第一章（第5/8页）

Or for no reason at all, except that they are discontented children, and can't be satisfied whatever they get, let a woman do what she may.

或是根本没有因由，他们只是牢骚满腹的孩子，无论得到什么，无论女子付出再多，也不会感到满足。

However, came the war, Hilda and Connie were rushed home again after having been home already in May, to their mother's funeral. Before Christmas of 1914 both their German young men were dead: whereupon the sisters wept, and loved the young men passionately, but underneath forgot them. They didn't exist any more.

大战烽火燃起，希尔达和康妮被迫再度匆忙返乡避祸，那年五月，她们就曾回过家，为了料理母亲的后事。1914年圣诞节来临前，两人的德国情郎双双殒命，为此姐妹俩垂泪许久，毕竟彼此间有过轰轰烈烈的爱情，但在心底却已渐渐将他们遗忘。毕竟已是阴阳相隔。

Both sisters lived in their father's, really their mother's, Kensington housemixed with the young Cambridge group, the group that stood for 'freedom' and flannel trousers, and flannel shirts open at the neck, and a well-bred sort of emotional anarchy, and a whispering, murmuring sort of voice, and an ultra-sensitive sort of manner. Hilda, however, suddenly married a man ten years older than herself, an elder member of the same Cambridge group, a man with a fair amount of money, and a comfortable family job in the government: he also wrote philosophical essays. She lived with him in a smallish house in Westminster, and moved in that good sort of society of people in the government who are not tip-toppers, but who are, or would be, the real intelligent power in the nation: people who know what they're talking about, or talk as if they did.

姐妹俩住进肯辛顿（注：位于伦敦西部的行政区划）父亲家里，确切地讲，那里本来属于母亲，与剑桥大学学生团体的年轻成员们混居一处。这些家伙都标榜“自由”，穿法兰绒开领衫，配法兰绒长裤，满腹教养，笃信情感无政府主义，嗓音低沉含混，仪态反应异常灵敏。没料想，希尔达突然成婚，丈夫比她年长十岁，是该学生团体的资深成员，家财殷实，在政府中充当僚属，也常写点哲学文章。她跟随丈夫，住进威斯敏斯特一处不大的寓所，交往的都是政府阶层，虽说算不得头面人物，但也都是或者将会成为英国的真正智囊。他们知道自己在谈论些什么，或者装作自己无所不知。

Connie did a mild form of war-work, and consorted with the flannel-trousers Cambridge intransigents, who gently mocked at everything, so far. Her "friend" was a Clifford Chatterley, a young man of twenty-two, who had hurried home from Bonn, where he was studying the technicalities of coal-mining. He had previously spent two years at Cambridge. Now he had become a first lieutenant in a smart regiment, so he could mock at everything more becomingly in uniform.

康妮得到份清闲的战时工作，常与那些穿法兰绒长裤的剑桥学生为伴，他们有着独立的政治见解，总会措辞文雅地揶揄时事。她的“男友”名叫克利福德·查泰莱，时年22岁，当时正在德国波恩学习煤矿开采技术，刚刚匆忙赶回英伦。此前，他在剑桥修习过两年。如今则是一个厉害的军团里的陆军中尉，身着军装，更可以随意睥睨一切了。

Clifford Chatterley was more upper-class than Connie. Connie was well-to-do intelligentsia, but he was aristocracy. Not the big sort, but still it. His father was a baronet, and his mother had been a viscount's daughter.

克利福德·查泰莱的出身高过康妮。康妮出自富裕的知识分子家庭，而他却属于贵族阶层。虽说不是名门显族，但仍然沾得上边。其父为准男爵，其母未出阁时，也是子爵家的千金。

But Clifford, while he was better bred than Connie, and more "society", was in his own way more provincial and more timid. He was at his ease in the narrow "great world", that is, landed aristocracy society, but he was shy and nervous of all that other big world which consists of the vast hordes of the middle and lower classes, and foreigners. If the truth must be told, he was just a little bit frightened of middle-and lower-class humanity, and of foreigners not of his own class. He was, in some paralysing way, conscious of his own defencelessness, though he had all the defence of privilege. Which is curious, but a phenomenon of our day.

虽说克利福德的教养及身份都优于康妮，但却更加狭隘羞怯。置身狭小的“上流社会”——地主贵族阶层，他尚且感觉自在，但一旦与其他阶层——包括人数众多的中产阶级、下层民众、甚至外国人相处，他便羞怯不前，紧张兮兮。说白了，他对中低阶层的人们有些心怀畏惧，对并非贵族的外国人也有些抵触。虽然享有的特权都得到极力捍卫，但他仍然会觉得自己有些麻木但又惶惑无助。这种现象的确怪异，但却真实存在于我们这个时代。