第十一章（第9/12页）

But this is a later stage of King Edward's landscape gardening, the sort that has an ornamental coal-mine on the lawn.

但这确是爱德华王执政后期的园艺风格，用煤矿来装点自家的草坪。

One England blots out another. The England of the Squire Winters and the Wragby Halls was gone, dead. The blotting out was only not yet complete.

旧日的英格兰被今时的所湮没。以乡绅温特和拉格比为代表的英格兰已经土崩瓦解，寿终正寝。而摧毁肃清的进程还未告终。

What would come after? Connie could not imagine. She could only see the new brick streets spreading into the fields, the new erections rising at the collieries, the new girls in their silk stockings, the new collier lads lounging into the Pally or the Welfare. The younger generation were utterly unconscious of the old England. There was a gap in the continuity of consciousness, almost American: but industrial really. What next? Connie always felt there was no next. She wanted to hide her head in the sand: or, at least, in the bosom of a living man.

以后会发生什么？康妮无法想象。她只能目睹着新砌的街区在旷野中延伸，新盖的厂房在煤矿旁竖起，妙龄少女穿着丝袜，青年矿工呼朋唤友，共赴欢场。年轻一代完全体验不到旧日英伦的精神。思想延续的过程中出现裂缝，几乎是美国式的，但真正的却是现代工业的裂缝。以后会怎样？康妮总感觉以后并不存在。她希望暂时将烦恼抛开，或者至少投入某个活生生男子的怀抱。

The world was so complicated and weird and gruesome! The common people were so many, and really so terrible. So she thought as she was going home, and saw the colliers trailing from the pits, grey-black, distorted, one shoulder higher than the other, slurring their heavy ironshod boots. Underground grey faces, whites of eyes rolling, necks cringing from the pit roof, shoulders Out of shape. Men! Men! Alas, in some ways patient and good men. In other ways, non-existent. Something that men SHOULD have was bred and killed out of them. Yet they were men. They begot children. One might bear a child to them. Terrible, terrible thought! They were good and kindly. But they were only half, Only the grey half of a human being. As yet, they were "good". But even that was the goodness of their halfness. Supposing the dead in them ever rose up! But no, it was too terrible to think of. Connie was absolutely afraid of the industrial masses. They seemed so WEIRD to her. A life with utterly no beauty in it, no intuition, always "in the pit'.

如今的世界如此纷繁复杂，不合常理，令人生畏！平头百姓人数众多，让上层阶级深感惶恐。回家的路上，她这样想到，此时适逢矿工们迈着疲惫的步伐离开煤矿，沉重的镶铁长靴拖出含混的声响，他们全身灰黑，面目全非，肩膀倾斜。长期的地下作业使他们面无血色，白色的眼珠骨碌碌转着，为适应低矮的矿坑，脖子总是紧缩着，肩膀失去应有的线条。人啊！人！唉，在某些方面，他们算得上坚韧良善的好人。但在其他方面，他们却如同孤魂野鬼。人类生来便应具备的某种特质被残酷地剥夺了。但他们仍算是人。他们成为人父。可以为他们生个一儿半女。多么可怕的念头啊！他们心地良善，和蔼可亲。但他们称不上完整的人类，只拥有人类灰暗的一半。到目前为止，他们仍是“良民”。但这样的良善只存在于现有的一半。要是那休眠的另一半苏醒过来！噢，不，单纯是想象都令人生畏。康妮对工人阶级怀有深深的畏惧。对她而言，他们过于离奇。他们的生命全无美感，直觉尽失，只知在井下劳作。

Children from such men! Oh God, oh God!

这种人生养的后代！噢，天呢，噢，天呢！

Yet Mellors had come from such a father. Not quite. Forty years had made a difference, an appalling difference in manhood. The iron and the coal had eaten deep into the bodies and souls of the men.

但梅勒斯就是这种人的儿子。也不尽然。40年光阴足以改变一切，让人性产生地覆天翻的变化。钢铁与煤炭已经渗透进人的肉体乃至灵魂。

Incarnate ugliness, and yet alive! What would become of them all? Perhaps with the passing of the coal they would disappear again, off the face of the earth. They had appeared out of nowhere in their thousands, when the coal had called for them. Perhaps they were only weird fauna of the coal-seams. Creatures of another reality, they were elementals, serving the elements of coal, as the metal-workers were elementals, serving the element of iron. Men not men, but animas of coal and iron and clay. Fauna of the elements, carbon, iron, silicon: elementals. They had perhaps some of the weird, inhuman beauty of minerals, the lustre of coal, the weight and blueness and resistance of iron, the transparency of glass. Elemental creatures, weird and distorted, of the mineral world! They belonged to the coal, the iron, the clay, as fish belong to the sea and worms to dead wood. The anima of mineral disintegration!

肉身丑陋不堪，但却异常活跃。他们将来会变成怎样？或许随着煤炭的消亡，他们会再度灭绝，从地表蒸发。听到煤炭的召唤，他们不知从何处现身，成千上万。或许他们只是从煤层中爬出的奇异生物。他们来自另一未知的世界，只是某种要素，与煤元素发生作用，钢铁工人同样如此，只不过作用于铁元素而已。他们并非真正的人类，只是煤、铁甚至粘土的灵魂。碳、铁、硅等自然元素结成的动物体。他们或许拥有矿物质那奇异的非人之美，兼具煤的光泽，铁的沉重、忧郁和坚韧，玻璃的透明。这种元素生物来自于矿物世界，神秘莫测，奇形怪状。他们来自于煤、铁以及粘土，就像鱼类来自于海洋，虫类来自于枯木一样。矿物分解时产生的灵魂！

Connie was glad to be home, to bury her head in the sand. She was glad even to babble to Clifford. For her fear of the mining and iron Midlands affected her with a queer feeling that went all over her, like influenza.

回到家里，将种种愁绪暂时抛到脑后，康妮深感欣慰。她甚至乐得跟克利福德闲扯。她对煤铁横行的英格兰中部心怀畏惧，这种奇异的情绪流感般弥漫于全身。

"Of course I had to have tea in Miss Bentley's shop," she said.

“没法子，我只得留在本特利小姐店里喝茶。”她说。

"Really! Winter would have given you tea." "Oh yes, but I daren't disappoint Miss Bentley." Miss Bentley was a shallow old maid with a rather large nose and romantic disposition who served tea with a careful intensity worthy of a sacrament.

“真的呀！温特应该请你喝茶才是。”“哦，是的，可我又不好驳本特利小姐的面子。”本特利小姐是个老处女，见识浅薄，长着蒜头鼻，生性浪漫，为人奉茶时谨慎而专注，简直像在做圣事。