带家具出租的房间英文原文

　　

　　原文（英语）：

　　

　　The Furnished Room 　　

　　

　　Restless, shifting, fugacious as time itself is a certain vast bulk

　　

　　of the population of the red brick district of the lower West Side.

　　

　　Homeless, they have a hundred homes. They flit from furnished room

　　

　　to furnished room, transients forever--transients in abode,

　　

　　transients in heart and mind. They sing

　　

　　Home, Sweet Home

　　

　　in

　　

　　ragtime; they carry their ~lares et penates~ in a bandbox; their vine

　　

　　is entwined about a picture hat; a rubber plant is their fig tree.

　　

　　Hence the houses of this district, having had a thousand dwellers,

　　

　　should have a thousand tales to tell, mostly dull ones, no doubt; but

　　

　　it would be strange if there could not be found a ghost or two in the

　　

　　wake of all these vagrant guests.

　　

　　One evening after dark a young man prowled among these crumbling red

　　

　　mansions, ringing their bells. At the twelfth he rested his lean

　　

　　hand-baggage upon the step and wiped the dust from his hatband and

　　

　　forehead. The bell sounded faint and far away in some remote, hollow

　　

　　depths.

　　

　　To the door of this, the twelfth house whose bell he had rung, came

　　

　　a housekeeper who made him think of an unwholesome, surfeited worm

　　

　　that had eaten its nut to a hollow shell and now sought to fill the

　　

　　vacancy with edible lodgers.

　　

　　He asked if there was a room to let.

　　

　　Come in,

　　

　　said the housekeeper. Her voice came from her throat; her

　　

　　throat seemed lined with fur.

　　

　　I have the third floor back, vacant

　　

　　since a week back. Should you wish to look at it?

　　

　　The young man followed her up the stairs. A faint light from no

　　

　　particular source mitigated the shadows of the halls. They trod

　　

　　noiselessly upon a stair carpet that its own loom would have

　　

　　forsworn. It seemed to have become vegetable; to have degenerated in

　　

　　that rank, sunless air to lush lichen or spreading moss that grew in

　　

　　patches to the staircase and was viscid under the foot like organic

　　

　　matter. At each turn of the stairs were vacant niches in the wall.

　　

　　Perhaps plants had once been set within them. If so they had died in

　　

　　that foul and tainted air. It may be that statues of the saints had

　　

　　stood there, but it was not difficult to conceive that imps and

　　

　　devils had dragged them forth in the darkness and down to the unholy

　　

　　depths of some furnished pit below.

　　

　　This is the room,

　　

　　said the housekeeper, from her furry throat.

　　

　　It's a nice room. It ain't often vacant. I had some most elegant

　　

　　people in it last summer--no trouble at all, and paid in advance to

　　

　　the minute. The water's at the end of the hall. Sprowls and Mooney

　　

　　kept it three months. They done a vaudeville sketch. Miss B'retta

　　

　　Sprowls--you may have heard of her--Oh, that was just the stage names

　　

　　--right there over the dresser is where the marriage certificate

　　

　　hung, framed. The gas is here, and you see there is plenty of closet

　　

　　room. It's a room everybody likes. It never stays idle long.

　　

　　Do you have many theatrical people rooming here?

　　

　　asked the young

　　

　　man.

　　

　　They comes and goes. A good proportion of my lodgers is connected

　　

　　with the theatres. Yes, sir, this is the theatrical district. Actor

　　

　　people never stays long anywhere. I get my share. Yes, they comes

　　

　　and they goes.

　　

　　He engaged the room, paying for a week in advance. He was tired, he

　　

　　said, and would take possession at once. He counted out the money.

　　

　　The room had been made ready, she said, even to towels and water. As

　　

　　the housekeeper moved away he put, for the thousandth time, the

　　

　　question that he carried at the end of his tongue.

　　

　　A young girl--Miss Vashner--Miss Eloise Vashner--do you remember

　　

　　such a one among your lodgers? She would be singing on the stage,

　　

　　most likely. A fair girl, of medium height and slender, with

　　

　　reddish, gold hair and a dark mole near her left eyebrow.

　　

　　No, I don't remember the name. Them stage people has names they

　　

　　change as often as their rooms. They comes and they goes. No, I

　　

　　don't call that one to mind.

　　

　　No. Always no. Five months of ceaseless interrogation and the

　　

　　inevitable negative. So much time spent by day in questioning

　　

　　managers, agents, schools and choruses; by night among the audiences

　　

　　of theatres from all-star casts down to music halls so low that he

　　

　　dreaded to find what he most hoped for. He who had loved her best

　　

　　had tried to find her. He was sure that since her disappearance from

　　

　　home this great, water-girt city held her somewhere, but it was like

　　

　　a monstrous quicksand, shifting its particles constantly, with no

　　

　　foundation, its upper granules of to-day buried to-morrow in ooze and

　　

　　slime.

　　

　　The furnished room received its latest guest with a first glow of

　　

　　pseudo-hospitality, a hectic, haggard, perfunctory welcome like the

　　

　　specious smile of a demirep. The sophistical comfort came in

　　

　　reflected gleams from the decayed furniture, the raggcd brocade

　　

　　upholstery of a couch and two chairs, a footwide cheap pier glass

　　

　　between the two windows, from one or two gilt picture frames and a

　　

　　brass bedstead in a corner.

　　

　　The guest reclined, inert, upon a chair, while the room, confused in

　　

　　speech as though it were an apartment in Babel, tried to discourse to

　　

　　him of its divers tenantry.

　　

　　A polychromatic rug like some brilliant-flowered rectangular,

　　

　　tropical islet lay surrounded by a billowy sea of soiled matting.

　　

　　Upon the gay-papered wall were those pictures that pursue the

　　

　　homeless one from house to house--The Huguenot Lovers, The First

　　

　　Quarrel, The Wedding Breakfast, Psyche at the Fountain. The mantel's

　　

　　chastely severe outline was ingloriously veiled behind some pert

　　

　　drapery drawn rakishly askew like the sashes of the Amazonian ballet.

　　

　　Upon it was some desolate flotsam cast aside by the room's marooned

　　

　　when a lucky sail had borne them to a fresh port--a trifling vase or

　　

　　two, pictures of actresses, a medicine bottle, some stray cards out

　　

　　of a deck.

　　

　　One by one, as the characters of a cryptograph become explicit, the

　　

　　little signs left by the furnished room's procession of guests

　　

　　developed a significance. The threadbare space in the rug in front

　　

　　of the dresser told that lovely woman had marched in the throng.

　　

　　Tiny finger prints on the wall spoke of little prisoners trying to

　　

　　feel their way to sun and air. A splattered stain, raying like the

　　

　　shadow of a bursting bomb, witnessed where a hurled glass or bottle

　　

　　had splintered with its contents against the wall. Across the pier

　　

　　glass had been scrawled with a diamond in staggering letters the name

　　

　　Marie.

　　

　　It seemed that the succession of dwellers in the furnished

　　

　　room had turned in fury--perhaps tempted beyond forbearance by its

　　

　　garish coldness--and wreaked upon it their passions. The furniture

　　

　　was chipped and bruised; the couch, distorted by bursting springs,

　　

　　seemed a horrible monster that had been slain during the stress of

　　

　　some grotesque convulsion. Some more potent upheaval had cloven a

　　

　　great slice from the marble mantel. Each plank in the floor owned

　　

　　its particular cant and shriek as from a separate and individual

　　

　　agony. It seemed incredible that all this malice and injury had been

　　

　　wrought upon the room by those who had called it for a time their

　　

　　home; and yet it may have been the cheated home instinct surviving

　　

　　blindly, the resentful rage at false household gods that had kindled

　　

　　their wrath. A hut that is our own we can sweep and adorn and

　　

　　cherish.

　　

　　The young tenant in the chair allowed these thoughts to file, soft-

　　

　　shod, through his mind, while there drifted into the room furnished

　　

　　sounds and furnished scents. He heard in one room a tittering and

　　

　　incontinent, slack laughter; in others the monologue of a scold, the

　　

　　rattling of dice, a lullaby, and one crying dully; above him a banjo

　　

　　tinkled with spirit. Doors banged somewhere; the elevated trains

　　

　　roared intermittently; a cat yowled miserably upon a back fence. And

　　

　　he breathed the breath of the house--a dank savour rather than a smell

　　

　　--a cold, musty effluvium as from underground vaults mingled with the

　　

　　reeking exhalations of linoleum and mildewed and rotten woodwork.

　　

　　Then, suddenly, as he rested there, the room was filled with the

　　

　　strong, sweet odour of mignonette. It came as upon a single buffet

　　

　　of wind with such sureness and fragrance and emphasis that it almost

　　

　　seemed a living visitant. And the man cried aloud:

　　

　　What, dear?

　　

　　as

　　

　　if he had been called, and sprang up and faced about. The rich odour

　　

　　clung to him and wrapped him around. He reached out his arms for it,

　　

　　all his senses for the time confused and commingled. How could one

　　

　　be peremptorily called by an odour? Surely it must have been a

　　

　　sound. But, was it not the sound that had touched, that had caressed

　　

　　him?

　　

　　She has been in this room,

　　

　　he cried, and he sprang to wrest from it

　　

　　a token, for he knew he would recognize the smallest thing that had

　　

　　belonged to her or that she had touched. This enveloping scent of

　　

　　mignonette, the odour that she had loved and made her own--whence

　　

　　came it?

　　

　　The room had been but carelessly set in order. Scattered upon the

　　

　　flimsy dresser scarf were half a dozen hairpins--those discreet,

　　

　　indistinguishable friends of womankind, feminine of gender, infinite

　　

　　of mood and uncommunicative of tense. These he ignored, conscious of

　　

　　their triumphant lack of identity. Ransacking the drawers of the

　　

　　dresser he came upon a discarded, tiny, ragged handkerchief. He

　　

　　pressed it to his face. It was racy and insolent with heliotrope; he

　　

　　hurled it to the floor. In another drawer he found odd buttons, a

　　

　　theatre programme, a pawnbroker's card, two lost marshmallows, a book

　　

　　on the divination of dreams. In the last was a woman's black satin

　　

　　hair bow, which halted him, poised between ice and fire. But the

　　

　　black satin hairbow also is femininity's demure, impersonal, common

　　

　　ornament, and tells no tales.

　　

　　And then he traversed the room like a hound on the scent, skimming

　　

　　the walls, considering the corners of the bulging matting on his

　　

　　hands and knees, rummaging mantel and tables, the curtains and

　　

　　hangngs, the drunken cabinet in the corner, for a visible sign,

　　

　　unable to perceive that she was there beside, around, against,

　　

　　within, above him, clinging to him, wooing him, calling him so

　　

　　poignantly through the finer senses that even his grosser ones became

　　

　　cognisant of the call. Once again he answered loudly:

　　

　　Yes, dear!

　　

　　and turned, wild-eyed, to gaze on vacancy, for he could not yet

　　

　　discern form and colour and love and outstretched arms in the odour

　　

　　of mnignonette. Oh, God! whence that odour, and since when have

　　

　　odours had a voice to call? Thus he groped.

　　

　　He burrowed in crevices and corners, and found corks and cigarettes.

　　

　　These he passed in passive contempt. But once he found in a fold of

　　

　　the matting a half-smoked cigar, and this he ground beneath his heel

　　

　　with a green and trenchant oath. He sifted the room from end to end.

　　

　　He found dreary and ignoble small records of many a peripatetic

　　

　　tenant; but of her whom he sought, and who may have lodged there, and

　　

　　whose spirit seemed to hover there, he found no trace.

　　

　　And then he thought of the housekeeper.

　　

　　He ran from the haunted room downstairs and to a door that showed a

　　

　　crack of light. She came out to his knock. He smothered his

　　

　　excitement as best he could.

　　

　　Will you tell me, madam,

　　

　　he besought her,

　　

　　who occupied the room I

　　

　　have before I came?

　　

　　Yes, sir. I can tell you again. 'Twas Sprowls and Mooney, as I

　　

　　said. Miss B'retta Sprowls it was in the theatres, but Missis Mooney

　　

　　she was. My house is well known for respectability. The marriage

　　

　　certificate hung, framed, on a nail over--

　　

　　What kind of a lady was Miss Sprowls--in looks, I mean?

　　

　　Why, black-haired, sir, short, and stout, with a comical face. They

　　

　　left a week ago Tuesday.

　　

　　And before they occupied it?

　　

　　Why, there was a single gentleman connected with the draying

　　

　　business. He left owing me a week. Before him was Missis Crowder

　　

　　and her two children, that stayed four months; and back of them was

　　

　　old Mr. Doyle, whose sons paid for him. He kept the room six months.

　　

　　That goes back a year, sir, and further I do not remember.

　　

　　He thanked her and crept back to his room. The room was dead. The

　　

　　essence that had vivified it was gone. The perfume of mignonette had

　　

　　departed. In its place was the old, stale odour of mouldy house

　　

　　furniture, of atmosphere in storage.

　　

　　The ebbing of his hope drained his faith. He sat staring at the

　　

　　yellow, singing gaslight. Soon he walked to the bed and began to

　　

　　tear the sheets into strips. With the blade of his knife he drove

　　

　　them tightly into every crevice around windows and door. When all

　　

　　was snug and taut he turned out the light, turned the gas full on

　　

　　again and laid himself gratefully upon the bed.

　　

　　* * * * * * *

　　

　　It was Mrs. McCool's night to go with the can for beer. So she

　　

　　fetched it and sat with Mrs. Purdy in one of those subterranean

　　

　　retreats where house-keepers foregather and the worm dieth seldom.

　　

　　I rented out my third floor, back, this evening,

　　

　　said Mrs. Purdy,

　　

　　across a fine circle of foam.

　　

　　A young man took it. He went up to

　　

　　bed two hours ago.

　　

　　Now, did ye, Mrs. Purdy, ma'am?

　　

　　said Mrs. McCool, with intense

　　

　　admiration.

　　

　　You do be a wonder for rentin' rooms of that kind. And

　　

　　did ye tell him, then?

　　

　　she concluded in a husky whisper, laden with

　　

　　mystery.

　　

　　Rooms,

　　

　　said Mrs. Purdy, in her furriest tones,

　　

　　are furnished for

　　

　　to rent. I did not tell him, Mrs. McCool.

　　

　　'Tis right ye are, ma'am; 'tis by renting rooms we kape alive. Ye

　　

　　have the rale sense for business, ma'am. There be many people will

　　

　　rayjict the rentin' of a room if they be tould a suicide has been

　　

　　after dyin' in the bed of it.

　　

　　As you say, we has our living to be making,

　　

　　remarked Mrs. Purdy.

　　

　　Yis, ma'am; 'tis true. 'Tis just one wake ago this day I helped ye

　　

　　lay out the third floor, back. A pretty slip of a colleen she was to

　　

　　be killin' herself wid the gas--a swate little face she had, Mrs.

　　

　　Purdy, ma'am.

　　

　　She'd a-been called handsome, as you say,

　　

　　said Mrs. Purdy,

　　

　　assenting but critical,

　　

　　but for that mole she had a-growin' by her

　　

　　left eyebrow. Do fill up your glass again, Mrs. McCool.