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1、【国外文学】飘 (中英文对照)Chapter 1SCARLETT OHARA was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charmas the Tarleton twins were. In her face were too sharply blended the delicate features of her mother,a Coast aristocrat of French descent, and the heavy ones of her florid Irish father. But i
2、t was anarresting face, pointed of chin, square of jaw. Her eyes were pale green without a touch of hazel,starred with bristly black lashes and slightly tilted at the ends. Above them, her thick black browsslanted upward, cutting a startling oblique line in her magnolia-white skinthat skin so prized
3、 bySouthern women and so carefully guarded with bonnets, veils and mittens against hot Georgiasuns.Seated with Stuart and Brent Tarleton in the cool shade of the porch of Tara, her fathersplantation, that bright April afternoon of 1861, she made a pretty picture. Her new green flowered-muslin dress
4、spread its twelve yards of billowing material over her hoops and exactly matched theflat-heeled green morocco slippers her father had recently brought her from Atlanta. The dress set off to perfection the seventeen-inch waist, the smallest in three counties, and the tightly fittingbasque showed brea
5、sts well matured for her sixteen years. But for all the modesty of her spreadingskirts, the demureness of hair netted smoothly into a chignon and the quietness of small whitehands folded in her lap, her true self was poorly concealed. The green eyes in the carefully sweetface were turbulent, willful
6、, lusty with life, distinctly at variance with her decorous demeanor. Hermanners had been imposed upon her by her mothers gentle admonitions and the sterner disciplineof her mammy; her eyes were her own.On either side of her, the twins lounged easily in their chairs, squinting at the sunlight throug
7、htall mint-garnished glasses as they laughed and talked, their long legs, booted to the knee and thickwith saddle muscles, crossed negligently. Nineteen years old, six feet two inches tall, long of boneand hard of muscle, with sunburned faces and deep auburn hair, their eyes merry and arrogant,their
8、 bodies clothed in identical blue coats and mustard-colored breeches, they were as much alikeas two bolls of cotton.Outside, the late afternoon sun slanted down in the yard, throwing into gleaming brightness thedogwood trees that were solid masses of white blossoms against the background of new gree
9、n. Thetwins horses were hitched in the driveway, big animals, red as their masters hair; and around thehorses legs quarreled the pack of lean, nervous possum hounds that accompanied Stuart and Brentwherever they went. A little aloof, as became an aristocrat, lay a black-spotted carriage dog,muzzle o
10、n paws, patiently waiting for the boys to go home to supper.Between the hounds and the horses and the twins there was a kinship deeper than that of theirconstant companionship. They were all healthy, thoughtless young animals, sleek, graceful, high-spirited, the boys as mettlesome as the horses they
11、 rode, mettlesome and dangerous but, withal,sweet-tempered to those who knew how to handle them.Although born to the ease of plantation life, waited on hand and foot since infancy, the faces ofthe three on the porch were neither slack nor soft. They had the vigor and alertness of countrypeople who h
12、ave spent all their lives in the open and troubled their heads very little with dullthings in books. Life in the north Georgia county of Clayton was still new and, according to thestandards of Augusta, Savannah and Charleston, a little crude. The more sedate and older sectionsof the South looked dow
13、n their noses at the up-country Georgians, but here in north Georgia, alack of the niceties of classical education carried no shame, provided a man was smart in the thingsthat mattered. And raising good cotton, riding well, shooting straight, dancing lightly, squiring theladies with elegance and car
14、rying ones liquor like a gentleman were the things that mattered.In these accomplishments the twins excelled, and they were equally outstanding in theirnotorious inability to learn anything contained between the covers of books. Their family had moremoney, more horses, more slaves than any one else
15、in the County, but the boys had less grammarthan most of their poor Cracker neighbors.It was for this precise reason that Stuart and Brent were idling on the porch of Tara this Aprilafternoon. They had just been expelled from the University of Georgia, the fourth university thathad thrown them out i
16、n two years; and their older brothers, Tom and Boyd, had come home withthem, because they refused to remain at an institution where the twins were not welcome. Stuartand Brent considered their latest expulsion a fine joke, and Scarlett, who had not willingly opened a book since leaving the Fayettevi
17、lle Female Academy the year before, thought it just as amusingas they did.“I know you two dont care about being expelled, or Tom either,” she said. “But what aboutBoyd? Hes kind of set on getting an education, and you two have pulled him out of the Universityof Virginia and Alabama and South Carolin
18、a and now Georgia. Hell never get finished at thisrate.”“Oh, he read law in Judge Parmalees office over in Fayetteville,” answered Brent carelessly.“Besi(can) des, it dont matter much. Wed have had to come home before the term was outanyway.”“Why?”“The war, goose! The wars going to start any day, an
19、d you dont suppose any of us would stayin college with a war going on, do you?”“You know there isnt going to be any war,” said Scarlett, bored. “Its all just talk. Why, AshleyWilkes and his father told Pa just last week that our commissioners in Washington would come totoanamicable agreement with Mr
20、. Lincoln about the Confederacy. And anyway, theYankees are too scared of us to fight. There wont be any war, and Im tired of hearing about it.”“Not going to be any war!” cried the twins indignantly, as though they had been defrauded.“Why, honey, of course theres going to be a war,” said Stuart. The
21、 Yankees may be scared of us,but after the way General Beauregard shelled them out of Fort Sumter day before yesterday, theyllhave to fight or stand branded as cowards before the whole world. Why, the Confederacy”Scarlett made a mouth of bored impatience.If you say war just once more, Ill go in the
22、house and shut the door. Ive never gotten so tiredof any one word in my life as war, unless its secession. Pa talks war morning, noon and night,and all the gentlemen who come to see him shout about Fort Sumter and States Rights and AbeLincoln till I get so bored I could scream! And thats all the boy
23、s talk about, too, that and their oldTroop. There hasnt been any fun at any party this spring because the boys cant talk aboutanything else. Im mighty glad Georgia waited till after Christmas before it seceded or it wouldhave ruined the Christmas parties, too. If you say war again, Ill go in the hou
24、se.”She meant what she said, for she could never long endure any conversation of which she wasnot the chief subject. But she smiled when she spoke, consciously deepening her dimple andfluttering her bristly black lashes as swiftly as butterflies wings. The boys were enchanted, as shehad intended the
25、m to be, and they hastened to apologize for boring her. They thought none the lessof her for her lack of interest. Indeed, they thought more. War was mens business, not ladies, andthey took her attitude as evidence of her femininity.Having maneuvered them away from the boring subject of war, she wen
26、t back with interest totheir immediate situation.“What did your mother say about you two being expelled again?”The boys looked uncomfortable, recalling their mothers conduct three months ago when theyhad come home, by request, from the University of Virginia.“Well,” said Stuart, “she hasnt had a cha
27、nce to say anything yet. Tom and us left home earlythis morning before she got up, and Toms laying out over at the Fontaines while we came overhere.”“Didnt she say anything when you got home last night?”“We were in luck last night. Just before we got home that new stallion Ma got in Kentucky lastmon
28、th was brought in, and the place was in a stew. The big brutehes a grand horse, Scarlett;you must tell your pa to come over and see him right awayhed already bitten a hunk out of hisgroom on the way down here and hed trampled two of Mas darkies who met the train atJonesboro. And just before we got h
29、ome, hed about kicked the stable down and half-killedStrawberry, Mas old stallion. When we got home, Ma was out in the stable with a sackful of sugarsmoothing him down and doing it mighty well, too. The darkies were hanging from the rafters,popeyed, they were so scared, but Ma was talking to the hor
30、se like he was folks and he was eatingout of her hand. There aint nobody like Ma with a horse. And when she saw us she said: InHeavens name, what are you four doing home again? Youre worse than the plagues of Egypt!And then the horse began snorting and rearing and she said: Get out of here! Cant you
31、 see hesnervous, the big darling? Ill tend to you four in the morning! So we went to bed, and this morningwe got away before she could catch us. and left Boyd to handle her.”“Do you suppose shell hit Boyd?” Scarlett, like the rest of the County, could never get used tothe way small Mrs. Tarleton bul
32、lied her grown sons and laid her riding crop on their backs if theoccasion seemed to warrant it.Beatrice Tarleton was a busy woman, having on her hands not only a large cotton plantation, ahundred negroes and eight children, but the largest horse-breeding farm in the state as well. Shewas hot-temper
33、ed and easily plagued by the frequent scrapes of her four sons, and while no onewas permitted to whip a horse or a slave, she felt that a lick now and then didnt do the boys anyharm.“Of course she wont hit Boyd. She never did beat Boyd much because hes the oldest andbesides hes the runt of the litte
34、r,” said Stuart, proud of his six feet two. “Thats why we left him athome to explain things to her. Godlmighty, Ma ought to stop licking us! Were nineteen and Tomstwenty-one, and she acts like were six years old.”“Will your mother ride the new horse to the Wilkes barbecue tomorrow?”“She wants to, bu
35、t Pa says hes too dangerous. And, anyway, the girls wont let her. They saidthey were going to have her go to one party at least like a lady, riding in the carriage.”“I hope it doesnt rain tomorrow,” said Scarlett. “Its rained nearly every day for a week. Theresnothing worse than a barbecue turned in
36、to an indoor picnic.”“Oh, itll be clear tomorrow and hot as June,” said Stuart. “Look at Oat sunset I never saw oneredder. You can always tell weather by sunsets.”They looked out across the endless acres of Gerald OHaras newly plowed cotton fields towardthe red horizon. Now that the sun was setting
37、in a welter of crimson behind tin lulls across the FlintRiver, the warmth of the April day was ebbing into a faint but balmy chill.Spring had come early that year, with warm quick rains and sudden frothing of pink peachblossoms and dogwood dappling with white stars the dark river swamp and far-off h
38、ills. Alreadythe plowing was nearly finished, and the bloody glory of the sunset colored the fresh-cut furrowsof red Georgia clay to even redder hues. The moist hungry earth, waiting upturned for the cottonseeds, showed pinkish on the sandy tops of furrows, vermilion and scarlet and maroon whereshad
39、ows lay along the sides of the trenches. The whitewashed brick plantation house seemed anisland set in a wild red sea, a sea of spiraling, curving, crescent billows petrified suddenly at themoment when the pink-tipped waves were breaking into surf. For here were no long, straightfurrows, such as cou
40、ld be seen in the yellow clay fields of the flat middle Georgia country or in thelush black earth of the coastal plantations. The rolling foothill country of north Georgia wasplowed in a million curves to keep the rich earth from washing down into the river bottoms.It was a savagely red land, blood-
41、colored after rains, brick dust in droughts, the best cotton landin the world. It was a pleasant land of white houses, peaceful plowed fields and sluggish yellowrivers, but a land of contrasts, of brightest sun glare and densest shade. The plantation clearingsand miles of cotton fields smiled up to
42、a warm sun, placid, complacent. At their edges rose thevirgin forests, dark and cool even in the hottest noons, mysterious, a little sinister, the soughingpines seeming to wait with an age-old patience, to threaten with soft sighs: “Be careful! Be careful!We had you once. We can take you back again.
43、”To the ears of the three on the porch came the sounds of hooves, the jingling of harness chainsand the shrill careless laughter of negro voices, as the field hands and mules came in from thefields. From within the house floated the soft voice of Scarletts mother, Ellen OHara, as shecalled to the li
44、ttle black girl who carried her basket of keys. The high-pitched, childish voiceanswered “Yasm,” and there were sounds of footsteps going out the back way toward thesmokehouse where Ellen would ration out the food to the home-coming hands. There was the clickof china and the rattle of silver as Pork
45、, the valet-butler of Tara, laid the table for supper.At these last sounds, the twins realized it was time they were starting home. But they were loathto face their mother and they lingered on the porch of Tara, momentarily expecting Scarlett to givethem an invitation to supper.“Look, Scarlett. Abou
46、t tomorrow,” said Brent. “Just because weve been away and didnt knowabout the barbecue and the ball, thats no reason why we shouldnt get plenty of dances tomorrownight. You havent promised them all, have you?”“Well, I have! How did I know you all would be home? I couldnt risk being a wallflower just
47、waiting on you two.”“You a wallflower!” The boys laughed uproariously.“Look, honey. Youve got to give me the first waltz and Stu the last one and youve got to eatsupper with us. Well sit on the stair landing like we did at the last ball and get Mammy Jincy tocome tell our fortunes again.”“I dont lik
48、e Mammy Jincys fortunes. You know she said I was going to marry a gentlemanwith jet-black hair and a long black mustache, and I dont like black-haired gentlemen.”“You like em red-headed, dont you, honey?” grinned Brent “Now, come on, promise us all the waltzes and the supper.”“If youll promise, well tell you a secret,” said Stuart.“What?” cried Scarlett, alert as a child at the word.“Is it what we heard yesterday in Atlanta, Stu? If it is, you know we promised not to tell.”“Well, Miss Pitty told us.”“Miss Who?”“You know, Ashley Wilkes cousin who lives in Atlanta, Miss Pittypat Hamilto