雙語小說連載:《董貝父子》第二章 Part 3

As the husband did nothing but chuckle and grin, and continually draw his right hand across his Mouth, moistening the palm, Mrs Toodle, after nudging him twice or thrice in vain, dropped a curtsey and replied 'that perhaps if she was to be called out of her name, it would be considered in the wages.'
'Oh, of course,' said Mr Dombey. 'I desire to make it a question of wages, altogether. Now, Richards, if you nurse my bereaved child, I wish you to remember this always. You will receive a liberal stipend in return for the discharge of certain duties, in the performance of which, I wish you to see as little of your family as possible. When those duties cease to be required and rendered, and the stipend ceases to be paid, there is an end of all relations between us. Do you understand me?'

由於她的丈夫除了咧開嘴吃吃地笑，並不斷地伸出右手捂着嘴，使手掌潮溼一些之外，什麼話也沒有說，圖德爾大嫂用胳膊肘輕輕地推了他兩三次也是徒勞無效，因此她就行了個屈膝禮，回答道，如果在這裏需要改換個姓來稱呼她的話，那麼在給她定工資的時候，請把這一點也考慮進去。“當然，”董貝先生說道，“我希望把這完全作爲一個工資問題來考慮。現在，理查茲，如果您要給我這個失去母親的孩子當奶媽的話，那麼我希望您 永遠記住下面的一些話：您在履行了一定的職責之後，將會領到一筆豐厚的報酬；在您擔任職務期間，我希望您儘量少去看望您的家庭。當不再需要您履行這些職責，不再向您支付報酬的時候，我們之間的一切關係就都結束了。您明白我的話了嗎？”

Mrs Toodle seemed doubtful about it; and as to Toodle himself, he had evidently no doubt whatever, that he was all abroad.
'You have children of your own,' said Mr Dombey. 'It is not at all in this bargain that you need become attached to my child, or that my child need become attached to you. I don't expect or desire anything of the kind. Quite the reverse. When you go away from here, you will have concluded what is a mere matter of bargain and sale, hiring and letting: and will stay away. The child will cease to remember you; and you will cease, if you please, to remember the child.'
Mrs Toodle, with a little more colour in her cheeks than she had had before, said 'she hoped she knew her place.'
'I hope you do, Richards,' said Mr Dombey. 'I have no doubt you know it very well. Indeed it is so plain and obvious that it could hardly be otherwise. Louisa, my dear, arrange with Richards about money, and let her have it when and how she pleases. Mr what's-your name, a word with you, if you please!'

圖德爾大嫂似乎對這有些疑問，至於圖德爾本人，他顯然沒有絲毫疑問，因爲他根本莫名其妙。
“您有您自己的孩子，”董貝先生說，“在我們的這個交易中，您根本不需要愛上我的孩子。我的孩子也不需要愛上您。我不希望，也不願意看見這一
類事情。恰恰相反，當您離開這裏的時候，您就結束了這純粹是買與賣、僱傭與辭退的交易關係，然後您就到別的地方去住。孩子就不再記得您。
您如果願意，也可以不再記得孩子。”
圖德爾大嫂的臉頰比先前更紅了一些，說，她希望她明白自己的身份。
“我希望您明白，理查茲，”董貝先生說道，“我毫不懷疑，您清清楚楚地明白這一點。確實，這是明明白白，顯而易見的事情，不可能是相反的情況 。路易莎，我親愛的，請你把有關錢的事情跟理查茲安排一下，讓她在她認爲合適的時候和按她願意的方式領去。您這位叫什麼的先生，如果您願意，我想跟您談一兩話。”

註釋：ceases to: 停止；不再出現某種情況
例句：
1. This one I learned about in my own research about 20 years ago, and it never ceases to amaze me.
這是在我自己的研究中發現的,大概20年前，它一直讓我很吃驚。
2. The newspaper ceased to appear after an existence of three months.
該報發行3 個月後停刊了。

Thus arrested on the threshold as he was following his wife out of the room, Toodle returned and confronted Mr Dombey alone. He was a strong, loose, round-shouldered, shuffling, shaggy fellow, on whom his clothes sat negligently: with a good deal of hair and whisker, deepened in its natural tint, perhaps by smoke and coal-dust: hard knotty hands: and a square forehead, as coarse in grain as the bark of an oak. A thorough contrast in all respects, to Mr Dombey, who was one of those close-shaved close-cut moneyed gentlemen who are glossy and crisp like new bank-notes, and who seem to be artificially braced and tightened as by the stimulating action of golden showerbaths.

當圖德爾跟着他的妻子正要走出房間的時候，他就這樣在門口被喊住了。他走回來，單獨面對着董貝先生。他是個身強力壯、自由散漫、後背駝曲 、行動笨拙、毛髮蓬鬆的人，他的衣服隨隨便便地搭在身上；頭髮和連鬢鬍子又長又密，也許由於煙與煤粉的關係，比自然的顏色更爲濃黑；手上 長着厚繭和好多癤疤；方方的前額，上面的紋理就像樹皮一樣粗糙。他與董貝先生在所有方面都形成了鮮明的對照：董貝先生是位鬍子颳得乾乾淨淨、頭髮剪得整整齊齊、錢財富有的上流社會人士，像嶄新的鈔票一樣富有光澤，清脆有聲；他似乎經過黃金淋浴這個使人激勵精神的行動之後， 已經被人爲地繃緊和振奮起來了。

'You have a son, I believe?' said Mr Dombey.
'Four on 'em, Sir. Four hims and a her. All alive!'
'Why, it's as much as you can afford to keep them!' said Mr Dombey.
'I couldn't hardly afford but one thing in the world less, Sir.'
'What is that?'
'To lose 'em, Sir.'
'Can you read?' asked Mr Dombey.

“我想您有一個兒子吧？”董貝先生問道。
“有四個，先生。四個小子，一個閨女，全都活着！”
“唔，您把他們全養下來了，總算還經受得起！”董貝先生說道。
“在這世界上我有一件事經受不起，先生。”
“什麼事？”
“失去他們，先生。”
“您能唸書嗎？”董貝先生問道。

'Why, not partickler, Sir.'
'Write?'
'With chalk, Sir?'
'With anything?'
'I could make shift to chalk a little bit, I think, if I was put to it,' said Toodle after some reflection.
'And yet,' said Mr Dombey, 'you are two or three and thirty, I suppose?'
'Thereabouts, I suppose, Sir,' answered Toodle, after more reflection.

“唔，勉勉強強能念一點兒，先生。”
“寫字呢？”
“用粉筆嗎，先生？”
“不論用什麼。”
“我想，如果非要我寫不行的話，那麼我也能用粉筆對付着寫一點兒，”圖德爾沉思了一會兒，說道。
“不過，”董貝先生說道，“我想，您今年已有三十二、三歲了吧？”
“我想，大概是這麼個歲數，先生，”圖德爾比剛纔沉思得長久一些之後，說道。

'Then why don't you learn?' asked Mr Dombey.
'So I'm a going to, Sir. One of my little boys is a going to learn me, when he's old enough, and been to school himself.'
'Well,' said Mr Dombey, after looking at him attentively, and with no great favour, as he stood gazing round the room (principally round the ceiling) and still drawing his hand across and across his mouth. 'You heard what I said to your wife just now?'

“那麼您爲什麼不學習呢？”董貝先生問道。
“是的，我準備學，先生。我有一個小男孩，等他長大上學以後，他將會教我。”
“唔，”董貝先生聚精會神地對他注視之後說道；他對他沒有產生很大的好感，因爲他站在那裏，眼睛在房間裏四處張望（主要是在天花板上溜來溜去），同時依舊不時抽出手來捂着嘴巴哈氣。
“我剛纔對您妻子說的話，您聽到了嗎？”

註釋：a good deal of: 大量的；很多的
例句：
1. I have given this matter a good deal of think but we cannot promise you 3 million dollars loan.
我已再三考慮過這件事，但是我們不能答應給您三百萬美元貸款。
2. He chose to spend a good deal of that money building his home in North Carolina.
他決定在北卡羅來納州，花巨資建一所房子。

'Polly heerd it,' said Toodle, jerking his hat over his shoulder in the direction of the door, with an air of perfect confidence in his better half. 'It's all right.'
'But I ask you if you heard it. You did, I suppose, and understood it?' pursued Mr Dombey.
'I heerd it,' said Toodle, 'but I don't know as I understood it rightly Sir, 'account of being no scholar, and the words being - ask your pardon - rayther high. But Polly heerd it. It's all right.'
'As you appear to leave everything to her,' said Mr Dombey, frustrated in his intention of impressing his views still more distinctly on the husband, as the stronger character, 'I suppose it is of no use my saying anything to you.'
'Not a bit,' said Toodle. 'Polly heerd it. She's awake, Sir.'
'I won't detain you any longer then,' returned Mr Dombey, disappointed. 'Where have you worked all your life?'
'Mostly underground, Sir, 'till I got married. I come to the level then. I'm a going on one of these here railroads when they comes into full play.'
As he added in one of his hoarse whispers, 'We means to bring up little Biler to that line,' Mr Dombey inquired haughtily who little Biler was.
'The eldest on 'em, Sir,' said Toodle, with a smile. 'It ain't a common name. Sermuchser that when he was took to church the gen'lm'n said, it wam't a chris'en one, and he couldn't give it. But we always calls him Biler just the same. For we don't mean no harm. Not we.
'Do you mean to say, Man,' inquired Mr Dombey; looking at him with marked displeasure, 'that you have called a child after a boiler?'
'No, no, Sir,' returned Toodle, with a tender consideration for his mistake. 'I should hope not! No, Sir. Arter a BILER Sir. The Steamingine was a'most as good as a godfather to him, and so we called him Biler, don't you see!'

“波利聽到了，”圖德爾把帽子越過肩膀朝門口的方向猛地一揮，露出對他那口子完全信任的神氣。“一切都很好。”
“既然看來您一切都由她作主，”董貝先生原以爲丈夫是家庭中更有力的人物，本打算把他的意見對他說得更加明確，以便加深他的印象，但卻沒有成功，就說道，“我想用不着再對您說什麼了。”
“什麼也不用說，”圖德爾說道，“波利聽到了。她沒有打盹兒，先生。”
“這麼說，我不想再留您了，”董貝先生失望地回答道。
“您過去在哪裏工作？”
“過去大部分時間是在地下，先生，直到我結婚以後纔到地面上來。這裏修建了鐵路，通車以後我就在一條鐵路上工作。”

As the last straw breaks the laden camel's back, this piece of information crushed the sinking spirits of Mr Dombey. He motioned his child's foster-father to the door, who departed by no means unwillingly: and then turning the key, paced up and down the room in solitary wretchedness.
It would be harsh, and perhaps not altogether true, to say of him that he felt these rubs and gratings against his pride more keenly than he had felt his wife's death: but certainly they impressed that event upon him with new force, and communicated to it added weight and bitterness. It was a rude shock to his sense of property in his child, that these people the mere dust of the earth, as he thought them should be necessary to him; and it was natural that in proportion as he felt disturbed by it, he should deplore the occurrence which had made them so. For all his starched, impenetrable dignity and composure, he wiped blinding tears from his eyes as he paced up and down his room; and often said, with an emotion of which he would not, for the world, have had a witness, 'Poor little fellow!'
It may have been characteristic of Mr Dombey's pride, that he pitied himself through the child. Not poor me. Not poor widower, confiding by constraint in the wife of an ignorant Hind who has been working 'mostly underground' all his life, and yet at whose door Death had never knocked, and at whose poor table four sons daily sit but poor little fellow!

就像最後一根稻草把滿負重載的駱駝的背壓斷一樣，圖德爾曾經在地下工作過的這個信息使董貝先生的情緒再也支撐不下去了。他向他兒子奶媽的丈夫指了指房門，於是圖德爾沒有一點不願意的樣子，離開了這個房間。然後，董貝先生把鑰匙轉了一下，鎖上了門，獨自一人在房間裏可憐地踱着步子。雖然他古板和固執地保持着尊嚴與鎮靜，可是他還是抹去了使他眼睛變得模糊的淚水，懷着他決不願意在別人面前顯露出來的情緒，不時說道，“可憐的小傢伙！”

註釋：It is of no use: 是沒有用的
例句：
1. It is of no use to talk to him; he is as deaf as a post.
跟他說話毫無用處，因爲他一點也聽見。
2. It is of no use boasting of being rich on a desert island.
在無人島上誇耀富有也是白費力氣。