This phenomenon, in the various shapes which it assumed, indicated no externalchange, but so sudden and important a change in the spectator of the familiar scene, that the intervening space of a single day had operated on his consciousness like the lapseof years. The minister's own will, and Hester's will, and the fate that grew between them, had wrought this transformation. It was the same town as heretofore; but the same minister returned not from the forest. He might have said to the friends who greeted him, "I am not the man for whom you take me! I left him yonder in the forest, withdrawn into a secret dell, by a mossy tree-trunk, and near a melancholy brook! Go, seek your minister, and see if his emaciatedfigure, his thin cheek, his white, heavy, pain-wrinkled brow, be not flung down there, like a cast-off garment!" His friends, no doubt, would still have insisted with him- "Thou art thyself the man!"- but the error would have been their own, not his.
这一变幻得千姿百态的现象,并非表明外观上起了变化,只是说明观察这些熟悉景现的人内心发生了重要的突变,以致在他的意识上有了“一日不见、如隔三秋之感。是牧师本人的意志和海丝特的意志,以及他俩之间出现的命运,造成了这一变形。镇子还是原来的镇子;但从林中归来的牧师却不同了。他很可能对向他打招呼的朋友们说:“我不是你们心目中的那个人了!我把他留在那边那座林子里了,他退缩到一个秘密的山谷里,离一条忧郁的小溪不远,就在一棵长满青苔的树干旁边!去找找你们的牧师吧,看看他那憔悴的身形,他那消瘦的面颊,他那苞白、沉重、爬满痛苦皱纹的前额,是不是象一件扔掉的衣袍一样给遗弃在那里了!而他的朋友们,不消说,还会继续坚持对他说:“你自己就是那个人!——但弄错的恐怕是他们,而不是他。
【英文名著精选阅读:《红字》第二十章(上)】相关文章:
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