“别去管这个吧,乖孩子!西宾斯太太对珠儿毕恭毕敬地说。“总有一天,你自己会看到的。孩子,他们都说你是‘空中王子’的后代呢!你愿意在一个晚上和我一起驾云上天去看你父亲吗?到那时你就会明白,牧师总把手指在心口上的原因了!那怪模怪样的老夫人尖声大笑着走开了,惹得全市场的人都听到了。
By this time the preliminaryprayer had been offered in the meeting-house, and the accents of the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale were heard commencing his discourse. An irresistiblefeeling kept Hester near the spot. As the sacred edificewas too much thronged to admit another auditor, she took up her position close beside the scaffold of the pillory. It was in sufficient proximityto bring the whole sermonto her ears, in the shape of an indistinct, but varied, murmur and flow of the minister's very peculiar voice.
此时,议事厅中已经作完场前祈祷,可以听到丁梅斯代尔牧师先生开始布道的声音了。一种不可抑制的情感促使海丝特向近处靠去。由于神圣的大厦中挤得人山人海,再也无法容纳新的听讲人,她只好在紧靠刑台的地方占了个位置。这地方足以听到全部说教.虽说不很响亮,但牧师那富有特色的声音象是流水的低吟,缓缓送入她的耳鼓。
The vocal organ was in itself a rich endowmentinsomuchthat a listener, comprehending nothing of the language in which the preacher spoke, might still have been swayed to and fro by the mere tone and cadence. Like all other music, it breathed passion and pathos, and emotions high or tender, in a tongue native to the human heart, wherever educated. Muffled as the sound was by its passage through the church walls, Hester Prynne listened with such intentness, and sympathised so intimately, that the sermon had throughout a meaning for her, entirely apart from its indistinguishablewords. These, perhaps, if more distinctly heard, might have been only a grosser medium, and have clogged the spiritual sense. Now she caught the low undertone, as of the wind sinking down to repose itself; then ascended with it, as it rose through progressive gradationsof sweetness and power, until its volume seemed to envelop her with an atmosphere of awe and solemn grandeur. And yet, majestic as the voice sometimes became, there was for ever in it an essential character of plaintivenessa loud or low expression of anguish- the whisper, or the shriek, as it might be conceived, of suffering humanity, that touched a sensibility in every bosom! At times this deep strain of pathoswas all that could be heard, and scarcely heard, sighing amid a desolate silence. But even when the minister's voice grew high and commanding- when it gushed irrepressiblyupward- when it assumed its utmost breadth and power, so overfilling the church as to burst its way through the solid walls, and diffuseitself in the open air- still, if the auditor listened intently, and for the purpose, he could detect the same cry of pain. What was it? The complaint of a human heart, sorrow-laden, perchance guilty, telling its secret, whether of guilt or sorrow, to the great heart of mankind; beseeching its sympathy or forgiveness- at every moment- in each accent- and never in vain! It was this profound and continual undertone that gave the clergyman his most appropriatepower. During all this time, Hester stood, statue-like, at the foot of the scaffold. If the minister's voice had not kept her there, there would nevertheless have been an inevitable magnetismin that spot, whence she dated the first hour of her life of ignominy. There was a sense within her- to ill-defined to be made a thought, but weighing heavily on her mind- that her whole orb of life, both before and after, was connected with this spot, as with the one point that gave it unity.
【英文名著精选阅读:《红字》第二十二章(下)】相关文章:
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