老妇人的故事 英文版The Old Wives' Tale
阿诺德.本涅特 Arnold Bennett
III
The holiday in the Isle of Man was of course ruined for her. Shecould scarcely walk because of the weight of a lump of lead thatshe carried in her bosom. On the brightest days the lump of leadwas always there. Besides, she was so obese. In ordinarycircumstances they might have stayed beyond the month. Anindentured pupil is not strapped to the wheel like a commonapprentice. Moreover, the indentures were to be cancelled. ButConstance did not care to stay. She had to prepare for hisdeparture to London. She had to lay the faggots for her ownmartyrdom.
In this business of preparation she showed as much silliness, shebetrayed as perfect a lack of perspective, as the most superiorson could desire for a topic of affectionate irony. Herpreoccupation with petty things of no importance whatever wasworthy of the finest traditions of fond motherhood. However,Cyril's careless satire had no effect on her, save that once shegot angry, thereby startling him; he quite correctly and sagelylaid this unprecedented outburst to the account of her wroughtnerves, and forgave it. Happily for the smoothness of Cyril'stranslation to London, young Peel-Swynnerton was acquainted withthe capital, had a brother in Chelsea, knew of reputable lodgings,was, indeed, an encyclopaedia of the town, and would himself spenda portion of the autumn there. Otherwise, the preliminaries whichhis mother would have insisted on by means of tears and hysteriamight have proved fatiguing to Cyril.
The day came when on that day week Cyril would be gone. Constancesteadily fabricated cheerfulness against the prospect. She said:
"Suppose I come with you?"
He smiled in toleration of this joke as being a passable qualityof joke. And then she smiled in the same sense, hastening to agreewith him that as a joke it was not a bad joke.
In the last week he was very loyal to his tailor. Many a young manwould have commanded new clothes after, not before, his arrival inLondon. But Cyril had faith in his creator.
On the day of departure the household, the very house itself, wasin a state of excitation. He was to leave early. He would notlisten to the project of her accompanying him as far as Knype,where the Loop Line joined the main. She might go to BursleyStation and no further. When she rebelled he disclosed the meresthint of his sullen-churlish side, and she at once yielded. Duringbreakfast she did not cry, but the aspect of her face made himprotest.
"Now, look here, mater! Just try to remember that I shall be backfor Christmas. It's barely three months." And he lit a cigarette.
She made no reply.
his hat!and the mat still.
Amy lugged a Gladstone bag down the crooked stairs. A trunk wasalready close to the door; it had wrinkled the carpet and derangedthe mat.
"You didn't forget to put the hair-brush in, did you, Amy?" heasked.
"N--no, Mr. Cyril," she blubbered.
"Amy!" Constance sharply corrected her, as Cyril ran upstairs, "Iwonder you can't control yourself better than that."
Amy weakly apologized. Although treated almost as one of thefamily, she ought not to have forgotten that she was a servant.What right had she to weep over Cyril's luggage? This question wasput to her in Constance's tone.
The cab came. Cyril tumbled downstairs with exaggeratedcarelessness, and with exaggerated carelessness he joked at thecabman.
"Now, mother!" he cried, when the luggage was stowed. "Do you wantme to miss this train?" But he knew that the margin of time wasample. It was his fun!
"Nay, I can't be hurried!" she said, fixing her bonnet. "Amy, assoon as we are gone you can clear this table."
She climbed heavily into the cab.
"That's it! Smash the springs!" Cyril teased her.
than ever before. And the townspeople!
The horse got a stinging cut to recall him to the seriousness oflife. It was a fine, bracing autumn morning, and the driver feltthe need of communicating his abundant energy to some one orsomething. They drove off, Amy staring after them from the door.Matters had been so marvellously well arranged that they arrivedat the station twenty minutes before the train was due.
"Never mind!" Cyril mockingly comforted his mother. "You'd ratherbe twenty minutes too soon than one minute too late, wouldn'tyou?"
His high spirits had to come out somehow.
Gradually the minutes passed, and the empty slate-tinted platformbecame dotted with people to whom that train was nothing but aLoop Line train, people who took that train every week-day oftheir lives and knew all its eccentricities.
best he could muster.forget to put the hair-brush in, did .
And they heard the train whistle as it started from Turnhill. AndCyril had a final word with the porter who was in charge of theluggage. He made a handsome figure, and he had twenty pounds inhis pocket. When he returned to Constance she was sniffing, andthrough her veil he could see that her eyes were circled with red.But through her veil she could see nothing. The train rolled in,rattling to a standstill. Constance lifted her veil and kissedhim; and kissed her life out. He smelt the odour of her crape. Hewas, for an instant, close to her, close; and he seemed to have anoverwhelmingly intimate glimpse into her secrets; he seemed to bechoked in the sudden strong emotion of that crape. He felt queer.
The daily frequenters of the train boarded it with their customarydisgust.
"I'll write as soon as ever I get there!" said Cyril, of his ownaccord. It was the best he could muster.
With what grace he raised his hat!
A sliding-away; clouds of steam; and she shared the dead platformwith milk-cans, two porters, and Smith's noisy boy!
She walked home, very slowly and painfully. The lump of lead washeavier than ever before. And the townspeople saw the proudestmother in Bursley walking home.
"After all," she argued with her soul angrily, petulantly, "couldyou expect the boy to do anything else? He is a serious student,he has had a brilliant success, and is he to be tied to yourapron-strings? The idea is preposterous. It isn't as if he was anidler, or a bad son. No mother could have a better son. A nicething, that he should stay all his life in Bursley simply becauseyou don't like being left alone!"
Unfortunately one might as well argue with a mule as with one'ssoul. Her soul only kept on saying monotonously: "I'm a lonely oldwoman now. I've nothing to live for any more, and I'm no use toanybody. Once I was young and proud. And this is what my life hascome to! This is the end!"
When she reached home, Amy had not touched the breakfast things;the carpet was still wrinkled, and the mat still out of place.And, through the desolating atmosphere of reaction after aterrific crisis, she marched directly upstairs, entered hisplundered room, and beheld the disorder of the bed in which he hadslept.