老妇人的故事 英文版The Old Wives' Tale
阿诺德.本涅特 Arnold Bennett
III
there were noises downstairs.. Why did Iforget father.
When Sophia arrived in the bedroom, she was startled because herfather's head and beard were not in their accustomed place on thepillow. She could only make out something vaguely unusual slopingoff the side of the bed. A few seconds passed--not to be measuredin time--and she saw that the upper part of his body had slippeddown, and his head was hanging, inverted, near the floor betweenthe bed and the ottoman. His face, neck, and hands were dark andcongested; his mouth was open, and the tongue protruded betweenthe black, swollen, mucous lips; his eyes were prominent andcoldly staring. The fact was that Mr. Baines had wakened up, and,being restless, had slid out partially from his bed and died ofasphyxia. After having been unceasingly watched for fourteenyears, he had, with an invalid's natural perverseness, takenadvantage of Sophia's brief dereliction to expire. Say what youwill, amid Sophia's horror, and her terrible grief and shame, shehad visitings of the idea: he did it on purpose!
She ran out of the room, knowing by intuition that he was dead,and shrieked out, "Maggie," at the top of her voice; the houseechoed.
"Yes, miss," said Maggie, quite close, coming out of Mr. Povey'schamber with a slop-pail.
"Fetch Mr. Critchlow at once. Be quick. Just as you are. It'sfather--"
Maggie, perceiving darkly that disaster was in the air, andinstantly filled with importance and a sort of black joy, droppedher pail in the exact middle of the passage, and almost fell downthe crooked stairs. One of Maggie's deepest instincts, always heldin check by the stern dominance of Mrs. Baines, was to leave pailsprominent on the main routes of the house; and now, divining whatwas at hand, it flamed into insurrection.
No sleepless night had ever been so long to Sophia as the threeminutes which elapsed before Mr. Critchlow came. As she stood onthe mat outside the bedroom door she tried to draw her mother andConstance and Mr. Povey by magnetic force out of the wakes intothe house, and her muscles were contracted in this strange effort.She felt that it was impossible to continue living if the secretof the bedroom remained unknown one instant longer, so intense washer torture, and yet that the torture which could not be bornemust be borne. Not a sound in the house! Not a sound from theshop! Only the distant murmur of the wakes!
"Why did I forget father?" she asked herself with awe. "I onlymeant to tell him that they were all out, and run back. Why did Iforget father?" She would never be able to persuade anybody thatshe had literally forgotten her father's existence for quite tenminutes; but it was true, though shocking.
on the stairs!"noises downstairs.
Then there were noises downstairs.
"Bless us! Bless us!" came the unpleasant voice of Mr. Critchlowas he bounded up the stairs on his long legs; he strode over thepail. "What's amiss?" He was wearing his white apron, and hecarried his spectacles in his bony hand.
"It's father--he's--" Sophia faltered.
She stood away so that he should enter the room first. He glancedat her keenly, and as it were resentfully, and went in. Shefollowed, timidly, remaining near the door while Mr. Critchlowinspected her handiwork. He put on his spectacles with strangedeliberation, and then, bending his knees outwards, thus loweredhis body so that he could examine John Baines point-blank. Heremained staring like this, his hands on his sharp apron-coveredknees, for a little space; and then he seized the inert mass andrestored it to the bed, and wiped those clotted lips with hisapron.
Sophia heard loud breathing behind her. It was Maggie. She heard ahuge, snorting sob; Maggie was showing her emotion.
"Go fetch doctor!" Mr. Critchlow rasped. "And don't stand gapingthere!"
"Run for the doctor, Maggie," said Sophia.
"How came ye to let him fall?" Mr. Critchlow demanded.
"I was out of the room. I just ran down into the shop--"
"Gallivanting with that young Scales!" said Mr. Critchlow, withdevilish ferocity. "Well, you've killed yer father; that's all!"
He must have been at his shop door and seen the entry of thetraveller! And it was precisely characteristic of Mr. Critchlow tojump in the dark at a horrible conclusion, and to be right afterall. For Sophia Mr. Critchlow had always been the personificationof malignity and malevolence, and now these qualities in him madehim, to her, almost obscene. Her pride brought up tremendousreinforcements, and she approached the bed.
"Is he dead?" she asked in a quiet tone. (Somewhere within a voicewas whispering, "So his name is Scales.")
"Don't I tell you he's dead?"
"Pail on the stairs!"
This mild exclamation came from the passage. Mrs. Baines,misliking the crowds abroad, had returned alone; she had leftConstance in charge of Mr. Povey. Coming into her house by theshop and showroom, she had first noted the phenomenon of the pail--proof of her theory of Maggie's incurable untidiness.
"Been to see the elephant, I reckon!" said Mr. Critchlow, infierce sarcasm, as he recognized Mrs. Baines's voice.
Sophia leaped towards the door, as though to bar her mother'sentrance. But Mrs. Baines was already opening the door.
"Well, my pet--" she was beginning cheerfully.
Mr. Critchlow confronted her. And he had no more pity for the wifethan for the daughter. He was furiously angry because his preciousproperty had been irretrievably damaged by the momentarycarelessness of a silly girl. Yes, John Baines was his property,his dearest toy! He was convinced that he alone had kept JohnBaines alive for fourteen years, that he alone had fullyunderstood the case and sympathized with the sufferer, that nonebut he had been capable of displaying ordinary common sense in thesick-room. He had learned to regard John Baines as, in some sort,his creation. And now, with their stupidity, their neglect, theirelephants, between them they had done for John Baines. He hadalways known it would come to that, and it had come to that.
"She let him fall out o' bed, and ye're a widow now, missis!" heannounced with a virulence hardly conceivable. His angularfeatures and dark eyes expressed a murderous hate for every womannamed Baines.
"Mother!" cried Sophia, "I only ran down into the shop to--to--"
She seized her mother's arm in frenzied agony.
"My child!" said Mrs. Baines, rising miraculously to the situationwith a calm benevolence of tone and gesture that remained for eversublime in the stormy heart of Sophia, "do not hold me." Withinfinite gentleness she loosed herself from those clasping hands."Have you sent for the doctor?" she questioned Mr. Critchlow.
The fate of her husband presented no mysteries to Mrs. Baines.Everybody had been warned a thousand times of the danger ofleaving the paralytic, whose life depended on his position, andwhose fidgetiness was thereby a constant menace of death to him.For five thousand nights she had wakened infallibly every time hestirred, and rearranged him by the flicker of a little oil lamp.But Sophia, unhappy creature, had merely left him. That was all.
Mr. Critchlow and the widow gazed, helplessly waiting, at thepitiable corpse, of which the salient part was the white beard.They knew not that they were gazing at a vanished era. John Baineshad belonged to the past, to the age when men really did think oftheir souls, when orators by phrases could move crowds to fury orto pity, when no one had learnt to hurry, when Demos was onlyturning in his sleep, when the sole beauty of life resided in itsinflexible and slow dignity, when hell really had no bottom, and agilt-clasped Bible really was the secret of England's greatness.Mid-Victorian England lay on that mahogany bed. Ideals had passedaway with John Baines. It is thus that ideals die; not in theconventional pageantry of honoured death, but sorrily, ignobly,while one's head is turned--
And Mr. Povey and Constance, very self-conscious, went and saw thedead elephant, and came back; and at the corner of King Street,Constance exclaimed brightly--
"Why! who's gone out and left the side-door open?"
For the doctor had at length arrived, and Maggie, in showing himupstairs with pious haste, had forgotten to shut the door.
And they took advantage of the side-door, rather guiltily, toavoid the eyes of the shop. They feared that in the parlour theywould be the centre of a curiosity half ironical and halfreproving; for had they not accomplished an escapade? So theywalked slowly.
The real murderer was having his dinner in the commercial room upat the Tiger, opposite the Town Hall.