Chapter 18 A FLOOD OF SUNSHINE
第十八章 一片阳光

ARTHUR DIMMESDALE gazed into Hester's face with a look in which hope and joy shone out, indeed, but with fear betwixt them, and a kind of horror at her boldness, who had spoken what he vaguely hinted at, but dared not speak.
阿瑟·丁梅斯代尔凝视着海丝特的面孔,他的神情中确实闪烁着希望和欣喜,但其中也夹杂着畏缩,以及对她的胆识的一种惊惧,因为她说出了他隐约地暗示而没敢说出的话。

But Hester Prynne, with a mind of native courage and activity, and for so long a period not merely estranged, but outlawed, from society, had habituated herself to such latitude of speculation as was altogether foreign to the clergyman. She had wandered, without rule or guidance, in a moral wilderness; as vast, as intricate and shadowy, as the untamed forest, amid the gloom of which they were now holding a colloquy that was to decide their fate. Her intellect and heart had their home, as it were, in desert places, where she roamed as freely as the wild Indian in his woods. For years past she had looked from this estranged point of view at human institutions, and whatever priests or legislators had established; criticising all with hardly more reverence than the Indian would feel for the clerical band, the judicial robe, the pillory, the gallows, the fireside, or the church. The tendency of her fate and fortunes had been to set her free. The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers- stern and wild ones- and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
但是,海丝特·白兰天生具有勇敢和活跃的气质,加之这多年来不仅被人视如陌窖,而且为社会所摒弃,所以就形成了那样一种思考问题的高度,对牧师来说简直难以企及。她一直漫无目标地在道德的荒野中徘徊;那荒野同这荒林一样广漠、一样错综、一样阴森,而他俩如今正在这幽暗的林中进行决定他们命运的会谈。她的智慧和心灵在这里适得其所,她在荒漠之处自由漫游,正如野蛮的印第安人以林为家。在过去这些年中,她以陌生人的目光看待人类的风俗制度,以及由教士和立法者所建立的一切;她几乎和印第安人一样,以不屑的态度批评牧师的丝带、法官的黑袍、颈手枷、绞刑架、家庭或教会。她的命运发展的趋向始终是放纵她自由的。红字则是她进入其他妇女不敢涉足的禁区的通行证。耻辱,绝望,孤寂!——这些就是她的教师,而且是一些严格粗野的教师,他们既使她坚强,也教会她出岔于。

The minister, on the other hand, had never gone through an experience calculated to lead him beyond the scope of generally received laws; although, in a single instance, he had so fearfully transgressed one of the most sacred of them. But this had been a sin of passion, not of principle, nor even purpose. Since that wretched epoch, he had watched, with morbid zeal and minuteness, not his acts- for those it was easy to arrange- but each breath of emotion, and his every thought. At the head of the social system, as the clergyman of that day stood, he was only the more trammelled by its regulations, its principles, and even its prejudices. As a priest, the framework of his order inevitably hemmed him in. As a man who had once sinned, but who kept his conscience all alive and painfully sensitive by the fretting of an unhealed wound, he might have been supposed safer within the line of virtue than if he had never sinned at all.
而在牧师那一方面,却从来没有过一种经历会引导他跨越雷池一步;虽说只有一例,他曾经那么可怕地冒犯了其中最为神圣的戒条。但那只是情感冲动造成的罪过,并非原则上的对抗,甚至不是故意而为。从那倒霉的时日起,他一直以病态的热情,小心翼翼地监视着自己的,不是他的行为——因为这很容易调整——,而是他的每一丝情绪和每一个念头。当年,牧师们是身居社会首位的,因此他只能更受戒律、原则甚至偏见的束缚。身为牧师,他的等级观必然也会限制他。作为一个一度犯罪、但又因未愈的伤口的不断刺激而良心未泯并备受折磨的人,他或许会认为比起他从未有过罪孽反倒在道德上更加保险。