老妇人的故事 英文版The Old Wives' Tale
阿诺德.本涅特 Arnold Bennett
I
The uneasiness of Mrs. Baines flowed and ebbed, during the nextthree months, influenced by Sophia's moods. There were days whenSophia was the old Sophia--the forbidding, difficult, waspish, andeven hedgehog Sophia. But there were other days on which Sophiaseemed to be drawing joy and gaiety and goodwill from some secretsource, from some fount whose nature and origin none could divine.It was on these days that the uneasiness of Mrs. Baines waxed. Shehad the wildest suspicions; she was almost capable of accusingSophia of carrying on a clandestine correspondence; she saw Sophiaand Gerald Scales deeply and wickedly in love; she saw them withtheir arms round each other's necks. ... And then she calledherself a middle-aged fool, to base such a structure of suspicionon a brief encounter in the street and on an idea, a fancy, acurious and irrational notion! Sophia had a certain streak of purenobility in that exceedingly heterogeneous thing, her character.Moreover, Mrs. Baines watched the posts, and she also watchedSophia--she was not the woman to trust to a streak of purenobility--and she came to be sure that Sophia's sinfulness, ifany, was not such as could be weighed in a balance, or collectedtogether by stealth and then suddenly placed before the girl on acharger.
Still, she would have given much to see inside Sophia's lovelyhead. Ah! Could she have done so, what sleep-destroying wondersshe would have witnessed! By what bright lamps burning in whatmysterious grottoes and caverns of the brain would her mature eyeshave been dazzled! Sophia was living for months on the exhaustlessardent vitality absorbed during a magical two minutes in WedgwoodStreet. She was living chiefly on the flaming fire struck in hersoul by the shock of seeing Gerald Scales in the porch of theWedgwood Institution as she came out of the Free Library withExperience Of Life tucked into her large astrakhan muff. He hadstayed to meet her, then: she knew it! "After all," her heartsaid, "I must be very beautiful, for I have attracted the pearl ofmen!" And she remembered her face in the glass. The value and thepower of beauty were tremendously proved to her. He, the great manof the world, the handsome and elegant man with a thousand strangefriends and a thousand interests far remote from her, had remainedin Bursley on the mere chance of meeting her! She was proud, buther pride was drowned in bliss. "I was just looking at thisinscription about Mr. Gladstone." "So you decided to come out asusual!" "And may I ask what book you have chosen?" These were thephrases she heard, and to which she responded with similarphrases. And meanwhile a miracle of ecstasy had opened--openedlike a flower. She was walking along Wedgwood Street by his side,slowly, on the scraped pavements, where marble bulbs of snow haddefied the spade and remained. She and he were exactly of the sameheight, and she kept looking into his face and he into hers. Thiswas all the miracle. Except that she was not walking on thepavement--she was walking on the intangible sward of paradise!Except that the houses had receded and faded, and the passers-bywere subtilized into unnoticeable ghosts! Except that her motherand Constance had become phantasmal beings existing at an immensedistance!
What had happened? Nothing! The most commonplace occurrence! Theeternal cause had picked up a commercial traveller (it might havebeen a clerk or curate, but it in fact was a commercialtraveller), and endowed him with all the glorious, unique,incredible attributes of a god, and planted him down before Sophiain order to produce the eternal effect. A miracle performedspecially for Sophia's benefit! No one else in Wedgwood Street sawthe god walking along by her side. No one else saw anything but asimple commercial traveller. Yes, the most commonplace occurrence!
Of course at the corner of the street he had to go. "Till nexttime!" he murmured. And fire came out of his eyes and lighted inSophia's lovely head those lamps which Mrs. Baines was mercifullyspared from seeing. And he had shaken hands and raised his hat.Imagine a god raising his hat! And he went off on two legs,precisely like a dashing little commercial traveller.
And, escorted by the equivocal Angel of Eclipses, she had turnedinto King Street, and arranged her face, and courageously met hermother. Her mother had not at first perceived the unusual; formothers, despite their reputation to the contrary, really are theblindest creatures. Sophia, the naive ninny, had actually supposedthat her walking along a hundred yards of pavement with a god byher side was not going to excite remark! What a delusion! It istrue, certainly, that no one saw the god by direct vision. ButSophia's cheeks, Sophia's eyes, the curve of Sophia's neck as hersoul yearned towards the soul of the god--these phenomena wereimmeasurably more notable than Sophia guessed. An account of them,in a modified form to respect Mrs. Baines's notorious dignity, hadhealed the mother of her blindness and led to that characteristicprotest from her, "I shall be glad if you will not walk about thestreets with young men," etc.
When the period came for the reappearance of Mr. Scales, Mrs.Baines outlined a plan, and when the circular announcing the exacttime of his arrival was dropped into the letter-box, sheformulated the plan in detail. In the first place, she wasdetermined to be indisposed and invisible herself, so that Mr.Scales might be foiled in any possible design to renew socialrelations in the parlour. In the second place, she flatteredConstance with a single hint--oh, the vaguest and briefest!--andConstance understood that she was not to quit the shop on theappointed morning. In the third place, she invented a way ofexplaining to Mr. Povey that the approaching advent of GeraldScales must not be mentioned. And in the fourth place, shedeliberately made appointments for Sophia with two millinerycustomers in the showroom, so that Sophia might be imprisoned inthe showroom.
Having thus left nothing to chance, she told herself that she wasa foolish woman full of nonsense. But this did not prevent herfrom putting her lips together firmly and resolving that Mr.Scales should have no finger in the pie of HER family. She hadacquired information concerning Mr. Scales, at secondhand, fromLawyer Pratt. More than this, she posed the question in a broaderform--why should a young girl be permitted any interest in anyyoung man whatsoever? The everlasting purpose had made use of Mrs.Baines and cast her off, and,, like most persons in a similarsituation, she was, unconsciously and quite honestly, at odds withthe everlasting purpose.