躊躇未定 She Cannot Decide
娘娘見說,心中怛突:欲不取出鈴兒,恐他見疑;欲取出鈴兒,又恐傷了孫行者性命。正自躊躇未定,那妖王又催逼道:「快拿出來。」這娘娘無奈,只得將鎖鑰開了,把三個鈴兒遞與妖王。娘娘见说,心中怛突:欲不取出铃儿,恐他见疑;欲取出铃儿,又恐伤了孙行者性命。正自踌躇未定,那妖王又催逼道:「快拿出来。」这娘娘无奈,只得将锁钥开了,把三个铃儿递与妖王。
逐句解 Line by line
Hearing this the Queen was startled at heart: if she did not fetch the bells out he might grow suspicious; if she did fetch them out she feared for Sun Pilgrim's life.
One sentence, cut in the source at a semicolon and carried whole here because its two halves are built to the same pattern — 欲 plus verb, then 恐 plus what is feared, twice over. Only the first half names her; the second simply carries on. 怛突 is a start of alarm, the physical jolt in the chest.
While she was still hesitating, undecided, the fiend king pressed her again: "Bring them out, quickly."
躊躇 is a doubled-sounding word for wavering — both characters carry the foot radical, so the image is of shifting from one foot to the other. 催逼 pairs urging with forcing.
The Queen had no choice. She turned the key in the lock and handed the three bells to the fiend king.
得 is dé in 只得, the lexicalised had no choice but to. 鑰 is yào: 康熙 金部十七畫 gives the character one band and glosses it 關下牡也, the bolt-pin of a gate, and 戸鑰, a door key — the physical thing she is turning.
This is the only passage in the chapter written from inside the queen's head, and it is a genuine dilemma: refuse and he suspects her, comply and she may be killing the man who came to rescue her. The sentence lays the two horns out in matched clauses — 欲不取出…恐他見疑 against 欲取出…又恐傷了 — and gives her no way between them.
What makes it painful is that she is wrong. The bells in the chest are three hairs. Nothing she does with them can hurt anybody, and Wukong knows it, and the fiend does not, and she does not. She spends the passage agonising over a choice that has already been taken away from her.
怛突 is a good word and a rare one: a jolt of alarm felt physically, in the chest. 躊躇 in the next line is its opposite in tempo — both characters are built on the foot radical, so the picture is of somebody shifting weight from one foot to the other, unable to move.