| Chapter VIII On reading over what I have written of the Stricklands, I am conscious that they must seem shadowy. I have been able to invest them with none of those characteristics which make the persons of a book exist with a real life of their own; and, wondering if the fault is mine, I rack my brains to remember idiosyncrasies which might lend them vividness. I feel that by dwelling on some trick of speech or some queer habit I should be able to give them a significance peculiar to themselves. As they stand they are like the figures in an old tapestry; they do not separate themselves from the background, and at a distance seem to lose their pattern, so that you have little but a pleasing piece of colour. My only excuse is that the impression they made on me was no other. There was just that shadowiness about them which you find in people whose lives are part of the social organism, so that they exist in it and by it only. They are like cells in the body, essential, but, so long as they remain healthy, engulfed in the momentous whole. The Stricklands were an average family in the middle class. A pleasant, hospitable woman, with a harmless craze for the small lions of literary society; a rather dull man, doing his duty in that state of life in which a merciful Providence had placed him; two nice-looking, healthy children. Nothing could be more ordinary. I do not know that there was anything about them to excite the attention of the curious. | 第八章 我把我笔下司查尔夫妇的故事通读了一遍，意识到他俩的形象看上去肯定阴影重重，模糊不清。对一本书中的各个人物进行性格特征的刻画，可使他们变得真实生动，而我却一点没把这些因素赋予他俩。为了弄清楚这个过错是否在我，我绞尽脑汁，回忆他俩的各种怪癖，以便可以给他们增加一些鲜明生动的性格特征。我觉得通过详细描写他俩的某些奇言怪行，就应该可以重点突出只属于他俩的性格特征。像他俩现在这样站着，就好比一幅旧挂毯上的两个人形，无法从背景中分离开来；如果从远处看，好像他俩的模样从挂毯上消失殆尽，除了令人赏心悦目的各种颜色，其他就所剩无几了。我唯一的借口就是他们给我留下的印象就是这样，别无其他。有些人的生活只是社会有机体的一部分，他们只能在其中存活，并只能赖其存活，给人留下的印象模糊不清。他们如同身体内的各个细胞，不可或缺，但只要他们健康存活着，就会被吞噬在庞然整体之中。司查尔一家属于平凡的中产阶级。妻子和蔼可亲、热情好客，狂热痴迷于结交文艺圈中小有名气的人物，这无伤大雅；丈夫乏味无趣，在仁慈的造物主已经给他安置的那种生活中履行职责；他们有两个漂亮健康的孩子。没有什么比这一家人更平凡了。我不知道这一家人有什么能引起猎奇者的注意。 |
| When I reflect on all that happened later, I ask myself if I was thick-witted not to see that there was in Charles Strickland at least something out of the common. Perhaps. I think that I have gathered in the years that intervene between then and now a fair knowledge of mankind, but even if when I first met the Stricklands I had the experience which I have now, I do not believe that I should have judged them differently. But because I have learnt that man is incalculable, I should not at this time of day be so surprised by the news that reached me when in the early autumn I returned to London. I had not been back twenty-four hours before I ran across Rose Waterford in Jermyn Street. "You look very gay and sprightly," I said. "What's the matter with you?" She smiled, and her eyes shone with a malice I knew already. It meant that she had heard some scandal about one of her friends, and the instinct of the literary woman was all alert. "You did meet Charles Strickland, didn't you?" | 我反思后来所发生的一切时扪心自问，是否我脑子太笨，没看出来司查尔至少有些非同寻常。我想也许是吧。从那时到现在已经间隔好多年，通过收集整理，我认为自己对人类已经有了相当的了解，但即使我初遇他们夫妇时就有现在这种认识，我相信我对他们的判断也不会有什么不同。但我已认清了人心叵测，那年初秋，我回伦敦后，听到了那则消息。若是搁在今天，我就不会那么惊讶了。 我回伦敦还不到一整天，就在哲敏街上碰见了沃玫瑰。 “你气色看上去不错，”我说道，“究竟发生了什么事？看把你高兴的跟什么似的。” 她笑着，闪烁的目光中流露着我早已熟知的不良居心。这说明她听说了有关她的一个朋友的某些丑闻，这位女文人的直觉永远保持高度警觉状态。 “你已经见过司查尔了，是不是？” |
| Not only her face, but her whole body, gave a sense of alacrity. I nodded. I wondered if the poor devil had been hammered on the Stock Exchange or run over by an omnibus. "Isn't it dreadful? He's run away from his wife." Miss Waterford certainly felt that she could not do her subject justice on the curb of Jermyn Street, and so, like an artist, flung the bare fact at me and declared that she knew no details. I could not do her the injustice of supposing that so trifling a circumstance would have prevented her from giving them, but she was obstinate. "I tell you I know nothing," she said, in reply to my agitated questions, and then, with an airy shrug of the shoulders: "I believe that a young person in a city tea-shop has left her situation." | 不仅她的面孔，而且她的整个身体给人一种欣然快乐，迫不及待的感觉。我点了点头。我怀疑那个可怜的家伙要么是在证券交易所折了本，要么是让公共汽车轧伤了。 “难道这还不够吓人吗？他丢下老婆跑了。” 沃小姐肯定觉得，在哲敏街的马路牙子上讨论这个话题有失公允，于是她像艺术家那样抛出赤裸裸的事实，然后声明她对此事的详情一无所知。如果假定只是因为这样一种随随便便的环境妨碍她透露此事的细节，我还真不能冤枉她，但她却固执己见。 “我跟你说了，我一无所知，”针对我焦躁不安的问题，她回答道，然后漫不经心地两肩一耸说道：“我敢肯定伦敦的某家茶馆有个年轻姑娘已经离职了。” |
| She flashed a smile at me, and, protesting an engagement with her dentist, jauntily walked on. I was more interested than distressed. In those days my experience of life at first hand was small, and it excited me to come upon an incident among people I knew of the same sort as I had read in books. I confess that time has now accustomed me to incidents of this character among my acquaintance. But I was a little shocked. Strickland was certainly forty, and I thought it disgusting that a man of his age should concern himself with affairs of the heart. With the superciliousness of extreme youth, I put thirty-five as the utmost limit at which a man might fall in love without making a fool of himself. And this news was slightly disconcerting to me personally, because I had written from the country to Mrs. Strickland, announcing my return, and had added that unless I heard from her to the contrary, I would come on a certain day to drink a dish of tea with her. This was the very day, and I had received no word from Mrs. Strickland. Did she want to see me or did she not? It was likely enough that in the agitation of the moment my note had escaped her memory. Perhaps I should be wiser not to go. On the other hand, she might wish to keep the affair quiet, and it might be highly indiscreet on my part to give any sign that this strange news had reached me. I was torn between the fear of hurting a nice woman's feelings and the fear of being in the way. I felt she must be suffering, and I did not want to see a pain which I could not help; but in my heart was a desire, that I felt a little ashamed of, to see how she was taking it. I did not know what to do. | 她朝我闪过一丝笑容，郑重声明说她约了要去看牙，便洋洋得意地走了。我听到刚才的那件事后，与其说伤心难过，倒不如说兴致勃勃。在那些日子里，我的生活阅历很少，我过去在书本中看到过同类事件，现在竟然发生在我认识的人身上，我感到非常兴奋。坦白说，在我认识的熟人中，此类事情已经是司空见惯了。但是我当时听到这个消息后，还是感到有些震惊。司查尔那时肯定年已不惑，我认为到了他这把年纪的人再把自己牵扯到风流韵事中，着实令人感到恶心。当时我年少轻狂，妄自尊大，认为一个男人要想坠入爱河而且自己不出洋相，三十五岁就算是顶到头的年龄极限了。这则新闻也令我个人感到有那么一点不安，因为之前我在乡下就给司太太写了信，把我回伦敦的日期告诉了她，并且在信中还说，如果事与愿违，我没收到她的回信，我将在某一天去找她一起喝壶茶。那天我正好遇见沃小姐，可我并未收到司太太的任何音讯。她到底是想见我还是不想见我？她在心烦意乱时完全有可能把我信中所写内容抛诸脑后了。也许我应该学乖一点，不去看望她。但另一方面，她也许想息事宁人，要是从我这边放出任何信号，说明这件怪事已经传到我的耳朵里了，那或许我就显得太不谨慎小心了。我心里非常纠结，既怕伤害这位讨人喜欢的妇人的感情，又怕去了她家妨碍她的正常生活。我感觉她一定正在痛苦煎熬着，对于我无法帮助解决的痛苦，我不愿去看；但在我心里又非常渴望看到司太太如何承受这件事，对此想法我多少感到有些难为情。我不知该如何是好。 |
