第五十四章
As we walked along I reflected on a circumstance which all that I had lately heard about Strickland forced on my attention. Here, on this remote island, he seemed to have aroused none of the detestation with which he was regarded at home, but compassion rather; and his vagaries were accepted with tolerance. To these people, native and European, he was a queer fish, but they were used to queer fish, and they took him for granted; the world was full of odd persons, who did odd things; and perhaps they knew that a man is not what he wants to be, but what he must be. In England and France he was the square peg in the round hole, but here the holes were any sort of shape, and no sort of peg was quite amiss. I do not think he was any gentler here, less selfish or less brutal, but the circumstances were more favourable. If he had spent his life amid these surroundings he might have passed for no worse a man than another. He received here what he neither expected nor wanted among his own people—sympathy.
我一面走路一面思索著他到這里以后的景況。最近一些日子我聽到思特里克蘭德不少軼事，不能不認真思考一下這里的環境。他在這個遙遠的海島上似乎同在歐洲不一樣，一點兒也沒有引起別人的厭嫌；相反地，人們對他都很同情，他的奇行怪癖也沒有人感到詫異。在這里的人們——不論是歐洲人或當地土著—— 眼里，他當然是個怪人，但是這里的人對于所謂怪人已經習以為常，因此對他從不另眼相看。世界上有的是怪人，他們的舉止離奇古怪；也許這里的居民更能理解，一般人都不是他們想要做的那種人，而是他們不得不做的那種人。在英國或法國，思特里克蘭德可以說是個不合時宜的人，“圓孔里插了個方塞子”，而在這里卻有各種形式的孔，什么樣子的塞子都能各得其所。我并不認為他到這里以后脾氣比過去變好了，不那么自私了，或者更富于人情味兒了；而是這里的環境對他比以前適合了。假如他過去就在這里生活，人們就不會注意到他的那些劣點了。他在這里所經歷到的是他在本鄉本土不敢希冀、從未要求的——他在這里得到的是同情。
I tried to tell Captain Brunot something of the astonishment with which this filled me, and for a little while he did not answer.
這一切我感到非常驚奇；我把我的想法試著同布呂諾船長談了一些。他并沒有立刻回答我什么。
"It is not strange that I, at all events, should have had sympathy for him," he said at last, "for, though perhaps neither of us knew it, we were both aiming at the same thing."
“我對他感到同情其實也沒有什么奇怪的，”最后他說，“因為，盡管我們兩人可能誰也不知道，我們尋求的卻是同一件東西。”
"What on earth can it be that two people so dissimilar as you and Strickland could aim at?" I asked, smiling.
“你同思特里克蘭德完全是不同類型的人，有什么東西會是你們倆共同尋求的呢？”
"Beauty."
“美。”
"A large order," I murmured.
“你們尋求的東西太高了，”我咕嚕了一句。
"Do you know how men can be so obsessed by love that they are deaf and blind to everything else in the world? They are as little their own masters as the slaves chained to the benches of a galley. The passion that held Strickland in bondage was no less tyrannical than love."
“你知道不知道，一個人要是墜入情網，就可能對世界上一切事物都聽而不聞、視而不見了？那時候他就會象古代鎖在木船里搖槳的奴隸一樣，身心都不是自己所有了。把思特里克蘭德俘獲住的熱情正同愛情一樣，一點自由也不給他。”
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