第二百四十四章 第二卷 珂赛特的疑虑
第二卷 珂赛特的疑虑
四月的上半月，冉阿让出了一趟门。读者知道，他隔很长时间才会这样出门一次，最多离开一两天。他去哪儿？没人知道，连珂赛特也不知道。只有一次，在他某次出门时，她曾乘出租马车送他到一条小死胡同的拐角，她看到胡同口写着：普朗什死胡同。他在那里下车，马车再把珂赛特送回巴比伦街。通常，冉阿让是在家里缺钱时才出门的。
所以冉阿让不在家。他说过：“我三天后回来。”
那天晚上，珂赛特独自待在客厅里。为了解闷，她打开了钢琴风琴，一边给自己伴奏，一边唱起《欧丽安特》中的合唱曲：“林中迷路的猎人们！”这大概是音乐领域中最美妙的篇章了。唱完后，她陷入了沉思。
突然，她似乎听到花园里有脚步声。
这不可能是她父亲，他不在家；也不可能是杜桑，她已经睡了，而且现在是晚上十点。
她走到客厅紧闭的百叶窗前，把耳朵贴上去。
听起来像是一个男人的脚步声，而且他走得很轻。
她迅速上楼，回到自己的房间，打开百叶窗上的小窗，朝花园里望去。圆月当空，一切清晰如昼。
那里空无一人。
她打开窗户。花园里一片寂静，街上也像往常一样空无一人。
珂赛特以为自己听错了。她觉得那只是幻觉，是韦伯那忧郁而壮丽的合唱曲在她心中引发的幻象。那乐曲在她面前展开令人恐惧的深渊，在目光下像眩晕的森林般颤抖，她仿佛能听到枯枝在那些在暮色中隐约可见的猎人不安的脚步下碎裂的声音。
她不再多想。
况且，珂赛特生性并不胆小。她的血管里流淌着波西米亚人和赤脚冒险家的血液。记得吧，她更像一只云雀，而不是鸽子。她骨子里有一种野性和勇敢。
第二天，天色稍早，临近黄昏时，她在花园里散步。在占据她心头的纷乱思绪中，她似乎又捕捉到与前一晚相似的声音，仿佛有人在暮色中，离她不远的树下走动；但她告诉自己，没有什么比两根相互摩擦的树枝更接近草地上的脚步声了，便没在意。再说，她什么也没看见。
她从“灌木丛”中走出来；还得穿过一小片草坪才能回到台阶前。
当她从灌木丛中出来时，刚在她身后升起的月亮将珂赛特的影子投射在她面前的草坪上。
珂赛特惊恐地停下脚步。
在她的影子旁边，月亮清晰地勾勒出另一个影子，一个特别令人惊骇和可怕的影子——一个戴着圆帽的影子。
那是一个男人的影子，他一定站在灌木丛的边缘，离珂赛特身后几步远。
她呆立了片刻，说不出话，喊不出声，动弹不得，也转不了头。
然后，她鼓起所有勇气，决然地转过身去。
那里空无一人。
她朝地上看去。影子消失了。
她重新走进灌木丛，大胆地搜查了每个角落，一直走到大门，什么也没发现。
她感到一阵彻骨的寒意。这又是幻觉吗？什么！连续两天！一次幻觉或许情有可原，但两次呢？令人不安的是，那个影子肯定不是幽灵。幽灵不戴圆帽。
第二天，冉阿让回来了。珂赛特把她听到和看到的事告诉了他。她想得到安慰，想看到父亲耸耸肩，对她说：“你个小傻瓜。”
冉阿让却担心起来。
“这不可能是什么事。”他说。
他找了个借口离开她，走进花园，她看到他非常仔细地检查了大门。
夜里，她醒了；这一次她确信无疑，她清楚地听到有人在她窗下的台阶附近走动。她跑到小窗边，打开它。果然，花园里有一个男人，手里拿着一根粗木棍。她正要尖叫，月光照亮了那个男人的侧影。是她父亲。她回到床上，心里想：“他非常不安！”
冉阿让在那夜以及接下来的两夜都在花园里度过。珂赛特透过百叶窗的缝隙看到他。
第三夜，月相渐亏，升起得也更晚；大概凌晨一点钟，她听到一阵响亮的大笑声和父亲呼唤她的声音：
“珂赛特！”
她跳下床，披上晨衣，打开窗户。
父亲站在下面的草坪上。
“我把你叫醒是为了让你安心，”他说，“看，那是你戴着圆帽的影子。”
他指着月光映在草地上的一道影子，那确实很像一个戴着圆帽的人的幽灵。那是隔壁屋顶上一个带罩子的铁皮烟囱投下的影子。
珂赛特跟着他笑起来，所有阴郁的猜测都消散了。第二天早上，她和父亲一起吃早餐时，拿那个被铁皮烟囱阴影笼罩的阴森花园打趣。
冉阿让又完全平静了；至于珂赛特，她并没太在意烟囱是否真的正对着她看到（或自以为看到）的那道影子，也没在意月亮是否在天空的同一位置。
她没有质问自己：一个烟囱怎么会害怕被当场抓住，又怎么会在有人看它的影子时缩回去——因为珂赛特转过身时，那影子确实像是受了惊，而珂赛特对此深信不疑。珂赛特完全恢复了平静。这个证据在她看来已经足够，她完全不再去想晚上或夜里会不会有人在花园里走动。
然而，几天后，又发生了一件事。
During the first fortnight in April, Jean Valjean took a journey. This,
as the reader knows, happened from time to time, at very long
intervals. He remained absent a day or two days at the utmost. Where
did he go? No one knew, not even Cosette. Once only, on the occasion of
one of these departures, she had accompanied him in a hackney-coach as
far as a little blind-alley at the corner of which she read: _Impasse
de la Planchette_. There he alighted, and the coach took Cosette back
to the Rue de Babylone. It was usually when money was lacking in the
house that Jean Valjean took these little trips.
So Jean Valjean was absent. He had said: “I shall return in three
days.”
That evening, Cosette was alone in the drawing-room. In order to get
rid of her ennui, she had opened her piano-organ, and had begun to
sing, accompanying herself the while, the chorus from _Euryanthe_:
“Hunters astray in the wood!” which is probably the most beautiful
thing in all the sphere of music. When she had finished, she remained
wrapped in thought.
All at once, it seemed to her that she heard the sound of footsteps in
the garden.
It could not be her father, he was absent; it could not be Toussaint,
she was in bed, and it was ten o’clock at night.
She stepped to the shutter of the drawing-room, which was closed, and
laid her ear against it.
It seemed to her that it was the tread of a man, and that he was
walking very softly.
She mounted rapidly to the first floor, to her own chamber, opened a
small wicket in her shutter, and peeped into the garden. The moon was
at the full. Everything could be seen as plainly as by day.
There was no one there.
She opened the window. The garden was absolutely calm, and all that was
visible was that the street was deserted as usual.
Cosette thought that she had been mistaken. She thought that she had
heard a noise. It was a hallucination produced by the melancholy and
magnificent chorus of Weber, which lays open before the mind terrified
depths, which trembles before the gaze like a dizzy forest, and in
which one hears the crackling of dead branches beneath the uneasy tread
of the huntsmen of whom one catches a glimpse through the twilight.
She thought no more about it.
Moreover, Cosette was not very timid by nature. There flowed in her
veins some of the blood of the bohemian and the adventuress who runs
barefoot. It will be remembered that she was more of a lark than a
dove. There was a foundation of wildness and bravery in her.
On the following day, at an earlier hour, towards nightfall, she was
strolling in the garden. In the midst of the confused thoughts which
occupied her, she fancied that she caught for an instant a sound
similar to that of the preceding evening, as though some one were
walking beneath the trees in the dusk, and not very far from her; but
she told herself that nothing so closely resembles a step on the grass
as the friction of two branches which have moved from side to side, and
she paid no heed to it. Besides, she could see nothing.
She emerged from “the thicket”; she had still to cross a small lawn to
regain the steps.
The moon, which had just risen behind her, cast Cosette’s shadow in
front of her upon this lawn, as she came out from the shrubbery.
Cosette halted in alarm.
Beside her shadow, the moon outlined distinctly upon the turf another
shadow, which was particularly startling and terrible, a shadow which
had a round hat.
It was the shadow of a man, who must have been standing on the border
of the clump of shrubbery, a few paces in the rear of Cosette.
She stood for a moment without the power to speak, or cry, or call, or
stir, or turn her head.
Then she summoned up all her courage, and turned round resolutely.
There was no one there.
She glanced on the ground. The figure had disappeared.
She re-entered the thicket, searched the corners boldly, went as far as
the gate, and found nothing.
She felt herself absolutely chilled with terror. Was this another
hallucination? What! Two days in succession! One hallucination might
pass, but two hallucinations? The disquieting point about it was, that
the shadow had assuredly not been a phantom. Phantoms do not wear round
hats.
On the following day Jean Valjean returned. Cosette told him what she
thought she had heard and seen. She wanted to be reassured and to see
her father shrug his shoulders and say to her: “You are a little
goose.”
Jean Valjean grew anxious.
“It cannot be anything,” said he.
He left her under some pretext, and went into the garden, and she saw
him examining the gate with great attention.
During the night she woke up; this time she was sure, and she
distinctly heard some one walking close to the flight of steps beneath
her window. She ran to her little wicket and opened it. In point of
fact, there was a man in the garden, with a large club in his hand.
Just as she was about to scream, the moon lighted up the man’s profile.
It was her father. She returned to her bed, saying to herself: “He is
very uneasy!”
Jean Valjean passed that night and the two succeeding nights in the
garden. Cosette saw him through the hole in her shutter.
On the third night, the moon was on the wane, and had begun to rise
later; at one o’clock in the morning, possibly, she heard a loud burst
of laughter and her father’s voice calling her:—
“Cosette!”
She jumped out of bed, threw on her dressing-gown, and opened her
window.
Her father was standing on the grass-plot below.
“I have waked you for the purpose of reassuring you,” said he; “look,
there is your shadow with the round hat.”
And he pointed out to her on the turf a shadow cast by the moon, and
which did indeed, bear considerable resemblance to the spectre of a man
wearing a round hat. It was the shadow produced by a chimney-pipe of
sheet iron, with a hood, which rose above a neighboring roof.
Cosette joined in his laughter, all her lugubrious suppositions were
allayed, and the next morning, as she was at breakfast with her father,
she made merry over the sinister garden haunted by the shadows of iron
chimney-pots.
Jean Valjean became quite tranquil once more; as for Cosette, she did
not pay much attention to the question whether the chimney-pot was
really in the direction of the shadow which she had seen, or thought
she had seen, and whether the moon had been in the same spot in the
sky.
She did not question herself as to the peculiarity of a chimney-pot
which is afraid of being caught in the act, and which retires when some
one looks at its shadow, for the shadow had taken the alarm when
Cosette had turned round, and Cosette had thought herself very sure of
this. Cosette’s serenity was fully restored. The proof appeared to her
to be complete, and it quite vanished from her mind, whether there
could possibly be any one walking in the garden during the evening or
at night.
A few days later, however, a fresh incident occurred.
