(雙語)月亮和六便士 第7章

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Chapter 7

七

The season was drawing to its dusty end, and everyone I knew was arranging to go away. Mrs. Strickland was taking her family to the coast of Norfolk, so that the children might have the sea and her husband golf. We said good-bye to one another, and arranged to meet in the autumn. But on my last day in town, coming out of the Stores, I met her with her son and daughter; like myself, she had been making her final purchases before leaving London, and we were both hot and tired. I proposed that we should all go and eat ices in the park.

喧囂紛擾的社交季節(jié)逐漸接近尾聲，我認識的每一個人都忙著準備離開誠里。思特里克蘭德太太計劃把一家人帶到諾佛克海濱去，孩子們可以在那里洗海水浴，丈夫可以打高爾夫球。我們告了別，說好秋天再會面。但是在我留在倫敦的最后一天，剛從陸海軍商店里買完東西走出來，卻又遇到思特里克蘭德太太帶著她的一兒一女；同我一樣，她也是在離開倫敦之前抓空買最后一批東西。我們都又熱又累，我提議一起到公園去吃一點冷食。

I think Mrs. Strickland was glad to show me her children, and she accepted my invitation with alacrity. They were even more attractive than their photographs had suggested, and she was right to be proud of them. I was young enough for them not to feel shy, and they chattered merrily about one thing and another. They were extraordinarily nice, healthy young children. It was very agreeable under the trees.

我猜想思特里克蘭德太太很高興讓我看到她的兩個孩子，她一點兒也沒有猶豫就接受了我的邀請。孩子們比照片上看到的更招人喜愛，她為他們感到驕傲是很有道理的。我的年紀也很輕，所以他們在我面前一點也不拘束，只顧高高興興地談他們自己的事。這兩個孩子都十分漂亮，健康活潑。歇息在樹蔭下，大家都感到非常愉快。

When in an hour they crowded into a cab to go home, I strolled idly to my club. I was perhaps a little lonely, and it was with a touch of envy that I thought of the pleasant family life of which I had had a glimpse. They seemed devoted to one another. They had little private jokes of their own which, unintelligible to the outsider, amused them enormously. Perhaps Charles Strickland was dull judged by a standard that demanded above all things verbal scintillation; but his intelligence was adequate to his surroundings, and that is a passport, not only to reasonable success, but still more to happiness. Mrs. Strickland was a charming woman, and she loved him. I pictured their lives, troubled by no untoward adventure, honest, decent, and, by reason of those two upstanding, pleasant children, so obviously destined to carry on the normal traditions of their race and station, not without significance. They would grow old insensibly; they would see their son and daughter come to years of reason, marry in due course-the one a pretty girl, future mother of healthy children; the other a handsome, manly fellow, obviously a soldier; and at last, prosperous in their dignified retirement, beloved by their descendants, after a happy, not unuseful life, in the fullness of their age they would sink into the grave.

一個鐘頭以后，這一家擠上一輛馬車回家去了，我也一個人懶散地往俱樂部踱去。我也許感到有一點寂寞，回想我剛才瞥見的這種幸福家庭生活，心里不無艷羨之感。這一家人感情似乎非常融洽。他們說一些外人無從理解的小笑話，笑得要命。如果純粹從善于辭令這一角度衡量一個人的智慧，也許查理斯·思特里克蘭德算不得聰明，但是在他自己的那個環(huán)境里，他的智慧還是綽綽有余的，這不僅是事業(yè)成功的敲門磚，而且是生活幸福的保障。思特里克蘭德太太是一個招人喜愛的女人，她很愛她的丈夫。我想象著這一對夫妻的生活，不受任何災殃禍變的干擾，誠實、體面，兩個孩子更是規(guī)矩可愛，肯定會繼承和發(fā)揚這一家人的地位和傳統(tǒng)。在不知不覺間，他們倆的年紀越來越老，兒女卻逐漸長大成人，到了一定的年齡，就會結(jié)婚成家——一個已經(jīng)出息成美麗的姑娘，將來還會生育活潑健康的孩子；另一個則是儀表堂堂的男子漢，顯然會成為一名軍人。最后這一對夫妻告老引退，受到子孫敬愛，過著富足、體面的晚年。他們幸福的一生并未虛度，直到年壽已經(jīng)很高，才告別了人世。

That must be the story of innumerable couples, and the pattern of life it offers has a homely grace. It reminds you of a placid rivulet, meandering smoothly through green pastures and shaded by pleasant trees, till at last it falls into the vasty sea; but the sea is so calm, so silent, so indifferent, that you are troubled suddenly by a vague uneasiness. Perhaps it is only by a kink in my nature, strong in me even in those days, that I felt in such an existence, the share of the great majority, something amiss. I recognised its social values, I saw its ordered happiness, but a fever in my blood asked for a wilder course. There seemed to me something alarming in such easy delights. In my heart was a desire to live more dangerously. I was not unprepared for jagged rocks and treacherous shoals if I could only have change-change and the excitement of the unforeseen.

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