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Gerald had come to America from Ireland when he was twenty-one. He had come hastily, as many a better and worse Irishman before and since, with the clothes he had on his back, two shillings above his passage money and a price on his head that he felt was larger than his misdeed warranted. There was no Orangeman this side of hell worth a hundred pounds to the British government or to the devil himself; but if the government felt so strongly about the death of an English absentee landlord’s rent agent, it was time for Gerald O’Hara to be leaving and leaving suddenly. True, he had called the rent agent “a bastard of an Orangeman,” but that, according to Gerald’s way of looking at it, did not give the man any right to insult him by whistling the opening bars of “The Boyne Water.”
２１岁那年杰拉尔德来到美国。他是匆匆而来像以前或以后许多好好坏坏的爱尔兰人那样，因为他只带着身上穿的衣服和买船票剩下的两个先令，以及悬赏捉拿他的那个身价，而且他觉得这个身价比他的罪行所应得的还高了一些。世界上还没有一个奥兰治派分子值得英国政府或魔鬼本身出一百镑的；但是如果政府对于一个英国的不在地主地租代理人的死会那么认真，那么杰拉尔德·奥哈拉的突然出走便是适时的了。的确，他曾经称呼过地租代理人为"奥兰治派野崽子"不过，按照杰拉尔德对此事的看法，这并不使那个人就有权哼着《博因河之歌》那开头几句来侮辱他。
The Battle of the Boyne had been fought more than a hundred years before, but, to the O’Haras and their neighbors, it might have been yesterday when their hopes and their dreams, as well as their lands and wealth, went off in the same cloud of dust that enveloped a frightened and fleeing Stuart prince, leaving William of Orange and his hated troops with their orange cockades to cut down the Irish adherents of the Stuarts.
博因河战役是一百多年以前的事了，但是在奥哈拉家族和他们的邻里看来，就像昨天发生的事，那时他们的希望和梦想，他们的土地和钱财，都在那团卷着一位惊惶逃路的斯图尔特王子的魔雾中消失了，只留下奥兰治王室的威廉和他那带着奥兰治帽徽的军队来屠杀斯图尔特王朝的爱尔兰依附者了。
For this and other reasons, Gerald’s family was not inclined to view the fatal outcome of this quarrel as anything very serious, except for the fact that it was charged with serious consequences. For years, the O’Haras had been in bad odor with the English constabulary on account of suspected activities against the government, and Gerald was not the first O’Hara to take his foot in his hand and quit Ireland between dawn and morning. His two oldest brothers, James and Andrew, he hardly remembered, save as close-lipped youths who came and went at odd hours of the night on mysterious errands or disappeared for weeks at a time, to their mother’s gnawing anxiety. They had come to America years before, after the discovery of a small arsenal of rifles buried under the O’Hara pigsty. Now they were successful merchants in Savannah, “though the dear God alone knows where that may be,” as their mother always interpolated when mentioning the two oldest of her male brood, and it was to them that young Gerald was sent.
由于这个以及别的原因，杰拉尔德的家庭并不想把这场争吵的毁灭结果看得十分严重，只把它看作是一桩有严重影响的事而已。多年来，奥哈拉家与英国警察部门的关系很不好，原因是被怀疑参与了反政府活动，而杰拉尔德并不是奥哈拉家族中头一个暗中离开爱尔兰的人。他几乎想不其他的两个哥哥詹姆斯和安德鲁，只记得两个闷声不响的年轻人，他们时常在深夜来来去去，干一些神秘的钩当，或者一走就是好几个星期，使母亲焦急万分。他们是许多年前人们在奥哈拉家猪圈里发现在一批理藏的来福枪之到美国的。现在他们已在萨凡纳作生意发了家，"虽然只有上帝才知道那地方究竟在哪里"----他们母亲提起这两个大儿子时老是这样说，年轻的杰拉尔德就是给送到两位哥哥这里来的。
