老妇人的故事 英文版The Old Wives' Tale
阿诺德.本涅特 Arnold Bennett
I
Then she was lying in bed in a small room, obscure because it washeavily curtained; the light came through the inner pair ofcurtains of ecru lace, with a beautiful soft silvery quality. Aman was standing by the side of the bed--not Chirac.
"Now, madame," he said to her, with kind firmness, and speakingwith a charming exaggerated purity of the vowels. "You have themucous fever. I have had it myself. You will be forced to takebaths, very frequently. I must ask you to reconcile yourself tothat, to be good."
She did not reply. It did not occur to her to reply. But shecertainly thought that this doctor--he was probably a doctor--wasoverestimating her case. She felt better than she had felt for twodays. Still, she did not desire to move, nor was she in the leastanxious as to her surroundings. She lay quiet.
A woman in a rather coquettish deshabille watched over her withexpert skill.
Later, Sophia seemed to be revisiting the sea on whose waves thecab had swum; but now she was under the sea, in a watery gulf,terribly deep; and the sounds of the world came to her through thewater, sudden and strange. Hands seized her and forced her fromthe subaqueous grotto where she had hidden into new alarms. Andshe briefly perceived that there was a large bath by the side ofthe bed, and that she was being pushed into it. The water was icycold. After that her outlook upon things was for a time clearerand more precise. She knew from fragments of talk which she heardthat she was put into the cold bath by her bed every three hours,night and day, and that she remained in it for ten minutes.Always, before the bath, she had to drink a glass of wine, andsometimes another glass while she was in the bath. Beyond thiswine, and occasionally a cup of soup, she took nothing, had nowish to take anything. She grew perfectly accustomed to theseextraordinary habits of life, to this merging of night and dayinto one monotonous and endless repetition of the same rite amidthe same circumstances on exactly the same spot. Then followed aperiod during which she objected to being constantly wakened upfor this annoying immersion. And she fought against it even in herdreams. Long days seemed to pass when she could not be surewhether she had been put into the bath or not, when all externalphenomena were disconcertingly interwoven with matters which sheknew to be merely fanciful. And then she was overwhelmed by thehopeless gravity of her state. She felt that her state wasdesperate. She felt that she was dying. Her unhappiness wasextreme, not because she was dying, but because the veils of sensewere so puzzling, so exasperating, and because her exhausted bodywas so vitiated, in every fibre, by disease. She was perfectlyaware that she was going to die. She cried aloud for a pair ofscissors. She wanted to cut off her hair, and to send part of itto Constance and part of it to her mother, in separate packages.She insisted upon separate packages. Nobody would give her a pairof scissors. She implored, meekly, haughtily, furiously, butnobody would satisfy her. It seemed to her shocking that all herhair should go with her into her coffin while Constance and hermother had nothing by which to remember her, no tangible souvenirof her beauty. Then she fought for the scissors. She clutched atsome one--always through those baffling veils--who was putting herinto the bath by the bedside, and fought frantically. It appearedto her that this some one was the rather stout woman who hadsupped at Sylvain's with the quarrelsome Englishman, four yearsago. She could not rid herself of this singular conceit, thoughshe knew it to be absurd. ...
A long time afterwards--it seemed like a century--she did actuallyand unmistakably see the woman sitting by her bed, and the womanwas crying.
"Why are you crying?" Sophia asked wonderingly.
And the other, younger, woman, who was standing at the foot of thebed, replied:
"You do well to ask! It is you who have hurt her, in yourdelirium, when you so madly demanded the scissors."
The stout woman smiled with the tears on her cheeks; but Sophiawept, from remorse. The stout woman looked old, worn, and untidy.The other one was much younger. Sophia did not trouble to inquirefrom them who they were.
That little conversation formed a brief interlude in the delirium,which overtook her again and distorted everything. She forgot,however, that she was destined to die.
One day her brain cleared. She could be sure that she had gone tosleep in the morning and not wakened till the evening. Hence shehad not been put into the bath.
"Have I had my baths?" she questioned.
It was the doctor who faced her.
"No," he said, "the baths are finished."
She knew from his face that she was out of danger. Moreover, shewas conscious of a new feeling in her body, as though the fount ofphysical energy within her, long interrupted, had recommenced toflow--but very slowly, a trickling. It was a rebirth. She was notglad, but her body itself was glad; her body had an existence ofits own.
She was now often left by herself in the bedroom. To the right ofthe foot of the bed was a piano in walnut, and to the left achimney-piece with a large mirror. She wanted to look at herselfin the mirror. But it was a very long way off. She tried to situp, and could not. She hoped that one day she would be able to getas far as the mirror. She said not a word about this to either ofthe two women.
Often they would sit in the bedroom and talk without ceasing.Sophia learnt that the stout woman was named Foucault, and theother Laurence. Sometimes Laurence would address Madame Foucaultas Aimee, but usually she was more formal. Madame Foucault alwayscalled the other Laurence.
Sophia's curiosity stirred and awoke. But she could not obtain anyvery exact information as to where she was, except that the housewas in the Rue Breda, off the Rue Notre Dame de Lorette. Sherecollected vaguely that the reputation of the street wassinister. It appeared that, on the day when she had gone out withChirac, the upper part of the Rue Notre Dame de Lorette was closedfor repairs--(this she remembered)--and that the cabman had turnedup the Rue Breda in order to make a detour, and that it was justopposite to the house of Madame Foucault that she had lostconsciousness. Madame Foucault happened to be getting into a cabat the moment; but she had told Chirac nevertheless to carrySophia into the house, and a policeman had helped. Then, when thedoctor came, it was discovered that she could not be moved, saveto a hospital, and both Madame Foucault and Laurence weredetermined that no friend of Chirac's should be committed to thehorrors of a Paris hospital. Madame Foucault had suffered in oneas a patient, and Laurence had been a nurse in another. ...
Chirac was now away. The women talked loosely of a war.
"How kind you have been!" murmured Sophia, with humid eyes.
But they silenced her with gestures. She was not to talk. Theyseemed to have nothing further to tell her. They said Chirac wouldbe returning perhaps soon, and that she could talk to him.Evidently they both held Chirac in affection. They said often thathe was a charming boy.
Bit by bit Sophia comprehended the length and the seriousness ofher illness, and the immense devotion of the two women, and theterrific disturbance of their lives, and her own debility. She sawthat the women were strongly attached to her, and she could notunderstand why, as she had never done anything for them, whereasthey had done everything for her. She had not learnt that benefitsrendered, not benefits received, are the cause of suchattachments.
All the time she was plotting, and gathering her strength todisobey orders and get as far as the mirror. Her preliminarystudies and her preparations were as elaborate as those of aprisoner arranging to escape from a fortress. The first attemptwas a failure. The second succeeded. Though she could not standwithout support, she managed by clinging to the bed to reach achair, and to push the chair in front of her until it approachedthe mirror. The enterprise was exciting and terrific. Then she sawa face in the glass: white, incredibly emaciated, with great,wild, staring eyes; and the shoulders were bent as though withage. It was a painful, almost a horrible sight. It frightened her,so that in her alarm she recoiled from it. Not attendingsufficiently to the chair, she sank to the ground. She could notpick herself up, and she was caught there, miserably, by herangered jailers. The vision of her face taught her moreefficiently than anything else the gravity of her adventure. Asthe women lifted her inert, repentant mass into the bed, shereflected, "How queer my life is!" It seemed to her that she oughtto have been trimming hats in the showroom instead of being inthat curtained, mysterious, Parisian interior.