大多数古老的宅子里都会有些幽灵。有时会是个安静、善良的幽灵;有时候则是个闹哄哄的家伙,总是不停地摔门,咯啷咯啷地晃着锁链。 Most grand old houses have a family ghost of some kind. Sometimes it is a quiet and kindly ghost, and sometimes it is a noisy one, always banging doors and crashing about in chains. 坎特维尔古堡的幽灵就属于闹哄哄的那种,吵得一家大小全都睡不好觉。于是坎特维尔勋爵把房子卖给了奥蒂斯先生。这位可是美国人,一点儿也不怕什么幽灵。实际上,奥蒂斯夫妇和他们的孩子们——华盛顿、漂亮的弗吉尼娅、加上那对淘气的双胞胎兄弟——非常乐意住在一所有幽灵的宅子里。 The ghost at Canterville Chase is one of the noisy kind, and the family can't get any sleep at night. So Lord Canterville sells the house to Mr Hiram B. Otis, who is an American and not at all worried about ghosts. In fact, Mr and Mrs Otis and their children Washington, pretty Virginia, and the twins, two noisy little boys are very happy to live in a house with a ghost. 但是幽灵可不乐意。他的职责就是吓唬人,而奥蒂斯一家对他那些拿手的把戏一点儿也不害怕。他们的头发没有被吓白,他们没有被吓得逃跑,他们也没有被吓晕——甚至连叫也不叫一声。还有,奥蒂斯家的那对双胞胎知道的把戏,竟比可怜的幽灵还多…… But the ghost is not happy. His job is to frighten people, and the Otis family aren't frightened by any of his best tricks. Their hair doesn't turn white, they don't run away in terror, they don't faint — they don't even scream! And the Otis twins know more tricks than the poor ghost will ever know...
The next morning, when the Otis family met at breakfast, they talked about the ghost for some time. Mr Otis was a little cross to find the bottle of Tammany’s Sun Oil lying on the floor of the passage.
I don’t want,’ he said, ’to hurt the ghost in any way.’ Here he looked at the boys. ’We must remember that he has lived in this house for a very long time, so I don’t think it’s very nice to throw pillows at him — no, don’t laugh, boys, it’s not funny. But if the ghost won’t use the oil, we will have to take his chains away from him. We can’t possibly sleep with that noise going on outside our bedrooms every night.’
But for the rest of the week all was quiet. The only interesting thing was the bloodstain. Every day Washington cleaned the floor with Pinkerton’s StainCleaner, and every night Mr Otis carefully locked the windows and the library door. But the bloodstain was always there again the next morning.
It also changed colour a few times. On some days it was red, on other days it was purple, and once it was bright green. Most of the family thought these colour changes were very funny and they hurried downstairs each morning to find out the new colour. The only person who did not laugh was little Virginia, but she would not explain why. And on the morning the bloodstain was bright green, she nearly cried.
On Sunday night, soon after the family went to bed, the ghost made his next move. There was a three-hundred-year-old suit of armour downstairs. ’Now, a ghost in armour will surely frighten even modern Americans,’ he thought. He began to put on the suit of armour, but it was too heavy for him, and he and the armour fell to the floor with a loud CRASH.
All the men in the Otis family jumped out of bed and hurried downstairs at once. They found the unhappy ghost sitting there, holding his head and crying softly with pain. The twins had their pea-shooters with them and immediately began to shoot little balls of paper at him. Mr Otis brought out his handgun and, like the good Californian he was, called out to the ghost:
At this, the ghost jumped up with a wild and angry scream and flew through them. Washington Otis’s candle went out, and suddenly everything was dark. At the top of the stairs, the ghost turned to give his terrible ghostly laugh — the famous laugh which once turned Lord Raker’s hair white in a single night. It went on and on until the house was full of the sound.
A bedroom door opened and Mrs Otis appeared with a bottle in her hand. ’I’m afraid you’re not feeling very well,’ she said to the ghost. ’I’ve brought you some of Dr Dobell’s special stomach medicine. If you’re having trouble with your stomach, this will soon help you to feel better.’
The ghost looked at her angrily, and began to turn himself into a big black dog (one of his most famous tricks). But the sound of young footsteps coming up the stairs stopped him, and he quickly disappeared with a ghostly ’Oooooooh!’ before the twins arrived at the top.
For some days after this he was very ill, and only went out to make the bloodstain again each night. But when he began to feel better, he decided to try for the third time to frighten Hiram B. Otis and his family.
He spent most of Friday, the 17th of August, trying to decide what to wear. At last he decided on a dead man’s shroud, a large black hat with a red feather in it, and a long knife.
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当天晚上,狂风摇曳着所有的门窗,雨滴砸在屋顶之上。幽灵在小心翼翼地计划着:
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That night the wind shook all the doors and windows, and the rain crashed down onto the roof of the house. The ghost made his plans carefully.
I’ll go first to Washington Otis’s room,’ he said to himself. ’He cleans away the famous Canterville bloodstain each morning, so I want to be sure that he’ll be really frightened. I’ll make ghostly noises to wake him up, then I’ll push my knife into my neck three times, to the sound of slow music.’
Then I’ll go to Mr Hiram B. Otis’s room. I’ll make a terrible noise in his ear, and at the same time put my cold hand on Mrs Otis’s face. Now, what about Virginia? She’s never played any tricks on me, and she’s sweet and pretty. Perhaps I’ll just make a soft ’Ooooh!’ in her ear ... or move her bed sheets a little with my skeleton’s fingers.’
And then on to the twins! Those horrible boys are going to learn a lesson tonight! I’ll stand between their beds, looking like a dead body — cold and green and smelling of death. They’ll be too frightened to move. Then I’ll throw off my shroud and do my famous skeleton dance all round the room.’
He heard the family go to bed at half past ten. For some time he listened to the laughs and shouts of the twins, but by a quarter past eleven all was quiet.
At the sound of midnight, the ghost left his room. He came out of the wall with the knife in his hand and a smile on his face. It was not a nice smile, and when the moon saw it through a window, she hid behind a cloud.
Slowly and silently the ghost moved through the house, while the Otis family went on happily sleeping. At the corner of the passage which went along to Washington’s room, the ghost stopped for a minute. A little wind came from nowhere, pulling his long white shroud this way and that, and showing the skeleton arms and neck of the walking dead. He heard the clock sound a quarter past midnight, gave a little laugh, and turned the corner...
...And stopped — in terror! There, in front of him, was standing the most horrible ghost. It had a large head with no hair on it, and a fat round face with a deathly smile across its open mouth. A red light burned like fire inside its mouth and behind both of its eyes. Its great body was hidden under a long shroud, and it carried a large piece of paper with strange writing on it.
The Canterville ghost did not wait to read it. He was too frightened. When you see your first ghost, you don’t stop to talk, you turn and run — so the Canterville ghost turned and ran. His long shroud got caught around his feet and he nearly fell over, but he ran as fast as he could, away from the horrible thing that was watching him with fire in its eyes. He turned the corner, dropped his knife into one of Hiram B. Otis’s shoes, which were outside his bedroom door (Mr Otis found it there the next morning) , and ran on to his room.
He threw himself onto his bed, and hid his head under his pillow. It was some time before he began to feel better. Then he told himself that he was a Canterville, and that Cantervilles were fighters to the end.
When it gets light,’ he thought, ’I’ll go and speak to this other ghost. Perhaps we can be friends. After all, two ghosts are better than one, and if the two of us work together, perhaps we can frighten those terrible twins at last.’
Very early the next morning, while the family was still sleeping, he went back to the passage. The other ghost was still there, but now there was something wrong with it. There was no fire in its eyes, and it was resting against the wall like a sick man. The Canterville ghost moved forward quickly and put his arms round the other ghost and its head fell off! Then the body fell to the floor, and the Canterville ghost saw that he was holding a white bed sheet. And there was a brush, and a turnip with holes in it, lying at his feet.
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“怎么回事?”他想,“那个幽灵去哪儿啦?”
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What’s happened?’ he thought. ’Where has the ghost gone?’
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这时他看到床单上的那张纸。在灰色的晨光中,他读到了这些可怕的字:
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Then he saw the piece of paper on the front of the sheet, and there, in the grey morning light, he read these terrible words:
At once he understood everything. It was a trick — another horrible trick! He stood there, too angry to move, and tried to think of a plan to finish these terrible Americans once and for all. But he couldn’t think of any plan, so after a while he went to find a quiet dark place to lie down in.