老妇人的故事 英文版The Old Wives' Tale
阿诺德.本涅特 Arnold Bennett
II
She knew that he was a traveller for the most renowned andgigantic of all Manchester wholesale firms--Birkinshaws. But shedid not know his name, which was Gerald Scales. He was a rathershort but extremely well-proportioned man of thirty, with fairhair, and a distinguished appearance, as became a representativeof Birkinshaws. His broad, tight necktie, with an edge of whitecollar showing above it, was particularly elegant. He had been onthe road for Birkinshaws for several years; but Sophia had onlyseen him once before in her life, when she was a little girl,three years ago. The relations between the travellers of the greatfirms and their solid, sure clients in small towns were in thosedays often cordially intimate. The traveller came with the lustreof a historic reputation around him; there was no need to fawn fororders; and the client's immense and immaculate respectabilitymade him the equal of no matter what ambassador. It was a case ofmutual esteem, and of that confidence-generating phenomenon, "anold account." The tone in which a commercial traveller of middleage would utter the phrase "an old account" revealed in a flashall that was romantic, prim, and stately in mid-Victoriancommerce. In the days of Baines, after one of the elaboratelyengraved advice-circulars had arrived ('Our Mr.------will have thepleasure of waiting upon you on--day next, the--inst.') John mightin certain cases be expected to say, on the morning of--day,'Missis, what have ye gotten for supper to-night?'
Mr. Gerald Scales had never been asked to supper; he had nevereven seen John Baines; but, as the youthful successor of an agedtraveller who had had the pleasure of St. Luke's Square, on behalfof Birkinshaws, since before railways, Mrs. Baines had treated himwith a faint agreeable touch of maternal familiarity; and, bothher daughters being once in the shop during his visit, she had onthat occasion commanded the gawky girls to shake hands with him.
Sophia had never forgotten that glimpse. The young man without aname had lived in her mind, brightly glowing, as the very symboland incarnation of the masculine and the elegant.
The renewed sight of him seemed to have wakened her out of asleep. Assuredly she was not the same Sophia. As she sat in hersister's chair in the corner, entrenched behind the perpendicularboxes, playing nervously with the scissors, her beautiful face wastransfigured into the ravishingly angelic. It would have beenimpossible for Mr. Gerald Scales, or anybody else, to credit, ashe gazed at those lovely, sensitive, vivacious, responsivefeatures, that Sophia was not a character of heavenly sweetnessand perfection. She did not know what she was doing; she wasnothing but the exquisite expression of a deep instinct to attractand charm. Her soul itself emanated from her in an atmosphere ofallurement and acquiescence. Could those laughing lips hang in aheavy pout? Could that delicate and mild voice be harsh? Couldthose burning eyes be coldly inimical? Never! The idea wasinconceivable! And Mr. Gerald Scales, with his head over the topof the boxes, yielded to the spell. Remarkable that Mr. GeraldScales, with all his experience, should have had to come toBursley to find the pearl, the paragon, the ideal! But so it was.They met in an equal abandonment; the only difference between themwas that Mr. Scales, by force of habit, kept his head.
"I see it's your wakes here," said he.
He was polite to the wakes; but now, with the least inflection inthe world, he put the wakes at its proper level in the scheme ofthings as a local unimportance! She adored him for this; she wasathirst for sympathy in the task of scorning everything local.
"I expect you didn't know," she said, implying that there wasevery reason why a man of his mundane interests should not know.
"I should have remembered if I had thought," said he. "But Ididn't think. What's this about an elephant?"
"Oh!" she exclaimed. "Have you heard of that?"
"My porter was full of it."
"Well," she said, "of course it's a very big thing in Bursley."
As she smiled in gentle pity of poor Bursley, he naturally did thesame. And he thought how much more advanced and broad the youngergeneration was than the old! He would never have dared to expresshis real feelings about Bursley to Mrs. Baines, or even to Mr.Povey (who was, however, of no generation); yet here was a youngwoman actually sharing them.
She told him all the history of the elephant.
"Must have been very exciting," he commented, despite himself.
"Do you know," she replied, "it WAS."
After all, Bursley was climbing in their opinion.
"And mother and my sister and Mr. Povey have all gone to see it.That's why they're not here."
That the elephant should have caused both Mr. Povey and Mrs.Baines to forget that the representative of Birkinshaws was due tocall was indeed a final victory for the elephant.
"But not you!" he exclaimed.
"No," she said. "Not me."
"Why didn't you go too?" He continued his flatteringinvestigations with a generous smile.
"I simply didn't care to," said she, proudly nonchalant.
"And I suppose you are in charge here?"
"No," she answered. "I just happened to have run down here forthese scissors. That's all."
"I often see your sister," said he. "'Often' do I say?--that is,generally, when I come; but never you."
"I'm never in the shop," she said. "It's just an accident to-day."
"Oh! So you leave the shop to your sister?"
"Yes." She said nothing of her teaching.
Then there was a silence. Sophia was very thankful to be hiddenfrom the curiosity of the shop. The shop could see nothing of her,and only the back of the young man; and the conversation had beenconducted in low voices. She tapped her foot, stared at the worn,polished surface of the counter, with the brass yard-measurenailed along its edge, and then she uneasily turned her gaze tothe left and seemed to be examining the backs of the black bonnetswhich were perched on high stands in the great window. Then hereyes caught his for an important moment.
"Yes," she breathed. Somebody had to say something. If the shopmissed the murmur of their voices the shop would wonder what hadhappened to them.
Mr. Scales looked at his watch. '"I dare say if I come in againabout two--" he began.
"Oh yes, they're SURE to be in then," she burst out before hecould finish his sentence.
He left abruptly, queerly, without shaking hands (but then itwould have been difficult--she argued--for him to have put his armover the boxes), and without expressing the hope of seeing heragain. She peeped through the black bonnets, and saw the porterput the leather strap over his shoulders, raise the rear of thebarrow, and trundle off; but she did not see Mr. Scales. She wasdrunk; thoughts were tumbling about in her brain like cargo loosein a rolling ship. Her entire conception of herself was beingaltered; her attitude towards life was being altered. The thoughtwhich knocked hardest against its fellows was, "Only in thesemoments have I begun to live!"
And as she flitted upstairs to resume watch over her father shesought to devise an innocent-looking method by which she might seeMr. Scales when he next called. And she speculated as to what hisname was.