老妇人的故事 英文版The Old Wives' Tale
阿诺德.本涅特 Arnold Bennett
III
That afternoon there was a search for Sophia, whom no one had seensince dinner. She was discovered by her mother, sitting alone andunoccupied in the drawing-room. The circumstance was in itselfsufficiently peculiar, for on weekdays the drawing-room was neverused, even by the girls during their holidays, except for thepurpose of playing the piano. However, Mrs. Baines offered nocomment on Sophia's geographical situation, nor on her idleness.
"My dear," she said, standing at the door, with a self-consciouseffort to behave as though nothing had happened, "will you comeand sit with your father a bit?"
"Yes, mother," answered Sophia, with a sort of cold alacrity.
mother said she should send ye."the meanings of external phenomena.part of the usual.
"Sophia is coming, father," said Mrs. Baines at the open door ofthe bedroom, which was at right-angles with, and close to, thedrawing-room door. Then she surged swishing along the corridor andwent into the showroom, whither she had been called.
Sophia passed to the bedroom, the eternal prison of John Baines.Although, on account of his nervous restlessness, Mr. Baines wasnever left alone, it was not a part of the usual duty of the girlsto sit with him. The person who undertook the main portion of thevigils was a certain Aunt Maria--whom the girls knew to be not areal aunt, not a powerful, effective aunt like Aunt Harriet ofAxe--but a poor second cousin of John Baines; one of thosenecessitous, pitiful relatives who so often make life difficultfor a great family in a small town. The existence of Aunt Maria,after being rather a "trial" to the Baineses, had for twelve yearspast developed into something absolutely "providential" for them.(It is to be remembered that in those days Providence was stillbusying himself with everybody's affairs, and foreseeing thefuture in the most extraordinary manner. Thus, having foreseenthat John Baines would have a "stroke" and need a faithful,tireless nurse, he had begun fifty years in advance by creatingAunt Maria, and had kept her carefully in misfortune's way, sothat at the proper moment she would be ready to cope with thestroke. Such at least is the only theory which will explain theuse by the Baineses, and indeed by all thinking Bursley, of theword "providential" in connection with Aunt Maria.) She was ashrivelled little woman, capable of sitting twelve hours a day ina bedroom and thriving on the regime. At nights she went home toher little cottage in Brougham Street; she had her Thursdayafternoons and generally her Sundays, and during the schoolvacations she was supposed to come only when she felt inclined, orwhen the cleaning of her cottage permitted her to come. Hence, inholiday seasons, Mr. Baines weighed more heavily on his householdthan at other times, and his nurses relieved each other accordingto the contingencies of the moment rather than by a set programmeof hours.
The tragedy in ten thousand acts of which that bedroom was thescene, almost entirely escaped Sophia's perception, as it didConstance's. Sophia went into the bedroom as though it were a merebedroom, with its majestic mahogany furniture, its crimson repcurtains (edged with gold), and its white, heavily tasselledcounterpane. She was aged four when John Baines had suddenly beenseized with giddiness on the steps of his shop, and had fallen,and, without losing consciousness, had been transformed from JohnBaines into a curious and pathetic survival of John Baines. Shehad no notion of the thrill which ran through the town on thatnight when it was known that John Baines had had a stroke, andthat his left arm and left leg and his right eyelid wereparalyzed, and that the active member of the Local Board, theorator, the religious worker, the very life of the town's life,was permanently done for. She had never heard of the crisisthrough which her mother, assisted by Aunt Harriet, had passed,and out of which she had triumphantly emerged. She was not yet oldenough even to suspect it. She possessed only the vaguest memoryof her father before he had finished with the world. She knew himsimply as an organism on a bed, whose left side was wasted, whoseeyes were often inflamed, whose mouth was crooked, who had nocreases from the nose to the corners of the mouth like otherpeople, who experienced difficulty in eating because the foodwould somehow get between his gums and his cheek, who slept agreat deal but was excessively fidgety while awake, who seemed tohear what was said to him a long time after it was uttered, as ifthe sense had to travel miles by labyrinthine passages to hisbrain, and who talked very, very slowly in a weak, tremblingvoice.
And she had an image of that remote brain as something with a redspot on it, for once Constance had said: "Mother, why did fatherhave a stroke?" and Mrs. Baines had replied: "It was a haemorrhageof the brain, my dear, here"--putting a thimbled finger on aparticular part of Sophia's head.
Not merely had Constance and Sophia never really felt theirfather's tragedy; Mrs. Baines herself had largely lost the senseof it--such is the effect of use. Even the ruined organism onlyremembered fitfully and partially that it had once been JohnBaines. And if Mrs. Baines had not, by the habit of years,gradually built up a gigantic fiction that the organism remainedever the supreme consultative head of the family; if Mr. Critchlowhad not obstinately continued to treat it as a crony, the mass ofliving and dead nerves on the rich Victorian bedstead would havebeen of no more account than some Aunt Maria in similar case.These two persons, his wife and his friend, just managed to keephim morally alive by indefatigably feeding his importance and hisdignity. The feat was a miracle of stubborn self-deceiving,splendidly blind devotion, and incorrigible pride.
When Sophia entered the room, the paralytic followed her with hisnervous gaze until she had sat down on the end of the sofa at thefoot of the bed. He seemed to study her for a long time, and thenhe murmured in his slow, enfeebled, irregular voice:
"Is that Sophia?"
"Yes, father," she answered cheerfully.
And after another pause, the old man said: "Ay! It's Sophia."
And later: "Your mother said she should send ye."
Sophia saw that this was one of his bad, dull days. He had,occasionally, days of comparative nimbleness, when his wits seizedalmost easily the meanings of external phenomena.
Presently his sallow face and long white beard began to slip downthe steep slant of the pillows, and a troubled look came into hisleft eye. Sophia rose and, putting her hands under his armpits,lifted him higher in the bed. He was not heavy, but only a stronggirl of her years could have done it.
"Ay!" he muttered. "That's it. That's it."
And, with his controllable right hand, he took her hand as shestood by the bed. She was so young and fresh, such an incarnationof the spirit of health, and he was so far gone in decay andcorruption, that there seemed in this contact of body with bodysomething unnatural and repulsive. But Sophia did not so feel it.
"Sophia," he addressed her, and made preparatory noises in histhroat while she waited.
He continued after an interval, now clutching her arm, "Yourmother's been telling me you don't want to go in the shop."
She turned her eyes on him, and his anxious, dim gaze met hers.She nodded.
"Nay, Sophia," he mumbled, with the extreme of slowness. "I'msurprised at ye. . .Trade's bad, bad! Ye know trade's bad?" He wasstill clutching her arm.
She nodded. She was, in fact, aware of the badness of trade,caused by a vague war in the United States. The words "North" and"South" had a habit of recurring in the conversation of adultpersons. That was all she knew, though people were starving in theFive Towns as they were starving in Manchester.
"There's your mother," his thought struggled on, like an agedhorse over a hilly road. "There's your mother!" he repeated, as ifwishful to direct Sophia's attention to the spectacle of hermother. "Working hard! Con--Constance and you must help her. . . .Trade's bad! What can I do. . .lying here?"
The heat from his dry fingers was warming her arm. She wanted tomove, but she could not have withdrawn her arm without appearingimpatient. For a similar reason she would not avert her glance. Adeepening flush increased the lustre of her immature loveliness asshe bent over him. But though it was so close he did not feel thatradiance. He had long outlived a susceptibility to the strangeinfluences of youth and beauty.
"Teaching!" he muttered. "Nay, nay! I canna' allow that."
Then his white beard rose at the tip as he looked up at theceiling above his head, reflectively.
"You understand me?" he questioned finally.
She nodded again; he loosed her arm, and she turned away. Shecould not have spoken. Glittering tears enriched her eyes. She wassaddened into a profound and sudden grief by the ridiculousness ofthe scene. She had youth, physical perfection; she brimmed withenergy, with the sense of vital power; all existence lay beforeher; when she put her lips together she felt capable of outvyingno matter whom in fortitude of resolution. She had always hatedthe shop. She did not understand how her mother and Constancecould bring themselves to be deferential and flattering to everycustomer that entered. No, she did not understand it; but hermother (though a proud woman) and Constance seemed to practisesuch behaviour so naturally, so unquestioningly, that she hadnever imparted to either of them her feelings; she guessed thatshe would not be comprehended. But long ago she had decided thatshe would never "go into the shop." She knew that she would beexpected to do something, and she had fixed on teaching as the onepossibility. These decisions had formed part of her inner life foryears past. She had not mentioned them, being secretive andscarcely anxious for unpleasantness. But she had been slowlypreparing herself to mention them. The extraordinary announcementthat she was to leave school at the same time as Constance hadtaken her unawares, before the preparations ripening in her mindwere complete--before, as it were, she had girded up her loins forthe fray. She had been caught unready, and the opposing forces hadobtained the advantage of her. But did they suppose she wasbeaten?
No argument from her mother! No hearing, even! Just a curt andhaughty 'Let me hear no more of this'! And so the great desire ofher life, nourished year after year in her inmost bosom, was to beflouted and sacrificed with a word! Her mother did not appearridiculous in the affair, for her mother was a genuine power,commanding by turns genuine love and genuine hate, and always,till then, obedience and the respect of reason. It was her fatherwho appeared tragically ridiculous; and, in turn, the wholemovement against her grew grotesque in its absurdity. Here wasthis antique wreck, helpless, useless, powerless--merely pathetic--actually thinking that he had only to mumble in order to make her'understand'! He knew nothing; he perceived nothing; he was aferocious egoist, like most bedridden invalids, out of touch withlife,--and he thought himself justified in making destinies, andcapable of making them! Sophia could not, perhaps, define thefeelings which overwhelmed her; but she was conscious of theirtendency. They aged her, by years. They aged her so that, in akind of momentary ecstasy of insight, she felt older than herfather himself.
"You will be a good girl," he said. "I'm sure o' that."
It was too painful. The grotesqueness of her father's complacencyhumiliated her past bearing. She was humiliated, not for herself,but for him. Singular creature! She ran out of the room.
gigantic fiction that the organism remainedever the supreme consultative head of the family; if Mr. .
Fortunately Constance was passing in the corridor, otherwiseSophia had been found guilty of a great breach of duty.
"Go to father," she whispered hysterically to Constance, and fledupwards to the second floor.