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(单词翻译:双击或拖选)
The Turn of the Screw
by Henry James
XXIV
My sense of how he received this suffered for a minute from something that I can describe only as a fierce split of my attention — a stroke that at first, as I sprang straight up, reduced me to the mere1 blind movement of getting hold of him, drawing him close, and, while I just fell for support against the nearest piece of furniture, instinctively2 keeping him with his back to the window. The appearance was full upon us that I had already had to deal with here: Peter Quint had come into view like a sentinel before a prison. The next thing I saw was that, from outside, he had reached the window, and then I knew that, close to the glass and glaring in through it, he offered once more to the room his white face of damnation. It represents but grossly what took place within me at the sight to say that on the second my decision was made; yet I believe that no woman so overwhelmed ever in so short a time recovered her grasp of the ACT. It came to me in the very horror of the immediate3 presence that the act would be, seeing and facing what I saw and faced, to keep the boy himself unaware4. The inspiration — I can call it by no other name — was that I felt how voluntarily, how transcendently, I MIGHT. It was like fighting with a demon5 for a human soul, and when I had fairly so appraised6 it I saw how the human soul — held out, in the tremor7 of my hands, at arm’s length — had a perfect dew of sweat on a lovely childish forehead. The face that was close to mine was as white as the face against the glass, and out of it presently came a sound, not low nor weak, but as if from much further away, that I drank like a waft8 of fragrance9.
“Yes — I took it.”
At this, with a moan of joy, I enfolded, I drew him close; and while I held him to my breast, where I could feel in the sudden fever of his little body the tremendous pulse of his little heart, I kept my eyes on the thing at the window and saw it move and shift its posture10. I have likened it to a sentinel, but its slow wheel, for a moment, was rather the prowl of a baffled beast. My present quickened courage, however, was such that, not too much to let it through, I had to shade, as it were, my flame. Meanwhile the glare of the face was again at the window, the scoundrel fixed11 as if to watch and wait. It was the very confidence that I might now defy him, as well as the positive certitude, by this time, of the child’s unconsciousness, that made me go on. “What did you take it for?”
“To see what you said about me.”
“You opened the letter?”
“I opened it.”
My eyes were now, as I held him off a little again, on Miles’s own face, in which the collapse12 of mockery showed me how complete was the ravage13 of uneasiness. What was prodigious14 was that at last, by my success, his sense was sealed and his communication stopped: he knew that he was in presence, but knew not of what, and knew still less that I also was and that I did know. And what did this strain of trouble matter when my eyes went back to the window only to see that the air was clear again and — by my personal triumph — the influence quenched15? There was nothing there. I felt that the cause was mine and that I should surely get ALL. “And you found nothing!” — I let my elation16 out.
He gave the most mournful, thoughtful little headshake. “Nothing.”
“Nothing, nothing!” I almost shouted in my joy.
“Nothing, nothing,” he sadly repeated.
“I’ve burned it.”
“Burned it?” It was now or never. “Is that what you did at school?”
Oh, what this brought up! “At school?”
“Did you take letters? — or other things?”
“Other things?” He appeared now to be thinking of something far off and that reached him only through the pressure of his anxiety. Yet it did reach him. “Did I STEAL?”
I felt myself redden to the roots of my hair as well as wonder if it were more strange to put to a gentleman such a question or to see him take it with allowances that gave the very distance of his fall in the world. “Was it for that you mightn’t go back?”
“I know everything.”
He gave me at this the longest and strangest look. “Everything?”
“Everything. Therefore DID you —?” But I couldn’t say it again.
Miles could, very simply. “No. I didn’t steal.”
My face must have shown him I believed him utterly19; yet my hands — but it was for pure tenderness — shook him as if to ask him why, if it was all for nothing, he had condemned20 me to months of torment21. “What then did you do?”
He looked in vague pain all round the top of the room and drew his breath, two or three times over, as if with difficulty. He might have been standing22 at the bottom of the sea and raising his eyes to some faint green twilight23. “Well — I said things.”
“Only that?”
“They thought it was enough!”
“To turn you out for?”
Never, truly, had a person “turned out” shown so little to explain it as this little person! He appeared to weigh my question, but in a manner quite detached and almost helpless. “Well, I suppose I oughtn’t.”
“But to whom did you say them?”
He evidently tried to remember, but it dropped — he had lost it. “I don’t know!”
He almost smiled at me in the desolation of his surrender, which was indeed practically, by this time, so complete that I ought to have left it there. But I was infatuated — I was blind with victory, though even then the very effect that was to have brought him so much nearer was already that of added separation. “Was it to everyone?” I asked.
“No; it was only to — ” But he gave a sick little headshake. “I don’t remember their names.”
“Were they then so many?”
“No — only a few. Those I liked.”
Those he liked? I seemed to float not into clearness, but into a darker obscure, and within a minute there had come to me out of my very pity the appalling24 alarm of his being perhaps innocent. It was for the instant confounding and bottomless, for if he WERE innocent, what then on earth was I? Paralyzed, while it lasted, by the mere brush of the question, I let him go a little, so that, with a deep-drawn sigh, he turned away from me again; which, as he faced toward the clear window, I suffered, feeling that I had nothing now there to keep him from. “And did they repeat what you said?” I went on after a moment.
He was soon at some distance from me, still breathing hard and again with the air, though now without anger for it, of being confined against his will. Once more, as he had done before, he looked up at the dim day as if, of what had hitherto sustained him, nothing was left but an unspeakable anxiety. “Oh, yes,” he nevertheless replied — “they must have repeated them. To those THEY liked,” he added.
There was, somehow, less of it than I had expected; but I turned it over. “And these things came round —?”
“To the masters? Oh, yes!” he answered very simply. “But I didn’t know they’d tell.”
“The masters? They didn’t — they’ve never told. That’s why I ask you.”
He turned to me again his little beautiful fevered face. “Yes, it was too bad.”
“Too bad?”
“What I suppose I sometimes said. To write home.”
I can’t name the exquisite25 pathos26 of the contradiction given to such a speech by such a speaker; I only know that the next instant I heard myself throw off with homely27 force: “Stuff and nonsense!” But the next after that I must have sounded stern enough. “What WERE these things?”
My sternness was all for his judge, his executioner; yet it made him avert28 himself again, and that movement made ME, with a single bound and an irrepressible cry, spring straight upon him. For there again, against the glass, as if to blight29 his confession30 and stay his answer, was the hideous31 author of our woe32 — the white face of damnation. I felt a sick swim at the drop of my victory and all the return of my battle, so that the wildness of my veritable leap only served as a great betrayal. I saw him, from the midst of my act, meet it with a divination33, and on the perception that even now he only guessed, and that the window was still to his own eyes free, I let the impulse flame up to convert the climax34 of his dismay into the very proof of his liberation. “No more, no more, no more!” I shrieked35, as I tried to press him against me, to my visitant.
“Is she HERE?” Miles panted as he caught with his sealed eyes the direction of my words. Then as his strange “she” staggered me and, with a gasp36, I echoed it, “Miss Jessel, Miss Jessel!” he with a sudden fury gave me back.
I seized, stupefied, his supposition — some sequel to what we had done to Flora37, but this made me only want to show him that it was better still than that. “It’s not Miss Jessel! But it’s at the window — straight before us. It’s THERE— the coward horror, there for the last time!”
At this, after a second in which his head made the movement of a baffled dog’s on a scent38 and then gave a frantic39 little shake for air and light, he was at me in a white rage, bewildered, glaring vainly over the place and missing wholly, though it now, to my sense, filled the room like the taste of poison, the wide, overwhelming presence. “It’s HE?”
I was so determined40 to have all my proof that I flashed into ice to challenge him. “Whom do you mean by ‘he’?”
“Peter Quint — you devil!” His face gave again, round the room, its convulsed supplication41. “WHERE?”
They are in my ears still, his supreme42 surrender of the name and his tribute to my devotion. “What does he matter now, my own? — what will he EVER matter? I have you,” I launched at the beast, “but he has lost you forever!” Then, for the demonstration43 of my work, “There, THERE!” I said to Miles.
But he had already jerked straight round, stared, glared again, and seen but the quiet day. With the stroke of the loss I was so proud of he uttered the cry of a creature hurled44 over an abyss, and the grasp with which I recovered him might have been that of catching45 him in his fall. I caught him, yes, I held him — it may be imagined with what a passion; but at the end of a minute I began to feel what it truly was that I held. We were alone with the quiet day, and his little heart, dispossessed, had stopped.
The End
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1
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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unaware
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| a.不知道的，未意识到的 | |
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demon
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| n.魔鬼，恶魔 | |
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appraised
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| v.估价( appraise的过去式和过去分词 )；估计；估量；评价 | |
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7
tremor
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| n.震动，颤动，战栗，兴奋，地震 | |
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waft
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| v.飘浮，飘荡；n.一股；一阵微风；飘荡 | |
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9
fragrance
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| n.芬芳，香味，香气 | |
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10
posture
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| n.姿势，姿态，心态，态度；v.作出某种姿势 | |
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11
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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12
collapse
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| vi.累倒；昏倒；倒塌；塌陷 | |
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13
ravage
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| vt.使...荒废，破坏...；n.破坏，掠夺，荒废 | |
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14
prodigious
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| adj.惊人的，奇妙的；异常的；巨大的；庞大的 | |
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15
quenched
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| 解（渴）( quench的过去式和过去分词 )； 终止（某事物）； （用水）扑灭（火焰等）； 将（热物体）放入水中急速冷却 | |
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16
elation
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| n.兴高采烈，洋洋得意 | |
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17
drenched
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| adj.湿透的；充满的v.使湿透( drench的过去式和过去分词 )；在某人（某物）上大量使用（某液体） | |
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dreary
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| adj.令人沮丧的，沉闷的，单调乏味的 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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condemned
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| adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
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21
torment
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| n.折磨；令人痛苦的东西(人)；vt.折磨；纠缠 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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23
twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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appalling
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| adj.骇人听闻的，令人震惊的，可怕的 | |
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25
exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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26
pathos
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| n.哀婉，悲怆 | |
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27
homely
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| adj.家常的，简朴的；不漂亮的 | |
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28
avert
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| v.防止，避免；转移(目光、注意力等) | |
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29
blight
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| n.枯萎病；造成破坏的因素；vt.破坏，摧残 | |
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30
confession
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| n.自白，供认，承认 | |
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hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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woe
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| n.悲哀，苦痛，不幸，困难；int.用来表达悲伤或惊慌 | |
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33
divination
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| n.占卜，预测 | |
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34
climax
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| n.顶点；高潮；v.(使)达到顶点 | |
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35
shrieked
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| v.尖叫( shriek的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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gasp
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| n.喘息，气喘；v.喘息；气吁吁他说 | |
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37
flora
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| n.(某一地区的)植物群 | |
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38
scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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39
frantic
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| adj.狂乱的，错乱的，激昂的 | |
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40
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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41
supplication
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| n.恳求，祈愿，哀求 | |
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42
supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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43
demonstration
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| n.表明，示范，论证，示威 | |
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44
hurled
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| v.猛投，用力掷( hurl的过去式和过去分词 )；大声叫骂 | |
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45
catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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