「双语阅读」简爱JaneEyre(2)

那天，出去散步是不可能了。其实，早上我们还在光秃秃的灌木林中溜达了一个小时，但从午饭时起（无客造访时，里德太太很早就用午饭）便刮起了冬日凛冽的寒风，随后阴云密布，大雨滂沱，室外的活动也就只能作罢了。我倒是求之不得。我向来不喜欢远距离散步，尤其在冷飕飕的下午。试想，阴冷的薄暮时分回得家来，手脚都冻僵了，还要受到保姆贝茵的数落，又自觉体格不如伊丽莎、约翰和乔治亚娜，心里既难过又惭愧，那情形委实可怕。此时此刻，刚才提到的伊丽莎、约翰和乔治亚娜都在客厅里，簇拥着他们的妈妈。她则斜倚在炉边的沙发上，身旁坐着自己的小宝贝们（眼下既未争吵也未哭叫），一副安享天伦之乐的神态。而我呢，她恩准我不必同他们坐在一起了，说是她很遗憾，不得不让我独个儿在一旁呆着。要是没有亲耳从贝茜那儿听到，并且亲眼看到，我确实在尽力养成一种比较单纯随和的习性，活泼可爱的举止，也就是更开朗、更率直、更自然些，那她当真不让我享受那些只配给予快乐知足的孩子们的特权了。
"What does Bessie say I have done?" I asked.
“贝茵说我干了什么啦？”我问。
"Jane, I don"t like cavillers or questioners; besides, there is something truly forbidding in a child taking up her elders in that manner. Be seated somewhere; and until you can speak pleasantly, remain silent."
“简，我不喜欢吹毛求疵或者刨根究底的人，更何况小孩子家这么跟大人顶嘴实在让人讨厌。找个地方去坐着，不会和气说话就别张嘴。”
A small breakfast-room adjoined the drawing-room, I slipped in there. It contained a bookcase: I soon possessed myself of a volume, taking care that it should be one stored with pictures. I mounted into the window-seat: gathering up my feet, I sat cross-legged, like a Turk; and, having drawn the red moreen curtain nearly close, I was shrined in double retirement. Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand; to the left were the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating me from the drear November day. At intervals, while turning over the leaves of my book, I studied the aspect of that winter afternoon. Afar, it offered a pale blank of mist and cloud; near a scene of wet lawn and storm-beat shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly before a long and lamentable blast. I returned to my book -- Bewick"s History of British Birds: the letterpress thereof I cared little for, generally speaking; and yet there were certain introductory pages that, child as I was, I could not pass quite as a blank. They were those which treat of the haunts of sea-fowl; of "the solitary rocks and promontories" by them only inhabited; of the coast of Norway, studded with isles from its southern extremity, the Lindeness, or Naze, to the North Cape -- "Where the Northern Ocean, in vast whirls, Boils round the naked, melancholy isles Of farthest Thule; and the Atlantic surge Pours in among the stormy Hebrides."Nor could I pass unnoticed the suggestion of the bleak shores of Lapland, Siberia, Spitzbergen, Nova Zembla, Iceland, Greenland, with "the vast sweep of the Arctic Zone, and those forlorn regions of dreary space, -- that reservoir of frost and snow, where firm fields of ice, the accumulation of centuries of winters, glazed in Alpine heights above heights, surround the pole and concentre the multiplied rigours of extreme cold." Of these death-white realms I formed an idea of my own: shadowy, like all the half-comprehended notions that float aim through children"s brains, but strangely impressive. The words in these introductory pages connected themselves with the succeeding vignettes, and gave significance to the rock standing up alone in a sea of billow and spray; to the broken boat stranded on a desolate coast; to the cold and ghastly moon glancing through bars of cloud at a wreck just sinking.