【经典名著阅读】《红字》第二十章（下）
Chapter 20 THE MINISTER IN A MAZE第二十章 迷悯中的牧师
"Ha, ha, ha!" cackled the old witch-lady, still nodding her high head-dress at the minister. "Well, well, we must needs talk thus in the daytime! You carry it off like an old hand! But at midnight, and in the forest, we shall have other talk together!"“哈，哈，哈！”那老妖婆咯咯地笑着，还向牧师一劲儿点着戴高帽的头。“好啦，好啦，我们在这光天化日之下是得这么讲话！你倒象个深通此道的老手！不过，等到夜半时分，在树林里，我们再在一起谈些别的吧！”
She passed on with her aged stateliness, but often turning back her head and smiling at him, like one willing to recognise a secret intimacy of connection.她摆出一副德高年迈的姿态走开了，但仍不时回头朝他微笑，象是要一心看出他们之间不可告人的亲密关系似的。
"Have I then sold myself," thought the minister, "to the fiend whom, if men say true, this yellow-starched and velveted old hag has chosen for her prince and master!"“这样看来，我是不是已经把自己出卖给那个恶魔啦？”牧师思忖着，“如果人们所说属实，这个浆着黄领、穿着绒袍的老妖婆，早就选了那恶魔作她的王子和主人啦！”
The wretched minister! He had made a bargain very like it! Tempted by a dream of happiness, he had yielded himself, with deliberate choice, as he had never done before, to what he knew was deadly sin. And the infectious poison of that sin had been thus rapidly diffused throughout his moral system. It had stupefied all blessed impulses, and awakened into vivid life the whole brotherhood of bad ones. Scorn, bitterness, unprovoked malignity, gratuitous desire of ill, ridicule of whatever was good and holy, all awoke, to tempt, even while they frightened him. And his encounter with old Mistress Hibbins, if it were a real incident, did but show his sympathy and fellowship with wicked mortals, and the world of perverted spirits.这个不幸的牧师！他所作的那笔交易与此极其相似！他受着幸福的梦境的诱惑，经过周密的选择，居然前所未有地屈从于明知是罪大恶极的行径。面那桩罪孽的传染性毒素已经就此迅速扩散到他的整个道德体系，愚弄了一切神圣的冲动，而将全部恶念唤醒，变成活跃的生命。轻蔑、狠毒、无缘无故的恶言秽行和歹意；对善良和神圣的事物妄加嘲弄，这一切全都绘唤醒起来，虽说把他吓得要命，却仍在诱惑着他。而他和西宾斯老太太的不期而遇，如果当真只是巧合的话，也确实表明他已同恶毒的人们及堕落的灵魂的世界同流合污了。
He had, by this time, reached his dwelling, on the edge of the burial-ground, and, hastening up the stairs, took refuge in his study. The minister was glad to have reached this shelter, without first betraying himself to the world by any of those strange and wicked eccentricities to which he had been continually impelled while passing through the streets. He entered the accustomed room, and looked around him on its books, its windows, its fireplace, and the tapestried comfort of the walls, with the same perception of strangeness that had haunted him throughout his walk from the forest-dell into the town, and thitherward. Here he had studied and written; here, gone through fast and vigil, and come forth half alive; here striven to pray; here, borne a hundred thousand agonies! There was the Bible, in its rich old Hebrew, with Moses and the Prophets speaking to him, and God's voice through all! There, on the table, with the inky pen beside it, was an unfinished sermon, with a sentence broken in the midst, where his thoughts had ceased to gush out upon the page, two days before. He knew that it was himself, the thin and white-cheeked minister, who had done and suffered these things, and written thus far into the Election Sermon! But he seemed to stand apart, and eye this former self with scornful, pitying, but half-envious curiosity. That self was gone. Another man had returned out of the forest; a wiser one; with a knowledge of hidden mysteries which the simplicity of the former never could have reached. A bitter kind of knowledge that!此时，他已走到坟场边上的住所，正在匆忙地踏上楼梯，躲进他的书斋中去一避。牧师能够进到这个庇荫之地，暗自高兴，因为这样一来，他就无须向世人暴露他在街上一路走来时那不断怂恿他的种种离奇古怪的邪念了。他走进熟悉的房间，环顾四周，看着室内的书籍、窗子、壁炉、接着壁毯的赏心悦目的墙壁，但从林中谷地进城来一路纠缠着他的同样的奇异感觉依然存在。他曾在这里研读和写作；他曾在这里斋戒和夜祷，以致弄得半死不活；他曾在这里尽心尽意地祈祷；他曾在这里忍受过成千上万种折磨！这里有那本装璜精美的《圣经》，上面用古老的希伯来文印着摩西和诸先知们对他的训戒，从头到尾全是上帝的声音！在桌上饱蘸墨水的鹅毛笔旁，摆着一篇未完成的布道词，一个句子写到中间就中断了，因为两天前他的思路再也涌不到纸上。他明知道那是他本人，两颊苍白、身材消瘦的牧师做的这些事、受的这些苦，写了这么些庆祝选举的布道文的！但他却象是站在一边，带着轻蔑和怜悯，而又怀着一些羡慕的好奇心，审视着先前的自己。那个自我已经一去不复返了，是另一个人从林中归来了，是具有神秘知识的男一个益发聪明的人了——那种知识是原先那人的简单头脑从来不可能企及的。那种知识真让人哭笑不得！
While occupied with these reflections, a knock came at the door of the study, and the minister said, "Come in!"- not wholly devoid of an idea that he might behold an evil spirit. And so he did! It was old Roger Chillingworth that entered. The minister stood, white and speechless, with one hand on the Hebrew Scriptures, and the other spread upon his breast.就在牧师沉浸在这些冥思苦想之中的时候，书斋的房门那儿传来一声敲门声，牧师便说道，“请进！”——并非完全没有料到他可能又要看到一个邪魔了。果不其然！进来的正是老罗杰·齐灵渥斯。牧师面包苍白、默默无言地站在那里，一手放在希伯来文鲍《圣经》上，另一只手则捂住心口。
"Welcome home, reverend sir," said the physician. "And how found you that godly man, the Apostle Eliot? But methinks, dear sir, you look pale; as if the travel through the wilderness had been too sore for you. Will not my aid be requisite to put you in heart and strength to preach your Election Sermon?"“欢迎你回到家中，可敬的牧师先生，”医生说。“你看那位圣洁的艾略特使徒可好啊？可是我看你的样子很苍白，亲爱的先生；看来你在荒野中的这次旅行过于疲惫不堪了。要不要我来帮忙你恢复一下身心健康，以便在庆祝选举的布道中祈祷呢？”
"Nay, I think not so," rejoined the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. "My journey, and the sight of the holy Apostle yonder, and the free air which I have breathed, have done me good, after so long confinement in my study. I think to need no more of your drugs, my kind physician, good though they be, and administered by a friendly hand."“不，我看不必了，”丁梅斯代尔牧师先生接口说。“我这次旅行，同那位圣洁的使徒的会面，以及我所呼吸到的自由空气，对我大有好处，原先我闷在书斋里的时间太长了。我想我已经不再需要你的药了，我的好心的医生，虽说那些药很好，又是一只友好的手给的。”
All this time, Roger Chillingworth was looking at the minister with the grave and intent regard of a physician towards his patient. But, in spite of his outward show, the latter was almost convinced of the old man's knowledge, or, at least, his confident suspicion, with respect to his own interview with Hester Prynne. The physician knew then, that, in the minister's regard, he was no longer a trusted friend, but his bitterest enemy. So much being known, it would appear natural that a part of it should be expressed. It is singular, however, how long a time often passes before words embody things; and with what security two persons, who choose to avoid a certain subject, may approach its very verge, and retire without disturbing it. Thus, the minister felt no apprehension that Roger Chillingworth would touch, in express words, upon the real position which they sustained towards one another. Yet did the physician, in his dark way, creep frightfully near the secret.在这段时间里，罗杰·齐灵渥斯始终用医生审视病人的那种严肃而专注的目光盯着牧师。他虽然表面上不动声色，但几乎确信，那老人已经知道了，或者至少暗中猜测到了他同海丝特·白兰已经会过面。那么，医生也就知道了，在牧师的心目中，他已不再是一个可信赖的朋友，而是一个最恶毒的敌人了。事情既然已经昭然若揭，自然要有所流露。然而，奇妙的是，往往要经过好长一段时间才能一语道破事实；而二人为了避免某一话题，又要何等小心翼翼地刚刚触到边缘，便又马上退缩回去，才不致点破。因此，牧师不必担心罗杰·齐灵渥斯会公然说出他们彼此维持的真正地位。不过，医生以他那不为人知的手段，已经可怕地爬近了秘密。
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