湖北师范学院外国语学院喻劲梅编译
一位不善言辞的客人登门拜访，也许仅仅在几分钟之内，接待他的这家的小主人，一个15岁的小姑娘，编出了一个与客厅里敞开的落地长窗有关的恐怖故事，吓得客人落荒而逃。小姑娘真是天才的故事编造者，而在她身后，这篇著名短篇小说的作者，苏格兰裔杰出小说家赫克托・门罗(Hector Hugh Munro．1870―1916，笔名萨基)，才是真正的天才的故事写作者。尽管萨基也出版有数部长篇小说，但最为人们称道的还是他的短篇作品。这些作品机智、俏皮、奇特，故事结构巧妙，多以异峰突起式的意外结局点明主题。
“My aunt will be down presently, Mr. Nuttel,” said a very self-possessed young lady of fifteen, “in the meantime you must try and put up with me.”
Framton Nuttel endeavoured to say the correct something which should duly flatter the niece of the moment without unduly discounting the aunt that was to come. Privately he doubted more than ever whether these formal visits on a succession of total strangers would do much towards helping the nerve cure which he was supposed to be undergoing.
“I know how it will be,” his sister had said when he was preparing to migrate to this rural retreat, “you will bury yourself down there and not speak to a living soul, and your nerves will be worse than ever from moping. I shall just give you letters of introduction to all the people I know there. Some of them, as far as I can remember, were quite nice.”
Framton wondered whether Mrs. Sappleton, the lady to whom he was presenting one of the letters of introduction came into the nice division.
“Do you know many of the people round here?” asked the niece, when she judged that they had had sufficient silent communication.
“Hardly a soul,” said Framton. “My sister was staying here, at the rectory, you know, some four years ago, and she gave me letters of introduction to some of the people here.”
He made the last statement in a tone of distinct regret.
“Then you know practically nothing about my aunt?” pursued the self-possessed young lady.
“Only her name and address,” admitted the caller. He was wondering whether Mrs. Sappleton was in the married or widowed state. An undefinable something about the room seemed to suggest masculine habitation.
“Her great tragedy happened just three years ago,” said the child, “that would be since your sister’s time.”
“Her tragedy?” asked Framton; somehow in this restful country spot tragedies seemed out of place.
“You may wonder why we keep that window wide open on an October afternoon,” said the niece, indicating a large French window that opened on to a lawn.
“It is quite warm for the time of the year,” said Framton, “but has that window got anything to do with the tragedy?”
“Out through that window, three years ago to a day, her husband and her two young brothers went off for their day’s shooting. They never came back. In crossing the moor to their favorite snipe-shooting ground they were all three engulfed in a treacherous piece of bog. It had been that dreadful wet summer, you know, and places that were safe in other years gave way suddenly without warning. Their bodies were never recovered. That was the dreadful part of it.” Here the child’s voice lost its self-possessed note and became falteringly human. “Poor aunt always thinks that they will come back someday, they and the little brown spaniel that was lost with them, and walk in at that window just as they used to do. That is why the window is kept open every evening till it is quite dusk. Poor dear aunt, she has often told me how they went out, her husband with his white waterproof coat over his arm, and Ronnie, her youngest brother, singing ‘Bertie, why do you bound?’ as he always did to tease her, because she said it got on her nerves. Do you know, sometimes on still, quiet evenings like this, I almost get a creepy feeling that they will all walk in through that window―”
She broke off with a little shudder. It was a relief to Framton when the aunt bustled into the room with a whirl of apologies for being late in making her appearance.
“I hope Vera has been amusing you?” she said.
“She has been very interesting,” said Framton.
“I hope you don’t mind the open window,” said Mrs. Sappleton briskly; “my husband and brothers will be Home directly from shooting, and they always come in this way. They’ve been out for snipe in the marshes today, so they’ll make a fine mess over my poor carpets. So like you menfolk, isn’t it?”
She rattled on cheerfully about the shooting and the scarcity of birds, and the prospects for duck in the winter. To Framton it was all purely horrible. He made a desperate but only partially successful effort to turn the talk on to a less ghastly topic, he was conscious that his hostess was giving him only a fragment of her attention, and her eyes were constantly straying past him to the open window and the lawn beyond. It was certainly an unfortunate coincidence that he should have paid his visit on this tragic anniversary.
“The doctors agree in ordering me complete rest, an absence of mental excitement, and avoidance of anything in the nature of violent physical exercise,” announced Framton, who labored under the tolerably widespread delusion that total strangers and chance acquaintances are hungry for the least detail of one’s ailments and infirmities, their cause and cure. “On the matter of diet they are not so much in agreement,” he continued.
“No?” said Mrs. Sappleton, in a voice which only replaced a yawn at the last moment. Then she suddenly brightened into alert attention―but not to what Framton was saying.
“Here they are at last!” she cried. “Just in time for tea, and don’t they look as if they were muddy up to the eyes!”
Framton shivered slightly and turned towards the niece with a look intended to convey sympathetic comprehension. The child was staring out through the open window with a dazed horror in her eyes. In a chill shock of nameless fear Framton swung round in his seat and looked in the same direction.
In the deepening twilight three figures were walking across the lawn towards the window, they all carried guns under their arms, and one of them was additionally burdened with a white coat hung over his shoulders. A tired brown spaniel kept close at their heels. Noiselessly they neared the house, and then a hoarse young voice chanted out of the dusk: “I said, Bertie, why do you bound?”
Framton grabbed wildly at his stick and hat; the hall door, the gravel drive, and the front gate were dimly noted stages in his headlong retreat. A cyclist coming along the road had to run into the hedge to avoid imminent collision.
“Here we are, my dear,” said the bearer of the white mackintosh, coming in through the window, “fairly muddy, but most of it’s dry. Who was that who bolted out as we came up?”
“A most extraordinary man, a Mr. Nuttel,” said Mrs. Sappleton, “could only talk about his illnesses, and dashed off without a word of goodby or apology when you arrived. One would think he had seen a ghost.”
“I expect it was the spaniel,” said the niece calmly, “he told me he had a horror of dogs. He was once hunted into a cemetery somewhere on the banks of the Ganges by a pack of pariah dogs, and had to spend the night in a newly dug grave with the creatures snarling and grinning and foaming just above him. Enough to make anyone lose their nerve.”
Romance at short notice was her speciality.
“家姑母马上就要下来了，纳特尔先生。”一位神情自若的15岁的小女士道：“在此期间您得暂时忍耐我了。”
弗拉姆顿・纳特尔尽力想说几句得体的话，既要适时恭维了眼前的侄女，又不能不合时宜地贬低马上就要下楼来的姑妈。私下里他却比平常更加怀疑这种接连不断的正式拜访完全陌生之人对他正在进行的镇定神经的治疗是否有益。
“我知道是怎么回事。”他姐姐在他准备隐居乡里的时候对他道：“你会把自己完全埋起来，不跟一个活人讲话，你的神经会因为闷闷不乐而更加糟糕。我会多写几封信，将你介绍给我在当地认识的所有人，我记得有几个人相当不错的。”
弗拉姆顿在想，眼下他已经呈上一封介绍信的这位萨普尔顿太太是否属于不错的阵营。
“这一带您认识的人很多吗？”这位侄女问他，因为她觉得她与这位来访者之间已经沉默够久了。
“我几乎谁都不认识。”弗拉姆顿道。“家姐4年前曾在这儿小住，住在教区长公馆，您知道，她给了我几封写给这里一些人的引见信。”
他的最后一句话带上了明显的悔恨语气。
“这么说来您实际上对家姑母一无所知了？”这位神情自若的年轻女士追问道。
“只知道她的姓名和住址。”拜访者承认道。他在捉摸萨普尔顿太太是已婚呢还是寡居。房间里有某种难以描述的男性气息。
“她的重大悲剧就发生在3年前，”侄女道：“应该是令姐离开之后的事了。”
“她的悲剧？”弗拉姆顿问，在这个宁静的乡居之地，似乎绝无发生什么悲剧的可能。
“您也许会想，都到10月了，午后干吗还要把那扇窗户大开着。”侄女道，指着一扇通向草坪的巨大法式窗户。
“今年这个时候算是相当暖和了，”弗拉姆顿道：“不过听您这么说，那扇窗难道跟您提到的悲剧有关？”
“3年前的今天，她丈夫和她的两个幼弟就是通过那扇窗户出去打猎的。他们再也没有回来。经过那片沼泽地到他们喜欢的猎鹬场时，3个人全都被一片背信弃义的沼泽吞没。那年夏天潮湿得可怕，您知道，很多原本安全的地方突然就没法立足了。他们的尸体一直没找到。可怕的正是这个。”说到此处，侄女神情自若的态度也消失不见了，开始变得结结巴巴了。“可怜的姑母总是觉得他们总有一天会回来，他们，还有跟他们一起失踪的棕色长毛小狗，有一天还会通过那扇窗户进来，就像以前一样。就是因为这个，那扇窗户每天都从早开到晚。可怜的亲爱的姑母，她经常向我提起他们是怎么出去的，她丈夫的白色防水外套搭在胳膊上，她的小兄弟罗尼嘴里还唱着：“伯蒂，你为何奔跑？”他总唱这支歌来逗她，因为她说这支歌叫她心烦。您知道吗，有时候，比如像今天这样寂静、安静的傍晚，我都几乎有一种毛骨悚然的感觉，觉得他们就要通过那扇窗户――”
她微微哆嗦了一下。这时姑母匆忙走进房间，因为迟迟未能出面接待客人不断地道歉。姑妈的出现让弗拉姆顿感到一阵轻松。
“我想薇拉逗你开心了吧。”她道。
“她一直都非常有趣。”弗拉姆顿道。
“希望你别介意开着的那扇窗户，”萨普尔顿太太轻快地说道：“我丈夫跟我两个弟弟打完猎后会直接从那儿进屋，他们总是这么进来的。今天他们去沼泽地打鹬鸟去了，所以会把我可怜的地毯弄得一团糟。男人们就是这副德行，不是吗？”
她兴致勃勃地继续谈论着狩猎、鹬鸟的稀少和冬季打野鸭的前景。可是对弗拉姆顿而言，这一切确实太恐怖了。他不顾一切地想转到某个不那么吓人的话题，不过只取得了部分效果，他觉得女主人不能全神贯注地听他讲话，她的目光总是不断地穿过他，投向敞开的窗户和窗外的草坪。他竟然在这个悲剧的周年忌日前来拜访实在是个不幸的巧合。
“医生们都同意我要完全休息，禁绝精神上的兴奋并避免剧烈的体力运动。”弗拉姆顿道，屈从于那种可以理解的普遍的错觉，即完全的陌生人以及偶遇的相识总是急于了解你的病痛和疾患及其病源与治疗的最小细节。“至于饮食问题，他们的看法倒没这么一致。
“是吗？”萨普尔顿太太道，最后差点打了个哈欠。然后她又突然高兴地警觉起来――却并非针对弗拉姆顿的的疾病。
“他们终于来了！”她叫道。“正赶上茶点时间，他们简直除了眼睛浑身是泥，不是吗？”
弗拉姆顿轻轻哆嗦了一下，转向侄女，目光中想传递一种同情的理解。那个女孩子却惊恐万分地直直盯着敞开的窗户。弗拉姆顿在莫名的惊恐下打了个寒战，在座位上转了个身朝同样的方向望去。
在越来越深的暮色中，三个人影正穿过草坪走向那扇窗户，他们胳膊底下都夹着枪，其中一位的肩上还搭着件白色的外套。一条疲累的棕色小狗紧跟在他们身后。他们寂然无声地逼近房屋，突然一个嘶哑的年轻声音打破黄昏唱了起来：“我说，伯蒂，你为何奔跑？”
弗拉姆顿疯狂地抓起他的手杖和帽子，客厅的大门、砾石铺的车道以及院门在他匆忙的退却中像是一晃而过的布景。一位骑自行车的人，为了避免跟他迎头撞上，冲进了路旁的矮树丛里去了。
“我们回来了，我亲爱的，”拿着白色橡胶防水外套的那位从窗户一脚迈进屋里，“是有不少泥巴，不过身上大部分还是干的。我们一出现就马上跑掉的那位是谁？”
“非常特别的一个人，姓纳特尔，”萨普尔顿太太道：“只会谈论他的病情，你们一到，他连句再见或道歉的话都没有就冲了出去。人家会以为他见鬼了呢。”
“我想是小狗的缘故，”侄女平静地说道：“他告诉我他怕狗。他曾在恒河岸边被一群贱民的狗逼进了一个墓地，不得不在一个新挖的坟里面躲了一夜，那群狗就在他的头上龇牙咧嘴、满口喷沫。谁碰上都会惊慌失措的。
灵机一动，编造故事，是这位少女的拿手好戏。
（责编：张楚武）