Chapter IV

No one was kinder to me at that time than Rose Waterford. She combined a masculine intelligence with a feminine perversity, and the novels she wrote were original and disconcerting. It was at her house one day that I met Charles Strickland's wife. Miss Waterford was giving a tea-party, and her small room was more than usually full. Everyone seemed to be talking, and I, sitting in silence, felt awkward; but I was too shy to break into any of the groups that seemed absorbed in their own affairs. Miss Waterford was a good hostess, and seeing my embarrassment came up to me.

第四章

当时没有哪个人会比沃玫瑰那样对我更加友好了。她身上结合了男性的聪明才智和女性的反复无常。她写的小说别出心裁，读了令人心潮澎湃。正是在她家里，有一天我见到了司查尔的妻子。那天沃小姐正在家里举办茶会，她的那个小屋子里宾客盈门，来得比平时多，挤得水泄不通。在座的每个人好像都在和其他人聊天，只有我默默坐在一边，心里感觉尴尬别扭；既然大家都在全神贯注地聊着各自的事情，我太过腼腆，不好意思冒然闯入其中任何一组。沃小姐招待体贴，看到我的窘相，便向我走了过来。

"I want you to talk to Mrs. Strickland," she said. "She's raving about your book."

"What does she do?" I asked.

I was conscious of my ignorance, and if Mrs. Strickland was a well-known writer I thought it as well to ascertain the fact before I spoke to her.

Rose Waterford cast down her eyes demurely to give greater effect to her reply.

"She gives luncheon-parties. You've only got to roar a little, and she'll ask you."

Rose Waterford was a cynic. She looked upon life as an opportunity for writing novels and the public as her raw material. Now and then she invited members of it to her house if they showed an appreciation of her talent and entertained with proper lavishness. She held their weakness for lions in good-humoured contempt, but played to them her part of the distinguished woman of letters with decorum.

“我想让你和司太太聊聊，”她说道，“她对你写的书简直到了痴迷疯狂的地步。”

“她是干什么工作的？”我问道。

我意识到自己孤陋寡闻，如果司太太是位知名作家，我想最好还是把实情弄清楚，然后再和她聊。

沃小姐为了让她的回答更加有实效，故意把两眼一沉，摆出一副郑重其事的样子。

“她专门组织午餐会。你只要轻轻吼一声，她就会邀请你去参加。”

沃玫瑰是个逢场作戏，玩世不恭之人。她把生活看成是她写小说的良好时机，把公众看成是她的小说素材。如果有人对她的才华表示欣赏，而且使用适度赞誉之辞哄她开心，她会时不时邀请他们到她家做客。这些人对文坛名流的嗜好令她感到既可笑又可鄙，但在他们面前她却举止得体，扮演着一位优秀女作家的角色。

I was led up to Mrs. Strickland, and for ten minutes we talked together. I noticed nothing about her except that she had a pleasant voice. She had a flat in Westminster, overlooking the unfinished cathedral, and because we lived in the same neighbourhood we felt friendly disposed to one another. The Army and Navy Stores are a bond of union between all who dwell between the river and St. James's Park. Mrs. Strickland asked me for my address, and a few days later I received an invitation to luncheon.

我被领到司太太面前，我和她一起聊了十分钟。她除了说话声音悦耳外，我没有留意到她有什么其他特别之处。她在威斯敏斯特区有套公寓，俯瞰着尚未落成的大教堂。因为我也住在同一街区，我俩就觉得关系上亲近了一层。对于泰晤士河同圣甄姆斯公园之间的左邻右舍而言，陆海军商店好像是一条把他们联结起来的纽带。司太太要了我的住址，没过几天我便收到她给我送来的一封午餐邀请函。

My engagements were few, and I was glad to accept. When I arrived, a little late, because in my fear of being too early I had walked three times round the cathedral, I found the party already complete. Miss Waterford was there and Mrs. Jay, Richard Twining and George Road. We were all writers. It was a fine day, early in spring, and we were in a good humour. We talked about a hundred things. Miss Waterford, torn between the aestheticism of her early youth, when she used to go to parties in sage green, holding a daffodil, and the flippancy of her maturer years, which tended to high heels and Paris frocks, wore a new hat. It put her in high spirits. I had never heard her more malicious about our common friends. Mrs. Jay, aware that impropriety is the soul of wit, made observations in tones hardly above a whisper that might well have tinged the snowy tablecloth with a rosy hue. Richard Twining bubbled over with quaint absurdities, and George Road, conscious that he need not exhibit a brilliancy which was almost a by-word, opened his mouth only to put food into it. Mrs. Strickland did not talk much, but she had a pleasant gift for keeping the conversation general; and when there was a pause she threw in just the right remark to set it going once more. She was a woman of thirty-seven, rather tall and plump, without being fat; she was not pretty, but her face was pleasing, chiefly, perhaps, on account of her kind brown eyes. Her skin was rather sallow. Her dark hair was elaborately dressed. She was the only woman of the three whose face was free of make-up, and by contrast with the others she seemed simple and unaffected.

The dining-room was in the good taste of the period. It was very severe. There was a high dado of white wood and a green paper on which were etchings by Whistler in neat black frames. The green curtains with their peacock design, hung in straight lines, and the green carpet, in the pattern of which pale rabbits frolicked among leafy trees, suggested the influence of William Morris. There was blue delft on the chimney-piece. At that time there must have been five hundred dining-rooms in London decorated in exactly the same manner. It was chaste, artistic, and dull.

我的交际应酬寥寥无几，便欣然接受了邀请。我到她家时稍微有点晚，因为害怕到得过早，我绕着大教堂先溜达了三圈。进门后我才发现客人们都已到齐。沃小姐在场，另外还有甄太太、颓瑞查和柔昭之。在座的各位都是作家。时值早春，阳光明媚，大家显得兴致勃勃。我们畅所欲言，所聊之事差不多有上百件。沃小姐少女时期一身灰绿，手持一朵水仙花；少妇时期脚登高跟鞋、身披巴黎装。今天她的这身打扮在少女时期的清纯唯美和少妇时期的风情万种之间相互撕扯，除此之外她还戴了顶新帽子。这顶帽子令她情绪高涨，我之前还从未听过她用比今天更刻薄恶毒的言语议论我们共同的朋友。甄太太意识到信口雌黄是机智风趣的灵魂，轻声细气表达着自己的种种看法，音量高不过窃窃私语，就连洁白如雪的桌布听了也会羞得染上一道玫瑰色的红晕。颓瑞查满嘴冒泡，滔滔不绝地发表着离奇古怪的荒唐谬论。柔昭之意识到自己的高谈阔论几乎已成了人们的口头禅，所以无须施展才华，只见他张开大口直把饭菜往自己嘴里送。司太太言语不多，但她天生有一套讨人喜欢的本领，令大家围绕着一个共同话题交谈；一旦出现冷场，她甩出一句正好使得谈话可以继续下去。司太太当时三十七岁，身材高挑，体态丰满，但不肥胖。她算不上漂亮，但她的脸蛋讨人喜欢，这很可能主要归功于她的那双棕色眼睛，目光和善。她皮肤有些蜡黄，一头黑发，发型精巧别致。这三位女士中，只有司太太脂粉未施，但同其他两位相比，她好像显得单纯朴素，一点都不矫揉造作。

餐厅风格品味较高，非常冷峻朴素。白色护墙木板很高，绿色墙纸上挂着威薮乐的蚀刻版画，这些版画镶有精致的黑色镜框。绿色窗帘印有孔雀图案，悬挂在笔直的窗帘绳上。绿色的地毯上，几只灰白兔子在枝叶茂密的树林中嬉戏玩耍，处处显示出是受了毛威廉绘画的影响。壁炉架上摆着各式各样的青花瓷器。当时的伦敦一定有五百间餐厅的装潢风格同这里简直可以说是一模一样，朴素、优雅，而且乏味。

When we left I walked away with Miss Waterford, and the fine day and her new hat persuaded us to saunter through the Park.

"That was a very nice party," I said.

"Did you think the food was good? I told her that if she wanted writers she must feed them well."

"Admirable advice," I answered. "But why does she want them?"

Miss Waterford shrugged her shoulders.

"She finds them amusing. She wants to be in the movement. I fancy she's rather simple, poor dear, and she thinks we're all wonderful. After all, it pleases her to ask us to luncheon, and it doesn't hurt us. I like her for it."

我同沃小姐一起离开司太太家时，天朗气清，加上她的那顶新帽子引诱着我们决定漫步穿过圣甄姆斯公园。

“刚才的聚会很不错，”我开口道。

“你觉得菜还合你的口味吗？我告诉过她，如果她想认识作家，就得让他们吃好才行。”

“这主意妙，”我答道。“可她为啥想认识作家呢？”

沃小姐耸了耸她的双肩。

“她觉得作家能让人开心。她想附庸风雅。我觉得她头脑过于简单，可怜的乖乖，她认为我们作家都非同寻常。无论如何，她能请我们共进午餐，她就开心，而且这对我们也无关痛痒。我就喜欢她这点。”

Looking back, I think that Mrs. Strickland was the most harmless of all the lion-hunters that pursue their quarry from the rarefied heights of Hampstead to the nethermost studios of Cheyne Walk. She had led a very quiet youth in the country, and the books that came down from Mudie's Library brought with them not only their own romance, but the romance of London. She had a real passion for reading (rare in her kind, who for the most part are more interested in the author than in his book, in the painter than in his pictures), and she invented a world of the imagination in which she lived with a freedom she never acquired in the world of every day. When she came to know writers it was like adventuring upon a stage which till then she had known only from the other side of the footlights. She saw them dramatically, and really seemed herself to live a larger life because she entertained them and visited them in their fastnesses. She accepted the rules with which they played the game of life as valid for them, but never for a moment thought of regulating her own conduct in accordance with them. Their moral eccentricities, like their oddities of dress, their wild theories and paradoxes, were an entertainment which amused her, but had not the slightest influence on her convictions.

现在回想起来，我认为在攀高结贵的所有人中，司太太最不会使坏，其他人捕获猎物，可以从汉普思戴德地区空气稀薄的各个高地一直追到切恩道最底层的各个画室。司太太年少时住在乡间，生活安谧，从穆迪图书馆借来的书不仅带给她各种传奇故事，而且也带给她具有传奇色彩的伦敦。她对阅读真地有股子激情（这种情况在像她这类人中很少见，他们大多数对作家和画家更敢兴趣，而不是他们所写的书和所作的画），她为自己虚构了一个充满想象的世界，自由地生活在其中，而这种自由她在日常的现实世界中从未获得过。当她开始认识了一些作家后，她感觉好像自己壮着胆子只身登上了一个舞台。而在此之前，她对舞台的了解程度，只是作为舞台脚灯背面的一名台下观众。她看着他们乱哄哄你方唱罢我登场，感觉真地好像自己的生活圈也跟着变大了，原因是她不仅设宴款待过他们，而且她也进入到了他们固若金汤的堡垒中拜访过他们。她认为他们游戏人生的做法对他们而言有效合理，而她自己却一刻也没想过要按他们的方式调整改变她自己的行为举止。这些人道德伦理上的种种怪癖，如同他们稀奇古怪的穿戴、荒诞无稽的各种理论和悖论，就是令她开心的一种娱乐消遣，但她生活中的各种信念却丝毫不受影响。

"Is there a Mr. Strickland?" I asked

"Oh yes; he's something in the city. I believe he's a stockbroker. He's very dull."

"Are they good friends?"

"They adore one another. You'll meet him if you dine there. But she doesn't often have people to dinner. He's very quiet. He's not in the least interested in literature or the arts."

"Why do nice women marry dull men?"

"Because intelligent men won't marry nice women."

I could not think of any retort to this, so I asked if Mrs. Strickland had children.

"Yes; she has a boy and a girl. They're both at school."

The subject was exhausted, and we began to talk of other things.

“是不是有一位司先生？”我问道。

“有的。他在伦敦小有名气。我想他是位股票经纪人。他这人很乏味无趣。”

“他们夫妻感情好吗？”

“他俩相敬如宾。如果你和他们一起吃晚餐的话，你会见到他。但她很少邀请人去她家共进晚餐。司先生不太爱说话，他对文学艺术丝毫不感兴趣。”

“为啥巧妇常嫁呆拙郎？”

“因为智者不娶巧娇娘。”

我想不出用什么话来反驳她，于是我就向她询问司太太是否有孩子。

“有，一儿一女，俩孩子都在上学。”

这个话题已经聊得彻底枯竭了，于是我们又开始聊其他事情。