CASTING my eyes on Mr Wemmick as we went along, to see what he was like in the light of day, I found him to be a dry man, rather short in stature, with a square wooden face, whose expression seemed to have been imperfectly chipped out with a dull-edged chisel. There were some marks in it that might have been dimples, if the material had been softer and the instrument finer, but which, as it was, were only dints. The chisel had made three or four of these attempts at embellishment over his nose, but had given them up without an effort to smooth them off. I judged him to be a bachelor from the frayed condition of his linen, and he appeared to have sustained a good many bereavements; for, he wore at least four mourning rings, besides a brooch representing a lady and a weeping willow at a tomb with an urn on it. I noticed, too, that several rings and seals hung at his watch chain, as if he were quite laden with remembrances of departed friends. He had glittering eyes - small, keen, and black - and thin wide mottled lips. He had had them, to the best of my belief, from forty to fifty years.
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“那么你以前没有来过伦敦?”温米克先生对我说道。
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`So you were never in London before?’ said Mr Wemmick to me.
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“没有。”我说道。
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`No,’ said I.
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“我第一次来伦敦时感到一切都新奇,”温米克先生说道,“现在想起来可真有意思!”
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`I was new here once,’ said Mr Wemmick. `Rum to think of now!’
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“你现在对伦敦已很熟悉了?”
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`You are well acquainted with it now?’
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“那当然,还用说吗,”温米克先生说道,“什么动静也瞒不了我。”
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`Why, yes,’ said Mr Wemmick. `I know the moves of it.’
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“这是个邪恶的地方吗?”我只是和他随便聊聊,并不是想打听情况。
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`Is it a very wicked place?’ I asked, more for the sake of saying something than for information.
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“在伦敦的人都可能受骗、被抢、被凶杀。不过,在这个世界上,哪里不都是有许多人在干着这类事情啊。”
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`You may get cheated, robbed, and murdered, in London. But there are plenty of people anywhere, who’ll do that for you.’
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“这其间一定有仇恨了。”为了缓和一些气氛,我便这样说道。
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`If there is bad blood between you and them,’ said I, to soften it off a little.
He wore his hat on the back of his head, and looked straight before him: walking in a self-contained way as if there were nothing in the streets to claim his attention. His mouth was such a postoffice of a mouth that he had a mechanical appearance of smiling. We had got to the top of Holborn Hill before I knew that it was merely a mechanical appearance, and that he was not smiling at all.
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“你知道马休·鄱凯特先生住在哪里吗?”我问温米克先生。
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`Do you know where Mr Matthew Pocket lives?’ I asked Mr Wemmick.
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“我晓得,”他对着西边点点头说道,“他住在伦敦西边的汉莫史密斯。”
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`Yes,’ said he, nodding in the direction. `At Hammersmith, west of London.’
There was an air of toleration or depreciation about his utterance of these words, that rather depressed me; and I was still looking sideways at his block of a face in search of any encouraging note to the text, when he said here we were at Barnard’s Inn. My depression was not alleviated by the announcement, for, I had supposed that establishment to be an hotel kept by Mr Barnard, to which the Blue Boar in our town was a mere public-house. Whereas I now found Barnard to be a disembodied spirit, or a fiction, and his inn the dingiest collection of shabby buildings ever squeezed together in a rank corner as a club for Tom-cats.
We entered this haven through a wicket-gate, and were disgorged by an introductory passage into a melancholy little square that looked to me like a flat burying-ground. I thought it had the most dismal trees in it, and the most dismal sparrows, and the most dismal cats, and the most dismal houses (in number half a dozen or so), that I had ever seen. I thought the windows of the sets of chambers into which those houses were divided, were in every stage of dilapidated blind and curtain, crippled flower-pot, cracked glass, dusty decay, and miserable makeshift; while To Let To Let To Let, glared at me from empty rooms, as if no new wretches ever came there, and the vengeance of the soul of Barnard were being slowly appeased by the gradual suicide of the present occupants and their unholyinterment under the gravel. A frouzy mourning of soot and smoke attired this forlorn creation of Barnard, and it had strewn ashes on its head, and was undergoing penance and humiliation as a mere dust-hole. Thus far my sense of sight; while dry rot and wet rot and all the silent rots that rot in neglected roof and cellar - rot of rat and mouse and bug and coaching-stables near at hand besides - addressed themselves faintly to my sense of smell, and moaned, `Try Barnard’s Mixture.’
So imperfect was this realization of the first of my great expectations, that I looked in dismay at Mr Wemmick. `Ah!’ said he, mistaking me; `the retirement reminds you of the country. So it does me.’
He led me into a corner and conducted me up a flight of stairs - which appeared to me to be slowly collapsing into sawdust, so that one of those days the upper lodgers would look out at their doors and find themselves without the means of coming down - to a set of chambers on the top floor. MR. POCKET, JUN., was painted on the door, and there was a label on the letter-box, `Return shortly.’
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“他没有想到你来得如此快,”温米克先生解释道,“你大概不再需要我了吧?”
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`He hardly thought you’d come so soon,’ Mr Wemmick explained. `You don’t want me any more?’
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“谢谢,不用了。”我说道。
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`No, thank you,’ said I.
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“由于我管着现金,”温米克说道,“我们会时常见面的。再见。”
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`As I keep the cash,’ Mr Wemmick observed, `we shall most likely meet pretty often. Good day.’
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“再见。”
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`Good day.’
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我伸出手,温米克先生看着我的手,以为我想索取什么东西,然后又看看我,才纠正了自己的误解,说道:
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I put out my hand, and Mr Wemmick at first looked at it as if he thought I wanted something. Then he looked at me, and said, correcting himself,
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“当然!是的。你有和人握手的习惯,是吗?”
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`To be sure! Yes. You’re in the habit of shaking hands?’
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我被他弄得有点狼狈,心想这一定和伦敦的时尚不符,不过我还是说他猜对了。
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I was rather confused, thinking it must be out of the London fashion, but said yes.
When we had shaken hands and he was gone, I opened the staircase window and had nearly beheaded myself, for, the lines had rotted away, and it came down like the guillotine. Happily it was so quick that I had not put my head out. After this escape, I was content to take a foggy view of the Inn through the window’s encrusting dirt, and to stand dolefully looking out, saying to myself that London was decidedly overrated.
Mr Pocket, Junior’s, idea of Shortly was not mine, for I had nearly maddened myself with looking out for half an hour, and had written my name with my finger several times in the dirt of every pane in the window, before I heard footsteps on the stairs. Gradually there arose before me the hat, head, neckcloth, waistcoat, trousers, boots, of a member of society of about my own standing. He had a paper-bag under each arm and a pottle of strawberries in one hand, and was out of breath.
`Dear me!’ he exclaimed. `I am extremely sorry; but I knew there was a coach from your part of the country at midday, and I thought you would come by that one. The fact is, I have been out on your account - not that that is any excuse - for I thought, coming from the country, you might like a little fruit after dinner, and I went to Convent Garden Market to get it good.’
For a reason that I had, I felt as if my eyes would start out of my head. I acknowledged his attention incoherently, and began to think this was a dream.
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“天啦!”小鄱凯特先生说道,“这扇门怎么如此难开!”
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`Dear me!’ said Mr Pocket, Junior. `This door sticks so!’
As he was fast making jam of his fruit by wrestling with the door while the paper-bags were under his arms, I begged him to allow me to hold them. He relinquished them with an agreeable smile, and combated with the door as if it were a wild beast. It yielded so suddenly at last, that he staggered back upon me, and I staggered back upon the opposite door, and we both laughed. But still I felt as if my eyes must start out of my head, and as if this must be a dream.
`Pray come in,’ said Mr Pocket, Junior. `Allow me to lead the way. I am rather bare here, but I hope you’ll be able to make out tolerably well till Monday. My father thought you would get on more agreeably through to-morrow with me than with him, and might like to take a walk about London. I am sure I shall be very happy to show London to you. As to our table, you won’t find that bad, I hope, for it will be supplied from our coffee-house here, and (it is only right I should add) at your expense, such being Mr Jaggers’s directions. AS to our lodging, it’s not by any means splendid, because I have my own bread to earn, and my father hasn’t anything to give me, and I shouldn’t be willing to take it, if he had. This is our sitting-room - just such chairs and tables and carpet and so forth, you see, as they could spare from home. You mustn’t give me credit for the tablecloth and spoons and castors, because they come for you from the coffee-house. This is my little bedroom; rather musty, but Barnard’s is musty. This is your bed-room; the furniture’s hired for the occasion, but I trust it will answer the purpose; if you should want anything, I’ll go and fetch it. The chambers are retired, and we shall be alone together, but we shan’t fight, I dare say. But, dear me, I beg your pardon, you’re holding the fruit all this time. Pray let me take these bags from you. I am quite ashamed.’