苹果树

——约翰. 高尔斯华绥

“那苹果树、那歌声和那金子。”

　　墨雷译《攸里披底斯的〈希波勒特斯〉》

The Apple Tree

——J. Galsworthy

"The Apple-tree, the singing and the gold."

~ Murray's "Hippolytus of Euripides

在他们的银婚日，艾舍斯特和妻子坐着汽车，行驶在荒原的外边，要到托尔基去过夜，圆满地结束这个节日，因为那里是他们初次相遇的地方。这是斯苔拉·艾舍斯特的主意，在她的性格里是有点儿多情色彩的。如果说她早已失掉了那蓝眼睛的、花儿般的魅力，脸儿和身段的那种玉洁冰清的秀气，还有那苹果花似的颜色儿——二十六年前它们曾那么迅速而奇妙地影响过艾舍斯特——那么在四十三岁的今天，她依旧是个好看而忠实的伴侣，不过两颊淡淡地有点儿斑驳，而灰蓝的眼睛也已经有点儿饱满了。

In their silver-wedding day Ashurst and his wife were motoring along the outskirts of the moor, intending to crown the festival by stopping the night at Torquay, where they had first met. This was the idea of Stella Ashurst, whose character contained a streak of sentiment. If she had long lost the blue-eyed, flower-like charm, the cool slim purity of face and form, the apple-blossom colouring, which had so swiftly and so oddly affected Ashurst twenty-six years ago, she was still at forty-three a comely and faithful companion, whose cheeks were faintly mottled, and whose grey-blue eyes had acquired a certain fullness.

正是她叫车停了下来。这儿，左边但见那块公有地陡峭地向上升起，右边是狭狭的一溜落叶松和山毛榉林子，还疏疏落落地长着几棵松树，直向介于公路和整个荒原上的第一座又长又高的山冈中间的山谷伸展过去。她在寻找一个可以让他们坐下来吃东西的地方，艾舍斯特是什么也不寻找的；而现在这个地方，处于金黄的金雀花和在四月的斜阳里散发着柠檬味儿的绿叶蓬松的落叶松之间，可以远眺深深的山谷，仰望长长的荒原群丘，似乎正适合一个热爱奇景异迹的水彩画家的有决定意义的天性。拿起画盒，她跨出车来。

It was she who had stopped the car where the common rose steeply to the left, and a narrow strip of larch and beech, with here and there a pine, stretched out towards the valley between the road and the first long high hill of the full moor. She was looking for a place where they might lunch, for Ashurst never looked for anything; and this, between the golden furze and the feathery green larches smelling of lemons in the last sun of April--this, with a view into the deep valley and up to the long moor heights, seemed fitting to the decisive nature of one who sketched in water-colours, and loved romantic spots. Grasping her paint box, she got out.

　　“这儿行吗，弗兰克？”

　　艾舍斯特，有几分像长了胡子的席勒，两鬓斑白，高个子，长腿儿，两只深邃的灰色大眼睛有时包藏着无限意味，而且几乎显得很美丽，鼻子稍稍偏向一边，长了胡了的双唇微微开着——四十八岁的他，沉默不语，拿起便餐篮子，也跨出车来。

　　“呀！看哪，弗兰克！一个坟墓！”

"Won't this do, Frank?"

Ashurst, rather like a bearded Schiller, grey in the wings, tall, long-legged, with large remote grey eyes which sometimes filled with meaning and became almost beautiful, with nose a little to one side, and bearded lips just open--Ashurst, forty-eight, and silent, grasped the luncheon basket, and got out too.

"Oh! Look, Frank! A grave!"

　　从公有地顶上下来的那条小道和公路直角相交，经过那狭长的林子跟前穿进一座大门里去，就在这地方的公路旁边，有一个长着一层草皮的矮丘，六尺长，一尺宽，靠西立着一块花岗石，不知是谁在上面丢了一枝刺李和一束野风信子。艾舍斯特看了，不觉触动了他的诗人气质。在十字路口——那一定是个自杀者的坟墓！可怜迷信的世人！不过，不管躺在坟墓里的是谁，他占据着最有利的地位——这不是挤在雕刻着废物的其他丑坟之间的阴湿的陵墓——有的只是一块粗糙的石头、广阔的天空和路旁的自然景物！他没有发表议论，因为他已经懂得不能在家人之间充当哲学家。他大踏步走开，登上公有地，把便餐篮子放在一面墙下，铺开一块毯子给妻子坐——她饿了会停止写生，到这边来的——然后从袋里掏出墨雷翻译的《希波勒特斯》来。他很快就读完了“塞浦琳”和她报复的故事，这时已经在看天了。注视着在深蓝的天幕上显得那么明亮的朵朵白云，在这银婚日，艾舍斯特渴望着—— 渴望他自己也不知道的什么东西。

By the side of the road, where the track from the top of the common crossed it at right angles and ran through a gate past the narrow wood, was a thin mound of turf, six feet by one, with a moorstone to the west, and on it someone had thrown a blackthorn spray and a handful of bluebells. Ashurst looked, and the poet in him moved. At cross-roads--a suicide's grave! Poor mortals with their superstitions! Whoever lay there, though, had the best of it, no clammy sepulchre among other hideous graves carved with futilities--just a rough stone, the wide sky, and wayside blessings! And, without comment, for he had learned not to be a philosopher in the bosom of his family, he strode away up on to the common, dropped the luncheon basket under a wall, spread a rug for his wife to sit on--she would turn up from her sketching when she was hungry--and took from his pocket Murray's translation of the "Hippolytus." He had soon finished reading of "The Cyprian" and her revenge, and looked at the sky instead. And watching the white clouds so bright against the intense blue, Ashurst, on his silver-wedding day, longed for--he knew not what.

男子的有机组织跟生活是多么不协调！一个人的生活方式尽可以是高超的、谨严的，但是总存在着一条贪得无厌的暗流，一种非分之想，一种蹉跎的感觉。妇女是不是也有这种情况呢？谁说得上？然而，那些纵情于新奇，纵情于胡思乱想，一味追求新的不平凡的经历、新的冒险、新的享乐的男子，毫无疑问，他们所苦的却并不是饥饿，而恰恰是它的反面——过饱。文明的男子仿佛是一只精神失调的野兽，陷在这里永远也出不去！他不可能有自己喜爱的花园，用那优美的希腊合唱诗的词句来说，不可能有那充满“苹果树、歌声和金子”的花园，生活中没有他可以到达的极乐世界，或者说，没有给予任何有美的感觉的男子的永恒的幸福天堂—— 他没有可以和艺术作品里那种被捕捉了的可爱的形象相比较的东西，那种可爱的形象是永远赋予了的。因此一经观赏或阅读，总会得到那同样的可贵的意气昂扬和心旷神怡的感觉。

Maladjusted to life--man's organism! One's mode of life might be high and scrupulous, but there was always an undercurrent of greediness, a hankering, and sense of waste. Did women have it too? Who could tell? And yet, men who gave vent to their appetites for novelty, their riotous longings for new adventures, new risks, new pleasures, these suffered, no doubt, from the reverse side of starvation, from surfeit. No getting out of it--a maladjusted animal, civilised man! There could be no garden of his choosing, of "the Apple-tree, the singing, and the gold," in the words of that lovely Greek chorus, no achievable elysium in life, or lasting haven of happiness for any man with a sense of beauty--nothing which could compare with the captured loveliness in a work of art, set down for ever, so that to look on it or read was always to have the same precious sense of exaltation and restful inebriety.

毫无疑问，生活中存在着这种美的时刻，存在着那种不召自来、飞逝而去的销魂蚀骨之喜的时刻，但是麻烦的是，它们持续的时间仅如一朵云片飞过太阳那么一会儿；你不可能把它们留下，像艺术捕捉了美，把它牢牢地掌握住似的。它们稍纵即逝，像人们看到大自然的魂灵的那种闪烁的或金光灿烂的幻景一般，像看到它那杳远而沉思的精灵的一瞥一般。这里，阳光热辣辣地晒在他的脸上，一只布谷鸟打一株山楂树里叫着，空气里荡漾着金雀花的甜味—— 周围是幼小的凤尾草的小叶和星星般的刺李，明亮的云片飘浮在群山和梦一般的山谷之上的高空——此时此地，正是这样的一瞥。

Life no doubt had moments with that quality of beauty, of unbidden flying rapture, but the trouble was, they lasted no longer than the span of a cloud's flight over the sun; impossible to keep them with you, as Art caught beauty and held it fast. They were fleeting as one of the glimmering or golden visions one had of the soul in nature, glimpses of its remote and brooding spirit. Here, with the sun hot on his face, a cuckoo calling from a thorn tree, and in the air the honey savour of gorse--here among the little fronds of the young fern, the starry blackthorn, while the bright clouds drifted by high above the hills and dreamy valleys here and now was such a glimpse.

但是刹那之间它就会消逝，就像潘的脸儿那样，刚从岩石后面露出来，你一注视，便消失了。这时他突然坐了起来。可不是，这片风景有点儿眼熟，这块公有地，这条路，背后的这面老墙。跟妻子在车里行驶的时候，他不曾注意—— 决不会注意，因为他只管想远在天边的事儿，或者什么也不想——但是现在他却看清楚了！二十六年前，就在这个时节，那天他从离眼前这个地点不到半哩的那个农家出发到托尔基去，这一去可以说就永远没有回来。他感到一阵突然的悲痛；他无意中撞在一段往事上了，这段往事的美丽和喜悦他没有能够捕捉住，它扑着翅膀飞到未知的世界中去了；他无意中触发了埋藏在心底的回忆，想起一段放纵、甜蜜、但被迅速地扼杀了的时光。于是他翻过身子，两只手支着下巴，凝视着长着小小的蓝色乳草花的那片短草……

　　这就是他想起的往事。

But in a moment it would pass--as the face of Pan, which looks round the corner of a rock, vanishes at your stare. And suddenly he sat up. Surely there was something familiar about this view, this bit of common, that ribbon of road, the old wall behind him. While they were driving he had not been taking notice--never did; thinking of far things or of nothing--but now he saw! Twenty-six years ago, just at this time of year, from the farmhouse within half a mile of this very spot he had started for that day in Torquay whence it might be said he had never returned. And a sudden ache beset his heart; he had stumbled on just one of those past moments in his life, whose beauty and rapture he had failed to arrest, whose wings had fluttered away into the unknown; he had stumbled on a buried memory, a wild sweet time, swiftly choked and ended. And, turning on his face, he rested his chin on his hands, and stared at the short grass where the little blue milkwort was growing....

And this is what he remembered.