老妇人的故事 英文版The Old Wives' Tale
阿诺德.本涅特 Arnold Bennett
I
"Sophia, will you come and see the elephant? Do come!" Constanceentered the drawing-room with this request on her eager lips.
"No," said Sophia, with a touch of condescension. "I'm far toobusy for elephants."
Only two years had passed; but both girls were grown up now; longsleeves, long skirts, hair that had settled down in life; and ademeanour immensely serious, as though existence were terrific inits responsibilities; yet sometimes childhood surprisingly brokethrough the crust of gravity, as now in Constance, aroused by suchthings as elephants, and proclaimed with vivacious gestures thatit was not dead after all. The sisters were sharplydifferentiated. Constance wore the black alpaca apron and thescissors at the end of a long black elastic, which indicated hervocation in the shop. She was proving a considerable success inthe millinery department. She had learnt how to talk to people,and was, in her modest way, very self-possessed. She was getting alittle stouter. Everybody liked her. Sophia had developed into thestudent. Time had accentuated her reserve. Her sole friend wasMiss Chetwynd, with whom she was, having regard to the disparityof their ages, very intimate. At home she spoke little. She lackedamiability; as her mother said, she was 'touchy.' She requireddiplomacy from others, but did not render it again. Her attitude,indeed, was one of half-hidden disdain, now gentle, now coldlybitter. She would not wear an apron, in an age when aprons werealmost essential to decency. No! She would not wear an apron, andthere was an end of it. She was not so tidy as Constance, and ifConstance's hands had taken on the coarse texture which comes fromcommerce with needles, pins, artificial flowers, and stuffs,Sophia's fine hands were seldom innocent of ink. But Sophia wassplendidly beautiful. And even her mother and Constance had aninstinctive idea that that face was, at any rate, a partial excusefor her asperity.
"Well," said Constance, "if you won't, I do believe I shall askmother if she will."
Sophia, bending over her books, made no answer. But the top of herhead said: "This has no interest for me whatever."
Constance left the room, and in a moment returned with her mother.
"Sophia," said her mother, with gay excitement, "you might go andsit with your father for a bit while Constance and I just run upto the playground to see the elephant. You can work just as wellin there as here. Your father's asleep."
"Oh, very, well!" Sophia agreed haughtily. "Whatever is all thisfuss about an elephant? Anyhow, it'll be quieter in your room. Thenoise here is splitting." She gave a supercilious glance into theSquare as she languidly rose.
It was the morning of the third day of Bursley Wakes; not themodern finicking and respectable, but an orgiastic carnival, grossin all its manifestations of joy. The whole centre of the town wasgiven over to the furious pleasures of the people. Most of theSquare was occupied by Wombwell's Menagerie, in a vast oblongtent, whose raging beasts roared and growled day and night. Andspreading away from this supreme attraction, right up through themarket-place past the Town Hall to Duck Bank, Duck Square and thewaste land called the 'playground' were hundreds of booths withbanners displaying all the delights of the horrible. You could seethe atrocities of the French Revolution, and of the Fiji Islands,and the ravages of unspeakable diseases, and the living flesh of anearly nude human female guaranteed to turn the scale at twenty-two stone, and the skeletons of the mysterious phantoscope, andthe bloody contests of champions naked to the waist (with thechance of picking up a red tooth as a relic). You could try yourstrength by hitting an image of a fellow-creature in the stomach,and test your aim by knocking off the heads of other images with awooden ball. You could also shoot with rifles at various targets.All the streets were lined with stalls loaded with food in heaps,chiefly dried fish, the entrails of animals, and gingerbread. Allthe public-houses were crammed, and frenzied jolly drunkards, menand women, lunged along the pavements everywhere, their shoutsvying with the trumpets, horns, and drums of the booths, and theshrieking, rattling toys that the children carried.
It was a glorious spectacle, but not a spectacle for the leadingfamilies. Miss Chetwynd's school was closed, so that the daughtersof leading families might remain in seclusion till the worst wasover. The Baineses ignored the Wakes in every possible way,choosing that week to have a show of mourning goods in the left-hand window, and refusing to let Maggie outside on any pretext.Therefore the dazzling social success of the elephant, which wasquite easily drawing Mrs. Baines into the vortex, cannotimaginably be over-estimated.
On the previous night one of the three Wombwell elephants hadsuddenly knelt on a man in the tent; he had then walked out of thetent and picked up another man at haphazard from the crowd whichwas staring at the great pictures in front, and tried to put thissecond man into his mouth. Being stopped by his Indian attendantwith a pitchfork, he placed the man on the ground and stuck histusk through an artery of the victim's arm. He then, amidunexampled excitement, suffered himself to be led away. He wasconducted to the rear of the tent, just in front of Baines'sshuttered windows, and by means of stakes, pulleys, and ropesforced to his knees. His head was whitewashed, and six men of theRifle Corps were engaged to shoot at him at a distance of fiveyards, while constables kept the crowd off with truncheons. Hedied instantly, rolling over with a soft thud. The crowd cheered,and, intoxicated by their importance, the Volunteers fired threemore volleys into the carcase, and were then borne off as heroesto different inns. The elephant, by the help of his twocompanions, was got on to a railway lorry and disappeared into thenight. Such was the greatest sensation that has ever occurred, orperhaps will ever occur, in Bursley. The excitement about therepeal of the Corn Laws, or about Inkerman, was feeble compared tothat excitement. Mr. Critchlow, who had been called on to put ahasty tourniquet round the arm of the second victim, had popped inafterwards to tell John Baines all about it. Mr. Baines'sinterest, however, had been slight. Mr. Critchlow succeeded betterwith the ladies, who, though they had witnessed the shooting fromthe drawing-room, were thirsty for the most trifling details.
The next day it was known that the elephant lay near theplayground, pending the decision of the Chief Bailiff and theMedical Officer as to his burial. And everybody had to visit thecorpse. No social exclusiveness could withstand the seduction ofthat dead elephant. Pilgrims travelled from all the Five Towns tosee him.
"We're going now," said Mrs. Baines, after she had assumed herbonnet and shawl.
"All right," said Sophia, pretending to be absorbed in study, asshe sat on the sofa at the foot of her father's bed.
And Constance, having put her head in at the door, drew her motherafter her like a magnet.
Then Sophia heard a remarkable conversation in the passage.
"Are you going up to see the elephant, Mrs. Baines?" asked thevoice of Mr. Povey.
"Yes. Why?"
"I think I had better come with you. The crowd is sure to be veryrough." Mr. Povey's tone was firm; he had a position.
"But the shop?"
"We shall not be long," said Mr. Povey.
"Oh yes, mother," Constance added appealingly.
Sophia felt the house thrill as the side-door banged. She sprangup and watched the three cross King Street diagonally, and soplunge into the Wakes. This triple departure was surely thecrowning tribute to the dead elephant! It was simply astonishing.It caused Sophia to perceive that she had miscalculated theimportance of the elephant. It made her regret her scorn of theelephant as an attraction. She was left behind; and the joy oflife was calling her. She could see down into the Vaults on theopposite side of the street, where working men--potters andcolliers--in their best clothes, some with high hats, weredrinking, gesticulating, and laughing in a row at a long counter.
She noticed, while she was thus at the bedroom window, a young manascending King Street, followed by a porter trundling a flatbarrow of luggage. He passed slowly under the very window. Sheflushed. She had evidently been startled by the sight of thisyoung man into no ordinary state of commotion. She glanced at thebooks on the sofa, and then at her father. Mr. Baines, thin andgaunt, and acutely pitiable, still slept. His brain had almostceased to be active now; he had to be fed and tended like abearded baby, and he would sleep for hours at a stretch even inthe daytime. Sophia left the room. A moment later she ran into theshop, an apparition that amazed the three young lady assistants.At the corner near the window on the fancy side a little nook hadbeen formed by screening off a portion of the counter with largeflower-boxes placed end-up. This corner had come to be known as"Miss Baines's corner." Sophia hastened to it, squeezing past ayoung lady assistant in the narrow space between the back of thecounter and the shelf-lined wall. She sat down in Constance'schair and pretended to look for something. She had examinedherself in the cheval-glass in the showroom, on her way from thesick-chamber. When she heard a voice near the door of the shopasking first for Mr. Povey and then for Mrs. Baines, she rose, andseizing the object nearest to her, which happened to be a pair ofscissors, she hurried towards the showroom stairs as though thescissors had been a grail, passionately sought and to be jealouslyhidden away. She wanted to stop and turn round, but somethingprevented her. She was at the end of the counter, under thecurving stairs, when one of the assistants said:
"I suppose you don't know when Mr. Povey or your mother are likelyto be back, Miss Sophia? Here's--"
It was a divine release for Sophia.
"They're--I--" she stammered, turning round abruptly. Luckily shewas still sheltered behind the counter.
The young man whom she had seen in the street came boldly forward.
"Good morning, Miss Sophia," said he, hat in hand. "It is a longtime since I had the pleasure of seeing you."
Never had she blushed as she blushed then. She scarcely knew whatshe was doing as she moved slowly towards her sister's corneragain, the young man following her on the customer's side of thecounter.