老妇人的故事 英文版The Old Wives' Tale
阿诺德.本涅特 Arnold Bennett
I
Those two girls, Constance and Sophia Baines, paid no heed to themanifold interest of their situation, of which, indeed, they hadnever been conscious. They were, for example, established almostprecisely on the fifty-third parallel of latitude. A little way tothe north of them, in the creases of a hill famous for itsreligious orgies, rose the river Trent, the calm andcharacteristic stream of middle England. Somewhat furthernorthwards, in the near neighbourhood of the highest public-housein the realm, rose two lesser rivers, the Dane and the Dove,which, quarrelling in early infancy, turned their backs on eachother, and, the one by favour of the Weaver and the other byfavour of the Trent, watered between them the whole width ofEngland, and poured themselves respectively into the Irish Sea andthe German Ocean. What a county of modest, unnoticed rivers! Whata natural, simple county, content to fix its boundaries by thesetortuous island brooks, with their comfortable names--Trent,Mease, Dove, Tern, Dane, Mees, Stour, Tame, and even hasty Severn!Not that the Severn is suitable to the county! In the countyexcess is deprecated. The county is happy in not exciting remark.It is content that Shropshire should possess that swollen bump,the Wrekin, and that the exaggerated wildness of the Peak shouldlie over its border. It does not desire to be a pancake likeCheshire. It has everything that England has, including thirtymiles of Watling Street; and England can show nothing morebeautiful and nothing uglier than the works of nature and theworks of man to be seen within the limits of the county. It isEngland in little, lost in the midst of England, unsung bysearchers after the extreme; perhaps occasionally somewhat sore atthis neglect, but how proud in the instinctive cognizance of itsrepresentative features and traits!
Constance and Sophia, busy with the intense preoccupations ofyouth, recked not of such matters. They were surrounded by thecounty. On every side the fields and moors of Staffordshire,intersected by roads and lanes, railways, watercourses andtelegraph-lines, patterned by hedges, ornamented and maderespectable by halls and genteel parks, enlivened by villages atthe intersections, and warmly surveyed by the sun, spread outundulating. And trains were rushing round curves in deep cuttings,and carts and waggons trotting and jingling on the yellow roads,and long, narrow boats passing in a leisure majestic and infiniteover the surface of the stolid canals; the rivers had onlythemselves to support, for Staffordshire rivers have remainedvirgin of keels to this day. One could imagine the messagesconcerning prices, sudden death, and horses, in their flightthrough the wires under the feet of birds. In the inns Utopianswere shouting the universe into order over beer, and in the hallsand parks the dignity of England was being preserved in a fittingmanner. The villages were full of women who did nothing but fightagainst dirt and hunger, and repair the effects of friction onclothes. Thousands of labourers were in the fields, but the fieldswere so broad and numerous that this scattered multitude wastotally lost therein. The cuckoo was much more perceptible thanman, dominating whole square miles with his resounding call. Andon the airy moors heath-larks played in the ineffaceable mule-tracks that had served centuries before even the Romans thought ofWatling Street. In short, the usual daily life of the county wasproceeding with all its immense variety and importance; but thoughConstance and Sophia were in it they were not of it.
The fact is, that while in the county they were also in thedistrict; and no person who lives in the district, even if heshould be old and have nothing to do but reflect upon things ingeneral, ever thinks about the county. So far as the county goes,the district might almost as well be in the middle of the Sahara.It ignores the county, save that it uses it nonchalantly sometimesas leg-stretcher on holiday afternoons, as a man may use his backgarden. It has nothing in common with the county; it is richlysufficient to itself. Nevertheless, its self-sufficiency and thetrue salt savour of its life can only be appreciated by picturingit hemmed in by county. It lies on the face of the county like aninsignificant stain, like a dark Pleiades in a green and emptysky. And Hanbridge has the shape of a horse and its rider, Bursleyof half a donkey, Knype of a pair of trousers, Longshaw of anoctopus, and little Turnhill of a beetle. The Five Towns seem tocling together for safety. Yet the idea of clinging together forsafety would make them laugh. They are unique and indispensable.From the north of the county right down to the south they alonestand for civilization, applied science, organized manufacture,and the century--until you come to Wolverhampton. They are uniqueand indispensable because you cannot drink tea out of a teacupwithout the aid of the Five Towns; because you cannot eat a mealin decency without the aid of the Five Towns. For this thearchitecture of the Five Towns is an architecture of ovens andchimneys; for this its atmosphere is as black as its mud; for thisit burns and smokes all night, so that Longshaw has been comparedto hell; for this it is unlearned in the ways of agriculture,never having seen corn except as packing straw and in quarternloaves; for this, on the other hand, it comprehends the mysterioushabits of fire and pure, sterile earth; for this it lives crammedtogether in slippery streets where the housewife must change whitewindow-curtains at least once a fortnight if she wishes to remainrespectable; for this it gets up in the mass at six a.m., winterand summer, and goes to bed when the public-houses close; for thisit exists--that you may drink tea out of a teacup and toy with achop on a plate. All the everyday crockery used in the kingdom ismade in the Five Towns--all, and much besides. A district capableof such gigantic manufacture, of such a perfect monopoly--andwhich finds energy also to produce coal and iron and great men--may be an insignificant stain on a county, consideredgeographically, but it is surely well justified in treating thecounty as its back garden once a week, and in blindly ignoring itthe rest of the time.
Even the majestic thought that whenever and wherever in allEngland a woman washes up, she washes up the product of thedistrict; that whenever and wherever in all England a plate isbroken the fracture means new business for the district--even thismajestic thought had probably never occurred to either of thegirls. The fact is, that while in the Five Towns they were also inthe Square, Bursley and the Square ignored the staple manufactureas perfectly as the district ignored the county. Bursley has thehonours of antiquity in the Five Towns. No industrial developmentcan ever rob it of its superiority in age, which makes itabsolutely sure in its conceit. And the time will never come whenthe other towns--let them swell and bluster as they may--will notpronounce the name of Bursley as one pronounces the name of one'smother. Add to this that the Square was the centre of Bursley'sretail trade (which scorned the staple as something wholesale,vulgar, and assuredly filthy), and you will comprehend theimportance and the self-isolation of the Square in the scheme ofthe created universe. There you have it, embedded in the district,and the district embedded in the county, and the county lost anddreaming in the heart of England!
The Square was named after St. Luke. The Evangelist might havebeen startled by certain phenomena in his square, but, except inWakes Week, when the shocking always happened, St. Luke's Squarelived in a manner passably saintly--though it contained fivepublic-houses. It contained five public-houses, a bank, abarber's, a confectioner's, three grocers', two chemists', anironmonger's, a clothier's, and five drapers'. These were all thecatalogue. St. Luke's Square had no room for minor establishments.The aristocracy of the Square undoubtedly consisted of the drapers(for the bank was impersonal); and among the five the shop ofBaines stood supreme. No business establishment could possibly bemore respected than that of Mr. Baines was respected. And thoughJohn Baines had been bedridden for a dozen years, he still livedon the lips of admiring, ceremonious burgesses as 'our honouredfellow-townsman.' He deserved his reputation.
The Baines's shop, to make which three dwellings had at intervalsbeen thrown into one, lay at the bottom of the Square. It formedabout one-third of the south side of the Square, the remainderbeing made up of Critchlow's (chemist), the clothier's, and theHanover Spirit Vaults. ("Vaults" was a favourite synonym of thepublic-house in the Square. Only two of the public-houses werecrude public-houses: the rest were "vaults.") It was a compositebuilding of three storeys, in blackish-crimson brick, with aprojecting shop-front and, above and behind that, two rows oflittle windows. On the sash of each window was a red cloth rollstuffed with sawdust, to prevent draughts; plain white blindsdescended about six inches from the top of each window. There wereno curtains to any of the windows save one; this was the window ofthe drawing-room, on the first floor at the corner of the Squareand King Street. Another window, on the second storey, waspeculiar, in that it had neither blind nor pad, and was verydirty; this was the window of an unused room that had a separatestaircase to itself, the staircase being barred by a door alwayslocked. Constance and Sophia had lived in continual expectation ofthe abnormal issuing from that mysterious room, which was next totheir own. But they were disappointed. The room had no shamefulsecret except the incompetence of the architect who had made onehouse out of three; it was just an empty, unemployable room. Thebuilding had also a considerable frontage on King Street, where,behind the shop, was sheltered the parlour, with a large windowand a door that led directly by two steps into the street. Astrange peculiarity of the shop was that it bore no signboard.Once it had had a large signboard which a memorable gale had blowninto the Square. Mr. Baines had decided not to replace it. He hadalways objected to what he called "puffing," and for this reasonwould never hear of such a thing as a clearance sale. The hatredof "puffing" grew on him until he came to regard even a sign as"puffing." Uninformed persons who wished to find Baines's must askand learn. For Mr. Baines, to have replaced the sign would havebeen to condone, yea, to participate in, the modern craze forunscrupulous self-advertisement. This abstention of Mr. Baines'sfrom indulgence in signboards was somehow accepted by the morethoughtful members of the community as evidence that the height ofMr. Baines's principles was greater even than they had imagined.
Constance and Sophia were the daughters of this credit to humannature. He had no other children.