That must be the story of innumerable (无数的) couples, and the pattern of life it offers has a homely grace.
It reminds you of a placid rivulet (小溪), meandering (蜿蜒缓慢流动) 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 (怪念头) 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 (有缺陷的). {1}
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 (凸凹不平的) rocks and treacherous shoals (浅滩) if I could only have change -- change and the excitement of the unforeseen.
On reading over what I have written of the Stricklands, I am conscious that they must seem shadowy (阴暗的).
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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 (特征) which might lend them vividness. {2}
I feel that by dwelling on some trick of speech or some queer habit I should be able to give them a significance peculiar (特有的) to themselves.
As they stand they are like the figures in an old tapestry (挂毯); 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 (吞没) in the momentous whole.
The Stricklands were an average family in the middle class.
A pleasant, hospitable (友好的) 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.
When I reflect on all that happened later, I ask myself if I was thick-witted (头脑迟钝的) 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. {3}
But because I have learnt that man is incalculable (不可预料的), 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 (快乐的) and sprightly, " I said. "What's the matter with you?"
She smiled, and her eyes shone with a malice (恶意) 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?"
Not only her face, but her whole body, gave a sense of alacrity (乐意). I nodded. I wondered if the poor devil had been hammered on the Stock Exchange or run over by an omnibus (公共汽车).
"Isn't it dreadful (糟透的)? 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 (固执的).
"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. "
She flashed a smile at me, and, protesting an engagement with her dentist (牙科医生), jauntily (洋洋得意地) 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 (使习惯于) 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 (傲慢) 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 (烦乱) 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.
Finally it occurred to me that I would call as though nothing had happened, and send a message in by the maid asking Mrs. Strickland if it was convenient for her to see me. This would give her the opportunity to send me away.
But I was overwhelmed with embarrassment (窘迫) when I said to the maid the phrase I had prepared, and while I waited for the answer in a dark passage I had to call up all my strength of mind not to bolt.
The maid came back. Her manner suggested to my excited fancy a complete knowledge of the domestic calamity (灾难).
"Will you come this way, sir?" she said.
I followed her into the drawing-room. The blinds (百叶窗) were partly drawn to darken the room, and Mrs. Strickland was sitting with her back to the light.
Her brother-in-law, Colonel MacAndrew, stood in front of the fireplace, warming his back at an unlit fire.
To myself my entrance seemed excessively awkward.
I imagined that my arrival had taken them by surprise, and Mrs. Strickland had let me come in only because she had forgotten to put me off. I fancied that the Colonel resented (愤恨) the interruption.
"I wasn't quite sure if you expected me, " I said, trying to seem unconcerned.
"Of course I did. Anne will bring the tea in a minute. "
Even in the darkened room, I could not help seeing that Mrs. Strickland's face was all swollen with tears. Her skin, never very good, was earthy.
"You remember my brother-in-law, don't you? You met at dinner, just before the holidays. "
We shook hands. I felt so shy that I could think of nothing to say, but Mrs. Strickland came to my rescue.
She asked me what I had been doing with myself during the summer, and with this help I managed to make some conversation till tea was brought in.
The Colonel asked for a whisky-and-soda.
"You'd better have one too, Amy, " he said.
"No; I prefer tea. "
