老妇人的故事 英文版The Old Wives' Tale
阿诺德.本涅特 Arnold Bennett
V
Sophia walked alone, with tired limbs, up the damaged oak stairsto the flat. Chirac had decided that, in the circumstances of thevictory, he would do well to go to the offices of his paper ratherearlier than usual. He had brought her back to the Rue Breda. Theyhad taken leave of each other in a sort of dream or generalenchantment due to their participation in the vast nationaldelirium which somehow dominated individual feelings. They did notdefine their relations. They had been conscious only of emotion.
The stairs, which smelt of damp even in summer, disgusted Sophia.She thought of the flat with horror and longed for green placesand luxury. On the landing were two stoutish, ill-dressed men, ofmiddle age, apparently waiting. Sophia found her key and openedthe door.
"Pardon, madame!" said one of the men, raising his hat, and theyboth pushed into the flat after her. They stared, puzzled, at thestrips of paper pasted on the doors.
"What do you want?" she asked haughtily. She was very frightened.The extraordinary interruption brought her down with a shock tothe scale of the individual.
"I am the concierge," said the man who had addressed her. He hadthe air of a superior artisan. "It was my wife who spoke to youthis afternoon. This," pointing to his companion, "this is thelaw. I regret it, but ..."
The law saluted and shut the front door. Like the concierge, thelaw emitted an odour--the odour of uncleanliness on a hot Augustday.
"The rent?" exclaimed Sophia.
"No, madame, not the rent: the furniture!"
Then she learnt the history of the furniture. It had belonged tothe concierge, who had acquired it from a previous tenant and soldit on credit to Madame Foucault. Madame Foucault had signed billsand had not met them. She had made promises and broken them. Shehad done everything except discharge her liabilities. She had beenwarned and warned again. That day had been fixed as the lastlimit, and she had solemnly assured her creditor that on that dayshe would pay. On leaving the house she had stated precisely andclearly that she would return before lunch with all the money. Shehad made no mention of a sick father.
Sophia slowly perceived the extent of Madame Foucault's duplicityand moral cowardice. No doubt the sick father was an invention.The woman, at the end of a tether which no ingenuity of lies couldfurther lengthen, had probably absented herself solely to avoidthe pain of witnessing the seizure. She would do anything, howeversilly, to avoid an immediate unpleasantness. Or perhaps she hadabsented herself without any particular aim, but simply in thehope that something fortunate might occur. Perhaps she had hopedthat Sophia, taken unawares, would generously pay. Sophia smiledgrimly.
She warned them as to the danger of opening the sealed rooms. Theman of the law seemed prepared to stay in the corridorindefinitely. No prospect of delay disturbed him.
Strange and disturbing, the triumph of the concierge! He was alocksmith by trade. He and his wife and their children lived intwo little dark rooms by the archway--an insignificant fragment ofthe house. He was away from home about fourteen hours every day,except Sundays, when he washed the courtyard. All the other dutiesof the concierge were performed by the wife. The pair alwayslooked poor, untidy, dirty, and rather forlorn. But they weresteadily levying toll on everybody in the big house. They amassedmoney in forty ways. They lived for money, and all men have whatthey live for. With what arrogant gestures Madame Foucault woulddescend from a carriage at the great door! What respectfulattitudes and tones the ageing courtesan would receive from thewife and children of the concierge! But beneath these conventionalfictions the truth was that the concierge held the whip. At lasthe was using it. And he had given himself a half-holiday in orderto celebrate his second acquirement of the ostentatious furnitureand the crimson lampshades. This was one of the dramatic crises inhis career as a man of substance. The national thrill of victoryhad not penetrated into the flat with the concierge and the law.The emotions of the concierge were entirely independent of theNapoleonic foreign policy.
As Sophia, sick with a sudden disillusion, was putting her thingstogether, and wondering where she was to go, and whether it wouldbe politic to consult Chirac, she heard a fluster at the frontdoor: cries, protestations, implorings. Her own door was thrustopen, and Madame Foucault burst in.
"Save me!" exclaimed Madame Foucault, sinking to the ground.
The feeble theatricality of the gesture offended Sophia's taste.She asked sternly what Madame Foucault expected her to do. Had notMadame Foucault knowingly exposed her, without the least warning,to the extreme annoyance of this visit of the law, a visit whichmeant practically that Sophia was put into the street?
Sophia learnt the complete history of the woman's efforts to payfor the furniture: a farrago of folly and deceptions. MadameFoucault confessed too much. Sophia scorned confession for thesake of confession. She scorned the impulse which forces a weakcreature to insist on its weakness, to revel in remorse, and tofind an excuse for its conduct in the very fact that there is noexcuse. She gathered that Madame Foucault had in fact gone away inthe hope that Sophia, trapped, would pay; and that in the end, shehad not even had the courage of her own trickery, and had runback, driven by panic into audacity, to fall at Sophia's feet,lest Sophia might not have yielded and the furniture have beenseized. From, beginning to end the conduct of Madame Foucault hadbeen fatuous and despicable and wicked. Sophia coldly condemnedMadame Foucault for having allowed herself to be brought into theworld with such a weak and maudlin character, and for havingallowed herself to grow old and ugly. As a sight the woman waspositively disgraceful.
doinvolved sacrifice and anxiety without the prospect .
"Save me!" she exclaimed again. "I did what I could for you!"
Sophia hated her. But the logic of the appeal was irresistible.
"But what can I do?" she asked reluctantly.
"Lend me the money. You can. If you don't, this will be the endfor me."
"And a good thing, too!" thought Sophia's hard sense.
"How much is it?" Sophia glumly asked.
"It isn't a thousand francs!" said Madame Foucault with eagerness."All my beautiful furniture will go for less than a thousandfrancs! Save me!"
She was nauseating Sophia.
"Please rise," said Sophia, her hands fidgeting undecidedly.
"I shall repay you, surely!" Madame Foucault asseverated. "Iswear!"
"Does she take me for a fool?" thought Sophia, "with her oaths!"
"No!" said Sophia. "I won't lend you the money. But I tell youwhat I will do. I will buy the furniture at that price; and I willpromise to re-sell it to you as soon as you can pay me. Like that,you can be tranquil. But I have very little money. I must have aguarantee. The furniture must be mine till you pay me."
"You are an angel of charity!" cried Madame Foucault, embracingSophia's skirts. "I will do whatever you wish. Ah! YouEnglishwomen are astonishing."
Sophia was not an angel of charity. What she had promised to doinvolved sacrifice and anxiety without the prospect of reward. Butit was not charity. It was part of the price Sophia paid for theexercise of her logical faculty; she paid it unwillingly. 'I didwhat I could for you!' Sophia would have died sooner than remindany one of a benefit conferred, and Madame Foucault had committedprecisely that enormity. The appeal was inexcusable to a finemind; but it was effective.
The men were behind the door, listening. Sophia paid out of herstock of notes. Needless to say, the total was more and not lessthan a thousand francs. Madame Foucault grew rapidly confidentialwith the man. Without consulting Sophia, she asked the bailiff todraw up a receipt transferring the ownership of all the furnitureto Sophia; and the bailiff, struck into obligingness by glimpsesof Sophia's beauty, consented to do so. There was much conferringupon forms of words, and flourishing of pens between thick, vilefingers, and scattering of ink.
Before the men left Madame Foucault uncorked a bottle of wine forthem, and helped them to drink it. Throughout the evening she wasinsupportably deferential to Sophia, who was driven to bed. MadameFoucault contentedly went up to the sixth floor to occupy theservant's bedroom. She was glad to get so far away from thesulphur, of which a few faint fumes had penetrated into thecorridor.
The next morning, after a stifling night of bad dreams, Sophia wastoo ill to get up. She looked round at the furniture in the littleroom, and she imagined the furniture in the other rooms, anddismally thought: "All this furniture is mine. She will never payme! I am saddled with it."
It was cheaply bought, but she probably could not sell it for evenwhat she had paid. Still, the sense of ownership was reassuring.
The charwoman brought her coffee, and Chirac's newspaper; fromwhich she learnt that the news of the victory which had sent thecity mad on the previous day was utterly false. Tears came intoher eyes as she gazed absently at all the curtained windows of thecourtyard. She had youth and loveliness; according to the rulesshe ought to have been irresponsible, gay, and indulgently watchedover by the wisdom of admiring age. But she felt towards theFrench nation as a mother might feel towards adorable, wilfulchildren suffering through their own charming foolishness. She sawFrance personified in Chirac. How easily, despite his specialknowledge, he had yielded to the fever! Her heart bled for Franceand Chirac on that morning of reaction and of truth. She could notbear to recall the scene in the Place de la Concorde. MadameFoucault had not descended.