The grey nurse resumed her knitting as Peter Walsh, on the hot seat beside her, began snoring. In her grey dress, moving her hands indefatigably yet quietly, she seemed like the champion of the rights of sleepers, like one of those spectral presences which rise in twilight in woods made of sky and branches. The solitary traveller, haunter of lanes, disturber of ferns, and devastator of great hemlock plants, looking up, suddenly sees the giant figure at the end of the ride.
白发的保姆继续织着毛衣，彼德·沃尔什坐在她旁边暖烘烘的位子上，打起了呼噜。她穿着灰色的连衣裙，两只手不停地忙活，但又悄无声息，似乎是睡眠的捍卫者，是黄昏时在天空与树枝交相辉映的森林里飞舞着的幽灵。他好似一个孤独的旅人，出没于小径，惊扰了蕨草，踩坏了大毒芹。他抬头张望，突然看见了道路尽头一个硕大的身影。
By conviction an atheist perhaps, he is taken by surprise with moments of extraordinary exaltation. Nothing exists outside us except a state of mind, he thinks; a desire for solace, for relief, for something outside these miserable pigmies, these feeble, these ugly, these craven men and women. But if he can conceive of her, then in some sort she exists, he thinks, and advancing down the path with his eyes upon sky and branches he rapidly endows them with womanhood; sees with amazement how grave they become; how majestically, as the breeze stirs them, they dispense with a dark flutter of the leaves charity, comprehension, absolution, and then, flinging themselves suddenly aloft, confound the piety of their aspect with a wild carouse.
也许他确信自己是个无神论者，对于一时的激动兴奋总会诧异不已。在我们的身体之外，只存在着一种心情，他想，一种渴望，渴望得到安慰与解脱，渴望在那些羸弱的、丑陋的、怯懦的男女那侏儒般的可怜肉身之外还存在着些什么。但如果他能幻想出她来，那她就会以某种形态存在，他思索着，走下了小道，仰望着天空与树枝，迅即将这些幻化成女人的身姿。他惊愕地发现她们变得多么严肃。微风吹动着，她们显得多么庄重，在枝叶隐隐地颤动中，散布着仁慈、理解与宽容，然后，她们在突然间飞向高空，将她们虔诚的外表与想要寻欢作乐的狂野内心混合在了一起。
Such are the visions which ceaselessly float up, pace beside, put their faces in front of, the actual thing; often overpowering the solitary traveller and taking away from him the sense of the earth, the wish to return, and giving him for substitute a general peace, as if (so he thinks as he advances down the forest ride) all this fever of living were simplicity itself; and myriads of things merged in one thing; and this figure, made of sky and branches as it is, had risen from the troubled sea (he is elderly, past fifty now) as a shape might be sucked up out of the waves to shower down from her magnificent hands compassion, comprehension, absolution. So, he thinks, may I never go back to the lamplight; to the sitting-room; never finish my book; never knock out my pipe; never ring for Mrs. Turner to clear away; rather let me walk straight on to this great figure, who will, with a toss of her head, mount me on her streamers and let me blow to nothingness with the rest.
如此景象，不断地浮现，徘徊在身边，并将它们的脸庞置于真实事物之前。它总是占据着旅人的心，夺走他对大地的依恋，夺走他回归的愿望，给他以全面的平和作为补偿，就好像（他走下林间小径，如是想着）对生活的全部渴望都只是单纯的事，成千上万桩事情合成了一件事，而这个人形，这个由天空和树枝组成的人形，已经从汹涌的海面上升起（他年纪大了，都五十多岁了），正如一个也许是由海浪变幻而来的形体，从她那高贵的双手中撒下同情、理解与赦免。那么，他兀自思量：愿我再也不用回到那灯火辉煌的世界，再也不用回到起居室，再也不用写完我的书，再也不用倾倒烟斗里的烟灰，再也不用按铃让特纳太太来收拾房间。我情愿笔直走上前，走到这个伟大的人形面前，而她会甩一甩头，把我放在她的飘带上，让我与所有的一切都灰飞烟灭呢。
Such are the visions which proffer great cornucopias full of fruit to the solitary traveller, or murmur in his ear like sirens lolloping away on the green sea waves, or are dashed in his face like bunches of roses, or rise to the surface like pale faces which fishermen flounder through floods to embrace.
如此景象，犹如给孤独的旅人献上了一只盛满水果的大羊角盘，或如在绿色海浪里嬉戏的海妖一般在他的耳边低语，又如一束束玫瑰在他的脸上轻拂，或像渔夫冲破巨浪想要去抱住的苍白面孔一般浮出了水面。
Such are the visions. The solitary traveller is soon beyond the wood; and there, coming to the door with shaded eyes, possibly to look for his return, with hands raised, with white apron blowing, is an elderly woman who seems (so powerful is this infirmity) to seek, over a desert, a lost son; to search for a rider destroyed; to be the figure of the mother whose sons have been killed in the battles of the world. So, as the solitary traveller advances down the village street where the women stand knitting and the men dig in the garden, the evening seems ominous; the figures still; as if some august fate, known to them, awaited without fear, were about to sweep them into complete annihilation.
如此景象。孤独的旅人很快就要越过森林了，在那儿，一个年迈的女人来到门口，她的目光浑浊，也许是在期待他的归来，她举起手，身上的白围裙飘扬着。她仿佛（如此脆弱的一个人，却又那么震撼人心）是在沙漠里寻找她失散的儿子，寻觅一个被摧残的骑士，她仿佛是个在世界大战中战死沙场的儿子的母亲。于是，当孤独的旅人沿着乡间小道而下，女人们站在那里织绒线，男人们在菜园子里锄地，这个黄昏似乎透出不祥之兆。静止的人们，如同某种威严的命运——他们了解那样的命运，他们无畏地等待着它——即将如风卷残云般将他们抛入彻底的虚无。
Indoors among ordinary things, the cupboard, the table, the window- sill with its geraniums, suddenly the outline of the landlady, bending to remove the cloth, becomes soft with light, an adorable emblem which only the recollection of cold human contacts forbids us to embrace. She takes the marmalade; she shuts it in the cupboard.
在室内的日用品中，食橱、桌子，窗台上的天竺葵，突然出现了女房东的身影，她弯腰拿掉了桌布，在灯光下她的身影显得极其柔和，成为了一个可爱的化身，仅仅因为想起了冰冷的人际关系，才阻止了我们去拥抱她。她拿走了橘子酱，把它放进了食橱。
“There is nothing more to-night, sir?”
“今晚没别的事了吗，先生？”
But to whom does the solitary traveller make reply?
可孤独的旅人究竟要对谁作出回答呢？
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