老妇人的故事 英文版The Old Wives' Tale
阿诺德.本涅特 Arnold Bennett
IV
About a fortnight later--it was a fine Saturday in early August--Sophia, with a large pinafore over her dress, was finishing theportentous preparations for disinfecting the flat. Part of theaffair was already accomplished, her own room and the corridorhaving been fumigated on the previous day, in spite of theopposition of Madame Foucault, who had taken amiss Laurence'stale-bearing to Sophia. Laurence had left the flat--under exactlywhat circumstances Sophia knew not, but she guessed that it musthave been in consequence of a scene elaborating the tiff caused byMadame Foucault's resentment against Laurence. The brief,factitious friendliness between Laurence and Sophia had gone likea dream, and Laurence had gone like a dream. The servant had beendismissed; in her place Madame Foucault employed a charwoman eachmorning for two hours. Finally, Madame Foucault had been suddenlycalled away that morning by a letter to her sick father at St.Mammes-sur-Seine. Sophia was delighted at the chance. Thedisinfecting of the flat had become an obsession with Sophia--theobsession of a convalescent whose perspective unconsciously twiststhings to the most wry shapes. She had had trouble on the daybefore with Madame Foucault, and she was expecting more serioustrouble when the moment arrived for ejecting Madame Foucault aswell as all her movable belongings from Madame Foucault's ownroom. Nevertheless, Sophia had been determined, whatever shouldhappen, to complete an honest fumigation of the entire flat. Hencethe eagerness with which, urging Madame Foucault to go to herfather, Sophia had protested that she was perfectly strong andcould manage by herself for a couple of days. Owing to the partialsuppression of the ordinary railway services in favour of militaryneeds, Madame Foucault could not hope to go and return on the sameday. Sophia had lent her a louis.
Pans of sulphur were mysteriously burning in each of the threefront rooms, and two pairs of doors had been pasted over withpaper, to prevent the fumes from escaping. The charwoman haddeparted. Sophia, with brush, scissors, flour-paste, and news-sheets, was sealing the third pair of doors, when there was a ringat the front door.
She had only to cross the corridor in order to open.
It was Chirac. She was not surprised to see him. The outbreak ofthe war had induced even Sophia and her landlady to look throughat least one newspaper during the day, and she had in this waylearnt, from an article signed by Chirac, that he had returned toParis after a mission into the Vosges country for his paper.
He started on seeing her. "Ah!" He breathed out the exclamationslowly. And then smiled, seized her hand, and kissed it.
The sight of his obvious extreme pleasure in meeting her again wasthe sweetest experience that had fallen to Sophia for years.
"Then you are cured?"
"Quite."
He sighed. "You know, this is an enormous relief to me, to know,veritably, that you are no longer in danger. You gave me a fright... but a fright, my dear madame!"
She smiled in silence.
As he glanced inquiringly up and down the corridor, she said--
"I'm all alone in the flat. I'm disinfecting it."
"Then that is sulphur that I smell?"
She nodded. "Excuse me while I finish this door," she said.
He closed the front-door. "But you seem to be quite at home here!"he observed.
"I ought to be," said she.
He glanced again inquiringly up and down the corridor. "And youare really all alone now?" he asked, as though to be doubly sure.
She explained the circumstances.
"I owe you my most sincere excuses for bringing you here," he saidconfidentially.
"But why?" she replied, looking intently at her door. "They havebeen most kind to me. Nobody could have been kinder. And MadameLaurence being such a good nurse----"
"It is true," said he. "That was a reason. In effect they are bothvery good-natured little women. ... You comprehend, as journalistit arrives to me to know all kinds of people ..." He snapped hisfingers ... "And as we were opposite the house. In fine, I prayyou to excuse me."
"Hold me this paper," she said. "It is necessary that every crackshould be covered; also between the floor and the door."
"You English are wonderful," he murmured, as he took the paper."Imagine you doing that! Then," he added, resuming theconfidential tone, "I suppose you will leave the Foucault now,hein?"
"I suppose so," she said carelessly.
"You go to England?"
She turned to him, as she patted the creases out of a strip ofpaper with a duster, and shook her head.
"Not to England?"
"No."
"If it is not indiscreet, where are you going?"
"I don't know," she said candidly.
And she did not know. She was without a plan. Her brain told herthat she ought to return to Bursley, or, at the least, write. Buther pride would not hear of such a surrender. Her situation wouldhave to be far more desperate than it was before she could confessher defeat to her family even in a letter. A thousand times no!That was a point which she had for ever decided. She would faceany disaster, and any other shame, rather than the shame of herfamily's forgiving reception of her.
"And you?" she asked. "How does it go? This war?"
He told her, in a few words, a few leading facts about himself."It must not be said," he added of the war, "but that will turnout ill! I--I know, you comprehend."
"Truly?" she answered with casualness.
"You have heard nothing of him?" Chirac asked.
"Who? Gerald?"
He gave a gesture.
"Nothing! Not a word! Nothing!"
"He will have gone back to England!"
"Never!" she said positively.
"But why not?"
"Because he prefers France. He really does like France. I think itis the only real passion he ever had."
"It is astonishing," reflected Chirac, "how France is loved! Andyet ...! But to live, what will he do? Must live!"
Sophia merely shrugged her shoulders.
"Then it is finished between you two?" he muttered awkwardly.
She nodded. She was on her knees, at the lower crack of the doors.
"There!" she said, rising. "It's well done, isn't it? That isall."
She smiled at him, facing him squarely, in the obscurity of theuntidy and shabby corridor. Both felt that they had become veryintimate. He was intensely flattered by her attitude, and she knewit.
"Now," she said, "I will take off my pinafore. Where can I nicheyou? There is only my bedroom, and I want that. What are we todo?"
"Listen," he suggested diffidently. "Will you do me the honour tocome for a drive? That will do you good. There is sunshine. Andyou are always very pale."
"With pleasure," she agreed cordially.
While dressing, she heard him walking up and down the corridor;occasionally they exchanged a few words. Before leaving, Sophiapulled off the paper from one of the key-holes of the sealed suiteof rooms, and they peered through, one after the other, and sawthe green glow of the sulphur, and were troubled by itsuncanniness. And then Sophia refixed the paper.
In descending the stairs of the house she felt the infirmity ofher knees; but in other respects, though she had been out onlyonce before since her illness, she was conscious of a sufficientstrength. A disinclination for any enterprise had prevented herfrom taking the air as she ought to have done, but within the flatshe had exercised her limbs in many small tasks. The littleChirac, nervously active and restless, wanted to take her arm, butshe would not allow it.
The concierge and part of her family stared curiously at Sophia asshe passed under the archway, for the course of her illness hadexcited the interest of the whole house. Just as the carriage wasdriving off, the concierge came across the pavement and paid hercompliments, and then said:
"You do not know by hazard why Madame Foucault has not returnedfor lunch, madame?"
"Returned for lunch!" said Sophia. "She will not come back tillto-morrow."
The concierge made a face. "Ah! How curious it is! She told myhusband that she would return in two hours. It is very grave!Question of business."
"I know nothing, madame," said Sophia. She and Chirac looked ateach other. The concierge murmured thanks and went off mutteringindistinctly.
The fiacre turned down the Rue Laferriere, the horse slipping andsliding as usual over the cobblestones. Soon they were on theboulevard, making for the Champs Elysees and the Bois de Boulogne.
The fresh breeze and bright sunshine and the large freedom of thestreets quickly intoxicated Sophia--intoxicated her, that is tosay, in quite a physical sense. She was almost drunk, with theheady savour of life itself. A mild ecstasy of well-being overcameher. She saw the flat as a horrible, vile prison, and blamedherself for not leaving it sooner and oftener. The air wasmedicine, for body and mind too. Her perspective was instantlycorrected. She was happy, living neither in the past nor in thefuture, but in and for that hour. And beneath her happiness moveda wistful melancholy for the Sophia who had suffered such acaptivity and such woes. She yearned for more and yet moredelight, for careless orgies of passionate pleasure, in the midstof which she would forget all trouble. Why had she refused theoffer of Laurence? Why had she not rushed at once into thesplendid fire of joyous indulgence, ignoring everything but thecrude, sensuous instinct? Acutely aware as she was of her youth,her beauty, and her charm, she wondered at her refusal. She didnot regret her refusal. She placidly observed it as the result ofsome tremendously powerful motive in herself, which could not bequestioned or reasoned with--which was, in fact, the essentialHER.
"Do I look like an invalid?" she asked, leaning back luxuriouslyin the carriage among the crowd of other vehicles.
Chirac hesitated. "My faith! Yes!" he said at length. "But itbecomes you. If I did not know that you have little love forcompliments, I--"
"But I adore compliments!" she exclaimed. "What made you thinkthat?"
"Well, then," he youthfully burst out, "you are more ravishingthan ever."
She gave herself up deliciously to his admiration.
After a silence, he said: "Ah! if you knew how disquieted I wasabout you, away there ...! I should not know how to tell you.Veritably disquieted, you comprehend! What could I do? Tell me alittle about your illness."
She recounted details.
As the fiacre entered the Rue Royale, they noticed a crowd ofpeople in front of the Madeleine shouting and cheering.
The cabman turned towards them. "It appears there has been avictory!" he said.
"A victory! If only it was true!" murmured Chirac, cynically.
rose and spoke to her.
In the Rue Royale people were running frantically to and fro,laughing and gesticulating in glee. The customers in the cafesstood on their chairs, and even on tables, to watch, andoccasionally to join in, the sudden fever. The fiacre was slowedto a walking pace. Flags and carpets began to show from the upperstoreys of houses. The crowd grew thicker and more febrile."Victory! Victory!" rang hoarsely, shrilly, and hoarsely again inthe air.
"My God!" said Chirac, trembling. "It must be a true victory! Weare saved! We are saved! ... Oh yes, it is true!"
"But naturally it is true! What are you saying?" demanded thedriver.
At the Place de la Concorde the fiacre had to stop altogether. Theimmense square was a sea of white hats and flowers and happyfaces, with carriages anchored like boats on its surface. Flagafter flag waved out from neighbouring roofs in the breeze thattempered the August sun. Then hats began to go up, and cheersrolled across the square like echoes of firing in an enclosedvalley. Chirac's driver jumped madly on to his seat, and crackedhis whip.
hesitated. "My faith! Yes!" he said.
"Vive la France!" he bawled with all the force of his lungs.
itbecomes you. If I did not know that you have.
A thousand throats answered him.
Then there was a stir behind them. Another carriage was beingslowly forced to the front. The crowd was pushing it, and crying,"Marseillaise! Marseillaise!" In the carriage was a woman alone;not beautiful, but distinguished, and with the assured gaze of onewho is accustomed to homage and multitudinous applause.
"It is Gueymard!" said Chirac to Sophia. He was very pale. And hetoo shouted, "Marseillaise!" All his features were distorted.
The woman rose and spoke to her coachman, who offered his hand andshe climbed to the box seat, and stood on it and bowed severaltimes.
"Marseillaise!" The cry continued. Then a roar of cheers, and thensilence spread round the square like an inundation. And amid thissilence the woman began to sing the Marseillaise. As she sang, thetears ran down her cheeks. Everybody in the vicinity was weepingor sternly frowning. In the pauses of the first verse could beheard the rattle of horses' bits, or a whistle of a tug on theriver. The refrain, signalled by a proud challenging toss ofGueymard's head, leapt up like a tropical tempest, formidable,overpowering. Sophia, who had had no warning of the emotiongathering within her, sobbed violently. At the close of the hymnGueymard's carriage was assaulted by worshippers. All around, inthe tumult of shouting, men were kissing and embracing each other;and hats went up continually in fountains. Chirac leaned over theside of the carriage and wrung the hand of a man who was standingby the wheel.
"Who is that?" Sophia asked, in an unsteady voice, to break theinexplicable tension within her.
"I don't know," said Chirac. He was weeping like a child. And hesang out: "Victory! To Berlin! Victory!"