狄更斯长篇小说 狄更斯双语小说:《董贝父子》第47章Part2

狄更斯双语小说:《董贝父子》第47章Part2  

Those who study the physical sciences
and bring them to bear upon the health of Man
tell us that if the noxious particles that rise from vitiated air were palpable to the sight
we should see them lowering in a dense black cloud above such haunts
and rolling slowly on to corrupt the better portions of a town. But if the moral pestilence that rises with them
and in the eternal laws of our Nature
is inseparable from them
could be made discernible too
how terrible the revelation! Then should we see depravity
impiety
drunkenness
theft
murder
and a long train of nameless sins against the natural affections and repulsions of mankind
overhanging the devoted spots
and creeping on
to blight the innocent and spread contagion among the pure. Then should we see how the same poisoned fountains that flow into our hospitals and lazar-houses
inundate the jails
and make the convict-ships swim deep
and roll across the seas
and over-run vast continents with crime. Then should we stand appalled to know
that where we generate disease to strike our children down and entail itself on unborn generations
there also we breed
by the same certain process
infancy that knows no innocence
youth without modesty or shame
maturity that is mature in nothing but in suffering and guilt
blasted old age that is a scandal on the form we bear. unnatural humanity! When we shall gather grapes from thorns
and figs from thistles; when fields of grain shall spring up from the offal in the bye-ways of our wicked cities
and roses bloom in the fat churchyards that they cherish; then we may look for natural humanity
and find it growing from such seed.
Oh for a good spirit who would take the house-tops off
with a mole potent and benignant hand than the lame demon in the tale
and show a Christian people what dark shapes issue from amidst their homes
to swell the retinue of the Destroying Angel as he moves forth among them! For only one night's view of the pale phantoms rising from the scenes of our too-long neglect; and from the thick and sullen air where Vice and Fever propagate together
raining the tremendous social retributions which are ever pouring down
and ever ing thicker! Bright and blest the morning that should rise on such a night: for men
delayed no more by stumbling-blocks of their own making
which are but specks of dust upon the path beeen them and eternity
would then apply themselves
like creatures of one mon origin
owing one duty to the Father of one family
and tending to one mon end
to make the world a better place!
Not the less bright and blest would that day be for rousing some who never have looked out upon the world of human life around them
to a knowledge of their own relation to it
and for making them acquainted with a perversion of nature in their own contracted sympathies and estimates; as great
and yet as natural in its development when once begun
as the lowest degradation known.'
But no such day had ever dawned on Mr Dombey
or his wife; and the course of each was taken.
Through six months that ensued upon his accident
they held the same relations one towards the other. A marble rock could not have stood more obdurately in his way than she; and no chilled spring
lying uncheered by any ray of light in the depths of a deep cave
could be more sullen or more cold than he.
The hope that had fluttered within her when the promise of her new home dawned
was quite gone from the heart of Florence now. That home was nearly o years old; and even the patient trust that was in her
could not survive the daily blight of such experience. If she had any lingering fancy in the nature of hope left
that Edith and her father might be happier together
in some distant time
she had none
now
that her father would ever love her. The little interval in which she had imagined that she saw some small relenting in him
was fotten in the long remembrance of his coldness since and before
or only remembered as a sorrowful delusion.
Florence loved him still
but
by degrees
had e to love him rather as some dear one who had been
or who might have been
than as the hard reality before her eyes. Something of the softened sadness with which she loved the memory of little Paul
or of her mother
seemed to enter now into her thoughts of him
and to make them
as it were
a dear remembrance. Whether it was that he was dead to her
and that partly for this reason
partly for his share in those old objects of her affection
and partly for the long association of him with hopes that were withered and tendernesses he had frozen
she could not have told; but the father whom she loved began to be a vague and dreamy idea to her: hardly more substantially connected with her real life
than the image she would sometimes conjure up
of her dear brother yet alive
and growing to be a man
who would protect and cherish her.
The change
if it may be called one
had stolen on her like the change from childhood to womanhood
and had e with it. Florence was almost seventeen
when
in her lonely musings
she was conscious of these thoughts.'
She was often alone now
for the old association beeen her and her Mama was greatly changed. At the time of her father's accident
and when he was lying in his room downstairs
Florence had first observed that Edith avoided her. Wounded and shocked
and yet unable to reconcile this with her affection when they did meet
she sought her in her own room at night
once more.
'Mama
' said Florence
stealing softly to her side
'have I offended you?'
Edith answered 'No.'