《福尔摩斯探案集·斑点带子案》第6节
“I am all attention, madam.” “My name is Helen Stoner, and I am living with my stepfather, who is the last survivor of one of the oldest Saxon families in England, the Roylotts of Stoke Moran, on the western border of Surrey.” Holmes nodded his head. “The name is familiar to me,” said he. “The family was at one time among the richest in England, and the estates extended over the borders into Berkshire in the north, and Hampshire in the west. In the last century, however, four successive heirs were of a dissolute and wasteful disposition, and the family ruin was eventually completed by a gambler in the days of the Regency. Nothing was left save a few acres of ground, and the two-hundred-year-old house, which is itself crushed under a heavy mortgage. The last squire dragged out his existence there, living the horrible life of an aristocratic pauper; but his only son, my stepfather, seeing that he must adapt himself to the new conditions, obtained an advance from a relative, which enabled him to take a medical degree and went out to Calcutta, where, by his professional skill and his force of character, he established a large practice. In a fit of anger, however, caused by some robberies which had been perpetrated in the house, he beat his native butler to death and narrowly escaped a capital sentence. As it was, he suffered a long term of imprisonment and afterwards returned to England a morose and disappointed man.
注释摘要
这一节，是委托人海伦·斯托纳对自己身世与家庭处境的完整交代。在福尔摩斯说出“我洗耳恭听”之后，她报出自己的姓名，以及她与继父的关系——继父格里姆斯比·罗伊洛特医生，是斯托克莫兰的罗伊洛特家族的最后一人。注意她特意点明这是“英格兰最古老的撒克逊家族之一”，这个身份标签并非闲笔。在维多利亚时代的英国，土地与血统仍被看作体面的根基，一个古老家族哪怕只剩空壳，其名…