. He had wandered by blue lakes and thought them;he had lain on mountain-sides with sheets of deep bluegentians blooming all about him and flower breaths fillingall the air and he had thought them. A terrible sorrowhad fallen upon him when he had been happy and he hadlet his soul fill

7、 itself with blackness and had refusedobstinately to allow any rift of light to pierce through.He had forgotten and deserted his home and his duties.When he traveled about, darkness so brooded over him thatthe sight of him was a wrong done to other people becauseit was as if he poisoned the air abou

8、t him with gloom.Most strangers thought he must be either half mad or a manwith some hidden crime on his soul. He, was a tall manwith a drawn face and crooked shoulders and the name healways entered on hotel registers was, Archibald Craven,Misselthwaite Manor, Yorkshire, England.He had traveled far

9、and wide since the day he saw MistressMary in his study and told her she might have her bitof earth. He had been in the most beautiful places in Europe,though he had remained nowhere more than a few days.He had chosen the quietest and remotest spots.He had been on the tops of mountains whose heads w

10、erein the clouds and had looked down on other mountainswhen the sun rose and touched them with such lightas made it seem as if the world were just being born.But the light had never seemed to touch himself untilone day when he realized that for the first time in tenyears a strange thing had happened

11、. He was in a wonderfulvalley in the Austrian Tyrol and he had been walking alonethrough such beauty as might have lifted, any mans soulout of shadow. He had walked a long way and it had notlifted his. But at last he had felt tired and had thrownhimself down to rest on a carpet of moss by a stream.I

12、t was a clear little stream which ran quite merrily alongon its narrow way through the luscious damp greenness.Sometimes it made a sound rather like very low laughteras it bubbled over and round stones. He saw birdscome and dip their heads to drink in it and then flicktheir wings and fly away. It se

13、emed like a thing aliveand yet its tiny voice made the stillness seem deeper.The valley was very, very still.As he sat gazing into the clear running of the water,Archibald Craven gradually felt his mind and bodyboth grow quiet, as quiet as the valley itself.He wondered if he were going to sleep, but

14、 he was not.He sat and gazed at the sunlit water and his eyes beganto see things growing at its edge. There was one lovelymass of blue forget-me-nots growing so close to the streamthat its leaves were wet and at these he found himself lookingas he remembered he had looked at such things years ago.He

15、 was actually thinking tenderly how lovely it was andwhat wonders of blue its hundreds of little blossoms were.He did not know that just that simple thought was slowlyfilling his mind-filling and filling it until other thingswere softly pushed aside. It was as if a sweet clearspring had begun to ris

16、e in a stagnant pool and had risenand risen until at last it swept the dark water away.But of course he did not think of this himself. He onlyknew that the valley seemed to grow quieter and quieteras he sat and stared at the bright delicate blueness.He did not know how long he sat there or what was

17、happeningto him, but at last he moved as if he were awakeningand he got up slowly and stood on the moss carpet,drawing a long, deep, soft breath and wondering at himself.Something seemed to have been unbound and released in him,very quietly.What is it? he said, almost in a whisper, and he passedhis

18、hand over his forehead. I almost feel as if-Iwere alive!I do not know enough about the wonderfulness of undiscoveredthings to be able to explain how this had happened to him.Neither does any one else yet. He did not understandat all himself-but he remembered this strange hourmonths afterward when he

19、 was at Misselthwaite againand he found out quite by accident that on this very dayColin had cried out as he went into the secret garden:I am going to live forever and ever and ever!The singular calmness remained with him the rest of theevening and he slept a new reposeful sleep; but it wasnot with

20、him very long. He did not know that it couldbe kept. By the next night he had opened the doorswide to his dark thoughts and they had come troopingand rushing back. He left the valley and went on hiswandering way again. But, strange as it seemed to him,there were minutes-sometimes half-hours-when, wi

21、thouthis knowing why, the black burden seemed to lift itselfagain and he knew he was a living man and not a dead one.Slowly-slowly-for no reason that he knew of-he wascoming alive with the garden.As the golden summer changed into the deep golden autumn hewent to the Lake of Como. There he found the

22、lovelinessof a dream. He spent his days upon the crystal bluenessof the lake or he walked back into the soft thick verdureof the hills and tramped until he was tired so that hemight sleep. But by this time he had begun to sleep better,he knew, and his dreams had ceased to be a terror to him.Perhaps,

23、 he thought, my body is growing stronger.It was growing stronger but-because of the rarepeaceful hours when his thoughts were changed-his soulwas slowly growing stronger, too. He began to thinkof Misselthwaite and wonder if he should not go home.Now and then he wondered vaguely about his boy and ask

24、edhimself what he should feel when he went and stoodby the carved four-posted bed again and looked down atthe sharply chiseled ivory-white face while it slept and,the black lashes rimmed so startlingly the close-shut eyes.He shrank from it.One marvel of a day he had walked so far that when hereturne

25、d the moon was high and full and all the worldwas purple shadow and silver. The stillness of lakeand shore and wood was so wonderful that he did not gointo the villa he lived in. He walked down to a littlebowered terrace at the waters edge and sat upon a seatand breathed in all the heavenly scents o

26、f the night.He felt the strange calmness stealing over him and it grewdeeper and deeper until he fell asleep.He did not know when he fell asleep and when he beganto dream; his dream was so real that he did not feelas if he were dreaming. He remembered afterward howintensely wide awake and alert he h

27、ad thought he was.He thought that as he sat and breathed in the scent ofthe late roses and listened to the lapping of the waterat his feet he heard a voice calling. It was sweetand clear and happy and far away. It seemed very far,but he heard it as distinctly as if it had been at hisvery side.Archie! Archie! it said, and then again,sweeter and clearer than before, He thought he sprang to his feet not even startled.It