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(单词翻译:双击或拖选)
The Turn of the Screw
by Henry James
X
I remained awhile at the top of the stair, but with the effect presently of understanding that when my visitor had gone, he had gone: then I returned to my room. The foremost thing I saw there by the light of the candle I had left burning was that Flora1’s little bed was empty; and on this I caught my breath with all the terror that, five minutes before, I had been able to resist. I dashed at the place in which I had left her lying and over which (for the small silk counterpane and the sheets were disarranged) the white curtains had been deceivingly pulled forward; then my step, to my unutterable relief, produced an answering sound: I perceived an agitation3 of the window blind, and the child, ducking down, emerged rosily4 from the other side of it. She stood there in so much of her candor5 and so little of her nightgown, with her pink bare feet and the golden glow of her curls. She looked intensely grave, and I had never had such a sense of losing an advantage acquired (the thrill of which had just been so prodigious) as on my consciousness that she addressed me with a reproach. “You naughty: where HAVE you been?” — instead of challenging her own irregularity I found myself arraigned6 and explaining. She herself explained, for that matter, with the loveliest, eagerest simplicity7. She had known suddenly, as she lay there, that I was out of the room, and had jumped up to see what had become of me. I had dropped, with the joy of her reappearance, back into my chair — feeling then, and then only, a little faint; and she had pattered straight over to me, thrown herself upon my knee, given herself to be held with the flame of the candle full in the wonderful little face that was still flushed with sleep. I remember closing my eyes an instant, yieldingly, consciously, as before the excess of something beautiful that shone out of the blue of her own. “You were looking for me out of the window?” I said. “You thought I might be walking in the grounds?”
Oh, how I looked at her now! “And did you see anyone?”
“Ah, NO!” she returned, almost with the full privilege of childish inconsequence, resentfully, though with a long sweetness in her little drawl of the negative.
At that moment, in the state of my nerves, I absolutely believed she lied; and if I once more closed my eyes it was before the dazzle of the three or four possible ways in which I might take this up. One of these, for a moment, tempted9 me with such singular intensity10 that, to withstand it, I must have gripped my little girl with a spasm11 that, wonderfully, she submitted to without a cry or a sign of fright. Why not break out at her on the spot and have it all over? — give it to her straight in her lovely little lighted face? “You see, you see, you KNOW that you do and that you already quite suspect I believe it; therefore, why not frankly12 confess it to me, so that we may at least live with it together and learn perhaps, in the strangeness of our fate, where we are and what it means?” This solicitation13 dropped, alas14, as it came: if I could immediately have succumbed15 to it I might have spared myself — well, you’ll see what. Instead of succumbing16 I sprang again to my feet, looked at her bed, and took a helpless middle way. “Why did you pull the curtain over the place to make me think you were still there?”
Flora luminously17 considered; after which, with her little divine smile: “Because I don’t like to frighten you!”
“But if I had, by your idea, gone out —?”
She absolutely declined to be puzzled; she turned her eyes to the flame of the candle as if the question were as irrelevant18, or at any rate as impersonal19, as Mrs. Marcet or nine-times-nine. “Oh, but you know,” she quite adequately answered, “that you might come back, you dear, and that you HAVE!” And after a little, when she had got into bed, I had, for a long time, by almost sitting on her to hold her hand, to prove that I recognized the pertinence20 of my return.
You may imagine the general complexion21, from that moment, of my nights. I repeatedly sat up till I didn’t know when; I selected moments when my roommate unmistakably slept, and, stealing out, took noiseless turns in the passage and even pushed as far as to where I had last met Quint. But I never met him there again; and I may as well say at once that I on no other occasion saw him in the house. I just missed, on the staircase, on the other hand, a different adventure. Looking down it from the top I once recognized the presence of a woman seated on one of the lower steps with her back presented to me, her body half-bowed and her head, in an attitude of woe22, in her hands. I had been there but an instant, however, when she vanished without looking round at me. I knew, nonetheless, exactly what dreadful face she had to show; and I wondered whether, if instead of being above I had been below, I should have had, for going up, the same nerve I had lately shown Quint. Well, there continued to be plenty of chance for nerve. On the eleventh night after my latest encounter with that gentleman — they were all numbered now — I had an alarm that perilously23 skirted it and that indeed, from the particular quality of its unexpectedness, proved quite my sharpest shock. It was precisely24 the first night during this series that, weary with watching, I had felt that I might again without laxity lay myself down at my old hour. I slept immediately and, as I afterward25 knew, till about one o’clock; but when I woke it was to sit straight up, as completely roused as if a hand had shook me. I had left a light burning, but it was now out, and I felt an instant certainty that Flora had extinguished it. This brought me to my feet and straight, in the darkness, to her bed, which I found she had left. A glance at the window enlightened me further, and the striking of a match completed the picture.
The child had again got up — this time blowing out the taper26, and had again, for some purpose of observation or response, squeezed in behind the blind and was peering out into the night. That she now saw — as she had not, I had satisfied myself, the previous time — was proved to me by the fact that she was disturbed neither by my reillumination nor by the haste I made to get into slippers27 and into a wrap. Hidden, protected, absorbed, she evidently rested on the sill — the casement28 opened forward — and gave herself up. There was a great still moon to help her, and this fact had counted in my quick decision. She was face to face with the apparition29 we had met at the lake, and could now communicate with it as she had not then been able to do. What I, on my side, had to care for was, without disturbing her, to reach, from the corridor, some other window in the same quarter. I got to the door without her hearing me; I got out of it, closed it, and listened, from the other side, for some sound from her. While I stood in the passage I had my eyes on her brother’s door, which was but ten steps off and which, indescribably, produced in me a renewal30 of the strange impulse that I lately spoke31 of as my temptation. What if I should go straight in and march to HIS window? — what if, by risking to his boyish bewilderment a revelation of my motive32, I should throw across the rest of the mystery the long halter of my boldness?
This thought held me sufficiently33 to make me cross to his threshold and pause again. I preternaturally listened; I figured to myself what might portentously34 be; I wondered if his bed were also empty and he too were secretly at watch. It was a deep, soundless minute, at the end of which my impulse failed. He was quiet; he might be innocent; the risk was hideous35; I turned away. There was a figure in the grounds — a figure prowling for a sight, the visitor with whom Flora was engaged; but it was not the visitor most concerned with my boy. I hesitated afresh, but on other grounds and only for a few seconds; then I had made my choice. There were empty rooms at Bly, and it was only a question of choosing the right one. The right one suddenly presented itself to me as the lower one — though high above the gardens — in the solid corner of the house that I have spoken of as the old tower. This was a large, square chamber36, arranged with some state as a bedroom, the extravagant37 size of which made it so inconvenient38 that it had not for years, though kept by Mrs. Grose in exemplary order, been occupied. I had often admired it and I knew my way about in it; I had only, after just faltering39 at the first chill gloom of its disuse, to pass across it and unbolt as quietly as I could one of the shutters40. Achieving this transit41, I uncovered the glass without a sound and, applying my face to the pane2, was able, the darkness without being much less than within, to see that I commanded the right direction. Then I saw something more. The moon made the night extraordinarily42 penetrable43 and showed me on the lawn a person, diminished by distance, who stood there motionless and as if fascinated, looking up to where I had appeared — looking, that is, not so much straight at me as at something that was apparently44 above me. There was clearly another person above me — there was a person on the tower; but the presence on the lawn was not in the least what I had conceived and had confidently hurried to meet. The presence on the lawn — I felt sick as I made it out — was poor little Miles himself.
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1
flora
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| n.(某一地区的)植物群 | |
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2
pane
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| n.窗格玻璃，长方块 | |
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3
agitation
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| n.搅动；搅拌；鼓动，煽动 | |
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4
rosily
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| adv.带玫瑰色地，乐观地 | |
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5
candor
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| n.坦白，率真 | |
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6
arraigned
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| v.告发( arraign的过去式和过去分词 )；控告；传讯；指责 | |
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7
simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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8
blanched
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| v.使变白( blanch的过去式 )；使（植物）不见阳光而变白；酸洗（金属）使有光泽；用沸水烫（杏仁等）以便去皮 | |
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9
tempted
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| v.怂恿（某人）干不正当的事；冒…的险（tempt的过去分词） | |
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10
intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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11
spasm
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| n.痉挛，抽搐；一阵发作 | |
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12
frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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13
solicitation
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| n.诱惑；揽货；恳切地要求；游说 | |
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14
alas
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| int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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15
succumbed
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| 不再抵抗（诱惑、疾病、攻击等）( succumb的过去式和过去分词 )； 屈从； 被压垮； 死 | |
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16
succumbing
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| 不再抵抗（诱惑、疾病、攻击等）( succumb的现在分词 )； 屈从； 被压垮； 死 | |
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17
luminously
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| 发光的； 明亮的； 清楚的； 辉赫 | |
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18
irrelevant
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| adj.不恰当的，无关系的，不相干的 | |
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19
impersonal
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| adj.无个人感情的，与个人无关的，非人称的 | |
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20
pertinence
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| n.中肯 | |
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21
complexion
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| n.肤色；情况，局面；气质，性格 | |
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22
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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23
perilously
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| adv.充满危险地，危机四伏地 | |
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24
precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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25
afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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26
taper
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| n.小蜡烛，尖细，渐弱；adj.尖细的；v.逐渐变小 | |
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27
slippers
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| n. 拖鞋 | |
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28
casement
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| n.竖铰链窗；窗扉 | |
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29
apparition
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| n.幽灵，神奇的现象 | |
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30
renewal
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| adj.(契约)延期，续订，更新，复活，重来 | |
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31
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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32
motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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33
sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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34
portentously
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35
hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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36
chamber
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| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
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37
extravagant
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| adj.奢侈的；过分的；(言行等)放肆的 | |
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38
inconvenient
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| adj.不方便的，令人感到麻烦的 | |
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39
faltering
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| 犹豫的，支吾的，蹒跚的 | |
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40
shutters
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| 百叶窗( shutter的名词复数 )； （照相机的）快门 | |
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41
transit
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| n.经过，运输；vt.穿越，旋转；vi.越过 | |
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42
extraordinarily
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| adv.格外地；极端地 | |
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43
penetrable
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| adj.可穿透的 | |
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44
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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