老妇人的故事 英文版The Old Wives' Tale
阿诺德.本涅特 Arnold Bennett
IV
She passed a night of physical misery, exasperated by the tirelessrattling vitality of the street. She kept saying to herself: "I'mall alone now, and I'm going to be ill. I am ill." She saw herselfdying in Paris, and heard the expressions of facile sympathy andidle curiosity drawn forth by the sight of the dead body of thisforeign woman in a little Paris hotel. She reached the stage, inthe gradual excruciation of her nerves, when she was obliged toconcentrate her agonized mind on an intense and painful expectancyof the next new noise, which when it came increased her tortureand decreased her strength to support it. She went through all theinterminable dilatoriness of the dawn, from the moment when shecould scarcely discern the window to the moment when she couldread the word 'Bock' on the red circlet of paper which had tossedall night on the sea of the counterpane. She knew she would neversleep again. She could not imagine herself asleep; and then shewas startled by a sound that seemed to clash with the rest of herimpressions. It was a knocking at the door. With a start sheperceived that she must have been asleep.
"Enter," she murmured.
There entered the menial in alpaca. His waxen face showed a morosecommiseration. He noiselessly approached the bed--he seemed tohave none of the characteristics of a man, but to be a creatureinfinitely mysterious and aloof from humanity--and held out toSophia a visiting card in his grey hand.
It was Chirac's card.
"Monsieur asked for monsieur," said the waiter. "And then, asmonsieur had gone away he demanded to see madame. He says it isvery important."
Her heart jumped, partly in vague alarm, and partly with a senseof relief at this chance of speaking to some one whom she knew.She tried to reflect rationally.
"What time is it?" she inquired.
"Eleven o'clock, madame."
This was surprising. The fact that it was eleven o'clock destroyedthe remains of her self-confidence. How could it be eleveno'clock, with the dawn scarcely finished?
"He says it is very important," repeated the waiter, imperturbablyand solemnly. "Will madame see him an instant?"
Between resignation and anticipation she said: "Yes."
"It is well, madame," said the waiter, disappearing without asound.
She sat up and managed to drag her matinee from a chair and put itaround her shoulders. Then she sank back from weakness, physicaland spiritual. She hated to receive Chirac in a bedroom, andparticularly in that bedroom. But the hotel had no public roomexcept the dining-room, which began to be occupied after eleveno'clock. Moreover, she could not possibly get up. Yes, on thewhole she was pleased to see Chirac. He was almost her onlyacquaintance, assuredly the only being whom she could by anystretch of meaning call a friend, in the whole of Europe. Geraldand she had wandered to and fro, skimming always over the reallife of nations, and never penetrating into it. There was no placefor them, because they had made none. With the exception ofChirac, whom an accident of business had thrown, into Gerald'scompany years before, they had no social relations. Gerald was nota man to make friends; he did not seem to need friends, or at anyrate to feel the want of them. But, as chance had given himChirac, he maintained the connection whenever they came to Paris.Sophia, of course, had not been able to escape from the solitudeimposed by existence in hotels. Since her marriage she had neverspoken to a woman in the way of intimacy. But once or twice shehad approached intimacy with Chirac, whose wistful admiration forher always aroused into activity her desire to charm.
Preceded by the menial, he came into the room hurriedly,apologetically, with an air of acute anxiety. And as he saw herlying on her back, with flushed features, her hair disarranged,and only the grace of the silk ribbons of her matinee to mitigatethe melancholy repulsiveness of her surroundings, that anxietyseemed to deepen.
"Dear madame," he stammered, "all my excuses!" He hastened to thebedside and kissed her hand--a little peek according to hiscustom. "You are ill?"
"I have my migraine," she said. "You want Gerald?"
"Yes," he said diffidently. "He had promised----"
"He has left me," Sophia interrupted him in her weak and fatiguedvoice. She closed her eyes as she uttered the words.
"Left you?" He glanced round to be sure that the waiter hadretired.
"Quitted me! Abandoned me! Last night!"
"Not possible!" he breathed.
She nodded. She felt intimate with him. Like all secretivepersons, she could be suddenly expansive at times.
"It is serious?" he questioned.
"All that is most serious," she replied.
"And you ill! Ah, the wretch! Ah, the wretch! That, for example!"He waved his hat about.
"What is it you want, Chirac?" she demanded, in a confidentialtone.
"Eh, well," said Chirac. "You do not know where he has gone?"
melancholy repulsiveness of her surroundings, .
"No. What do you want?" she insisted.
He was nervous. He fidgetted. She guessed that, though warm withsympathy for her plight, he was preoccupied by interests andapprehensions of his own. He did not refuse her requesttemporarily to leave the astonishing matter of her situation inorder to discuss the matter of his visit.
"Eh, well! He came to me yesterday afternoon in the Rue Croissantto borrow some money."
She understood then the object of Gerald's stroll on the previousafternoon.
"Eh, well! It was like this. He said he ought to have receivedfive thousand francs yesterday morning, but that he had had atelegram that it would not arrive till to-day. And he had need offive hundred francs at once. I had not five hundred francs"--hesmiled sadly, as if to insinuate that he did not handle such sums--"but I borrowed it from the cashbox of the journal. It isnecessary, absolutely, that I should return it this morning." Hespoke with increased seriousness. "Your husband said he would takea cab and bring me the money immediately on the arrival of thepost this morning--about nine o'clock. Pardon me for deranging youwith such a----"
He stopped. She could see that he really was grieved to 'derange'her, but that circumstances pressed.
"At my paper," he murmured, "it is not so easy as that to--infine----!"
Gerald had genuinely been at his last francs. He had not lied whenshe thought he had lied. The nakedness of his character showednow. Instantly upon the final and definite cessation of the lawfulsupply of money, he had set his wits to obtain money unlawfully.He had, in fact, simply stolen it from Chirac, with the ornamentaladdition of endangering Chirac's reputation and situation--as asort of reward to Chirac for the kindness! And, further, no soonerhad he got hold of the money than it had intoxicated him, and hehad yielded to the first fatuous temptation. He had no sense ofresponsibility, no scruple. And as for common prudence--had he notrisked permanent disgrace and even prison for a paltry sum whichhe would certainly squander in two or three days? Yes, it wasindubitable that he would stop at nothing, at nothing whatever.
"You did not know that he was coming to me?" asked Chirac, pullinghis short, silky brown beard.
"No," Sophia answered.
"But he said that you had charged him with your friendlinesses tome!" He nodded his head once or twice, sadly but candidlyaccepting, in his quality of a Latin, the plain facts of humannature--reconciling himself to them at once.
hope you didn't lend him any," she said.was Chirac.
Sophia revolted at this crowning detail of the structure ofGerald's rascality.
"It is fortunate that I can pay you," she said.
"But----" he tried to protest.
"I have quite enough money."
She did not say this to screen Gerald, but merely from amour-propre. She would not let Chirac think that she was the wife of aman bereft of all honour. And so she clothed Gerald with the ragof having, at any rate, not left her in destitution as well as insickness. Her assertion seemed a strange one, in view of the factthat he had abandoned her on the previous evening--that is to say,immediately after the borrowing from Chirac. But Chirac did notexamine the statement.
"Perhaps he has the intention to send me the money. Perhaps, afterall, he is now at the offices----"
"No," said Sophia. "He is gone. Will you go downstairs and waitfor me. We will go together to Cook's office. It is English moneyI have."
"Cook's?" he repeated. The word now so potent had then littlesignificance. "But you are ill. You cannot----"
"I feel better."
She did. Or rather, she felt nothing except the power of herresolve to remove the painful anxiety from that wistful brow. Theshame of the trick played on Chirac awakened new forces in her.She dressed in a physical torment which, however, had no morereality than a nightmare. She searched in a place where even aninquisitive husband would not think of looking, and then,painfully, she descended the long stairs, holding to the rail,which swam round and round her, carrying the whole staircase withit. "After all," she thought, "I can't be seriously ill, or Ishouldn't have been able to get up and go out like this. I neverguessed early this morning that I could do it! I can't possibly beas ill as I thought I was!"
And in the vestibule she encountered Chirac's face, lightening atthe sight of her, which proved to him that his deliverance wasreally to be accomplished.
"Permit me----"
"I'm all right," she smiled, tottering. "Get a cab." It suddenlyoccurred to her that she might quite as easily have given him themoney in English notes; he could have changed them. But she hadnot thought. Her brain would not operate. She was dreaming andwaking together.
He helped her into the cab.