' "I could see directly I set my eyes on him what sort of a fool he was," gasped14 the dying Brown. "He a man! Hell! He was a hollow sham15. As if he couldn't have said straight out, 'Hands off my plunder16!' blast him! That would have been like a man! Rot his superior soul! He had me there -- but he hadn't devil enough in him to make an end of me. Not he! A thing like that letting me off as if I wasn't worth a kick! ..." Brown struggled desperately17 for breath.... "Fraud.... Letting me off.... And so I did make an end of him after all...." He choked again.... "I expect this thing'll kill me, but I shall die easy now. You . . . you here . . . I don't know your name -- I would give you a five-pound note if -- if I had it -- for the news -- or my name's not Brown...." He grinned horribly.... "Gentleman Brown."
'He said all these things in profound gasps18, staring at me with his yellow eyes out of a long, ravaged19, brown face; he jerked his left arm; a pepper-and-salt matted beard hung almost into his lap; a dirty ragged20 blanket covered his legs. I had found him out in Bankok through that busybody Schomberg, the hotel-keeper, who had, confidentially21, directed me where to look. It appears that a sort of loafing, fuddled vagabond -- a white man living amongst the natives with a Siamese woman -- had considered it a great privilege to give a shelter to the last days of the famous Gentleman Brown. While he was talking to me in the wretched hovel, and, as it were, fighting for every minute of his life, the Siamese woman, with big bare legs and a stupid coarse face, sat in a dark corner chewing betel stolidly22. Now and then she would get up for the purpose of shooing a chicken away from the door. The whole hut shook when she walked. An ugly yellow child, naked and pot-bellied like a little heathen god, stood at the foot of the couch, finger in mouth, lost in a profound and calm contemplation of the dying man.
'He talked feverishly23; but in the middle of a word, perhaps, an invisible hand would take him by the throat, and he would look at me dumbly with an expression of doubt and anguish24. He seemed to fear that I would get tired of waiting and go away, leaving him with his tale untold25, with his exultation unexpressed. He died during the night, I believe, but by that time I had nothing more to learn.
'So much as to Brown, for the present.
'Eight months before this, coming into Samarang, I went as usual to see Stein. On the garden side of the house a Malay on the verandah greeted me shyly, and I remembered that I had seen him in Patusan, in Jim's house, amongst other Bugis men who used to come in the evening to talk interminably over their war reminiscences and to discuss State affairs. Jim had pointed26 him out to me once as a respectable petty trader owning a small seagoing native craft, who had showed himself "one of the best at the taking of the stockade27. " I was not very surprised to see him, since any Patusan trader venturing as far as Samarang would naturally find his way to Stein's house. I returned his greeting and passed on. At the door of Stein's room I came upon another Malay in whom I recognised Tamb' Itam.
'I asked him at once what he was doing there; it occurred to me that Jim might have come on a visit. I own I was pleased and excited at the thought. Tumb' Itam looked as if he did not know what to say. "Is Tuan Jim inside?" I asked impatiently. "No," he mumbled28, hanging his head for a moment, and then with sudden earnestness, "He would not fight. He would not fight," he repeated twice. As he seemed unable to say unything else, I pushed him aside and went in,
'Stein, tall and stooping, stood alone in the middle of the room between the rows of butterfly cases. "Ach! is it you, my friend?" he said sadly, peering through his glasses. A drab sack-coat of alpaca hung, unbuttoned, down to his knees. He had a Panama hat on his head, and there were deep furrows29 on his pale cheeks. "What's the matter now?" I asked nervously30. "There's Tamb' Itam there...." "Come and see the girl. Come and see the girl. She is here," he said, with a half-hearted show of activity. I tried to detain him, but with gentle obstinacy31 he would take no notice of my eager questions. "She is here, she is here," he repeated, in great perturbation. "They came here two days ago. An old man like me, a stranger -- sehen Sie -- cannot do much.... Come this way.... Young hearts are unforgiving...." I could see he was in utmost distress32.... "The strength of life in them, the cruel strength of life...." He mumbled, leading me round the house; I followed him, lost in dismal33 and angry conjectures34. At the door of the drawing-room he barred my way. "He loved her very much," he said interrogatively, and I only nodded, feeling so bitterly disappointed that I would not trust myself to speak . "Very frightful35," he murmured. "She can' t understand me. I am only a strange old man. Perhaps you . . . she knows you. Talk to her. We can't leave it like this. Tell her to forgive him. It was very frightful." "No doubt," I said, exasperated36 at being in the dark; "but have you forgiven him?" He looked at me queerly. "You shall hear," he said, and opening the door, absolutely pushed me in.
'You know Stein's big house and the two immense receptionrooms, uninhabited and uninhabitable, clean, full of solitude37 und of shining things that look as if never beheld38 by the eye of man? They are cool on the hottest days, and you enter them as you would a scrubbed cave underground. I passed through one, and in the other I saw the girl sitting at the end of a big mahogany table, on which she rested her head, the face hidden in her arms. The waxed floor reflected her dimly as though it had been a sheet of frozen water. The rattan39 screens were down, and through the strange greenish gloom made by the foliage40 of the trees outside a strong wind blew in gusts41, swaying the long draperies of windows and doorways42. Her white figure seemed shaped in snow; the pendent crystals of a great chandelier clicked above her head like glittering icicles. She looked up and watched my approach. I was chilled as if these vast apartments had been the cold abode43 of despair.
'She recognised me at once, and as soon as I had stopped, looking down at her: "He has left me," she said quietly; "you always leave us -- for your own ends." Her face was set. All the heat of life seemed withdrawn44 within some inaccessible45 spot in her breast. "It would have been easy to die with him," she went on, and made a slight weary gesture as if giving up the incomprehensible. "He would not! It was like a blindness -- and yet it was I who was speaking to him; it was I who stood before his eyes; it was at me that he looked all the time! Ah! you are hard, treacherous46, without truth, without compassion47. What makes you so wicked? Or is it that you are all mad?"
'I took her hand; it did not respond, and when I dropped it, it hung down to the floor. That indifference48, more awful than tears, cries, and reproaches, seemed to defy time and consolation49. You felt that nothing you could say would reach the seat of the still and benumbing pain.
'Stein had said, "You shall hear." I did hear. I heard it all, listening with amazement50, with awe51, to the tones of her inflexible52 weariness. She could not grasp the real sense of what she was telling me, and her resentment53 filled me with pity for her -- for him too. I stood rooted to the spot after she had finished. Leaning on her arm, she stared with hard eyes, and the wind passed in gusts, the crystals kept on clicking in the greenish gloom. She went on whispering to herself: "And yet he was looking at me! He could see my face, hear my voice, hear my grief! When I used to sit at his feet, with my cheek against his knee and his hand on my head, the curse of cruelty and madness was already within him, waiting for the day. The day came! . . . and before the sun had set he could not see me any more -- he was made blind and deaf and without pity, as you all are. He shall have no tears from me. Never, never. Not one tear. I will not! He went away from me as if I had been worse than death. He fled as if driven by some accursed thing he had heard or seen in his sleep...."
'Her steady eyes seemed to strain after the shape of a man torn out of her arms by the strength of a dream. She made no sign to my silent bow. I was glad to escape.
'I saw her once again, the same afternoon. On leaving her I had gone in search of Stein, whom I could not find indoors; and I wandered out, pursued by distressful54 thoughts, into the gardens, those famous gardens of Stein, in which you can find every plant and tree of tropical lowlands. I followed the course of the canalised stream, and sat for a long time on a shaded bench near the ornamental55 pond, where some waterfowl with clipped wings were diving and splashing noisily. The branches of casuarina trees behind me swayed lightly, incessantly56, reminding me of the soughing of fir trees at home.
'This mournful and restless sound was a fit accompaniment to my meditations57. She had said he had been driven away from her by a dream, -- and there was no answer one could make her -- there seemed to be no forgiveness for such a transgression58. And yet is not mankind itself, pushing on its blind way, driven by a dream of its greatness and its power upon the dark paths of excessive cruelty and of excessive devotion? And what is the pursuit of truth, after all?
'When I rose to get back to the house I caught sight of Stein's drab coat through a gap in the foliage, and very soon at a turn of the path I came upon him walking with the girl. Her little hand rested on his forearm, and under the broad, flat rim59 of his Panama hat he bent60 over her, grey-haired, paternal61, with compassionate62 and chivalrous63 deference64. I stood aside, but they stopped, facing me. His gaze was bent on the ground at his feet; the girl, erect65 and slight on his arm, stared sombrely beyond my shoulder with black, clear, motionless eyes. "Schrecklich," he murmured. "Terrible! Terrible! What can one do?" He seemed to be appealing to me, but her youth, the length of the days suspended over her head, appealed to me more; and suddenly, even as I realised that nothing could be said, I found myself pleading his cause for her sake. "You must forgive him," I concluded, and my own voice seemed to me muffled66, lost in un irresponsive deaf immensity. "We all want to be forgiven," I added after a while.
' "What have I done?" she asked with her lips only.
' "You always mistrusted him," I said.
' "He was like the others," she pronounced slowly.
' "Not like the others," I protested, but she continued evenly, without any feeling
' "He was false." And suddenly Stein broke in. "No! no! no! My poor child! . . ." He patted her hand lying passively on his sleeve. "No! no! Not false! True! True! True!" He tried to look into her stony67 face. "You don't understand. Ach! Why you do not understand? . . . Terrible," he said to me. "Some day she shall understand."
' "Will you explain?" I asked, looking hard at him. They moved on.
'I watched them. Her gown trailed on the path, her black hair fell loose. She walked upright and light by the side of the tall man, whose long shapeless coat hung in perpendicular68 folds from the stooping shoulders, whose feet moved slowly. They disappeared beyond that spinney (you may remember) where sixteen different kinds of bamboo grow together, all distinguishable to the learned eye. For my part, I was fascinated by the exquisite69 grace and beauty of that fluted70 grove71, crowned with pointed leaves and feathery heads, the lightness, the vigour, the charm as distinct as a voice of that unperplexed luxuriating life. I remember staying to look at it for a long time, as one would linger within reach of a consoling whisper. The sky was pearly grey. It was one of those overcast72 days so rare in the tropics, in which memories crowd upon one -memories of other shores, of other faces.
'I drove back to town the same afternoon, taking with me Tamb' Itam and the other Malay, in whose seagoing craft they had escaped in the bewilderment, fear, and gloom of the disaster. The shock of it seemed to have changed their natures. It had turned her passion into stone, and it made the surly taciturn Tamb' Itam almost loquacious73. His surliness, too, was subdued74 into puzzled humility75, as though he had seen the failure of a potent76 charm in a supreme77 moment. The Bugis trader, a shy hesitating man, was very clear in the little he had to say. Both were evidently overawed by a sense of deep inexpressible wonder, by the touch of an inscrutable mystery.' There with Marlow's sigrature the letter proper ended. The privileged reader screwed up his lump, and solitary78 above the billowy roofs of the town, like a lighthouse-keeper above the sea, he turned to the pages of the story.
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1
remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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schooner
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| n.纵帆船 | |
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arrogant
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| adj.傲慢的，自大的 | |
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asthma
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| n.气喘病，哮喘病 | |
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writhed
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| （因极度痛苦而）扭动或翻滚( writhe的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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malicious
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| adj.有恶意的，心怀恶意的 | |
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exultation
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| n.狂喜，得意 | |
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exulted
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| 狂喜，欢跃( exult的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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akin
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| adj.同族的，类似的 | |
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derived
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| vi.起源；由来；衍生；导出v.得到( derive的过去式和过去分词 )；（从…中）得到获得；源于；（从…中）提取 | |
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inflamed
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| adj.发炎的，红肿的v.（使）变红，发怒，过热( inflame的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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vigour
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| （=vigor）n.智力，体力，精力 | |
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abject
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| adj.极可怜的，卑屈的 | |
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gasped
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| v.喘气( gasp的过去式和过去分词 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
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sham
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| n./adj.假冒(的)，虚伪(的) | |
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plunder
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| vt.劫掠财物，掠夺；n.劫掠物，赃物；劫掠 | |
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desperately
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| adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地 | |
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gasps
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| v.喘气( gasp的第三人称单数 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
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ravaged
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| 毁坏( ravage的过去式和过去分词 )； 蹂躏； 劫掠； 抢劫 | |
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ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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confidentially
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| ad.秘密地，悄悄地 | |
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stolidly
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| adv.迟钝地，神经麻木地 | |
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feverishly
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| adv. 兴奋地 | |
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anguish
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| n.(尤指心灵上的)极度痛苦，烦恼 | |
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untold
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| adj.数不清的，无数的 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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stockade
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| n.栅栏，围栏；v.用栅栏防护 | |
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mumbled
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| 含糊地说某事，叽咕，咕哝( mumble的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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furrows
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| n.犁沟( furrow的名词复数 )；（脸上的）皱纹v.犁田，开沟( furrow的第三人称单数 ) | |
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nervously
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| adv.神情激动地，不安地 | |
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obstinacy
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| n.顽固；（病痛等）难治 | |
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distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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dismal
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| adj.阴沉的，凄凉的，令人忧郁的，差劲的 | |
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conjectures
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| 推测，猜想( conjecture的名词复数 ) | |
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frightful
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| adj.可怕的；讨厌的 | |
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exasperated
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| adj.恼怒的 | |
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solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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beheld
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| v.看，注视( behold的过去式和过去分词 )；瞧；看呀；（叙述中用于引出某人意外的出现）哎哟 | |
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rattan
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| n.藤条，藤杖 | |
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foliage
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| n.叶子，树叶，簇叶 | |
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gusts
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| 一阵强风( gust的名词复数 )； （怒、笑等的）爆发； （感情的）迸发； 发作 | |
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doorways
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| n.门口，门道( doorway的名词复数 ) | |
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abode
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| n.住处，住所 | |
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withdrawn
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| vt.收回；使退出；vi.撤退，退出 | |
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inaccessible
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| adj.达不到的，难接近的 | |
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treacherous
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| adj.不可靠的，有暗藏的危险的；adj.背叛的，背信弃义的 | |
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compassion
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| n.同情，怜悯 | |
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indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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consolation
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| n.安慰，慰问 | |
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amazement
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| n.惊奇，惊讶 | |
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awe
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| n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧 | |
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inflexible
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| adj.不可改变的，不受影响的，不屈服的 | |
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resentment
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| n.怨愤，忿恨 | |
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54
distressful
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| adj.苦难重重的，不幸的，使苦恼的 | |
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ornamental
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| adj.装饰的；作装饰用的；n.装饰品；观赏植物 | |
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incessantly
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| ad.不停地 | |
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meditations
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| 默想( meditation的名词复数 )； 默念； 沉思； 冥想 | |
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transgression
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| n.违背；犯规；罪过 | |
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rim
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| n.(圆物的)边，轮缘；边界 | |
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60
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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paternal
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| adj.父亲的，像父亲的，父系的，父方的 | |
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compassionate
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| adj.有同情心的，表示同情的 | |
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chivalrous
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| adj.武士精神的；对女人彬彬有礼的 | |
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deference
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| n.尊重，顺从；敬意 | |
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erect
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| n./v.树立，建立，使竖立；adj.直立的，垂直的 | |
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muffled
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| adj.（声音）被隔的；听不太清的；（衣服）裹严的；蒙住的v.压抑，捂住( muffle的过去式和过去分词 )；用厚厚的衣帽包着（自己） | |
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stony
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| adj.石头的，多石头的，冷酷的，无情的 | |
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perpendicular
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| adj.垂直的，直立的；n.垂直线，垂直的位置 | |
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exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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fluted
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| a.有凹槽的 | |
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grove
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| n.林子，小树林，园林 | |
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overcast
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| adj.阴天的，阴暗的，愁闷的；v.遮盖，（使）变暗，包边缝；n.覆盖，阴天 | |
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loquacious
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| adj.多嘴的，饶舌的 | |
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74
subdued
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| adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
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75
humility
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| n.谦逊，谦恭 | |
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potent
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| adj.强有力的，有权势的；有效力的 | |
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supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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