4-a-1

Not that Miss Emily would have accepted charity. Colonel Sartoris invented an involved tale to the effect that Miss Emily's father had loaned money to the town, which the town, as a matter of business, preferred this way of repaying. Only a man of Colonel Sartoris' generation and thought could have invented it, and only a woman could have believed it.

也并不是说爱米丽甘愿接受别人的怜悯，原来是沙多里斯上校编造了一大套无中生有的话，说是爱米丽的父亲曾经贷款给镇政府，因此，镇政府作为一种交易，宁愿以这种方式偿还。这一套话，只有沙多里斯一代的人以及像沙多里斯一样头脑的人才能编得出来，也只有女人才会相信。

4-a-2

So the next night, after midnight, four men crossed Miss Emily's lawn and slunk about the house like burglars, sniffing along the base of the brickwork and at the cellar openings while one of them performed a regular sowing motion with his hand out of a sack slung from his shoulder.

第二天午夜之后，有四个人穿过了爱米丽小姐家的草坪，像夜盗一样绕着屋子潜行，沿着墙角一带以及在地窖通风处拚命闻嗅，而其中一个人则用手从挎在肩上的袋子中掏出什么东西，不断做着播种的动作。

4-a-3

We had long thought of them as a tableau, Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed by the back-flung front door. So when she got to be thirty and was still single, we were not pleased exactly, but vindicated; even with insanity in the family she wouldn't have turned down all of her chances if they had really materialized.

长久以来，我们把这家人一直看做一幅画中的人物：身段苗条、穿着白衣的爱米丽小姐立在背后，她父亲叉开双脚的侧影在前面，背对爱米丽，手执一根马鞭，一扇向后开的前门恰好嵌住了他们俩的身影。因此当她年近三十，尚未婚配时，我们实在没有喜幸的心理，只是觉得先前的看法得到了证实。即令她家有着疯癫的血液吧，如果真有一切机会摆在她面前，她也不至于断然放过。

4-a-4

She carried her head high enough --- even when we believed that she was fallen. It was as if she demanded more than ever the recognition of her dignity as the last Grierson; as if it had wanted that touch of earthiness to reaffirm her imperviousness. Like when she bought the rat poison, the arsenic.

她把头抬得高高——甚至当我们深信她已经“堕落”的时候，仿佛她比任何时候都要求人们承认她作为格里尔生家族末代人物的尊严；仿佛她的尊严就需要同世俗的接触来重新肯定她那不受任何影响的性格。比如说，她那次买老鼠药、砒霜的情况。

4-a-5

And that was the last we saw of Homer Barron. And of Miss Emily for some time. The Negro man went in and out with the market basket, but the front door remained closed. Now and then we would see her at a window for a moment, as the men did that night when they sprinkled the lime, but for almost six months she did not appear on the streets. Then we knew that this was to be expected too; as if that quality of her father which had thwarted her woman's life so many times had been too virulent and too furious to die.

这就是我们最后一次看到荷默•伯隆。至于爱米丽小姐呢，我们则有一段时间没有见到过她。黑人拿着购货篮进进出出，可是正门却总是关着。偶尔可以看到她的身影在窗口晃过，就像人们在撒石灰那天夜晚曾经见到过的那样，但却有整整六个月的时间，她没有出现在大街上。我们觉得这并没有出乎意料；“她父亲的性格三番五次毁灭了她作为女性的一生，而他的性格太歹毒、太狂暴，阴魂不散。

4-a-6

When we next saw Miss Emily, she had grown fat and her hair was turning gray. During the next few years it grew grayer and grayer until it attained an even pepper-and- salt iron-gray, when it ceased turning. Up to the day of her death at seventy-four it was still that vigorous iron-gray, Iike the hair of an active man.

等到我们再见到爱米丽小姐时，她已经发胖了，头发也变得灰白。以后数年中，她的头发越变越灰，变得像胡椒盐似的铁灰色，颜色就不再变了。直到她七十四岁去世之日为止，还是保持着那旺盛的铁灰色，像是一个活跃的男子头发。

4-a-7

Now and then we would see her in one of the downstairs windows-she had evidently shut up the top floor of the house-like the carven torso of an idol in a niche, looking or not looking at us, we could never tell which. Thus she passed from generation to generation_dear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil, and perverse.

时不时我们在楼底下的一个窗口——她显然是把楼上封闭起来了——见到她的身影，像神龛中的一尊无头雕塑的躯干，我们说不上她究竟看没看我们。她就这样度过了一代又一代——高贵，宁静，无法逃避，无法接近，怪僻乖张。

4-a-8

She died in one of the downstairs rooms, in a heavy walnut bed with a curtain, her gray head propped on a pillow yellow and moldy with age and lack of sunlight.

她死在楼下一间屋子里，倒在笨重的胡桃木床上。床上还挂着床帷，她那长满铁灰头发的头枕着的枕头由于用了多年而又不见阳光，已经黄得发霉了。

4-a-9

The violence of breaking down the door seemed to fill this room with pervading dust. A thin, acrid pall as of the tomb seemed to lie everywhere upon this room decked and furnished as for a bridal.

猛烈地撞开门，震得屋里灰尘弥漫。这间布置得像新房的屋子，仿佛到处都笼罩着墓室一般的淡淡的阴惨惨的氛围。

4-a-10

For a long while we just stood there, looking down at the profound and fleshless grin. The body had apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace, but now the long sleep that outlasts love, that conquers even the grimace of love, had cuckolded him.

我们在那里站了好久，俯视着那没有肉的脸上令人莫测的龇牙咧嘴的样子。那尸体躺在那里，显出一度是拥抱的姿势，但那比爱情更能持久、那战胜了爱情的熬煎的永恒的长眠已经使他驯服了。