老妇人的故事 英文版The Old Wives' Tale
阿诺德.本涅特 Arnold Bennett
II
Gerald Scales walked about the Strand, staring up at its highnarrow houses, crushed one against another as though they had beenpacked, unsorted, by a packer who thought of nothing but economyof space. Except by Somerset House, King's College, and one or twotheatres and banks, the monotony of mean shops, with severalstoreys unevenly perched over them, was unbroken, Then Geraldencountered Exeter Hall, and examined its prominent facade with aprovincial's eye; for despite his travels he was not very familiarwith London. Exeter Hall naturally took his mind back to his UncleBoldero, that great and ardent Nonconformist, and his own godlyyouth. It was laughable to muse upon what his uncle would say andthink, did the old man know that his nephew had run away with agirl, meaning to seduce her in Paris. It was enormously funny!
However, he had done with all that. He was well out of it. She hadtold him to go, and he had gone. She had money to get home; shehad nothing to do but use the tongue in her head. The rest was heraffair. He would go to Paris alone, and find another amusement. Itwas absurd to have supposed that Sophia would ever have suitedhim. Not in such a family as the Baineses could one reasonablyexpect to discover an ideal mistress. No! there had been amistake. The whole business was wrong. She had nearly made a foolof him. But he was not the man to be made a fool of. He had kepthis dignity intact.
So he said to himself. Yet all the time his dignity, and his pridealso, were bleeding, dropping invisible blood along the length ofthe Strand pavements.
He was at Salisbury Street again. He pictured her in the bedroom.Damn her! He wanted her. He wanted her with an excessive desire.He hated to think that he had been baulked. He hated to think thatshe would remain immaculate. And he continued to picture her inthe exciting privacy of that cursed bedroom.
Now he was walking down Salisbury Street. He did not wish to bewalking down Salisbury Street; but there he was!
"Oh, hell!" he murmured. "I suppose I must go through with it."
He felt desperate. He was ready to pay any price in order to beable to say to himself that he had accomplished what he had sethis heart on.
"My wife hasn't gone out, has she?" he asked of the hall-porter.
"I'm not sure, sir; I think not," said the hall-porter.
The fear that Sophia had already departed made him sick. When henoticed her trunk still there, he took hope and ran upstairs.
He saw her, a dark crumpled, sinuous piece of humanity, half onand half off the bed, silhouetted against the bluish-whitecounterpane; her hat was on the floor, with the spotted veiltrailing away from it. This sight seemed to him to be the mosttouching that he had ever seen, though her face was hidden. Heforgot everything except the deep and strange emotion whichaffected him. He approached the bed. She did not stir.
Having heard the entry and knowing that it must be Gerald who hadentered, Sophia forced herself to remain still. A wild, splendidhope shot up in her. Constrained by all the power of her will notto move, she could not stifle a sob that had lain in ambush in herthroat.
The sound of the sob fetched tears to the eyes of Gerald.
"Sophia!" he appealed to her.
But she did not stir. Another sob shook her.
"Very well, then," said Gerald. "We'll stay in London till we canbe married. I'll arrange it. I'll find a nice boarding-house foryou, and I'll tell the people you're my cousin. I shall stay on atthis hotel, and I'll come and see you every day."
A silence.
"Thank you!" she blubbered. "Thank you!"
He saw that her little gloved hand was stretching out towards him,like a feeler; and he seized it, and knelt down and took herclumsily by the waist. Somehow he dared not kiss her yet.
An immense relief surged very slowly through them both.
"I--I--really--" She began to say something, but the articulationwas lost in her sobs.
"What? What do you say, dearest?" he questioned eagerly.
And she made another effort. "I really couldn't have gone to Pariswith you without being married," she succeeded at last. "I reallycouldn't."
"No, no!" he soothed her. "Of course you couldn't. It was I whowas wrong. But you didn't know how I felt. ... Sophia, it's allright now, isn't it?"
She sat up and kissed him fairly.
It was so wonderful and startling that he burst openly into tears.She saw in the facile intensity of his emotion a guarantee oftheir future happiness. And as he had soothed her, so now shesoothed him. They clung together, equally surprised at the sweet,exquisite, blissful melancholy which drenched them through andthrough. It was remorse for having quarrelled, for having lackedfaith in the supreme rightness of the high adventure. Everythingwas right, and would be right; and they had been criminallyabsurd. It was remorse; but it was pure bliss, and worth thequarrel! Gerald resumed his perfection again in her eyes! He wasthe soul of goodness and honour! And for him she was again theideal mistress, who would, however, be also a wife. As in his mindhe rapidly ran over the steps necessary to their marriage, he keptsaying to himself, far off in some remote cavern of the brain: "Ishall have her! I shall have her!" He did not reflect that thisfragile slip of the Baines stock, unconsciously drawing upon theaccumulated strength of generations of honest living, had put adefeat upon him.
After tea, Gerald, utterly content with the universe, redeemed hisword and found an irreproachable boarding-house for Sophia inWestminster, near the Abbey. She was astonished at the glibness ofhis lies to the landlady about her, and about their circumstancesgenerally. He also found a church and a parson, close by, and inhalf an hour the formalities preliminary to a marriage were begun.He explained to her that as she was now resident in London, itwould be simpler to recommence the business entirely. Shesagaciously agreed. As she by no means wished to wound him again,she made no inquiry about those other formalities which, owing tored-tape, had so unexpectedly proved abortive! She knew she wasgoing to be married, and that sufficed. The next day she carriedout her filial idea of telegraphing to her mother.