老妇人的故事 英文版The Old Wives' Tale
阿诺德.本涅特 Arnold Bennett
V
In the bureau de change there was a little knot of English,people, with naive, romantic, and honest faces, quite differentfrom the faces outside in the street. No corruption in thosefaces, but a sort of wondering and infantile sincerity, rather outof its element and lost in a land too unsophisticated, seeming tobelong to an earlier age! Sophia liked their tourist stare, andtheir plain and ugly clothes. She longed to be back in England,longed for a moment with violence, drowning in that desire.
The English clerk behind his brass bars took her notes, andcarefully examined them one by one. She watched him, not entirelyconvinced of his reality, and thought vaguely of the detestablemorning when she had abstracted the notes from Gerald's pocket.She was filled with pity for the simple, ignorant Sophia of thosedays, the Sophia who still had a few ridiculous illusionsconcerning Gerald's character. Often, since, she had been temptedto break into the money, but she had always withstood thetemptation, saying to herself that an hour of more urgent needwould come. It had come. She was proud of her firmness, of theforce of will which had enabled her to reserve the fund intact.The clerk gave her a keen look, and then asked her how she wouldtake the French money. And she saw the notes failing down oneafter another on to the counter as the clerk separated them with asnapping sound of the paper.
Chirac was beside her.
"Does that make the count?" she said, having pushed towards himfive hundred-franc notes.
"I should not know how to thank you," he said, accepting thenotes. "Truly--"
His joy was unmistakably eager. He had had a shock and a fright,and he now saw the danger past. He could return to the cashier ofhis newspaper, and fling down the money with a lordly and carelessair, as if to say: "When it is a question of these English, onecan always be sure!" But first he would escort her to the hotel.She declined--she did not know why, for he was her sole point ofmoral support in all France. He insisted. She yielded. So sheturned her back, with regret, on that little English oasis in theSahara of Paris, and staggered to the fiacre.
And now that she had done what she had to do, she lost control ofher body, and reclined flaccid and inert. Chirac was evidentlyalarmed. He did not speak, but glanced at her from time to timewith eyes full of fear. The carriage appeared to her to beswimming amid waves over great depths. Then she was aware of aheavy weight against her shoulder; she had slipped down uponChirac, unconscious.