《魔法師的外甥》第17期:鍾與錘(4)
Polly nodded. All the faces they could see were certainly nice. Both the men and women looked kind and wise, and they seemed to come of a handsome race. But after the children had gone a few steps down the room they came to faces that looked a little different. These were very solemn faces. You felt you would have to mind your P's and Q's, if you ever met living people who looked like that. When they had gone a little further, they found themselves among faces they didn't like: this was about the middle of the room. The faces here looked very strong and proud and happy, but they looked cruel. A little further on they looked crueller. Further on again, they were still cruel but they no longer looked happy. They were even despairing faces: as if the people they belonged to had done dreadful things and also suffered dreadful things. The last figure of all was the most interesting - a woman even more richly dressed than the others, very tall (but every figure in that room was taller than the people of our world), with a look of such fierceness and pride that it took your breath away. Yet she was beautiful too. Years afterwards when he was an old man, Digory said he had never in all his life known a woman so beautiful. It is only fair to add that Polly always said she couldn't see anything specially beautiful about her.
This woman, as I said, was the last: but there were plenty of empty chairs beyond her, as if the room had been intended for a much larger collection of images.
"I do wish we knew the story that's behind all this," said Digory. "Let's go back and look at that table sort of thing in the middle of the room."
The thing in the middle of the room was not exactly a table. It was a square pillar about four feet high and on it there rose a little golden arch from which there hung a little golden bell; and beside this there lay a little golden hammer to hit the bell with.
"I wonder... I wonder... I wonder..." said Digory.
"There seems to be something written here," said Polly, stooping down and looking at the side of the pillar.
"By gum, so there is," said Digory. "But of course we shan't be able to read it."
"Shan't we? I'm not so sure," said Polly.
They both looked at it hard and, as you might have expected, the letters cut in the stone were strange. But now a great wonder happened: for, as they looked, though the shape of the strange letters never altered, they found that they could understand them. If only Digory had remembered what he himself had said a few minutes ago, that this was an enchanted room, he might have guessed that the enchantment was beginning to work. But he was too wild with curiosity to think about that. He was longing more and more to know what was written on the pillar. And very soon they both knew. What it said was something like this - at least this is the sense of it though the poetry, when you read it there, was better:
Make your choice, adventurous Stranger; Strike the bell and bide the danger, Or wonder, till it drives you mad, What would have followed if you had.
"No fear!" said Polly. "We don't want any danger."
"Oh but don't you see it's no good!" said Digory. "We can't get out of it now. We shall always be wondering what else would have happened if we had struck the bell. I'm not going home to be driven mad by always thinking of that. No fear!"
我說的這個女人是最後一個，在她的身後，放着無數把空椅子，似乎這間屋子原來準備容納更多的塑像。
“我多希望我們知道這裏面的故事。”迪格雷說，“我們回頭看看中間那個像桌子一樣的東西吧。”
屋子的中間不是一張真正的桌子，而是一個四尺高的方形柱，上面降起一個金色的小拱門，門上懸梓着一隻金色的小鐘，鐘的旁邊放着一把用來敲鐘的金色小錘。
“我想… … 我想… … 我想… … ”迪格雷說。
“這兒好像寫着什麼。”波莉彎下腰，看着柱子的側面。‘天哪，就在這兒”迪格雷說，“可是，我們讀不懂的。”
“讀不性？我看不一定。” 波莉說。
兩人認真地看着，你可能猜得到，刻在石頭上的是一種奇怪的字母。但就在這時，一個不可思議的奇蹟發生了：他們看的時候，字母的形狀並未改變，他們卻發現自己能夠讀懂了。要是迪格雷記得幾分鐘前他說過，這間屋子裏有魔法，他就早該想到魔法開始起作用了，但他的心中除了好奇以外，什麼也想不到。他越來越急於知道柱子上寫了什麼。很快，內人都讀懂了。上面是這樣寫的，至少大意如此，雖然原詩讀起來更好：
選擇吧．喜歡冒險的陌生人，
敲響鐘，等候危險的來臨，
或者，呆呆地想，這會有什麼後果，
直到你想得發瘋。
“當然不，”波莉說，“我們不想要任何危險。”
“你難道不明白這是沒用的嗎？”迪格雷說，“我們現在擺脫不了啦。我們將一直想下去，敲了鍾會發生什麼事。我不願意被這種想法糾纏得瘋瘋巔巔地回家。不願意！”
