第十章（第9/34页）

He stood back and watched her going into the dark, against the pallor of the horizon. Almost with bitterness he watched her go. She had connected him up again, when he had wanted to be alone. She had cost him that bitter privacy of a man who at last wants only to be alone.

他站在原地，目送她步入黑暗，消失在露出鱼肚白的地平线处。眼见她远去，他的心情几近苦涩。他本想就此孤独终老，而她却又将他与俗世联系起来。他本想就此了却残生，她却使他从痛苦的清静中挣脱出来。

He turned into the dark of the wood. All was still, the moon had set. But he was aware of the noises of the night, the engines at Stacks Gate, the traffic on the main road. Slowly he climbed the denuded knoll. And from the top he could see the country, bright rows of lights at Stacks Gate, smaller lights at Tevershall pit, the yellow lights of Tevershall and lights everywhere, here and there, on the dark country, with the distant blush of furnaces, faint and rosy, since the night was clear, the rosiness of the outpouring of white-hot metal. Sharp, wicked electric lights at Stacks Gate! An undefinable quick of evil in them! And all the unease, the ever-shifting dread of the industrial night in the Midlands. He could hear the winding-engines at Stacks Gate turning down the seven-o'clock miners. The pit worked three shifts.

他回身走进漆黑的树林。万籁俱寂，月亮也已沉下。但暗夜中的喧嚣声仍不绝于耳，斯塔克斯门采煤的机器仍在轰鸣，还有主干道上车流的熙攘。他攀上草木凋零的山丘，步履沉重。置身山顶，夜间的村落尽收眼底，斯塔克斯门成行的灯光异常明亮，特弗沙尔矿场的却稍显黯淡，还有各家各户昏黄的灯火，星星点点，散满黑暗的大地。远处隐约可见暗粉色的熔炉，夜空朗朗，白热的钢水倾泻而出后，立即着上玫瑰的色泽。斯塔克斯门刺眼的灯光，那样令人生厌！难以言喻的罪恶本性隐藏其间！英格兰中部工业区的夜晚充斥着不安，恐惧源源不绝。他听到斯塔克斯门的卷扬机吱扭作响，把七点当班的矿工们送到井底。矿场采取的是三班轮转制。

He went down again into the darkness and seclusion of the wood. But he knew that the seclusion of the wood was illusory. The industrial noises broke the solitude, the sharp lights, though unseen, mocked it. A man could no longer be private and withdrawn. The world allows no hermits. And now he had taken the woman, and brought on himself a new cycle of pain and doom. For he knew by experience what it meant.

他走下山岗，回归与世隔绝的阴暗丛林。但他清楚这丛林的超然物外，不过是幻象而已。现代工业的喧嚣打破了这里的宁静，耀目的灯光虽无法穿透树木的遮蔽，但也极尽挖苦之能事。孑然独居，隐遁世外已成不切实际的奢望。这世界已没有隐士存活的乐土。如今，他已与她行过周公之礼，而这也会给他带来新的一轮的痛苦和厄运。以往的经历告诉他这意味着什么。

It was not woman's fault, nor even love's fault, nor the fault of sex. The fault lay there, out there, in those evil electric lights and diabolical rattlings of engines. There, in the world of the mechanical greedy, greedy mechanism and mechanized greed, sparkling with lights and gushing hot metal and roaring with traffic, there lay the vast evil thing, ready to destroy whatever did not conform. Soon it would destroy the wood, and the bluebells would spring no more. All vulnerable things must perish under the rolling and running of iron.

这罪责不应由女人来承担，更与情爱和性欲无关。过错源自那里，就在那里，在那邪恶的灯光中，在那恶魔般格格乱吼的机械里。在那里，在这机械化的贪婪世界里，贪婪的机械化和机械化的贪婪交织纠缠，放射出刺目的灯光，喷吐出炽热的金属，咆哮出嘈杂的车流声。那里便是无尽罪恶的根源，奉行着逆我者亡的信条。用不了多久，这片树林就将被毁灭殆尽，风铃草也将无处容身。面对钢筋铁骨的冲击滚碾，所有脆弱的东西都将被碾得粉碎。

He thought with infinite tenderness of the woman. Poor forlorn thing, she was nicer than she knew, and oh! So much too nice for the tough lot she was in contact with. Poor thing, she too had some of the vulnerability of the wild hyacinths, she wasn't all tough rubber-goods and platinum, like the modern girl. And they would do her in! As sure as life, they would do her in, as they do in all naturally tender life. Tender! Somewhere she was tender, tender with a tenderness of the growing hyacinths, something that has gone out of the celluloid women of today. But he would protect her with his heart for a little while. For a little while, before the insentient iron world and the Mammon of mechanized greed did them both in, her as well as him.