托伯莫里

托伯莫里

Tobermory

那是八月下旬一个阴冷、经雨水洗刷过的午后；在这段尴尬难言的季节里，鹧鸪尚安然无恙或是躺在冷库中，且别无猎物可逐——除非某人的领地北临布里斯托尔海峡，在此情形下，他尚可名正言顺地纵马飞驰，追捕肥硕的红鹿。

It was a chill, rain-washed afternoon of a late August day, that indefinite season when partridges are still in security or cold storage, and there is nothing to hunt—unless one is bounded on the north by the Bristol Channel, in which case one may lawfully gallop after fat red stags.

布莱姆利夫人的庄园聚会并非北临布里斯托尔海峡，因此在这个特别的下午，她的宾客们全都齐聚在茶桌周围。

Lady Blemley’s house-party was not bounded on the north by the Bristol Channel, hence there was a full gathering of her guests round the tea-table on this particular afternoon.

尽管时令百无聊赖，场面亦显平淡，但在座众人身上却不见丝毫疲惫焦躁的迹象——那种焦躁通常意味着对自动钢琴的畏惧，以及对竞叫桥牌的隐秘渴望。

And, in spite of the blankness of the season and the triteness of the occasion, there was no trace in the company of that fatigued restlessness which means a dread of the pianola and a subdued hankering for auction bridge.

全场宾客毫无掩饰、目瞪口呆的注意力，全都聚焦在科尼利厄斯·阿平先生那张貌不惊人且缺乏存在感的面孔上。在布莱姆利夫人的所有客人中，他赴会时的名声最为模棱两可。

The undisguised openmouthed attention of the entire party was fixed on the homely negative personality of Mr. Cornelius Appin. Of all her guests, he was the one who had come to Lady Blemley with the vaguest reputation.

曾有人称赞他“聪明过人”，而女主人向他发出邀请，也是抱着适度的期待，指望他至少能将自己聪慧才智的某一部分贡献出来，为聚会助兴。

Some one had said he was “clever,” and he had got his invitation in the moderate expectation, on the part of his hostess, that some portion at least of his cleverness would be contributed to the general entertainment.

然而直到当天下午茶歇，她仍未能发掘出他的聪明究竟体现在何处——倘若真有的话。他既非妙语连珠的机智之士，亦非槌球冠军，既无摄人心魄的魅力，也未能发起业余戏剧表演。

Until tea-time that day she had been unable to discover in what direction, if any, his cleverness lay. He was neither a wit nor a croquet champion, a hypnotic force nor a begetter of amateur theatricals.

他的外表也丝毫不像那种女人愿意对其智力上的诸多缺陷宽大为怀的男子。他已沦为纯粹的“阿平先生”，而“科尼利厄斯”这个教名，看起来不过是一场显而易见的受洗虚张声势罢了。

Neither did his exterior suggest the sort of man in whom women are willing to pardon a generous measure of mental deficiency. He had subsided into mere Mr. Appin, and the Cornelius seemed a piece of transparent baptismal bluff.

而此刻，他却声称自己向世人公布了一项重大发现，相比之下，火药的发明、印刷术的面世以及蒸汽机车的问世，都成了无足轻重的琐碎小事。

And now he was claiming to have launched on the world a discovery beside which the invention of gunpowder, of the printing-press, and of steam locomotion were inconsiderable trifles.

近几十年来，科学在诸多领域取得了令人眼花缭乱的飞跃，但眼下这件事似乎更属于神迹的范畴，而非科学成就。

Science had made bewildering strides in many directions during recent decades, but this thing seemed to belong to the domain of miracle rather than to scientific achievement.

“难道你真的要我们相信，”威尔弗里德爵士正说道，“你发现了一种教授动物掌握人类语言艺术的方法，而且我们亲爱的老托伯莫里已成为你的首位得意门生？”

“And do you really ask us to believe,” Sir Wilfrid was saying, “that you have discovered a means for instructing animals in the art of human speech, and that dear old Tobermory has proved your first successful pupil?”

“这是我过去十七年来潜心钻研的课题，”阿平先生道，“但直到最近八九个月，我才迎来了初露端倪的成功微光。

“It is a problem at which I have worked for the last seventeen years,” said Mr. Appin, “but only during the last eight or nine months have I been rewarded with glimmerings of success.

当然，我拿数以千计的动物做过实验，但近来仅限于猫——这些不可思议的生灵既如此奇妙地融入了我们的人类文明，同时又完整保留了其高度发达的野性本能。

Of course I have experimented with thousands of animals, but latterly only with cats, those wonderful creatures which have assimilated themselves so marvellously with our civilization while retaining all their highly developed feral instincts.

在猫群之中，偶尔也能遇见智力超群卓绝之辈，正如在芸芸众生中亦有英才一般；一周前我与托伯莫里相识时，便立刻看出自己遇上了一只智力超凡的‘超猫’。

Here and there among cats one comes across an outstanding superior intellect, just as one does among the ruck of human beings, and when I made the acquaintance of Tobermory a week ago I saw at once that I was in contact with a ‘Beyond-cat’ of extraordinary intelligence.