第十一章（第5/12页）

大教堂位于左侧稍远的地方，为黑压压的树木所环抱。汽车开始下坡，将“矿工港湾”甩在背后。驶过韦林顿、尼尔森、三桶以及太阳这几家旅栈酒馆，现在正经过“矿工港湾”，接下来便是“技工中心”，新开张但华而不实的“矿工之家”，还有几家新“公馆”，开上通往斯塔克斯门的漆黑大道，两侧是阴暗的树篱和墨绿的旷野。

Tevershall! That was Tevershall! Merrie England! Shakespeare's England! No, but the England of today, as Connie had realized since she had come to live in it. It was producing a new race of mankind, over-conscious in the money and social and political side, on the spontaneous, intuitive side dead, but dead. Half-corpses, all of them: but with a terrible insistent consciousness in the other half. There was something uncanny and underground about it all. It was an under-world. And quite incalculable. How shall we understand the reactions in half-corpses? When Connie saw the great lorries full of steel-workers from Sheffield, weird, distorted smallish beings like men, off for an excursion to Matlock, her bowels fainted and she thought: Ah God, what has man done to man? What have the leaders of men been doing to their fellow men? They have reduced them to less than humanness; and now there can be no fellowship any more! It is just a nightmare.

特弗沙尔！这就是特弗沙尔！快乐的英格兰！莎翁的英格兰！不，这就是当今英格兰的缩影，自从康妮来此地定居，对这一点已经心知肚明。这里孕育出全新的人种，内心在乎的只有金钱、社会与政治，而那些自然流露、与生俱来的部分却已经泯灭，踪影不见。他们无一不是行尸走肉，但仅存的一半意识却异常执着。这实在是稀奇古怪，神秘莫测。这里与冥界无异。无法揣度和预估。我们怎能理解行尸的反应呢？一队大卡车从康妮眼前开过，满载着谢菲尔德的炼钢工人。他们个个表情怪异，身形扭曲萎缩，不成人样，正往马特洛克进发。她内心一阵抽搐，暗暗想道：啊，上帝，人类究竟对自己做了些什么？人间的卓越领袖们到底对同胞们做了些什么？他们把自己弄得人性丧尽，情谊无存。如同置身痛苦的梦魇。

She felt again in a wave of terror the grey, gritty hopelessness of it all. With such creatures for the industrial masses, and the upper classes as she knew them, there was no hope, no hope any more. Yet she was wanting a baby, and an heir to Wragby! An heir to Wragby! She shuddered with dread.

恐惧的浪潮再度袭来，她被挥之不去的阴霾绝望所笼罩。只为工业生产而活的生灵，与她所熟知的上层阶级联手，将希望全部击碎，让理想荡然无存。但她还是盼着能有个孩子，为拉格比留下子嗣！拉格比的子嗣！她心有余悸地颤抖起来。

Yet Mellors had come out of all this!— Yes, but he was as apart from it all as she was. Even in him there was no fellowship left. It was dead. The fellowship was dead. There was only apartness and hopelessness, as far as all this was concerned. And this was England, the vast bulk of England: as Connie knew, since she had motored from the centre of it.

而梅勒斯同样生长于斯——没错，但他同样出污泥而不染，和她一样超凡脱俗。即使在他身上，也找不到任何朋友情谊。已经消失殆尽。真情厚意已经不见踪影。如果说还留存着什么，那就是孤独和绝望。但这就是英格兰的真实写照，当今英格兰的绝大部分地区都是如此，对此康妮再清楚不过，因为她乘车从腹地一路驶来。

The car was rising towards Stacks Gate. The rain was holding off, and in the air came a queer pellucid gleam of May. The country rolled away in long undulations, south towards the Peak, east towards Mansfield and Nottingham. Connie was travelling South.

汽车直奔斯塔克斯门而去。云收雨歇，天空中呈现出澄明的奇异光彩，这是五月英伦特有的景象。绵延起伏的乡村景色在眼前掠过，往南是皮克，而曼斯菲尔德和诺丁汉则在东边。康妮正自北向南进发。

As she rose on to the high country, she could see on her left, on a height above the rolling land, the shadowy, powerful bulk of Warsop Castle, dark grey, with below it the reddish plastering of miners' dwellings, newish, and below those the plumes of dark smoke and white steam from the great colliery which put so many thousand pounds per annum into the pockets of the Duke and the other shareholders. The powerful old castle was a ruin, yet it hung its bulk on the low sky-line, over the black plumes and the white that waved on the damp air below.

汽车攀上高地，康妮看到左侧起伏的丘陵顶端，坐落着阴暗雄伟的沃索普城堡，主体呈深灰色，而下方则是稍新的矿工寓所，漆成红色，再往下，就是黑烟滚滚、白气腾腾的硕大煤矿，每年都会将成千上万的金元，送进公爵以及其他股东的腰包里。气势磅礴的旧城堡已成废墟，但它那庞大的身躯依然耸立于低垂的天际，俯瞰黑烟白雾在潮湿的空气中流动。

A turn, and they ran on the high level to Stacks Gate. Stacks Gate, as seen from the highroad, was just a huge and gorgeous new hotel, the Coningsby Arms, standing red and white and gilt in barbarous isolation off the road. But if you looked, you saw on the left rows of handsome "modern" dwellings, set down like a game of dominoes, with spaces and gardens, a queer game of dominoes that some weird "masters" were playing on the surprised earth. And beyond these blocks of dwellings, at the back, rose all the astonishing and frightening overhead erections of a really modern mine, chemical works and long galleries, enormous, and of shapes not before known to man. The head-stock and pit-bank of the mine itself were insignificant among the huge new installations. And in front of this, the game of dominoes stood forever in a sort of surprise, waiting to be played.

汽车转向，在高地上朝着斯塔克斯门驶去。从公路向上望去，整个斯塔克斯门只有那座恢弘壮丽、金碧辉煌的新饭店——康宁斯比饭店矗立在路旁，显得有些突兀。但只要仔细看，就会发现左手边有成排美观的“摩登”住宅，鳞次栉比，好似多米诺骨牌，其间点缀着空地和花园，像是某几位高深莫测的“大师”在这片奇迹的土地上展开的多米诺牌局。这片住宅区的另一端，在其背后，耸立着令人惊讶甚至望而生畏的高大建筑，包括一座真正现代化的煤矿，数座化工厂以及多条狭长的隧道，体积庞大，形状之奇特是人所未见。坐落在这些庞然大物般的全新设施之中，井架和矿坑都已算不得什么。在前端，多米诺骨牌经年累月地伫立着，带着几分惊讶，等待着轰然倒塌的命运。