A Perfect Wife　完美的妻子

By Ellen Glasgow ■周松濤 譯 何維銀 校

埃倫·格拉斯哥 (1874-1945),美國女小說家。她以現實主義手法描寫家鄉弗吉尼亞州的生活，有計劃地描繪了1850年以后的弗吉尼亞州的社會歷史，共寫成5部。第一部為《人民之聲》（1900），最成功的一部是《弗吉尼亞》（1913）。1925年發表描寫農村的長篇小說《不毛之地》，得到評論界的贊許，但時已年過半百。以后發表帶有諷刺性的三部曲：《浪漫的喜劇演員》（1926）、《他們不惜干蠢事》（1929）和《溫室中的生活》（1932）。最后一部常與《不毛之地》并列為她的最佳作品。一生未婚，但在她去世后發表的回憶錄《女人的內心世界》（1954）中寫出她曾與兩個男人有過長期的愛情。1958年出版《書信集》。1963年出版《短篇小說選》。
 
After thirty years of married happiness, he could still remind himself that Victoria was endowed with every charm except the thrilling touch of human frailty. Though her perfection discouraged pleasures, especially the pleasures of love, he had learned in time to feel the pride of a husband in her natural frigidity. For he still clung, amid the decay of moral platitudes, to the discredited ideal of chivalry. In his youth the world was suffused with the after-glow of the long Victorian age, and a graceful feminine style had softened the manners, if not the natures, of men. At the end of that interesting epoch, when womanhood was exalted from a biological fact into a miraculous power, Virginius Littlepage, the younger son of an old and affluent family, had married Victoria Brooke, the grand-daughter of a tobacco planter, who had made a satisfactory fortune by forsaking his plantation and converting tobacco into cigarettes. While Virginius had been trained by stern tradition to respect every woman who had not stooped to folly, the virtue peculiar to her sex was among the least of his reasons for admiring Victoria. She was not only modest, which was usual in the 課ineties, but she was beautiful, which is unusual in any decade. In the beginning of their acquaintance he had gone even further and ascribed intellect to her; but a few months of marriage had shown this to be merely one of the many delusions created by perfect features and noble expression. Everything about her had been smooth and definite, even the tones of her voice and the way her light brown hair, which she wore ?la Pompadour, was rolled stiffly back from her forehead and coiled in a burnished rope on the top of her head. A serious young man, ambitious to attain a place in the world more brilliant than the secluded seat of his ancestors, he had been impressed at their first meeting by the compactness and precision of Victoria's orderly mind. For in that earnest period the minds, as well as the emotions, of lovers were orderly. It was an age when eager young men flocked to church on Sunday morning, and eloquent divines discoursed upon the Victorian poets in the middle of the week. He could afford to smile now when he recalled the solemn Browning class in which he had first lost his heart. How passionately he had admired Victoria's virginal features! How fervently he had envied her competent but caressing way with the poet! Incredible as it seemed to him now, he had fallen in love with her while she recited from the more ponderous passages in The Ring and the Book. He had fallen in love with her then, though he had never really enjoyed Browning, and it had been a relief to him when the Unseen, in company with its illustrious poet, had at last gone out of fashion. Yet, since he was disposed to admire all the qualities he did not possess, he had never ceased to respect the firmness with which Victoria continued to deal in other forms with the Absolute. As the placid years passed, and she came to rely less upon her virginal features, it seemed to him that the ripe opinions of her youth began to shrink and flatten as fruit does that has hung too long on the tree. She had never changed, he realized, since he had first known her; she had become merely riper, softer, and sweeter in nature. Her advantage rested where advantage never fails to rest, in moral fervour. To be invariably right was her single wifely failing. For his wife, he sighed, with the vague unrest of a husband whose infidelities are imaginary, was a genuinely good woman. She was as far removed from pretence as she was from the posturing virtues that flourish in the credulous world of the drama. The pity of it was that even the least exacting husband should so often desire something more piquant than goodness.(from They Stooped to Folly, 1929)
 經過了三十年的幸?；橐?，他仍能時常提醒自己，維多利亞除了缺乏那么一點點令人心動的人性脆弱以外, 擁有一切美妙的品質。盡管她的完美減少了樂趣，尤其是愛情的樂趣，經過長時間的生活，作為一個丈夫，他漸漸為她天性中的保守感到驕傲。雖然陳腐的道德已經沒落，他卻仍然堅守遭到懷疑的騎士風范。他年輕的時候，漫長的維多利亞時代的余暉仍未散去；如果說優雅的女性化風尚沒有軟化男人們的本性，那它也軟化了他們的舉止。在這個有趣的年代行將結束的時候，人們對女性的贊美已不再停留在對女人的自然屬性的贊美上，而是近乎把女人作為神明來膜拜。在這個時候，弗吉尼亞斯·里托爾培奇，一個古老富有家庭中的小兒子，和維多利亞·布魯克結婚了。維多利亞是一個大煙草種植園主的孫女，這個種植園主因不再種植煙草而是把煙草做成卷煙而發了財。盡管嚴格的傳統教育使弗吉尼亞斯尊重所有不甘墮落至做蠢事的女性，女性獨有的美德并不是他愛慕維多利亞的原因。她不僅謙虛——這個品質在九十年代很普遍，她還非常美麗，這在任何年代都是不常見的。

在他們相識之初，他甚至還認為她才華出眾。但是幾個月的婚姻生活證明了這不過是完美的外表和高貴的言辭帶來的眾多錯覺之一。她的一切都是那么安詳平淡，那么不事張揚，甚至包括她說話的聲調和她選擇的發式；她梳的是高卷式發型，淡褐色的頭發從前額向后緊緊地卷過去用一根光亮的頭繩盤繞在頭頂上。

那是一個凡事都嚴肅認真的年代，甚至戀人的情感和頭腦都是有條理的。弗吉尼亞斯就是這樣一個嚴肅的年輕人，他夢想有朝一日能在世上贏得輝煌的地位，遠勝于他名聲不旺的祖先。他們第一次見面的時候，他就發現維多利亞不僅思想有條理，而且思維縝密精確，因而留下了深刻的印象。在那個年代，滿懷激情的年輕男子星期天早晨都涌向教堂；每星期三牧師們繪聲繪色地講述維多利亞詩人的詩歌?，F在他回想起在那討論詩人布朗寧的嚴肅課堂上，自己竟然春心萌動，不禁啞然失笑。他那時是多么醉心于維多利亞清純的容顏，而看到她對布朗寧的詩心領神會，愛不釋手時，他又是多么妒忌！

現在看起來真是難以置信，他居然是在她背誦《戒指和書》中非常沉悶的段落時愛上她的。盡管他從來沒有真正喜歡過布朗寧的詩，他還是在那時愛上了她。當這個杰出的詩人與他的詩“幽冥”終于不再時興的時候，他感到如釋重負般的輕松。可是，對維多利亞繼續以其它形式信奉絕對真理所表現出的堅定精神，他向來無比欽佩，因為他總是欽佩他所沒有的所有品質。

隨著平靜歲月的流逝，維多利亞美麗的容顏開始漸褪；他似乎覺得她年輕時的成熟思想也開始變得不再鋒芒畢露，就像果實在樹上掛得過久。他意識到自從他第一次見到她，她從來沒有改變過；她只是變得更加成熟、溫婉和甜美。

她優于別人的地方在于她的精神熱誠，這種優勢牢不可破。作為妻子,她惟一的缺點就是能在任何時候都不做錯事。臆想對妻子有不忠行為的丈夫總會有種淡淡的不安，正是帶著這種不安他嘆息道，他的妻子是一個真正的好女人。她沒有一點虛飾，也沒有一點在這個容易輕信的世界上所流行的那種偽善。但遺憾的是，即使是最不挑剔的丈夫也時常會渴望一點更為活潑有趣的東西，而不僅僅是善良。（選自《他們不惜干蠢事》，1929）

更多 英語美文、英文美文、英文短文、英語短文，請點擊 英語短文