过了四五天你康复了，我就出去租公寓住﹐想把剧本写完。你，当然了，就陪着我过来。安顿好的第二天早上，我觉得人非常难受。你有事得去伦敦，但答应下午回来。在伦敦你遇见了朋友，等到第二天很迟才回到布莱顿，到那时我已经烧得很厉害了，医生说是你的流感传给了我。谁要是病了，都会发现再没有比那套公寓更不方便的地方了。我的起居室在二楼，卧室在四楼。没有男仆伺候，连找个人递信，或者买医生吩咐的东西都没有。但有你在呢。我用不着担心。接下来两天，你把我孤零零的一个人撂在那儿，不管不顾[20a]，什么也没有。这不是什么葡萄鲜花礼物的问题，而是最基本的必需品的问题：我甚至连医生要我喝的牛奶都没有，柠檬水就更别提了。我求你到书店买本书，如果没有我要的，就挑一本别的，可你从来就舍不得到那里走一趟。结果我一整天没东西可读，这时你不动声色地告诉我，你买了书，他们答应要送过来的。这话我后来碰巧发现，从头到尾是一派胡言。在这期间你不用说，全是由我供养，马车进出，宏伟酒店的餐饭，全由我支付。的确，只是在要钱时才会在我房间里出现。那个星期六晚上，你把我一个人撂下不管已有一天了，我要你晚餐后回来，陪我坐一会儿。你没好气地答应了。我等到了十一点，可你就是不露面。我于是在你房间里留了个字条，只是提醒一下你的许诺，以及你是怎么守的约。下半夜三点[20b]，我睡不着，口渴难耐，就摸黑冒着寒冷下楼到起居室，想找点水喝。没想找到了你。你朝我破口大骂，用尽了只有一个狂野的、没教养的人才想得出的语言。在自我中心可怕的点化之下，你的愧悔变成了暴怒[20c]。你骂我自私，自己生病了还想要人陪；说我对你的消遣横加阻挠，想剥夺你享受生活的权利。你告诉我，而我也知道这话不假，你半夜里回来，不过是要换件衣服，又再出去继续寻你的欢作你的乐；可是给你留这么一封信，说你一整天一整夜把我放着不管，我实在是把你寻找更多欢乐的心境剥夺了，把你再去享受生活的兴味减低了。我嫌恶地回到楼上去，一夜未眠直到天亮。而天亮后很久我才弄到东西缓解一下发烧引起的口渴。十一点时分你来到我房间。通过你刚才的吵闹我不禁看出，由于那封信，我到底还是在你变本加厉放纵自己的一个夜里拦住了你。那天上午你倒是恢复了常态，我自然就等着听你要编出什么借口，看你要怎样请求你心里明白一定在等着的宽恕，不管你做了什么。你绝对地相信我永远会宽恕你的，说真的这是我最喜欢你的地方，或许也是你最讨人喜欢的地方。没想到你不但没这么做，反而又开始夜里的吵闹，用词更为激烈狂暴。我最后只好叫你出去，你也装着走出去了。可当我把埋在枕头里的头抬起来时，你还在那里，狞笑着以歇斯底里的狂怒突然向我蹿过来。我心中冒起一阵恐惧，到底是因为什么我也说不清，但我一跃而起，就这样光着脚跑下两层楼到了起居室，摇铃叫房东。直到房东说你已经不在我卧室，还答应需要的话随叫随到，我才走出起居室。这样过了一个小时，在这期间医生来过，发现我，当然啰，神情紧张衰弱不堪，烧得比刚发病时更厉害了。这时你一声不响地回来，取钱来了：把梳妆台和壁炉台上能找着的钱都拿了，带着你的行李离开了这房子。难道还用得着我说吗[20d]，在接下来两天病中欲唤无人的凄苦日子里，我拿你是怎么看的？难道还用得着说出来吗[20d]，我已清楚地看到，照你如此表现的为人，即使只是同你保持熟人关系，也是很丢人的一件事？难道还用说吗[20d]，我已认识到，该是最后了结的时候了，这可是真正的一大解脱？难道还用说吗[20d]，我知道，从今往后我的艺术和生活不管在哪方面都将更自由、更美、更好？虽病体虚弱，但内心舒畅[20e]。分手是义无返顾了，这使我觉得安宁平静。到了星期二，烧退了，我第一次在楼下用餐。星期三是我的生日。在桌上放着的电报书信中有一封你手书的信。我怀着一份伤感将它打开，心里知道自己再也不会因为一句好话、一句感人的话、一句哀愁的话而容你回来。可我完全上当了。我低估了你。你在我生日当天寄来的信是对前两场吵闹淋漓尽致的重复，处心积虑地、狡猾地写成白纸黑字！你用粗俗的嘲弄取笑我。你说，在整个事件中你得意的一招便是在动身回伦敦之前折回宏伟酒家，把吃的午餐算到我的帐上。你恭喜我还算聪明，从病床上跳开得快，逃下楼逃得快。“那可是你小命危险的一刻，”你说，“比你所想象的还要危险。” 啊！对这一点我可是深有体会。话里的真正意思我不知道：不知你是否带着那支买来要吓唬你父亲的手枪，有一次我陪着你在一个餐馆，你以为枪没上膛，在那儿还开了一枪；不知你当时是否在伸手，要操起一把碰巧搁在我们面前桌子上的普通餐刀；不知你是否盛怒中忘了你的个子体力都在我之下，趁我卧病在床想要来点特别的人身侮辱，甚至攻击；这些我都不知道。直到现在也不知道。我所知道的是当时心中腾起一股极度的恐惧，感到要不是马上离开房间躲避，你说不定会做出、或者想做出什么事来，铸成甚至是你本人的千古之恨[20f]。我平生在此之前只有一次经历过这种对一个同类的恐惧。那就是在泰特街我的书房里，你父亲和我，中间是他的帮凶，或者朋友，只见他那双小手在空中暴怒狂乱地挥舞着，站在那儿口中吐出他那颗肮脏的心能想得出的所有的肮脏话，嚎叫着作出令人恶心的威胁，这些威胁他后来又是如此狡猾地付诸行动。在那一次，当然是他，先离开房间的。我把他赶了出去。同你的这一次，是我先走[20g]。这不是第一次我觉得有责任救你一把，免得你自食其果[20h]。
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You concluded your letter by saying: “When you are not on your pedestal you are not interesting. The next time you are ill I will go away at once.” Ah! what coarseness of fibre does that reveal[21a]! What an entire lack of imagination! How callous, how common had the temperament by that time become! “When you are not on your pedestal you are not interesting. The next time you are ill I will go away at once.” How often have those words come back to me in the wretched solitary cell of the various prisons I have been sent to. I have said them to myself over and over again, and seen in them, I hope unjustly, some of the secret of your strange silence. For you to write thus to me, when the very illness and fever from which I was suffering I had caught from tending you, was of course revolting in its coarseness and crudity; but for any human being in the whole world[21b] to write thus to another would be a sin for which there is no pardon, were there any sin for which there is none[21c].
你在信的结尾说道：“你像尊偶像，没了底座就没意思了。 下次你要是病了我马上走开。” 啊！活脱脱一副多么粗鄙的嘴脸[21a]！多么的缺乏想象力啊！那性情，到了那时候，变得多么无情，多么卑俗啊！ “你像尊偶像，没了底座就没意思了。下次你要是病了我马上走开。” 有多少次，在被关押过的各处监狱那凄凉的单人牢房里，这些话在我耳边响起过。我自言自语念着，一遍又一遍；在这些话中我看到了，但愿是冤枉了你，你奇怪的沉默背后的一些秘密。我为了照顾你而染上你的病，在我被高烧病痛折磨之际，你居然写了这些话给我，其粗鲁和鄙俗当然是令人心寒；但是普天之下[21b]，任何一个人写这样的信给另一个人，都是罪不可赦，如果天下还有不可赦之罪的话[21c]。21
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I confess that when I had finished your letter I felt almost polluted, as if by associating with one of such a nature I had soiled and shamed my life irretrievably. I had, it is true, done so, but I was not to learn how fully till just six months later on in life. I settled with myself to go back to London on the Friday, and see Sir George Lewis personally and request him to write to your father to state that I had determined never under any circumstances to allow you to enter my house, to sit at my board, to talk to me, walk with me, or anywhere and at my time to be my companion at all. This done I would have written to you just to inform you of the course of action I had adopted; the reasons you would inevitably have realised for yourself. I had everything arranged on Thursday night, when on Friday morning, as I was sitting at breakfast before starting, I happened to open the newspaper and saw in it a telegram stating that your elder brother, the real head of the family, the heir to the title, the pillar of the house, had been found dead in a ditch with his gun lying discharged beside him.[22.1] The horror of the circumstances of the tragedy, now known to have been an accident, but then stained with a darker suggestion; the pathos of the sudden death of one so loved by all who knew him, and almost on the eve, as it were, of his marriage; my idea of what your own sorrow would, or should be; my consciousness of the misery awaiting your mother at the loss of the one to whom she clung for comfort and joy in life, and who, as she told me once herself, had from the very day of his birth never caused her to shed a single tear; my consciousness of your own isolation, both your other brothers being out of Europe, and you consequently the only one to whom your mother and sister could look, not merely for companionship in their sorrow, but also for those dreary responsibilities of dreadful detail that Death always brings with it[22a]; the mere sense of the lacrimae rerum, of the tears of which the world is made[22b], and of the sadness of all human things — out of the confluence of these thoughts and emotions crowding into my brain came infinite pity for you and your family. My own griefs and bitternesses against you I forgot. What you had been to me in my sickness, I could not be to you in your bereavement[22c]. I telegraphed at once to you my deepest sympathy, and in the letter that followed invited you to come to my house as soon as you were able. I felt that to abandon you at that particular moment, and formally through a solicitor, would have been too terrible for you.
坦白说在读了你的信后我觉得自己几乎是被玷污了，好像与这样一个人为伍，我已无可挽回地使自己的生命陷入了污秽和羞耻。 没错，我已经陷进去了，可只有在六个月后，才知道陷得有多深。我打定主意那个星期五回伦敦，当面去见乔治●刘易斯勋爵，请他写信给你父亲，说明我已下定决心无论如何不再让你进我的屋子、坐在我的饭桌旁、跟我讲话、同我散步，不管何时何地都绝不能与我在一起。这件事办好了，就会给你写信告知我所采取的行动；其中的理由谅你也心知肚明。星期四晚上我一切安排停当。星期五早晨上路前坐下来准备吃早餐，无意间翻开报纸，看到上面登了一则电文，说是你哥哥，你们真正的一家之主，爵位的继承人，家庭的栋梁，被发现死在一道沟里，身边是他发射后的空枪。这恐怖的悲剧，现在据知是意外事故，可当时却暗指另有蹊跷。这样一个谁见了谁喜欢的年轻人，几乎可以说是在成婚的前夜，却突然死了。如此悲惨的变故，使我想到你本人的哀伤会有多深、该有多深；使我意识到你母亲，她的幸福和欢乐之所寄的人失去了，那她会面临怎样的哀痛，她曾亲口告诉我，你哥哥从一落地就没让她掉过一滴眼泪；我也意识到你本人的孤单，因为你另外的两个兄弟都出门不在欧洲，所以你母亲和妹妹在哀恸中不但要靠你照应，还要靠你处理出了人命之后必不可免的大大小小令人伤心劳神的事务[22a]；一想到眼泪，一想到承载着这世界的泪水[22b]，一想到做人处世的种种哀愁——在这万千思绪百般情感的交汇之下，汹涌在我脑海中的便是对你及你家人的无限同情。对你的愤懑和怨恨我忘了。在我病重时你那样待我，在你痛失亲人之际我不能以牙还牙[22c]。我当即致电给你，表达我最深切的同情，并随后去信，邀请你一走得开就到我家来。我觉得在这一特殊时刻丢下你，通过律师正式的一刀两断，对你会是太可怕的一件事了。
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On your return to town from the actual scene of the tragedy to which you had been summoned, you came at once to me very sweetly and very simply, in your suit of woe, and with your eyes dim with tears. You sought consolation and help, as a child might seek it. I opened to you my house, my home, my heart. I made your sorrow mine also, that you might have help in bearing it[23a]. Never, even by one word, did I allude to your conduct towards me, to the revolting scenes, and the revolting letter[23b]. Your grief, which was real, seemed to me to bring you nearer to me than you had ever been. The flowers you took from me to put on your brother’s grave were to be a symbol not merely of the beauty of his life, but of the beauty that in all lives lies dormant and may be brought to light.
从他们传召你去的悲剧现场一回到城里，你马上就到我这儿来，穿着丧服，泪眼盈盈的一派温良率真的模样，要人安慰、求人帮忙，像个小孩似的。 我对你敞开了我的房子，我的家，我的心。将你的悲痛当作自己的悲痛，这样也许能在你的沉沉哀痛中扶你一把[23a]。我甚至绝口不提你是怎么待我的，绝口不提那一幕幕不堪入目的吵闹和那一封不堪入耳的信[23b]。你那真切的悲哀，似乎带着你前所未有地靠近我。你从我这儿带去供在你哥哥坟上的鲜花，不止要成为他生命之美的象征，也要成为蕴藏于所有生命中并可能绽放的美的象征。
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The gods are strange. It is not of our vices only they make instruments to scourge us.[24.1] They bring us to ruin through what in us is good, gentle, humane, loving[24a]. But for my pity and affection for you and yours, I would not now be weeping in this terrible place[24b].
神是奇怪的。他们不但借助我们的恶来惩罚我们，也利用我们内心的美好、善良、慈悲、关爱，来毁灭我们[24a]。要不是因为对你及你家人的怜悯和感情，我现在也不会在这人所不齿的地方哭泣[24b]。
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Of course I discern in all our relations, not Destiny merely, but Doom: Doom that walks always swiftly, because she goes to the shedding of blood[25a]. Through your father you[25b] come of a race, marriage with whom is horrible, friendship fatal, and that lays violent hands either on its own life or on the lives of others. In every little circumstance in which the ways of our lives met; in every point of great, or seemingly trivial import in which you came to me for pleasure or for help; in the small chances, the slight accidents that look, in their relation to life, to be no more than the dust that dances in a beam, or the leaf that flutters from a tree, Ruin followed, like the echo of a bitter cry, or the shadow that hunts with the beast of prey[25c]. Our friendship really begins with your begging me in a most pathetic and charming letter to assist you in a position appalling to anyone, doubly so to a young man at Oxford: I do so, and ultimately through your using my name as your friend with Sir George Lewis, I begin to lose his esteem and friendship, a friendship of fifteen years’ standing. When I was deprived of his advice and help and regard I was deprived of the one great safeguard of my life.
当然，你我所有的交往，我看不光是命中注定，而且是在劫难逃：劫数从来是急急难逃，因为她疾步所向的，是血光之地[25a]。因为你父亲的缘故，你[25b]所出身的这个家系，与之联姻是可怕的，与之交谊是致命的；其凶残的手，要么自戮，要么杀人。在每一个小小的场合当你我命途相交，在每一个或至关紧要或像是无关紧要的时刻，你来我处寻乐或者求助，在那些不起眼的机缘和不足道的偶然之中——对生活而言，它们像是浮沉于光影中的纤尘、飘落于树荫下的枯叶——在这些时候，毁灭都尾随左右，像哀号的回声，像猛兽扑食的阴影[25c]。我们的友谊真正是始自你的一封可怜又可爱的信，求我在危急之中助你一把。你当时的境况任谁都会吓坏的，对一个就读于牛津的年轻人更是倍加可怕。我帮了你，并且最终由于你对乔治●刘易斯勋爵用了我的名字称作你的朋友，我开始失去这位十五年老朋友的尊重和友谊。得不到他的忠告、帮助和关心，我生命中便失去了这一大保障。
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You send me a very nice poem,[26.1] of the undergraduate school of verse, for my approval: I reply by a letter of fantastic literary conceits: I compare you to Hylas, or Hyacinth, Jonquil or Narcisse,[26.2] or someone whom the great god of Poetry favoured, and honoured with his love[26a]. The letter is like a passage from one of Shakespeare’s sonnets, transposed to a minor key[26b]. It can only be understood by those who have read the Symposium of Plato, or caught the spirit of a certain grave mood made beautiful for us in Greek marbles. It was, let me say frankly, the sort of letter I would, in a happy if wilful moment, have written to any graceful young man of either University who had sent me a poem of his own making, certain that he would have sufficient wit or culture to interpret rightly its fantastic phrases. Look at the history of that letter! It passes from you into the hands of a loathsome companion: from him to a gang of blackmailers: copies of it are sent about London to my friends, and to the manager of the theatre where my work is being performed: every construction but the right one is put on it[26c]: Society is thrilled with the absurd rumours that I have had to pay a huge sum of money for having written an infamous letter to you: this forms the basis of your father’s worst attack: I produce the original letter myself in Court to show what it really is: it is denounced by your father’s Counsel as a revolting and insidious attempt to corrupt Innocence: ultimately it forms part of a criminal charge: the Crown takes it up: the Judge sums up on it with little learning and much morality: I go to prison for it at last. That is the result of writing you a charming letter[26d].
你送过来一首很好的诗，给本科生诗社的，要我审核，我在回信中兴之所至地作了一些文学上俏皮诙谐的比附，把你比作海拉斯、海尔辛托斯、琼奎伊尔或纳西斯，或者受到伟大的诗神宠爱、眷顾和礼遇[26a]的哪个人。那信听着就像一首莎士比亚商籁诗中的一段，被转为小调式似的[26b]。只有那些读过柏拉图的《会饮篇》，或者对希腊雕像优美地为我们传达出来的某种凝重情调得其神韵的人，才能理解信中的意思。让我坦白地说吧，这样的信，在我心情愉快、如果说是随心所欲的时候，要是两所中随便哪所大学的任何一位风雅的年轻人送我一首自己写的诗的话，我都会写给他的；确信他会有足够的才智，或教养，来正确阐释信中兴笔所至的那些话。看看那封信是怎样辗转流传的吧！先是从你传到了你一个缺德的同伴手中，从他再传到一伙敲诈之徒那里，弄成许多份在伦敦到处传流，寄给了我的朋友，还寄给了我的作品正在上演的剧院的经理：人们众说纷纭，可就是没有一个解释切中信的原意[26c]。社会为各种荒唐的谣言撩得耳热心跳：说是我因为写了一封不光彩的信给你而不得不付出一笔巨款。而你父亲又据此进行最为恶毒的攻击：我自己在法庭出示原信，说明真相，却被你父亲的辩护律师指为意在暗中败坏纯真心灵的邪恶企图，最终列为刑事罪状的一部分。刑事庭接受了这一指控，法官对此的总结陈词道学多而见识少：我到底还是因为这个进了监狱。情辞并茂地给你写了一封信，却落得个如此收场[26d]。
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While I am staying with you at Salisbury you are terribly alarmed at a threatening communication from a former companion of yours: you beg me to see the writer and help you: I do so: the result is Ruin to me[27a]. I am forced to take everything you have done on my own shoulders and answer for it. When, having failed to take your degree, you have to go down from Oxford, you telegraph to me in London to beg me to come to you. I do so at once[27b]: you ask me to take you to Goring, as you did not like, under the circumstances, to go home: at Goring you see a house that charms you: I take it for you: the result from every point of view is Ruin to me[27c]. One day you come to me and ask me, as a personal favour to you, to write something for an Oxford undergraduate magazine, about to be started by some friend of yours, whom I had never heard of in all my life, and knew nothing at all about. To please you — what did I not do always to please you? – I sent him a page of paradoxes destined originally for the Saturday Review. A few months later I find myself standing in the dock of the Old Bailey on account of the character of the magazine. It forms part of the Crown charge against me. I am called upon to defend your friend’s prose and your own verse. The former I cannot palliate; the latter I, loyal to the bitter extreme, to your youthful literature as to your youthful life, do very strongly defend[27d], and will not hear of your being a writer of indecencies. But I go to prison, all the same, for your friend’s undergraduate magazine, And “the Love that dares not tell its name.” At Christmas I give you a “very pretty present,” as you described it in your letter of thanks, on which I knew you had set your heart, worth some ￡40 or ￡50 at most. When the crash of my life comes, and I am ruined, the bailiff who seizes my library, and has it sold, does so to pay for the “very pretty present.” It was for that the execution was put into my house. At the ultimate and terrible moment when I am taunted, and spurred-on by your taunts, to take an action against your father and have him arrested, the last straw to which I clutch in my wretched efforts to escape is the terrible expense. I tell the solicitor in your presence that I have no funds, that I cannot possibly afford the appalling costs, that I have no money at my disposal. What I said was, as you know, perfectly true. On that fatal Friday instead of being in Humphreys’s office weakly consenting to my own ruin, I would have been happy and free in France, away from you and your father, unconscious of his loathsome card, and indifferent to your letters, if I had been able to leave the Avondale Hotel[27e]. But the hotel people absolutely refused to allow me to go. You had been staying with me for ten days: indeed you had ultimately, to my great and, you will admit, rightful indignation, brought a companion of yours to stay with me also: my bill for the ten days was nearly ￡140. The proprietor said he could not allow my luggage to be removed from the hotel till I had paid the account in full. That is what kept me in London. Had it not been for the hotel bill I would have gone to Paris on Thursday morning.
