英文名著阅读翻译-《飘》节选

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《飘》节选

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英文写作翻译频道为大家整理的《英文名著阅读翻译

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《飘》节选》，供大家参考。更多内容请看本站频道。

HOPE WAS ROLLING HIGH in every Southern heart as the

summer of 1863 came in. Despite privation and hardships,

despite food speculators and kindred scourges, despite death

and sickness and suffering which had now left their mark on

nearly every family, th

e South was again saying “One more

victory and the war is over,” saying it with even more happy

assurance than in the summer before. The Yankees were proving

a hard nut to crack but they were cracking at last.

Christmas of 1862 had been a happy one for Atlanta, for

the whole South. The Confederacy had scored a smashing

victory at Fredericksburg and the Yankee dead and wounded

were counted in the thousands. There was universal rejoicing

in that holiday season, rejoicing and thankfulness that the

tide was turning. The army in butternut were now seasoned

fighters, their generals had proven their mettle, and

everyone knew that when the campaign reopened in the spring,

the Yankees would be crushed for good and all.

Spring came and the fighting recommenced. May came and

the Confederacy won another great victory at Chancellorsville.

The South roared with elation.

Closer at home, a Union cavalry dash into Georgia had

been turned into a Confederate triumph. Folks were still

laughing and slapping each other on the back and saying

：

“Yes, sir! When old Nathan Bedford Forrest gets after them,

they better git!” Late in April, Colonel Straight and

eighteen hundred Yankee cavalry had made a surprise raid into

Georgia, aiming at Rome, only a little more than sixty miles

north of Atlanta. They had ambitious plans to cut the vitally

important railroad between Atlanta and Tennessee and then

swing southward into Atlanta to destroy the factories and the

war supplies concentrated there in that key city of the

Confederacy.

It was a bold stroke and it would have cost the South

dearly, except for Forrest. With only one-third as many men

—

but what men and what riders!

—

he had started after them,

engaged them before they even reached Rome, harassed them day

and night and finally captured the entire force!

The news reached Atlanta almost simultaneously with the

news of the victory at Chancellorsville, and the town fairly

rocked with exultation and with laughter. Chancellorsville

might be a more important victory but the capture of

St

reight’s raiders made the Yankees positively ridiculous.

“No, sir, they’d better not fool with old Forrest,”

Atlanta said gleefully as the story was told over and over.

The tide of the Confederacy’s fortune was running strong

and full now, sweeping the people jubilantly along on its

flood. True, the Yankees under Grant had been besieging

Vicksburg since the middle of May. True, the South had

suffered a sickening loss when Stonewall Jackson had been

fatally wounded at Chancellorsville. True, Georgia had lost

one of her bravest and most brilliant sons when General T. R.

R. Cobb had been killed at Fredericksburg. But the Yankees

just couldn’t stand any more defeats like Fredericksburg and

Chancellorsville. They’d have to give in, and then this

cruel war would be over.

The first days of July came and with them the rumor,

later confirmed by dispatches, that Lee was marching into

Pennsylvania. Lee in the enemy’s territory! Lee forcing

battle! This was the last fight of the war!

Atlanta was wild with excitement, pleasure and a hot

thirst for vengeance. Now the Yankees would know what it

meant to have the war carried into their own country. Now

they’d know what it meant to have fertile fields stripped,

horses and cattle stolen, houses burned, old men and boys

dragged off to prison and women and children turned out to

starve.

Everyone knew what the Yankees had done in Missouri,

Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia. Even small children could

recite with hate and fear the horrors the Yankees had

inflicted upon the conquered territory. Already Atlanta was

full of refugees from east Tennessee, and the town had heard

firsthand stories from them of what suffering they had gone

through. In that section, the Confederate sympathizers were

in the minority and the hand of war fell heavily upon them,

as it did on all the border states, neighbor informing

against neighbor and brother killing brother. These refugees

cried out to see Pennsylvania one solid sheet of flame, and

even the gentlest of old ladies wore expressions of grim

pleasure.

But when the news trickled back that Lee had issued

orders that no private property in Pennsylvania should be

touched, that looting would be punished by death and that the

army would pay for every article it requisitioned

—

then it

needed all the reverence the General had earned to save his

popularity. Not turn the men loose in the rich storehouses of

that prosperous state? What was General Lee thinking of? And

our boys so hungry and needing shoes and clothes and horses!

A hasty note from Darcy Meade to the doctor, the only

first-hand information Atlanta received during those first

days of July, was passed from hand to hand, with mounting

indignation.

“Pa, could you manage to get me a pair of boots? I’ve

been barefooted for two weeks now and

I don’t see any

prospects of getting another pair. If I didn’t have such big

feet I could get them off dead Yankees like the other boys,

but I’ve never yet found a Yankee whose feet were near as

big as mine. If you can get me some, don’t mail them.

Somebod

y would steal them on the way and I wouldn’t blame

them. Put Phil on the train and send him up with them. I’ll

write you soon, where we’ll be. Right now I don’t know,

except that we’re marching north. We’re in Maryland now and

everybody says we’re going on

into Pennsylvania. …

“Pa, I thought that we’d give the Yanks a taste of

their own medicine but the General says No, and personally I

don’t care to get shot just for the pleasure of burning some

Yank’s house. Pa, today we marched through the grandest

cor

nfields you ever saw. We don’t have corn like this down

home. Well, I must admit we did a bit of private looting in

that corn, for we were all pretty hungry and what the General

don’t know won’t hurt him. But that green corn didn’t do

us a bit of good. All the boys have got dysentery anyway, and

that corn made it worse. It’s easier to walk with a leg

wound than with dysentery. Pa, do try to manage some boots

for me. I’m a captain now and a captain ought to have boots,

even if be hasn’t got a new uniform or epaulets.”

But the army was in Pennsylvania

—

that was all that

mattered. One more victory and the war would be over, and

then Darcy Meade could have all the boots he wanted, and the

boys would come marching home and everybody would be happy

again. Mrs. Me

ade’s eyes grew wet as she pictured her

soldier son home at last, home to stay.

On the third of July, a sudden silence fell on the wires

from the north, a silence that lasted till midday of the

fourth when fragmentary and garbled reports began to trickle

into headquarters in Atlanta. There had been hard fighting in

Pennsylvania, near a little town named Gettysburg, a great

battle with all Lee’s army massed. The news was uncertain,

slow in coming, for the battle had been fought in the

enemy’s territory and

the reports came first through

Maryland, were relayed to Richmond and then to Atlanta.

Suspense grew and the beginnings of dread slowly crawled

over the town. Nothing was so bad as not knowing what was

happening. Families with sons at the front prayed fervently

that their boys were not in Pennsylvania, but those who knew

their relatives were in the same regiment with Darcy Meade

clamped their teeth and said it was an honor for them to be

in the big fight that would lick the Yankees for good and all.

In

Aunt Pitty’s house, the three women looked into one

another’s eyes with fear they could not conceal. Ashley was

in Darcy’s regiment.

On the fifth came evil tidings, not from the North but

from the West. Vicksburg had fallen, fallen after a long and

bitter siege, and practically all the Mississippi River, from

St. Louis to New Orleans was in the hands of the Yankees. The

Confederacy had been cut in two. At any other time, the news

of this disaster would have brought fear and lamentation to

Atlanta. But now they could give little thought to Vicksburg.

They were thinking of Lee in Pennsylvania, forcing battle.

Vicksburg’s loss would be no catastrophe if Lee won in the

East. There lay Philadelphia, New York, Washington. Their

capture would paralyze the North and more than cancel off the

defeat on the Mississippi.

The hours dragged by and the black shadow of calamity

brooded over the town, obscuring the hot sun until people

looked up startled into the sky as if incredulous that it was

clear and blue instead of murky and heavy with scudding

clouds. Everywhere, women gathered in knots, huddled in

groups on front porches, on sidewalks, even in the middle of

the streets, telling each other that no news is good news,

trying to comfort each other, trying to present a brave

appearance. But hideous rumors that Lee was killed, the

battle lost, and enormous casualty lists coming in, fled up

and down the quiet streets like darting bats. Though they

tried not to believe, whole neighborhoods, swayed by panic,

rushed to town, to the newspapers, to headquarters, pleading

for news, any news, even bad news.

Crowds formed at the depot, hoping for news from incoming

trains, at the telegraph office, in front of the harried

headquarters, before the locked doors of the newspapers. They

were oddly still crowds, crowds that quietly grew larger and

larger. There was no talking. Occasionally an old man’s

treble voice begged for news, and instead of inciting the

crowd to babbling it only intensified the hush as they heard

the oft- repeated

：

“Nothing on the wires yet from the North

except that there’s been fighting.” The fringe of women on

foot and in carriages grew greater and greater, and the heat

of the close-packed bodies and dust rising from restless feet

were suffocating. The women did not speak, but their pale set

faces pleaded with a mute eloquence that was louder than

wailing.

There was hardly a house in town that had not sent away a

son, a brother, a father, a lover, a husband, to this battle.

They all waited to hear the news that death had come to their

homes. They expected death. They did not expect defeat. That

thought they dismissed. Their men might be dying, even now,

on the sun-parched grass of the Pennsylvania hills. Even now

the Southern ranks might be falling like grain before a

hailstorm, but the Cause for which they fought could never

fall. They might be dying in thousands but, like the fruit of

the dragon’s teeth, thousands of fresh men in gray and

butternut with the Rebel yell on their lips would spring up

from the earth to take their places. Where these men would

come from, no one knew. They only knew, as surely as they

knew there was a just and jealous God in Heaven, that Lee was

miraculous and the Army of Virginia invincible.

Scarlett, Melanie and Miss Pittypat sat in front of the

Daily Examiner office in the carriage with the top back,

sheltered beneath their parasols. Scarlett’s hands shook so

that her parasol wobbled above her head, Pitty was so excited

her nose quivered in her round face like a rabbit’s, but

Melanie sat as though carved of stone, her dark eyes growing

larger and larger as time went by. She made only one remark

in two hours, as she took a vial of smelling salts from her

reticule and handed it to her aunt, the only time she had

ever spoken to her, in her whole life, with anything but

tenderest affection.

“Take this, Auntie, and use it if you feel faint. I warn

you if you do faint you’ll just have to faint and let Uncle

Peter take you home, for I’m not going to leave this place

till I hear about

—

ti

ll I hear. And I’m not going to let

Scarlett leave me, either.”

Scarlett had no intention of leaving, no intention of

placing herself where she could not have the first news of

Ashley. No, even if Miss Pitty died, she wouldn’t leave this

spot. Somewhere, Ashley was fighting, perhaps dying, and the

newspaper office was the only place where she could learn the

truth.

She looked about the crowd, picking out friends and

neighbors, Mrs. Meade with her bonnet askew and her arm

though that of fifteen-year-old Phil; the Misses McLure

trying to make their trembling upper lips cover their buck

teeth; Mrs. Elsing, erect as a Spartan mother, betraying her

inner turmoil only by the straggling gray locks that hung

from her chignon; and Fanny Elsing white as a ghost (Surely

Fanny wouldn’t be so worried about her brother Hugh. Had she

a real beau at the front that no one suspected?) Mrs.

Merriwether sat in her carriage patting Maybelle’s hand.

Maybelle looked so very pregnant it was a disgrace for her to

be out in public, even if she did have her shawl carefully

draped over her. Why should she be so worried? Nobody had

heard that the Louisiana troops were in Pennsylvania.

Probably her hairy little Zouave was safe in Richmond this

very minute.

There was a movement on the outskirts of the crowd and

those on foot gave way as Rhett Butler carefully edged his

horse toward Aunt Pitty’s c

arriage. Scarlett thought

：

He’s

got courage, coming here at this time when it wouldn’t take

anything to make this mob tear him to pieces because he

isn’t in uniform. As he came nearer, she thought she might

be the first to rend him. How dared he sit there on that fine

horse, in shining boots and handsome white linen suit so

sleek and well fed, smoking an expensive cigar, when Ashley

and all the other boys were fighting the Yankees, barefooted,

sweltering in the heat, hungry, their bellies rotten with

disease?

Bitter looks were thrown at him as he came slowly through

the press. Old men growled in their beards, and Mrs.

Merriwether who feared nothing rose slightly in her carriage

and said clearly

：

“Speculator!” in a tone that made the

word the foulest and most venomous of epithets. He paid no

heed to anyone but raised his hat to Melly and Aunt Pitty and,

riding to Scarlett’s side, leaned down and whispered：

“Don’t you think this would be the time for Dr. Meade to

give us his familiar speech about victory perching like a

screaming eagle on our banners?”

Her nerves taut with suspense, she turned on him as

swiftly as an angry cat, hot words bubbling to her lips, but

he stopped them with a gesture.

“I came to tell you ladies,” he said loudly, “that I

have been to headquarters and the first casualty lists are

coming in.”

At these words a hum rose among those near enough to hear

his remark, and the crowd surged, ready to turn and run down

Whitehall Street toward headquarters.

“Don’t go,” he called, rising in

his saddle and

holding up his hand. “The lists have been sent to both

newspapers and are now being printed. Stay where you are!”

“Oh, Captain Butler,” cried Melly, turning to him with

tears in her eyes. “How kind of you to come and tell us!

When will the

y be posted?”

“They should be out any minute, Madam. The reports have

been in the offices for half an hour now. The major in charge

didn’t want to let that out until the printing was done, for

fear the crowd would wreck the offices trying to get news. Ah!

Look!”

The side window of the newspaper office opened and a hand

was extended, bearing a sheaf of long narrow galley proofs,

smeared with fresh ink and thick with names closely printed.

The crowd fought for them, tearing the slips in half, those

obtaining them trying to back out through the crowd to read,

those behind pushing forward, crying

：

“Let me through!”

“Hold the reins,” said Rhett shortly, swinging to the

ground and tossing the bridle to Uncle Peter. They saw his

heavy shoulders towering above the crowd as he went through,

brutally pushing and shoving. In a while he was back, with

half a dozen in his hands. He tossed one to Melanie and

distributed the others among the ladies in the nearest

carriages, the Misses McLure, Mrs. Meade, Mrs. Merriwether,

Mrs. Elsing.

“Quick, Melly,” cried Scarlett, her heart in her throat,

exasperation sweeping her as she saw that Melly’s hands were

shaking so that it was impossible for her to read.

“Take it,” whispered Melly, and Scarlett snatched it

from her. The Ws. Where were the Ws? Oh, there they were at

the bottom and all smeared up. “White,” she read and her

voice shook, “Wilkens ... Winn ... Zebulon ... Oh, Melly,

he’s not on it! He’s not on it! Oh, for God’s sake, Auntie,

Melly, pick up the salts! Hold he

r up, Melly.”

Melly, weeping openly with happiness, steadied Miss

Pitty’s rolling head and held the smelling salts under her

nose. Scarlett braced the fat old lady on the other side, her

heart singing with joy. Ashley was alive. He wasn’t even

wounded. How good God was to pass him by! How

—

She heard a low moan and, turning, saw Fanny Elsing lay

her head on her mother’s bosom, saw the casualty list

flutter to the floor of the carriage, saw Mrs. Elsing’s thin

lips quiver as she gathered her daughter in her arms and said

quietly to the coachman

：

“Home. Quickly.” Scarlett took a

quick glance at the lists. Hugh Elsing was not listed. Fanny

must have had a beau and now he was dead. The crowd made way

in sympathetic silence for the Elsings’ carriage, and after

them followed the little wicker pony cart of the McLure girls.

Miss Faith was driving, her face like a rock, and for once,

her teeth were covered by her lips. Miss Hope, death in her

face, sat erect beside her, holding her sister’s skirt in a

tight grasp. They looked like very old women. Their young

brother Dallas was their darling and the only relative the

maiden ladies had in the world. Dallas was gone.

“Melly! Melly!” cried Maybelle, joy in her voice,

“René is safe! And Ashley, too! Oh, thank God!” The

shawl

had slipped from her shoulders and her condition was most

obvious but, for once, neither she nor Mrs. Merriwether cared.

“Oh, Mrs. Meade! René—” Her voice changed, swiftly,

“Melly, look!—Mrs. Meade, please! Darcy isn’t—?”

Mrs. Meade was looking down into her lap and she did not

raise her head when her name was called, but the face of

little Phil beside her was an open book that all might read.

“There, there, Mother,” he said, helplessly. Mrs. Meade,

looked up, meeting M

elanie’s eyes.

“He won’t need those boots now,” she said.

“Oh, darling!” cried Melly, beginning to sob, as she

shoved Aunt Pitty onto Scarlett’s shoulder and scrambled out

of the carriage and toward that of the doctor’s wife.

“Mother, you’ve still got me,” said Phil, in a forlorn

effort at comforting the white-

faced woman beside him. “And

if you’ll just let me, I’ll go kill all the Yank—”

Mrs. Meade clutched his arm as if she would never let it

go, said “No!” in a strangled voice and seemed to choke

.

“Phil Meade, you hush your mouth!” hissed Melanie,

climbing in beside Mrs. Meade and taking her in her arms.

“Do you think it’ll help your mother to have you off

getting shot too? I never heard anything so silly. Drive us

home, quick!”

She turned to Scarlett as Phil picked up the reins.

“As soon as you take Auntie home, come over to Mrs.

Meade’s. Captain Butler, can you get word to the doctor?

He’s at the hospital.”

The carriage moved off through the dispersing crowd. Some

of the women were weeping with joy, but most looked too

stunned to realize the heavy blows that had fallen upon them.

Scarlett bent her head over the blurred lists, reading

rapidly, to find names of friends. Now that Ashley was safe

she could think of other people. Oh, how long the list was!

How heavy the toll from Atlanta, from all of Georgia.

Good Heavens! “Calvert—Raiford, Lieutenant.” Raif!

Suddenly she remembered the day, so long ago, when they had

run away together but decided to come home at nightfall

because they were hungry and afraid of the dark.

“Fontaine—Joseph K., private,” Little bad

-tempered Joe!

And Sally hardly over having her baby!

“Munroe—LaFayette, Captain.” And Lafe had been engaged

to Cathleen Calvert. Poor Cathleen! Hers had been a double

loss, a brothe

r and a sweetheart. But Sally’s loss was

greater

—

a brother and a husband.

Oh, this was too terrible. She was almost afraid to read

further. Aunt Pitty was heaving and sighing on her shoulder

and, with small ceremony, Scarlett pushed her over into a

comer of the carriage and continued her reading.

Surely, surely

—there couldn’t be three “Tarleton”

names on that list. Perhaps

—

perhaps the hurried printer had

repeated the name by error. But no. There they were.

“Tarleton—Brenton, Lieutenant.” “Tarleton—

Stuart,

Corporal.” “Tarleton—Thomas, private.” And Boyd, dead the

first year of the war, was buried God knew where in Virginia.

All the Tarleton boys gone. Tom and the lazy long-legged

twins with their love of gossip and their absurd practical

jokes and Boyd who had the grace of a dancing master and the

tongue of a wasp.

She could not read any more. She could not know if any

other of those boys with whom she had grown up, danced,

flirted, kissed were on that list. She wished that she could

cry, do something to ease the iron fingers that were digging

into her throat.

“I’m sorry, Scarlett,” said Rhett. She looked up at

him. She had forgotten he was still there. “Many of your

friends?”

She nodded and struggled to speak

：

“About every family

in the County

—

and all

—all three of the Tarleton boys.”

His face was quiet, almost somber, and there was no

mocking in his eyes.

“And the end is not yet,” he said. “These are just the

first lists and they’re incomplete. There’ll be a longer

list tomorrow.” He lowered his voice so that those in the

near-

by carriages could not hear. “Scarlett, Gen

eral Lee

must have lost the battle. I heard at headquarters that he

had retreated back into Maryland.”

She raised frightened eyes to his, but her fear did not

spring from Lee’s defeat. Longer casualty lists tomorrow!

Tomorrow. She had not thought of tomorrow, so happy was she

at first that Ashley’s name was not on that list. Tomorrow.

Why, right this minute he might be dead and she would not

know it until tomorrow, or perhaps a week from tomorrow.

“Oh, Rhett, why do there have to be wars? It would have

been so much better for the Yankees to pay for the darkies

—

or even for us to give them the darkies free of charge than

to have this happen.”

“It isn’t the darkies, Scarlett. They’re just the

excuse. There’ll always be wars because men love wars. Women

do

n’t, but men do—yea, passing the love of women.”

His mouth twisted in his old smile and the seriousness

was gone from his face. He lifted his wide Panama hat.

“Good

-

by. I’m going to find Dr. Meade. I imagine the

irony of me being the one to tell him of

his son’s death

will be lost on him, just now. But later, he’ll probably

hate to think that a speculator brought the news of a hero’s

death.”

Scarlett put Miss Pitty to bed with a toddy, left Prissy

and Cookie in attendance and went down the street to the

Meade house. Mrs. Meade was upstairs with Phil, waiting her

husband’s return, and Melanie sat in the parlor, talking in

a low voice to a group of sympathetic neighbors. She was busy

with needle and scissors, altering a mourning dress that Mrs.

Elsing had lent to Mrs. Meade. Already the house was full of

the acrid smell of clothes boiling in homemade black dye for,