双语小说连载:纯真年代 The Age of Innocence(10)

"Mercy--shall we elope?" she laughed.
“天哪——我们私奔好吗？”她笑着说。

"If you would--"
“如果你肯——”

"You DO love me, Newland! I'm so happy."
“你确实很爱我，纽兰！我真幸福。”

"But then--why not be happier?"
“那么——为什么不更幸福些？”

"We can't behave like people in novels, though, can we?"
“可是，我们也不能像小说中的人那样啊，对吗？”

"Why not--why not--why not?"
“为什么不——为什么不——为什么不呢？”

She looked a little bored by his insistence. She knew very well that they couldn't, but it was troublesome to have to produce a reason. "I'm not clever enough to argue with you. But that kind of thing is rather--vulgar, isn't it?" she suggested, relieved to have hit on a word that would assuredly extinguish the whole subject.
她看上去对他的执拗有点不悦，她很清楚他们不能那样做，不过要说清道理却又很难。“我没那么聪明，无法跟你争论。可那种事有点——粗俗，不是吗？”她暗示说，因为想出了一个肯定能结束这个话题的词而松了口气。

"Are you so much afraid, then, of being vulgar?"
“这么说，你是很害怕粗俗了？”

She was evidently staggered by this. "Of course I should hate it--so would you," she rejoined, a trifle irritably.
她显然被这话吓了一跳。“我当然会讨厌了——你也会的，”她有点生气地回答说。

He stood silent, beating his stick nervously against his boot-top; and feeling that she had indeed found the right way of closing the discussion, she went on light- heartedly: "Oh, did I tell you that I showed Ellen my ring? She thinks it the most beautiful setting she ever saw. There's nothing like it in the rue de la Paix, she said. I do love you, Newland, for being so artistic!"
他站在那儿一语不发，神经质地用手杖敲着他的靴子尖，觉得她的确找到了结束争论的好办法。她心情轻松地接着说：“喂，我让埃伦看过我的戒指了，我告诉过你了吗？她认为这是她见过的最美的镶嵌了。她说，贝克斯大街上根本没有能与之相比的货色。我太爱你了，纽兰，因为你这么有艺术眼光。”

The next afternoon, as Archer, before dinner, sat smoking sullenly in his study, Janey wandered in on him. He had failed to stop at his club on the way up from the office where he exercised the profession of the law in the leisurely manner common to well-to-do New Yorkers of his class. He was out of spirits and slightly out of temper, and a haunting horror of doing the same thing every day at the same hour besieged his brain.
第二天晚饭之前，阿切尔正心情阴郁地坐在书房里吸烟，詹尼漫步进来走到他跟前。他今天从事务所回来的路上，没有去俱乐部逗留。他从事法律职业，对待工作像纽约他那个富有阶级的其他人一样漫不经心。他情绪低落，心烦意乱。每天在同一时间都要干同样的事，这使他脑子里塞满了挥之不去的痛苦。

"Sameness--sameness!" he muttered, the word running through his head like a persecuting tune as he saw the familiar tall-hatted figures lounging behind the plate- glass; and because he usually dropped in at the club at that hour he had gone home instead. He knew not only what they were likely to be talking about, but the part each one would take in the discussion. The Duke of course would be their principal theme; though the appearance in Fifth Avenue of a golden-haired lady in a small canary-coloured brougham with a pair of black cobs (for which Beaufort was generally thought responsible) would also doubtless be thoroughly gone into. Such "women" (as they were called) were few in New York, those driving their own carriages still fewer, and the appearance of Miss Fanny Ring in Fifth Avenue at the fashionable hour had profoundly agitated society. Only the day before, her carriage had passed Mrs. Lovell Mingott's, and the latter had instantly rung the little bell at her elbow and ordered the coachman to drive her home. "What if it had happened to Mrs. van der Luyden?" people asked each other with a shudder. Archer could hear Lawrence Lefferts, at that very hour, holding forth on the disintegration of society.
“千篇一律——千篇一律！”他看着玻璃板后面那些百无聊赖的戴高帽子的熟悉身影咕哝说，这话像纠缠不休的乐曲在他脑袋里不停地回响，平时这个时候他都是在俱乐部逗留，而今天他却直接回了家。他不仅知道他们可能谈论什么，而且还知道每个人在讨论中站在哪一方。公爵当然会是他们谈论的主题，尽管那位乘坐一对黑色矮脚马拉的淡黄色小马车的金发女子在第五大街的露面（此事人们普遍认为归功于博福特）无疑也将会被他们深入的研究。这样的“女人”（人们如此称呼她们）在纽约还很少见，自己驾驶马车的就更稀罕了。范妮·琳小姐在社交时间出现在第五大街，深深刺激了上流社会。就在前一天，她的马车从洛弗尔·明戈特太太的车旁驶过，后者立即摇了摇身边的小铃铛，命令车夫马上送她回家。“这事若发生在范德卢顿太太身上，又会怎样呢？”人们不寒而栗地相互问道。此时此刻，阿切尔甚至仿佛能听见劳伦斯·莱弗茨正就社交界的分崩离析发表高见。

He raised his head irritably when his sister Janey entered, and then quickly bent over his book (Swinburne's "Chastelard"--just out) as if he had not seen her. She glanced at the writing-table heaped with books, opened a volume of the "Contes Drolatiques," made a wry face over the archaic French, and sighed: "What learned things you read!"
妹妹詹尼进屋的时候，他烦躁地抬起头来，接着又迅速俯身读他的书（斯温伯恩的《沙特拉尔》——刚出版的），仿佛没看见她一样。她瞥了一眼堆满书籍的写字台，打开一卷《幽默故事》，对着那些古法语愁眉苦脸地说：“你读的东西好深奥呀！”

"Well--?" he asked, as she hovered Cassandra-like before him.
“嗯——？”他问道，只见她像卡珊德拉一样站在面前。

"Mother's very angry."
“妈妈非常生气呢。”

"Angry? With whom? About what?"
“生气？跟谁？为什么？”

"Miss Sophy Jackson has just been here. She brought word that her brother would come in after dinner: she couldn't say very much, because he forbade her to: he wishes to give all the details himself. He's with cousin Louisa van der Luyden now."
“索菲·杰克逊小姐刚才来过，捎话说她哥哥晚饭后要来我们家；她不能多讲，因为他不许她讲，他要亲自告诉我们全部细节。他现在跟路易莎·范德卢顿在一起。”