雙語小說連載:純真年代 The Age of Innocence(6)
That evening, after Mr. Jackson had taken himself away, and the ladies had retired to their chintz- curtained bedroom, Newland Archer mounted thoughtfully to his own study. A vigilant hand had, as usual, kept the fire alive and the lamp trimmed; and the room, with its rows and rows of books, its bronze and steel statuettes of "The Fencers" on the mantelpiece and its many photographs of famous pictures, looked singularly home-like and welcoming.
這天晚上，傑克遜先生離開之後，兩位女士回到她們掛着印花布窗簾的臥室，紐蘭·阿切爾沉思着上樓進了自己的書房。勤快的僕人已跟平時一樣把爐火燃旺，調好了燈的光亮。屋子裏放着一排排的書，壁爐爐臺上放着一個個銅製與鋼製的“擊劍者”小雕像，牆上掛着許多名畫的照片——這一切看起來格外溫馨。
As he dropped into his armchair near the fire his eyes rested on a large photograph of May Welland, which the young girl had given him in the first days of their romance, and which had now displaced all the other portraits on the table. With a new sense of awe he looked at the frank forehead, serious eyes and gay innocent mouth of the young creature whose soul's custodian he was to be. That terrifying product of the social system he belonged to and believed in, the young girl who knew nothing and expected everything, looked back at him like a stranger through May Welland's familiar features; and once more it was borne in on him that marriage was not the safe anchorage he had been taught to think, but a voyage on uncharted seas.
他坐進自己那把扶手椅時，目光落在梅·韋蘭的一張大照片上，那是他們戀愛初期那位年輕姑娘送給他的，如今已經取代了桌子上所有其他的畫像。他帶着一種敬畏的新感覺注視着她那坦誠的前額、莊重的眼睛，以及天真快樂的嘴巴。他就要成爲這位年輕女子的靈魂監護人了，作爲他歸屬並信奉的這個社會制度的令人驚歎的產物，這位年輕姑娘對一切都全然不知，卻又期待着得到一切。她像一個陌生人，藉助梅·韋蘭那熟悉的容貌回望着他；他又一次深刻地認識到：婚姻並非如他慣常認爲的那樣，是一個安全的港灣，而是在未知的大洋上的航行。
The case of the Countess Olenska had stirred up old settled convictions and set them drifting dangerously through his mind. His own exclamation: "Women should be free--as free as we are," struck to the root of a problem that it was agreed in his world to regard as non-existent. "Nice" women, however wronged, would never claim the kind of freedom he meant, and generous- minded men like himself were therefore--in the heat of argument--the more chivalrously ready to concede it to them. Such verbal generosities were in fact only a humbugging disguise of the inexorable conventions that tied things together and bound people down to the old pattern. But here he was pledged to defend, on the part of his betrothed's cousin, conduct that, on his own wife's part, would justify him in calling down on her all the thunders of Church and State. Of course the dilemma was purely hypothetical; since he wasn't a blackguard Polish nobleman, it was absurd to speculate what his wife's rights would be if he WERE. But Newland Archer was too imaginative not to feel that, in his case and May's, the tie might gall for reasons far less gross and palpable. What could he and she really know of each other, since it was his duty, as a "decent" fellow, to conceal his past from her, and hers, as a marriageable girl, to have no past to conceal? What if, for some one of the subtler reasons that would tell with both of them, they should tire of each other, misunderstand or irritate each other? He reviewed his friends' marriages-- the supposedly happy ones--and saw none that answered, even remotely, to the passionate and tender comradeship which he pictured as his permanent relation with May Welland. He perceived that such a picture presupposed, on her part, the experience, the versatility, the freedom of judgment, which she had been carefully trained not to possess; and with a shiver of foreboding he saw his marriage becoming what most of the other marriages about him were: a dull association of material and social interests held together by ignorance on the one side and hypocrisy on the other. Lawrence Lefferts occurred to him as the husband who had most completely realised this enviable ideal. As became the high-priest of form, he had formed a wife so completely to his own convenience that, in the most conspicuous moments of his frequent love-affairs with other men's wives, she went about in smiling unconsciousness, saying that "Lawrence was so frightfully strict"; and had been known to blush indignantly, and avert her gaze, when some one alluded in her presence to the fact that Julius Beaufort (as became a "foreigner" of doubtful origin) had what was known in New York as "another establishment."
奧蘭斯卡伯爵夫人的事攪亂了那些根深蒂固的社會信條，並使它們在他的腦海裏危險地飄移。他個人的斷言——“女人應當是自由的——跟我們一樣自由” ——擊中了一個問題的要害，而這個問題在他那個圈子裏卻一致認爲是不存在的。“有教養”的女子，無論受到怎樣的傷害，都決不會要求他講的那種自由，而像他這樣心胸博大的男人卻因此越發豪俠地——在激烈辯論中——準備把這種自由授與她們。這種口頭上的慷慨陳詞實際上只是騙人的幌子而已，在它背後止是束縛世事、讓人因襲守舊的不可動搖的習俗。不過，他在這裏發誓爲之辯護的未婚妻的表姐的那些行爲，若是出現在自己妻子身上，他即使請求教會和國家給她最嚴厲的懲罰也會是正當的。當然，這種兩難的推測純屬假設；既然他不是個惡棍般的波蘭貴族，現在假設他是，再來推斷他妻子將有什麼權力，這未免荒唐。然而紐蘭·阿切爾想像力太強，難免不想到他與梅的關係也可能會由於遠沒有如此嚴重和明顯的原因而受到損害。既然作爲一個“正人君子”，向她隱瞞自己的過去是他的義務，而作爲已到婚齡的姑娘，她的義務卻是把過去的歷史向他袒露，那麼，兩個人又怎能真正相互瞭解呢？假如因某種微妙的原因使他們兩人互相厭倦、誤解或發生不愉快，那該怎麼辦呢？他回顧朋友們的婚姻——那些被認爲是美滿的婚姻——發現沒有一個（哪怕一點點）符合他爲自己與梅·韋蘭構想的那種終生相伴的熱烈而又溫柔的友愛關係。他意識到，作爲這種構想的前提條件——她的經驗、她的多才多藝、她的判斷自由——她早已被精心訓練得不具備了。他預感地打了個冷顫，發現自己的婚姻變得跟周圍大部分人完全相同：一種由一方的愚昧與另一方的虛僞捏合在一起的物質利益與社會利益的乏味的聯盟。他想到，勞倫斯·萊弗茨就是一個徹底實現了這一令人羨慕的理想的丈夫。那位儀態舉止方面的權威，塑造了一位給他最大方便的妻子。在他與別人的妻子頻繁發生桃色事件大出風頭的時刻，她卻照常喜笑顏開，不知不覺，四處遊說：“勞倫斯極其循規蹈矩。”有人在她面前提及朱利葉斯·博福特擁有紐約人所說的“外室”時（籍貫來歷不明的“外國人”常常如此），據說她氣得臉都紅了，並且把目光移開。
Archer tried to console himself with the thought that he was not quite such an ass as Larry Lefferts, nor May such a simpleton as poor Gertrude; but the difference was after all one of intelligence and not of standards. In reality they all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs; as when Mrs. Welland, who knew exactly why Archer had pressed her to announce her daughter's engagement at the Beaufort ball (and had indeed expected him to do no less), yet felt obliged to simulate reluctance, and the air of having had her hand forced, quite as, in the books on Primitive Man that people of advanced culture were beginning to read, the savage bride is dragged with shrieks from her parents' tent.
阿切爾設法安慰自己，心想他跟拉里·萊弗茨那樣的蠢驢決不可同日而語，梅也不是可悲的格特魯德那樣的傻爪；然而這差別畢竟只是屬於才智方面的，而不是原則性的。他們實際上都生活在一種用符號表示的天地裏，在那裏真實的事情從來不說、不做，甚至也不想，而只是用一套隨心所欲的符號來表示；就像韋蘭太太那樣，她十分清楚阿切爾爲什麼催她在博福特的舞會上宣佈女兒的訂婚消息（而且她確實也希望他那樣做），卻認爲必須假裝不情願，裝出勉爲其難的樣子，這頗似文化超前的人們開始閱讀的關於原始人的書中描繪的情景：原始時代未開化的新娘是尖叫着被人從父母的帳篷裏拖走的。
The result, of course, was that the young girl who was the centre of this elaborate system of mystification remained the more inscrutable for her very frankness and assurance. She was frank, poor darling, because she had nothing to conceal, assured because she knew of nothing to be on her guard against; and with no better preparation than this, she was to be plunged overnight into what people evasively called "the facts of life."
其結果必然是，處於精心策劃的神祕體制中心的年輕姑娘因爲坦誠與自信反而越發不可思議。她坦誠——可憐的寶貝——因爲她沒有什麼需要隱瞞；她自信，因爲她不知道有什麼需要防範；僅僅有這點準備，一夜之間她便投身於人們含糊稱謂的“生活常規”之中去了。
The young man was sincerely but placidly in love. He delighted in the radiant good looks of his betrothed, in her health, her horsemanship, her grace and quickness at games, and the shy interest in books and ideas that she was beginning to develop under his guidance. (She had advanced far enough to join him in ridiculing the Idyls of the King, but not to feel the beauty of Ulysses and the Lotus Eaters.) She was straightforward, loyal and brave; she had a sense of humour (chiefly proved by her laughing at HIS jokes); and he suspected, in the depths of her innocently-gazing soul, a glow of feeling that it would be a joy to waken. But when he had gone the brief round of her he returned discouraged by the thought that all this frankness and innocence were only an artificial product. Untrained human nature was not frank and innocent; it was full of the twists and defences of an instinctive guile. And he felt himself oppressed by this creation of factitious purity, so cunningly manufactured by a conspiracy of mothers and aunts and grandmothers and long-dead ancestresses, because it was supposed to be what he wanted, what he had a right to, in order that he might exercise his lordly pleasure in smashing it like an image made of snow.
阿切爾真誠卻又冷靜地墜人愛河，他喜愛未婚妻光華照人的容貌、她的身體、她的馬術、她在遊戲中的優雅與敏捷，以及在他指導下剛剛萌發的對書籍與思想的興趣。（她已經進步到能與他一起嘲笑《國王牧歌》，但尚不能感受《尤利西斯》與《食忘憂果者》的美妙。）她直爽、忠誠、勇敢，並且有幽默感（主要證明是聽了他的笑話後大笑）。他推測，在她天真、專注的心靈深處有一種熱烈的感情，喚醒它是一種快樂。然而對她進行一番解剖之後，他重又變得氣餒起來，因爲他想到，所有這些坦率與天真只不過是人爲的產物。未經馴化的人性是不坦率、不天真的，而是出自本能的狡猾，充滿了怪僻與防範。他感到自己就受到這種人造的假純潔的折磨。它非常巧妙地由母親們、姑姨們、祖母們及早已過世的祖先們合謀製造出來——因爲據認爲他需要它並有權得到它——以便讓他行使自己的高貴意志，把它像雪人般打得粉碎。
There was a certain triteness in these reflections: they were those habitual to young men on the approach of their wedding day. But they were generally accompanied by a sense of compunction and self-abasement of which Newland Archer felt no trace. He could not deplore (as Thackeray's heroes so often exasperated him by doing) that he had not a blank page to offer his bride in exchange for the unblemished one she was to give to him. He could not get away from the fact that if he had been brought up as she had they would have been no more fit to find their way about than the Babes in the Wood; nor could he, for all his anxious cogitations, see any honest reason (any, that is, unconnected with his own momentary pleasure, and the passion of masculine vanity) why his bride should not have been allowed the same freedom of experience as himself.
這些想法未免有些迂腐，它們屬於臨近婚禮的年輕人慣常的思考，不過伴隨這些思考的往往是懊悔與自卑，但紐蘭·阿切爾卻絲毫沒有這種感覺。他不想哀嘆（這是薩克雷的主人公們經常令他惱怒的做法）他沒有一身的清白奉獻給他的新娘，以換取她的白壁無瑕。他不想回避這樣的事實：假如他受的教養跟她一樣，他們的適應能力就無異於那些容易上當的老好人。而且，絞盡腦汁也看不出有何（與他個人的一時尋歡與強烈的男性虛榮心不相干的）正當理由，不讓他的新娘得到與他同樣的自由與經驗。
Such questions, at such an hour, were bound to drift through his mind; but he was conscious that their uncomfortable persistence and precision were due to the inopportune arrival of the Countess Olenska. Here he was, at the very moment of his betrothal--a moment for pure thoughts and cloudless hopes--pitchforked into a coil of scandal which raised all the special problems he would have preferred to let lie. "Hang Ellen Olenska!" he grumbled, as he covered his fire and began to undress. He could not really see why her fate should have the least bearing on his; yet he dimly felt that he had only just begun to measure the risks of the championship which his engagement had forced upon him.
這樣一些問題，在這樣一種時刻，是必然會浮上他心頭的；然而他意識到，它們那樣清晰、那樣令人不快地壓在他的心頭，全是因爲奧蘭斯卡伯爵夫人來得不合時宜，使他剛好在訂婚的時刻——思想純淨、前景光明的時刻——突然被推人醜聞的混濁漩渦，引出了所有那些他寧願束之高閣的特殊問題。“去他的埃倫·奧蘭斯卡！”他抱怨地咕噥道，一面蓋好爐火，開始脫衣。他真的不明白她的命運爲何會對他產生影響，然而他朦朧地感覺到，他只是剛剛開始體驗訂婚加給他的捍衛者這一角色的風險。
A few days later the bolt fell.
幾天之後，意外的事情發生了。
The Lovell Mingotts had sent out cards for what was known as "a formal dinner" (that is, three extra footmen, two dishes for each course, and a Roman punch in the middle), and had headed their invitations with the words "To meet the Countess Olenska," in accordance with the hospitable American fashion, which treats strangers as if they were royalties, or at least as their ambassadors.
洛弗爾·明戈特家散發請柬，要舉辦所謂“正式宴會”（即增加3名男僕，每道菜兩份，中間上羅馬潘趣酒），並按好客的美國方式——把陌生人當成王親貴族。或者至少是他們的大使對待——在請柬開頭用了“爲歡迎奧蘭斯卡伯爵夫人”這樣的措辭。
The guests had been selected with a boldness and discrimination in which the initiated recognised the firm hand of Catherine the Great. Associated with such immemorial standbys as the Selfridge Merrys, who were asked everywhere because they always had been, the Beauforts, on whom there was a claim of relationship, and Mr. Sillerton Jackson and his sister Sophy (who went wherever her brother told her to), were some of the most fashionable and yet most irreproachable of the dominant "young married" set; the Lawrence Leffertses, Mrs. Lefferts Rushworth (the lovely widow), the Harry Thorleys, the Reggie Chiverses and young Morris Dagonet and his wife (who was a van der Luyden). The company indeed was perfectly assorted, since all the members belonged to the little inner group of people who, during the long New York season, disported themselves together daily and nightly with apparently undiminished zest.
客人的挑選頗具膽識，內行人從中看得出大人物凱瑟琳的大手筆。被邀請的常客有塞爾弗裏奇·梅里夫婦——他們到處受邀請是因爲歷來如此，博福特夫婦 ——人們要求與他們建立聯繫，以及西勒頓·傑克遜先生與妹妹索菲（哥哥讓她去哪兒她就去哪兒）。與這些中堅人物爲伍的是幾對最時髦卻又最無懈可擊。超羣出衆的“年輕夫婦”；還有勞倫斯·萊弗茨夫婦，萊弗茨·拉什沃斯太太（那位可愛的寡婦），哈里·索利夫婦，雷傑·奇弗斯夫婦，以及小莫里斯·達格尼特和他妻子（她姓範德盧頓）。這夥客人真可謂最完美的組合，因爲他們都屬於那個核心小團體，在紐約漫長社交季節裏，他們熱情不減地日夜在一起尋歡作樂。
Forty-eight hours later the unbelievable had happened; every one had refused the Mingotts' invitation except the Beauforts and old Mr. Jackson and his sister. The intended slight was emphasised by the fact that even the Reggie Chiverses, who were of the Mingott clan, were among those inflicting it; and by the uniform wording of the notes, in all of which the writers "regretted that they were unable to accept," without the mitigating plea of a "previous engagement" that ordinary courtesy prescribed.
48小時之後，令人不可思議的事情發生了。除去博福特夫婦及老傑克遜先生和妹妹，所有的人都拒絕了明戈特家的邀請。甚至屬於明戈特家族的雷傑·奇弗斯夫婦也加盟作梗。而且他們的回函措辭也十分統一，都是直截了當地說“抱歉不能接受邀請”，連一般情況下出於禮貌常用的“事先有約”這種緩衝性藉口都沒有。這一事實突出了人們的故意怠慢。
New York society was, in those days, far too small, and too scant in its resources, for every one in it (including livery-stable-keepers, butlers and cooks) not to know exactly on which evenings people were free; and it was thus possible for the recipients of Mrs. Lovell Mingott's invitations to make cruelly clear their determination not to meet the Countess Olenska.
那時候的紐約社交界範圍還很小，娛樂活動也少得可憐，遠不至於使其中任何人（包括馬車行的老闆、男僕及廚師在內）無法確知人們哪些晚上空閒。正因爲如此，接到洛弗爾·明戈特太太請柬的人們不願與奧蘭斯卡伯爵夫人會面的決心，才表達得那麼明確，那麼無情。
The blow was unexpected; but the Mingotts, as their way was, met it gallantly. Mrs. Lovell Mingott confided the case to Mrs. Welland, who confided it to Newland Archer; who, aflame at the outrage, appealed passionately and authoritatively to his mother; who, after a painful period of inward resistance and outward temporising, succumbed to his instances (as she always did), and immediately embracing his cause with an energy redoubled by her previous hesitations, put on her grey velvet bonnet and said: "I'll go and see Louisa van der Luyden."
這一打擊是出乎意料的；然而明戈特一家以他們慣有的方式勇敢地迎接了這一挑戰。洛弗爾·明戈特太太把情況祕密告知了韋蘭太太，韋蘭太太又祕密告知了紐蘭· 阿切爾，他聽了大爲光火，急忙像下達命令似地要求母親立即採取行動。做母親的雖然內心裏極其不願，外表上卻又不能不對他盡力撫慰。經過一段痛苦的鬥爭之後，還是屈從了他的要求（像一向那樣），她立即採納他的主張，且由於先前的猶豫而幹勁倍增，戴上她的灰絲絨帽說：“我去找路易莎·範德盧頓。”
The New York of Newland Archer's day was a small and slippery pyramid, in which, as yet, hardly a fissure had been made or a foothold gained. At its base was a firm foundation of what Mrs. Archer called "plain people"; an honourable but obscure majority of respectable families who (as in the case of the Spicers or the Leffertses or the Jacksons) had been raised above their level by marriage with one of the ruling clans. People, Mrs. Archer always said, were not as particular as they used to be; and with old Catherine Spicer ruling one end of Fifth Avenue, and Julius Beaufort the other, you couldn't expect the old traditions to last much longer.
在紐蘭·阿切爾那個時代，紐約的上流社會還是個滑溜溜的小金字塔，人們很難在上面開鑿裂縫，找到立足點。其底部的堅實基礎，由阿切爾太太所說的“平民”構成，他們多數屬於相當有身份的家庭，儘管體面，卻沒有名望，通過與某個佔支配地位的家族聯姻而崛起（就像斯派塞夫婦、萊弗茨夫婦與傑克遜夫婦那樣）。阿切爾太太總是說，人們不像過去那樣講究了；有老凱瑟琳·斯派塞把持第五大街的一端，朱利葉斯·博福特把持另一端，你無法指望那些老規矩能維持多久。
Firmly narrowing upward from this wealthy but inconspicuous substratum was the compact and dominant group which the Mingotts, Newlands, Chiverses and Mansons so actively represented. Most people imagined them to be the very apex of the pyramid; but they themselves (at least those of Mrs. Archer's generation) were aware that, in the eyes of the professional genealogist, only a still smaller number of families could lay claim to that eminence.
從這個富有卻不引人注目的底部堅固地向上收縮，便是由明戈特家族、紐蘭家族、奇弗斯家族及曼森家族代表的那個舉足輕重的緊密羣體。在多數人的想象中，他們便是金字塔的頂端了，然而他們自己（至少阿切爾太太那一代人）卻明白，在職業系譜學家的心目中，只有爲數更少的幾個家族纔有資格享有那份顯赫。
"Don't tell me," Mrs. Archer would say to her children, "all this modern newspaper rubbish about a New York aristocracy. If there is one, neither the Mingotts nor the Mansons belong to it; no, nor the Newlands or the Chiverses either. Our grandfathers and great- grandfathers were just respectable English or Dutch merchants, who came to the colonies to make their fortune, and stayed here because they did so well. One of your great-grandfathers signed the Declaration, and another was a general on Washington's staff, and received General Burgoyne's sword after the battle of Saratoga. These are things to be proud of, but they have nothing to do with rank or class. New York has always been a commercial community, and there are not more than three families in it who can claim an aristocratic origin in the real sense of the word."
阿切爾太太經常對孩子們說，“不要相信現在報紙上關於紐約有個貴族階層的胡說八道。假如有的話，屬於它的既不是明戈特家族，也不是曼森家族，更不是紐蘭或奇弗斯家族。我們的祖父和曾祖父僅僅是有名望的英國或荷蘭商人，他們來到殖民地發家致富，因爲幹得特別出色而留在了這裏。你們的一位曾祖簽署過《獨立宣言》，另一位是華盛頓參謀部的一名將軍，他在薩拉託加之役後接受了伯戈因將軍的投降。這些事情是應該引以爲榮的，不過這與身份、階級毫無關係。紐約向來都是個商業社會，按字面的真正含義，能稱得上貴族出身的不超過3個家族。”
Mrs. Archer and her son and daughter, like every one else in New York, knew who these privileged beings were: the Dagonets of Washington Square, who came of an old English county family allied with the Pitts and Foxes; the Lannings, who had intermarried with the descendants of Count de Grasse, and the van der Luydens, direct descendants of the first Dutch governor of Manhattan, and related by pre-revolutionary marriages to several members of the French and British aristocracy.
跟紐約所有的人一樣，阿切爾太太與她的兒子、女兒知道擁有這一殊榮的人物是誰：華盛頓廣場的達戈內特夫婦。他們出身於英國古老的郡中世家，與皮特和福克斯家族有姻親關係；蘭寧家族，他們與德格拉斯伯爵的後代近親通婚；還有範德盧頓一家，他n］是曼哈頓首任荷蘭總督的直系後代，獨立戰爭前與法國及英國的幾位貴族有姻親關係。
The Lannings survived only in the person of two very old but lively Miss Lannings, who lived cheerfully and reminiscently among family portraits and Chippendale; the Dagonets were a considerable clan, allied to the best names in Baltimore and Philadelphia; but the van der Luydens, who stood above all of them, had faded into a kind of super-terrestrial twilight, from which only two figures impressively emerged; those of Mr. and Mrs. Henry van der Luyden.
蘭寧家族目前只剩下兩位年邁卻很活躍的三寧小姐。她們喜歡懷舊，興致勃勃地生活在族人的畫像與切賓代爾式的傢俱中間；達戈內特是個了不起的家族，他們與巴爾的摩和費城最著名的人物聯了姻；而範德盧頓家雖然地位比前兩家都高，但家道已經敗落，成了殘留在地面上的一抹夕照，目前能給人留下深刻印象的只有兩個人物，即亨利·範德盧頓先生與他的太太。
Mrs. Henry van der Luyden had been Louisa Dagonet, and her mother had been the granddaughter of Colonel du Lac, of an old Channel Island family, who had fought under Cornwallis and had settled in Maryland, after the war, with his bride, Lady Angelica Trevenna, fifth daughter of the Earl of St. Austrey. The tie between the Dagonets, the du Lacs of Maryland, and their aristocratic Cornish kinsfolk, the Trevennas, had always remained close and cordial. Mr. and Mrs. van der Luyden had more than once paid long visits to the present head of the house of Trevenna, the Duke of St. Austrey, at his country-seat in Cornwall and at St. Austrey in Gloucestershire; and his Grace had frequently announced his intention of some day returning their visit (without the Duchess, who feared the Atlantic).
亨利·範德盧頓太太原名路易莎·達戈內特，其母本是杜拉克上校的孫女。杜拉克屬於海峽島的一個古老家族，曾在康沃利斯麾下征戰，戰後攜新娘聖奧斯特利伯爵的五女兒安吉莉卡·特利文納小姐定居馬里蘭。達戈內特家、馬里蘭的杜拉克家及其康沃爾郡的貴族親戚特利文納家之間的關係一直密切融洽。範德盧頓先生與太太不止一次地對特利文納家的現任首腦、聖奧斯特利公爵進行長時間拜望，到過他在康沃爾郡的莊園及格羅斯特郡的聖奧斯特利，而且公爵大人經常宣佈有朝一日將對他們進行回訪的意向（不攜公爵夫人，她害怕大西洋）。
Mr. and Mrs. van der Luyden divided their time between Trevenna, their place in Maryland, and Skuytercliff, the great estate on the Hudson which had been one of the colonial grants of the Dutch government to the famous first Governor, and of which Mr. van der Luyden was still "Patroon." Their large solemn house in Madison Avenue was seldom opened, and when they came to town they received in it only their most intimate friends.
範德盧頓先生與太太把他們的時間分別花在馬里蘭的特利文納宅邸以及哈德遜河沿岸的大莊園斯庫特克利夫。莊園原是荷蘭政府對著名的首任總督的賞賜，範德盧頓先生如今仍爲“莊主”。他們在麥迪遜大街那座莊嚴肅穆的宅邪很少開門。他們進城時只在裏面接待至交。
"I wish you would go with me, Newland," his mother said, suddenly pausing at the door of the Brown coupe. "Louisa is fond of you; and of course it's on account of dear May that I'm taking this step--and also because, if we don't all stand together, there'll be no such thing as Society left."
“希望你跟我一起去，紐蘭，”母親在布朗馬車的門前突然停步說。“路易莎喜歡你；當然，我是爲了親愛的梅才走這一步的——同時還因爲，假如我們不都站在一起，上流社會也就不復存在了。”
雙語小說連載:純真年代 The Age of Innocence(5)
