纳尼亚传奇狮子女巫魔衣橱 《狮子女巫与魔衣橱》第1章:露茜窥探衣橱

《狮子女巫与魔衣橱》第1章:露茜窥探衣橱  

ONCE there were four children whose names were Peter
Susan
Edmund and Lucy. This story is about something that happened to them when they were sent away from London during the war because of the air-raids. They were sent to the house of an old Professor who lived in the heart of the country
ten miles from the nearest railway station and o miles from the nearest post office. He had no wife and he lived in a very large house with a housekeeper called Mrs Macready and three servants. (Their names were Ivy
Margaret and Betty
but they do not e into the story much.) He himself was a very old man with shaggy white hair whichgrew over most of his face as well as on his head
and they liked him almost at once; but on the first evening when he came out to meet them at the front door he was so odd-looking that Lucy (who was the youngest) was a little afraid of him
and Edmund (who was the next youngest) wanted to laugh and had to keep on pretending he was blowing his nose to hide it.
As soon as they had said good night to the Professor and gone upstairs on the first night
the boys came into the girls' room and they all talked it over.
"We've fallen on our feet and no mistake
" said Peter. "This is going to be perfectly splendid. That old chap will let us do anything we like."
“我们的确运气不错，”彼得说，“这儿太好了，我们高兴干啥就可以干啥，这位老先生是不会管我们的。”
"I think he's an old dear
" said Susan.
"Oh
e off it!" said Edmund
who was tired and pretending not to be tired
which always made him Bad-tempered. "Don't go on talking like that."
"Like what?" said Susan; "and anyway
it's time you were in bed."
"Trying to talk like Mother
" said Edmund. "And who are you to say when I'm to go to bed? Go to bed yourself."
"Hadn't we all better go to bed?" said Lucy. "There's sure to be a row if we're heard talking here."
"No there won't
" said Peter. "I tell you this is the sort of house where no one's going to mind what we do. Anyway
they won't hear us. It's about ten minutes' walk from here down to that dining-room
and any amount of stairs and passages in beeen."
"What's that noise?" said Lucy suddenly. It was a far larger house than she had ever been in before and the thought of all those long passages and rows of doors leading into empty rooms was beginning to make her feel a little creepy.
"It's only a bird
silly
" said Edmund.
"It's an owl
" said Peter. "This is going to be a wonderful place for birds. I shall go to bed now. I say
let's go and explore tomorrow. You might find anything in a place like this. Did you see those mountains as we came along? And the woods? There might be eagles. There might be stags. There'll be hawks."
"Badgers!" said Lucy.
"Foxes!" said Edmund.
"Rabbits!" said Susan.
But when next morning came there was a steady rain falling
so thick that when you looked out of the window you could see neither the mountains nor the woods nor even the stream in the garden.
"Of course it would be raining!" said Edmund. They had just finished their breakfast with the Professor and were upstairs in the room he had set apart for them - a long
low room with o windows looking out in one direction and o in another.
"Do stop grumbling
Ed
" said Susan. "Ten to one it'll clear up in an hour or so. And in the meantime we're pretty well off. There's a wireless and lots of books."
"Not for me"said Peter; "I'm going to explore in the house."
Everyone agreed to this and that was how the adventures began. It was the sort of house that you never seem to e to the end of
and it was full of unexpected places. The first few doors they tried led only into spare bedrooms
as everyone had expected that they would; but soon they came to a very long room full of pictures and there they found a suit of armour; and after that was a room all hung with green
with a harp in one corner; and then came three steps down and five steps up
and then a kind of little upstairs hall and a door that led out on to a balcony
and then a whole series of rooms that led into each other and were lined with books- most of them very old books and some bigger than a Bible in a church. And shortly after that they looked into a room that was quite empty except for one big wardrobe; the sort that has a looking-glass in the door. There was nothing else in the room at all except a dead blue-bottle on the window-sill.
"Nothing there!" said Peter
and they all trooped out again - all except Lucy. She stayed behind because she thought it would be worth while trying the door of the wardrobe
even though she felt almost sure that it would be locked. To her surprise it opened quite easily
and o moth-balls dropped out.
Looking into the inside
she saw several coats hanging up - mostly long fur coats. There was nothing Lucy liked so much as the smell and feel of fur. She immediately stepped into the wardrobe and got in among the coats and rubbed her face against them
leaving the door open
of course
because she knew that it is very foolish to shut oneself into any wardrobe. Soon she went further in and found that there was a second row of coats hanging up behind the first one. It was almost quite dark in there and she kept her arms stretched out in front of her so as not to bump her face into the back of the wardrobe. She took a step further in - then o or three steps always expecting to feel woodwork against the tips of her fingers. But she could not feel it.
"This must be a simply enormous wardrobe!" thought Lucy
going still further in and pushing the soft folds of the coats aside to make room for her. Then she noticed that there was something crunching under her feet. "I wonder is that more mothballs?" she thought
stooping down to feel it with her hand. But instead of feeling the hard
smooth wood of the floor of the wardrobe
she felt something soft and powdery and extremely cold. "This is very queer
" she said
and went on a step or o further.
Next moment she found that what was rubbing against her face and hands was no longer soft fur but something hard and rough and even prickly. "Why
it is just like branches of trees!" exclaimed Lucy. And then shesaw that there was a light ahead of her; not a few inches away where the back of the wardrobe ought to have been
but a long way off. Something cold and soft was falling on her. A moment later she found that she was standing in the middle of a wood at night-time with snow under her feet and snowflakes falling through the air.
Lucy felt a little frightened
but she felt very inquisitive and excited as well. She looked back over her shoulder and there
beeen the dark tree trunks; she could still see the open doorway of the wardrobe and even catch a glimpse of the empty room from which she had set out. (She had
of course
left the door open
for she knew that it is a very silly thing to shut oneself into a wardrobe.) It seemed to be still daylight there. "I can always get back if anything goes wrong
" thought Lucy. She began to walk forward
crunch-crunch over the snow and through the wood towards the other light. In about ten minutes she reached it and found it was a lamp-post. As she stood looking at it
wondering why there was a lamp-post in the middle of a wood and wondering what to do next
she heard a pitter patter of feet ing towards her. And soon after that a very strange person stepped out from among the trees into the light of the lamp-post.
He was only a little taller than Lucy herself and he carried over his head an umbrella
white with snow. From the waist upwards he was like a man
but his legs were shaped like a goat's (the hair on them was glossy black) and instead of feet he had goat's hoofs. He also had a tail
but Lucy did not notice this at first because it was neatly caught up over the arm that held the umbrella so as to keep it from trailing in the snow. He had a red woollen muffler round his neck and his skin was rather reddish too. He had a strange
but pleasant little face
with a short pointed beard and curly hair
and out of the hair there stuck o horns
one on each side of his forehead. One of his hands
as I have said
held the umbrella: in the other arm he carried several brown-paper parcels. What with the parcels and the snow it looked just as if he had been doing his Christmas shopping. He was a Faun. And when he saw Lucy he gave such a start of surprise that he dropped all his parcels.
"Goodness gracious me!" exclaimed the Faun.