At ten to five, when the last coach had gone and the café was stacking its chairs, the woman at the ticket desk came out to the potting shed. A visitor, she said, had not come back from the maze. Severin put down his shears. In nineteen years as a gardener on the estate he had retrieved eleven lost visitors, two lost shoes and, one memorable August, an entire lost wedding party. He knew the routine as well as he knew the pruning calendar.
四点五十分，最后一辆旅游大巴已经开走，咖啡馆正在收椅子，售票处的女人走到了花园工具棚前。她说，有一位游客没有从迷宫里出来。塞韦兰放下了修枝剪。在庄园当园丁的十九年里，他找回过十一位迷路的游客、两只丢失的鞋，还有一个难忘的八月，找回了整整一个走丢的婚礼团。这套流程，他熟得就像熟悉修剪日历一样。
The visitor's daughter was waiting at the entrance with her husband, already pale. "She went in at three," the daughter said. "She told us twenty minutes. She's seventy-nine, and her name is Rosalie." Severin lit the lantern, though it was not yet dark, because the hedges stood three metres high and the paths between them went dim an hour before the sky did.
游客的女儿和她丈夫已经等在入口处，脸色发白。“她三点进去的，”女儿说，“她说二十分钟就出来。她七十九岁了，名字叫罗莎莉。”塞韦兰点亮了提灯，虽然天还没黑，因为树篱有三米高，篱间的小径比天空早一个小时暗下来。
The maze covered most of an acre, and had been planted, according to the guidebook, by an owner who disliked guests who left too soon. Severin knew every turn of it. He searched the way he had been taught, working outward in a spiral from the entrance, calling her name at each junction and then standing still to listen. Nothing answered except pigeons. By half past five he had covered every dead end, and the thought of an old woman, a stone step and a cold evening had begun to settle in his stomach.
迷宫占地将近一英亩，据导览手册说，是由一位不喜欢客人太早离开的庄园主人种下的。塞韦兰对它的每一个转弯都了如指掌。他按学来的方法搜寻，从入口开始，一圈圈向外盘旋，在每个岔路口喊她的名字，然后站定倾听。除了鸽子，没有任何回应。到五点半，他已经找遍了每一个死胡同，一位老太太、一级石阶和一个寒冷的夜晚，这些念头开始在他的胃里沉了下来。
It was the sound of a page turning that gave her away. He was in the last passage before the centre, a place he rarely bothered with, since nobody had ever been lost there. Through the leaves came a small, dry, unhurried sound, entirely out of place. Not once in nineteen years had anything so ordinary come from the middle of the maze.
是翻书页的声音暴露了她。他当时正在通往中心的最后一条通道里，这个地方他很少费心去查，因为从来没有人在那里迷过路。树叶间传来一个轻微、干燥、不紧不慢的声音，与此地格格不入。十九年来，迷宫的中心从未传出过这样平常的声响。
She was sitting on the stone bench beside the sundial with a paperback open on her knee, a flask at her elbow and a cardigan folded under her against the cold of the seat. She looked up at the lantern with mild interest, the way one regards a waiter who has taken a little longer than expected.
她正坐在日晷旁的石凳上，膝头摊着一本平装书，手肘边放着一只保温瓶，身下垫着叠好的开衫，抵挡石凳的寒气。她抬头看着那盏提灯，神情里只有淡淡的兴味，就像看着一位比预期多花了一点时间的服务生。
"Oh, hello," she said. "Is it closing time?"
“哦，你好，”她说，“要关门了吗？”
"It's well past it," Severin said. "Your family have been looking for you for two hours. We thought you were lost."
“早就过了关门时间，”塞韦兰说，“你的家人找了你两个小时。我们以为你迷路了。”
"Lost?" Rosalie considered the word honestly. "I don't think so. I knew exactly where I was the whole time. I was in the middle of a maze, which is where one is supposed to end up." She marked her page with a bus ticket. "Getting out seemed a separate problem, and I thought it could wait for somebody with a lantern."
“迷路？”罗莎莉认真地琢磨了一下这个词。“我想不是。我一直清楚地知道自己在哪儿。我在迷宫中间，人本来就是应该走到这儿的。”她用一张公交车票夹住书页。“走出去是另一个问题，我想，这个问题可以等一个提灯的人来。”
Severin opened his mouth to deliver the speech about signs and closing times, and found that he had no use for it. Had she called out, he would have found her an hour sooner; but she had not called out, because it had never occurred to her that she needed finding. It might well be, he thought, that she was the only visitor who had ever reached the centre in peace.
塞韦兰张开嘴，想把那套关于指示牌和关门时间的话说一遍，却发现用不上了。如果她喊过，他早一个小时就能找到她；可她没有喊，因为她压根没想过自己需要被人找。他想，说不定，她是唯一一位平平静静走到了中心的游客。
She poured tea into the cup of the flask and held it out. He hesitated, a man on duty, and then sat down at the far end of the bench with the lantern between his boots. In nineteen years he had only ever passed through the middle, never stopped in it. From here the hedges closed overhead in a dark green ring, and the evening sky showed in the opening as a single pale coin.
她把茶倒进保温瓶的杯盖里，递了过来。他犹豫了一下，毕竟是当班的人，然后在石凳另一头坐了下来，提灯放在两只靴子之间。十九年来，他只是经过这个中心，从没在这里停留过。从这里望出去，树篱在头顶合拢，围成一圈深绿，傍晚的天空从缺口里露出来，像一枚淡淡的硬币。
They stayed for the length of the cup. Then he led her out by the shortest route, left, left, right. At the gate the daughter ran forward, half scolding and half in tears, while Rosalie said again and again that she had not been lost.
他们坐了一杯茶的工夫。然后他带她从最近的路走了出去：左，左，右。到了大门口，女儿跑上前来，半是责备，半是含泪，罗莎莉则一遍又一遍地说，她没有迷路。
"She wasn't," Severin said, and put out the lantern.
“她没有。”塞韦兰说着，熄灭了提灯。
