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Chapter XII Engaged to be Married
第十二章 订婚
Was the “poor Peter” of Cranford the Aga Jenkyns of Chunderabaddad, or was he not?
克兰福德的“可怜的彼得”就是琼德拉巴德的阿迦·詹金斯吗？还是不是呢？
As somebody says, that was the question.
正如有人所说，这就是问题所在。
In my own home, whenever people had nothing else to do, they blamed me for want of discretion.
在我自己家里，每当人们无事可做的时候，他们就会数落我不够谨慎。
Indiscretion was my bug-bear fault.
轻率是我最头痛的毛病。
Everybody has a bug-bear fault, a sort of standing characteristic—a piece de resistance for their friends to cut at; and in general they cut and come again.
每个人都有一个令人头痛的缺点，一种长期存在的特征——这是朋友们可以批评的“主要特点”；而且一般来说，批评了之后又会再犯。
I was tired of being called indiscreet and incautious; and I determined for once to prove myself a model of prudence and wisdom.
我厌倦了被人说太轻率和太鲁莽；我决定这一次要证明自己是谨慎和智慧的典范。
I would not even hint my suspicions respecting the Aga.
我甚至不会暗示我对阿迦的怀疑。
I would collect evidence and carry it home to lay before my father, as the family friend of the two Miss Jenkynses.
我会收集证据，然后带回家，呈给我的父亲，因为他是两位詹金斯小姐的世交好友。
In my search after facts, I was often reminded of a description my father had once given of a ladies’ committee that he had had to preside over.
在我寻找事实的过程中，我常常想起我父亲对他不得不主持的一个女士委员会的描述。
He said he could not help thinking of a passage in Dickens, which spoke of a chorus in which every man took the tune he knew best, and sang it to his own satisfaction.
他说他不禁想起了狄更斯的一段话，这段话讲的是一个合唱团，每个人都唱自己最熟悉的曲调，并且自己唱得很满意。
So, at this charitable committee, every lady took the subject uppermost in her mind, and talked about it to her own great contentment, but not much to the advancement of the subject they had met to discuss.
在这个慈善女士委员会里，每位女士都把自己最关心的话题拿出来讨论，自己谈得非常满意，但对于她们开会要讨论的议题却没有什么进展。
But even that committee could have been nothing to the Cranford ladies when I attempted to gain some clear and definite information as to poor Peter’s height, appearance, and when and where he was seen and heard of last.
但即便如此，当我试图从克兰福德的女士们那里获得一些关于可怜的彼得的明确信息，弄明白他的身高、外貌以及最后一次出现和听说他的消息是什么时候和什么地点时，那个女士委员会也比不上克兰福德的女士们。
For instance, I remember asking Miss Pole (and I thought the question was very opportune, for I put it when I met her at a call at Mrs Forrester’s, and both the ladies had known Peter, and I imagined that they might refresh each other’s memories)—I asked Miss Pole what was the very last thing they had ever heard about him;
例如，我记得我问过波尔小姐（我觉得这个问题提出的时机很巧，因为我是在福里斯特夫人家拜访并遇见她时问的，两位女士都认识彼得，我想她们可能会互相唤起对方的记忆）——我问波尔小姐，她们最后一次听到关于他的消息是什么；
and then she named the absurd report to which I have alluded, about his having been elected Great Lama of Thibet; and this was a signal for each lady to go off on her separate idea.
然后她提到了我之前提到的那个荒谬的传闻，说他被选为西藏的大喇嘛；这传达了一个信号，就是让两位女士自顾自地表达想法。
Mrs Forrester’s start was made on the veiled prophet in Lalla Rookh—whether I thought he was meant for the Great Lama, though Peter was not so ugly, indeed rather handsome, if he had not been freckled.
福里斯特夫人的话头是《拉拉·鲁克》中的蒙面先知——问我是否认为蒙面先知和大喇嘛是一样的，尽管彼得并不那么丑，实际上相当英俊，如果他没有雀斑的话。（注：《拉拉·鲁克》是关于东方的故事集。）
I was thankful to see her double upon Peter; but, in a moment, the delusive lady was off upon Rowland’s Kalydor, and the merits of cosmetics and hair oils in general, and holding forth so fluently that I turned to listen to Miss Pole, who (through the llamas, the beasts of burden) had got to Peruvian bonds, and the share market, and her poor opinion of joint-stock banks in general, and of that one in particular in which Miss Matty’s money was invested.
我很感激她把话题绕回彼得身上了；但是不一会儿，这位爱幻想的女士就开始谈论罗兰德牌护肤品，以及各种化妆品和发油的优点，她滔滔不绝地说着，我转过身去听波尔小姐说话，她（通过负重牲畜羊驼）谈到了秘鲁债券、股票市场，以及她对一般意义上的合股银行的不看好，尤其是对马蒂小姐存钱的那家银行的不看好。
In vain I put in “When was it—in what year was it that you heard that Mr Peter was the Great Lama?”
我徒劳地插嘴问道：“你是什么时候——在哪一年听说彼得先生是大喇嘛的？”
They only joined issue to dispute whether llamas were carnivorous animals or not; in which dispute they were not quite on fair grounds, as Mrs Forrester (after they had grown warm and cool again) acknowledged that she always confused carnivorous and graminivorous together, just as she did horizontal and perpendicular;
她们只在争论羊驼是不是食肉动物的时候才把话题汇集在一起；在这场争论中，她们并没有站在同等的立场上，因为福里斯特夫人（在她们激烈的争论又平息下来后）承认，她总是把食肉动物和食草动物这两个词混淆，就像她把水平和垂直这两个词混淆一样；
but then she apologised for it very prettily, by saying that in her day the only use people made of four-syllabled words was to teach how they should be spelt.
但后来她为自己辩解得很漂亮，说在她那个时代，人们对四音节单词的唯一用途就是教其他人应该如何拼写这个单词。
The only fact I gained from this conversation was that certainly Peter had last been heard of in India, “or that neighbourhood”;
我从这次谈话中得到的唯一事实是，最后一次得到彼得的消息时他肯定在印度，“或者是那附近”；
and that this scanty intelligence of his whereabouts had reached Cranford in the year when Miss Pole had brought her Indian muslin gown, long since worn out (we washed it and mended it, and traced its decline and fall into a window-blind before we could go on);
这条关于他行踪的简略消息是在波尔小姐带来她的印度细棉布长袍的那一年传到克兰福德的，那件长袍早已穿破了（我们洗了又补，看着它逐渐磨损，最后变成了一块窗帘才作罢）；
and in a year when Wombwell came to Cranford, because Miss Matty had wanted to see an elephant in order that she might the better imagine Peter riding on one; and had seen a boa-constrictor too, which was more than she wished to imagine in her fancy-pictures of Peter’s locality;
也是沃姆威尔人来克兰福德的那一年，因为马蒂小姐想看看大象，这样她就能更好地想象彼得骑在大象上的情景；她还看到了一条蟒蛇，她在想象彼得所在的地方时可没希望想到蟒蛇；
and in a year when Miss Jenkyns had learnt some piece of poetry off by heart, and used to say, at all the Cranford parties, how Peter was “surveying mankind from China to Peru,” which everybody had thought very grand, and rather appropriate, because India was between China and Peru, if you took care to turn the globe to the left instead of the right.
也是在詹金斯小姐背诵了一首诗的那一年，她在克兰福德的所有聚会上都说，彼得是如何“从中国一路到秘鲁去考察人类”，每个人都认为这非常了不起，而且说得相当贴切，因为如果你小心地把地球仪向左而不是向右转动，就会看到印度就在中国和秘鲁之间。
