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On my return to London next day I remember sitting in my room and sadly and seriously trying to make up my mind whether or not you really were what you seemed to me to be, so full of terrible defects, so utterly ruinous both to yourself and to others[16a], so fatal a one to know even or to be with. For a whole week I thought about it, and wondered if after all I was not unjust and mistaken in my estimate of you. At the end of the week a letter from your mother is handed in. It expressed to the full every feeling I myself had about you. In it she spoke of your blind exaggerated vanity which made you despise your home, and treat your elder brother — that candidissima anima—“as a Philistine:” of your temper which made her afraid to speak to you about your life, the life she felt, she knew, you were leading: about your conduct in money matters, so distressing to her in more ways than one: of the degeneration and change that had taken place in you. She saw, of course, that heredity had burdened you with a terrible legacy, and frankly admitted it, admitted it with terror: he is “the one of my children who has inherited the fatal Douglas temperament,” she wrote of you. At the end she stated that she felt bound to declare that your friendship with me, in her opinion, had so intensified your vanity that it had become the source of all your faults, and earnestly begged me not, to meet you abroad. I wrote to her at once, in reply, and told her that I agreed entirely with every word she had said. I added much more. I went as far as I could possibly go. I told her that the origin of our friendship was you in your undergraduate days at Oxford coming to beg me to help you in very serious trouble of a very particular character. I told her that your life had been continually in the same manner troubled[16b]. The reason of your going to Belgium you had placed to the fault of your companion in that journey, and your mother had reproached me with having introduced you to him. I replaced the fault on the right shoulders, on yours. I assured her at the end that I had not the smallest intention of meeting you abroad, and begged her to try to keep you there[16c], either as an honorary attaché[16d], if that were possible, or to learn modern languages, if it were not; or for any reason she chose, at least during two or three years, and for your sake as well as for mine.
记得我第二天回到伦敦，坐在房间里悲伤而又认真地思索着，你到底是不是我认为的那样，全是可怕的缺点，对己对人都是祸害一个[16a]，同你相处甚至相识，就要酿成致命之祸。整整一个星期，我都在想这事，捉摸着是不是真的看错了人，把你冤枉了。那个周末一封你母亲的信送来了。信中将我自己对你存有的每一个印象说得透彻无遗。说到你那盲目地自视甚高的虚荣心，这使你看不起自己的家，把你的兄长——那个老实人——看作市侩庸人；说到你的脾气使她不敢同你谈你的生活，她感到、她知道你过的那种生活；说到你在处理钱财事务上的行为，在在让她苦恼丧气；还说到你的变化和堕落。当然她看到了，遗传让你背上了一个可怕的性格负担，并且也坦白地承认、心怀恐惧地承认：他是“我孩子中继承了致命的道格拉斯家族禀性的那一个”，信中是这么说你的。最后她说她觉得只好挑明，你同我的交往依她看是大大加强了你的虚荣心，以致成为你一切过失的根源，并恳切地请求我别在国外同你会面。我马上给她回信，说我对她讲的每句话都完全同意。还加了许多，把我可能说的都说了。我告诉她，我们的友谊源自你在牛津读大学时，那时你碰上了非常特别又非常严重的麻烦，向我求助。我告诉她，你的生活仍旧如此，仍旧为同样的麻烦所困扰[16b]。你把去比利时的原因归咎于同行友伴的过失，你母亲就怪我把他介绍给你。我于是把责任放到了该放的肩膀上，那就是你的肩膀。我最后向她保证，我一点也没这意思要同你在国外见面，并央求她想法把你留在埃及[16c]，可能的话在使馆里供个荣誉官职[16d]，不行的话就在那里学习现代语言，或者以任何一个她认为合适的理由。但为你好也为我好，至少要留在那儿两三年。16