EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION, by John Galsworthy, in his The Inn of Tranquillity, New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1912. As reprinted in Chamberlain and Bolton,Progressive Readings in Prose, pp. 45-47.
John Galsworthy （1867-1933）, English novelist, is well known among present-day English writers of plays and novels subtly analyzing the upper and the middle classes of England and revealing the conditions which largely determine them. Of his novels The Patrician, dealing with class distinctions and conventions, and The Man of Property, studying the passion for possession in the Forsyte family, are best known.Strife, a powerful account of the evil and the futility of a strike, and Justice, an indictment of the English legal system, are two of his finest plays.Evolution（1910）is a characteristic essay in its treatment of a changing phase of society and is typical of the exposition which combines the informality of the essay with the narrative interest of fiction.
Coming out of the theater, we found it utterly impossible to get a taxicab; and, though it was raining slightly, walked through Leicester Square in the hope of picking one up as it returned down Piccadily. Numbers of hansoms and four-wheelers passed, or stood by the curb, hailing us feebly, or not even attempting to attract our attention, but every taxi seemed to have its load. At Piccadily Circus, losing patience, we beckoned to a four-wheeler and resigned ourselves to a long, slow journey. A sou\'westerly air blew through the open windows, and there was in it the scent of change, that wet scent which visits even the hearts and towns and inspires the watcher of their myriad activities with thought of the restless Force that forever cries: “On, on!” But gradually the steady patter of the horse's hoofs, the rattling of the windows, the slow thudding of the wheels, pressed on us so drowsily that when, at last, we reached home we were more than half asleep. The fare was two shillings, and, standing in the lamplight to make sure the coin was a half-crown before handing it to the driver, we happened to look up. This cabman appeared to be a man of about sixty, with a long thin face, whose chin and drooping gray mustaches seemed in permanent repose on the up-turned collar of his old blue overcoat. But the remarkable features of his face were the two furrows down his cheeks, so deep and hollow that it seemed as though that face were a collection of bones without coherent flesh, among which the eyes were sunk back so far that they had lost their luster. He sat quite motionless, gazing at the tail of his horse. And, almost unconsciously, one added the rest of one\'s silver to that half-crown. He took the coins without speaking; but, as we were turning into the garden gate, we heard him say:
“Thank you; you've saved my life.”
Not knowing, either of us, what to reply to such a curious speech, we closed the gate again and came back to the cab.
“Are things so very bad?”
“They are,” replied the cabman. “It's done with—is this job. We're not wanted now.” And, taking up his whip, he prepared to drive away.
“How long have they been as bad as this?”
The cabman dropped his hand again, as though glad to rest it, and answered incoherently:
“Thirty-five year I've been drivin' a cab.”
And, sunk again in contemplation of his horse's tail, he could only be roused by many questions to express himself, having, as it seemed, no knowledge of the habit.
“I don\'t blame the taxis, I don't blame nobody. It's come on us, that\'s what it has. I left the wife this morning with nothing in the house. She was saying to me only yesterday:‘What have you brought home the last four months? ' ‘Put it at six shillings a week, ' I said. ‘No, ' she said, ‘seven.' Well, that\'s right—she enters it all down in her book.”
“You are really going short of food?”
The cabman smiled; and that smile between those two deep hollows was surely as strange as ever shone on a human face.
“You may say that,” he said. “Well, what does it amount to? Before I picked you up, I had one eighteenpenny fare to-day; and yesterday I took five shillings. And I\'ve got seven bob a day to pay for the cab, and that\'s low, too. There's many and many a proprietor that\'s broke and gone—every bit as bad as us. They let us down as easy as ever they can; you can\'t get blood from a stone, can you?” Once again he smiled. “I\'m sorry for them, too, and I\'m sorry for the horses, though they come out the best of the three of us, I do believe.”
One of us muttered something about the Public.
The cabman turned his face and stared down through the darkness.
“The Public?” he said, and his voice had in it a faint surprise. “Well, they all want the taxis. It's natural. They get about faster in them, and time\'s money. I was seven hours before I picked you up. And then you was lookin' for a taxi. Them as take us because they can't get better, they're not in a good temper, as a rule. And there's a few old ladies that's frightened of the motors, but old ladies aren't never very free with their money—can't afford to be, the most of them, I expect.”
“Everybody\'s sorry for you; one would have thought that—”
He interrupted quietly: “Sorrow don't buy bread. . . . I never had nobody ask me about things before.” And, slowly moving his long face from side to side, he added: “Besides, what could people do? They can't be expected to support you; and if they started askin' you questions they'd feel it very awkward. They know that, I suspect. Of course, there's such a lot of us; the hansoms are pretty nigh as bad off as we are. Well, we're gettin' fewer every day, that's one thing.”
Not knowing whether or no to manifest sympathy with this extinction, we approached the horse. It was a horse that “stood over” a good deal at the knee, and in the darkness seemed to have innumerable ribs. And suddenly one of us said: “Many people want to see nothing but taxis on the streets, if only for the sake of the horses.”
The cabman nodded.
“This old fellow,” he said, “never carried a deal of flesh. His grub don\'t put spirit into him nowadays; it\'s not up to much in quality, but he gets enough of it.”
“And you don't.”
The cabman again took up his whip.
“I don't suppose,” he said without emotion, “any one could ever find another job for me now. I've been at this too long. It'll be the workhouse, if it's not the other thing.”
And hearing us mutter that it seemed cruel, he smiled for the third time.
“Yes,” he said slowly, “it's a bit 'ard on us, because we've done nothing to deserve it. But things are like that, so far as I can see. One thing comes pushin' out another, and so you go on. I've thought about it—you get to thinkin' and worryin' about the rights o' things, sittin' up here all day. No, I don't see anything for it. It'll soon be the end of us now—can't last much longer. And I don\'t know that I\'ll be sorry to have done with it. It's pretty well broke my spirit.”
“There was a fund got up.”
“Yes, it helped a few of us to learn the motor drivin'; but what\'s the good of that to me, at my time of life? Sixty, that's my age; I'm not the only one—there's hundreds like me. We\'re not fit for it, that's the fact; we haven't got the nerve now. It'd want a mint of money to help us. And what you say's the truth—people want to see the end of us. They want the taxis—our day's over. I'm not complaining; you asked me about it yourself.”
And for the third time he raised his whip.
“Tell me what you would have done if you had been given your fare and just sixpence over?”
The cabman stared downward, as though puzzled by that question.
“Done? Why, nothing. What could I have done?”
“But you said that it had saved your life.”
“Yes, I said that,” he answered slowly; “I was feelin' a bit low. You can't help it sometimes; it's the thing comin' on you, and no way out of it—that's what gets over you. We try not to think about it, as a rule.”
And this time, with a “Thank you, kindly!” he touched his horse's flank with the whip. Like a thing aroused from sleep the forgotten creature started and began to draw the cabman away from us. Very slowly they traveled down the road among the shadows of the trees broken by lamplight. Above us, white ships of cloud were sailing rapidly across the dark river of sky on the wind which smelled of change. And, after the cab was lost to sight, that wind still brought to us the dying sound of the slow wheels.
Notes
taxicab, a motor cab or car, fitted with a taximeter that registers the distance covered by the car and at the same time registers the fare.
Leicester Square and Piccadilly, the names, respectively, of a well-known street crossing and of a street in London.
hansoms, a kind of horse carriage named after its English inventor J. A. Hansom. A hansom has two wheels, while four-wheelers have four wheels.
curb, the edging of upright stones set along the margin of the street to separate the sidewalk from the roadbed.
sou\'westerly, southwesterly. The wind blew from the southwest.
half-crown, an English coin worth two and a half shillings.
furrows, deep lines on the face.
coherent, attached or stuck together; sticking to the bones.
done with, finished.
incoherently, without agreement to the question asked; inconsistently.
Thirty-five year. The uneducated cab-driver uses year where his better educated cousin would use years.
I don\'t blame nobody,meaning,I don\'t blame anybody.
short of food, lacking in food; destitute of food; without food.
eighteenpenny, an adjective here, denoting a fare of eighteen pence or one and a half shillings.
bob, slang in England for a shilling. Bob is the plural as well as the singular form of the word.
broke, bankrupt, ruined, without money.
very free, very liberal or generous with their money.
“stood over, ” leaned over. The horse was weak; its legs could hardly support the weight of the body; and therefore the knees were bent out to an unusual degree.
innumerable ribs, because it was so skinny and emaciated, therefore the ribs stood out very plainly.
grub, food.
workhouse, in England, a poorhouse where able-bodied poor are maintained at public expense and made to do work.
’ard, hard.
broke, crushed, destroyed, shattered, took away.
fund, a sum of money raised to help them.
mint of money, a very large sum of money, enough to fill a mint, the place where money is coined.
low, low in spirit, depressed, ready to give up, disspirited.
flank, the side of the horse, between the ribs and the hip.
Questions
1. Explain why this story is called “Evolution.”
2. Describe and characterize the cabman.
3. Do you know of any similar tragedies of evolution?
4. Would the idea of this story be as effectively expressed in ordinary essay form?
参考译文
【作品简介】
《时代变迁》一文选自约翰·高尔斯华绥所著《宁静的旅馆》，纽约博纳出版社1912年出版。后收入钱伯伦及博尔顿编写的《散文进阶读本》,45—47页。
【作者简介】
约翰·高尔斯华绥（1867—1933），英国著名小说家、剧作家，善于分析英国上层及中产阶级，揭示造成他们行为方式的原因。著名小说有《贵族》《有产业的人》等；《贵族》描写阶级界限及社会习俗，《有产业的人》刻画福尔赛家族对占有财富的热情。代表剧作有《冲突》《公义》等。《冲突》生动有力地描写了一场罢工，揭露其邪恶与无益；《公义》则控诉了英国的司法体制。《时代变迁》（1910年）描写了处于变化中的英国社会，把散文的随意和小说的精心叙述结合起来，是这方面的代表作。
走出剧场，我们发现根本叫不到出租汽车。尽管在下着小雨，我们还是走过莱斯特广场，希望能叫到一辆从繁华的皮卡迪利大街返回的出租车。不少两轮和四轮马车从我们身边经过，或者停在马路边，小声招呼我们，或者干脆根本不想引起我们的注意。但每辆出租汽车上似乎都有乘客。走到皮卡迪利广场，我们终于失去了耐心，招手叫了一辆四轮马车，开始了一段漫长的旅程。一阵西南风透过敞开的窗户吹进来，风中有种变化的气息，那种湿漉漉的气息浸入人们的心灵，浸入大街小巷，使得那些注视着这个城市万千变化的人们禁不住地想到有一种躁动不安的力量永远在召唤人们：继续，继续。但渐渐地，马蹄稳定的嗒嗒声，风吹窗户发出的乒乓声，车轮缓慢沉闷的轧轧声，使我们昏昏欲睡；当我们终于到家时，几乎都睡着了。车费是两先令，我们站在灯光下看清一枚硬币是半克朗，把它递给马车夫之前，我们正好抬起头来。马车夫大约六十岁的年纪，瘦长脸，下巴和下垂的灰色胡须似乎永远贴在他蓝色旧外套的立领上。但他脸上最突出的特征，是脸颊上两道深陷的皱纹，犁沟似的，看上去脸上全是骨头，没有肉。眼睛也深深地凹陷下去，没有光泽。他坐在那儿一动不动，盯着马尾巴。几乎是下意识地，我们中间有个人把剩下的硬币也给了他。他拿着钱，没有说话。但是，当我们要走进园门时，听到他说：
“谢谢你们，你们救了我的命呀。”
听到车夫这样突兀的话，我们都不知道该怎么回答。所以，又关上大门，回到马车旁边。
“情况真的这么糟糕吗？”
“是啊，”车夫说道，“完了——马车夫完了。现在，人们不需要我们了。”他拿起马鞭，准备赶车离开。
“这么糟糕有多久了？”
马车夫又放下了扬起的马鞭，好像很高兴让手休息一下，答非所问地说：
“三十五年了，我当了三十五年马车夫呀。”
然后，又盯着马尾巴沉思起来。别人问他很多问题，似乎才能激起他的表达愿望；他对这个习惯并不自知。
“我不怪出租汽车，我谁也不怪。我们受到冲击了，就是这样。今天早上我离开家时，没给老婆一分钱。我老婆昨天对我说：‘过去四个月，你给了家里多少钱？\'‘一周六先令吧。’我说。‘不对，’她说，‘是七先令。’哦，她是对的——她把所有的进项都记在了本上。”
“你们真的连饭也吃不饱了？”
车夫苦笑了一下。在他有着两道深陷皱纹的脸上挤出的笑容，无疑是人间最奇怪的笑容了。
“可以这么说。”他答道，“哎，总共能挣多少钱呢？我拉到你们这趟活之前，今天挣了十八便士的车费。昨天挣了五先令。每天的租车费要七先令，这还算低的。许多车主已经破产了，没了——情况跟我们一样糟糕。他们轻易地抛弃了我们，因为石头里榨不出血，对吧？”他再次苦笑了，“我也为他们感到难过，也为这些拉车的马儿感到难过，不过我相信，三者中马儿的命运会是最好的。”
我们中有个人低声说，公众都爱乘坐出租汽车。
马车夫转过脸，盯着黑暗深处。
“公众？”他说，声音里有些许惊讶。“哎，大家都想坐出租汽车。这很自然。出租汽车跑得快，时间就是金钱嘛。今天我等了七个钟头才拉上你们这趟活。而当时你们也在等出租汽车。人们叫不到出租汽车时，才坐我们的马车，所以他们通常都气哼哼的。有一些老太太倒是害怕汽车，但老太太花钱都很节俭——她们中大多数都奢侈不起呀，我猜。”
“大家都为你们感到难过；人们应该早就想到——”
他平静地打断说：“难过不能当饭吃……以前从来没人问过我这些问题。”他慢慢地摇了摇头，补充道，“此外，人们能做什么？你不能指望别人养活你。如果他们开始问你生计的问题，他们会感到尴尬。我猜，他们也知道这一点。当然，我们人数太多了；两轮马车的情况跟我们差不多。不过，干我们这行的人数在不断减少，这倒是真的。”
我们不知道该不该对马车夫这行的消亡表示同情，便走过去看拉车的马儿。马儿老了，瘦骨嶙峋，膝盖部分弯曲变形得很厉害。在黑暗中看上去尽是肋骨。突然，我们中间有人说：“很多人在街上只想看到出租汽车，如果他们为这些马儿想想就好了。”
马车夫点点头。
“这个老伙计，”他说，“一直都很瘦。如今，草料也让它打不起精神。草料不算好，但够它吃。”
“而你们却不够吃。”
马车夫再次扬起马鞭。
“我想，”他不带感情地说，“现在没人能帮我找到别的工作了。干这一行太久了。不是等死，就是进济贫院。”
听到我们小声说这也太残酷了，他第三次苦笑了。
“是啊，”他缓慢地说，“这对我们是有点残酷，因为我们啥也没做，不应该遭这样的报应。但在我看来，事情就是这样：一件新事物出现了，老的就要被淘汰，循环往复。我想过了——你可以整天坐在这儿，思考事情该不该如此，为此发愁。但我觉得这样做毫无意义。我们不久就完了——要不了多久。没想到，这一行完了我会这样难过，几乎心灰意冷。”
“不是有一项帮助马车夫的基金吗？”
“是有这么个基金，帮助我们中的一些人学习开汽车。但我这么大岁数了，这对我有什么用呢？六十岁了，不是我一个人这么大岁数了——有几百个像我这样的人。我们不适合开汽车了，这是事实。我们没那个胆量了。帮助我们需要大量的钱。您刚才说的是事实——人们不想再看到我们了，大家都想坐出租汽车。我不是在抱怨，是你们自己要问我的。”
他第三次扬起了马鞭。
“告诉我，如果别人付了你的车费，并且只多给了你六便士，你会做什么？”
马车夫盯着地面，似乎对这个问题感到迷惑。
“做什么？为什么问这个，什么也做不了。我能做什么呢？”
“可是你刚才说，我们给你的那点钱救了你的命。”
“是的，我说过这话。”他慢慢答道，“我刚才情绪有点低落。有时人禁不住有这种感觉。有什么东西向你袭来，找不到出路——这让你崩溃。我们通常竭力不去想它。”
这次，说了句“真诚地谢谢你们”，车夫用马鞭拍了拍马儿的侧腹。马儿刚才被遗忘了，这会儿像从梦中被惊醒了，开始拉着马车往前走。马车走得很慢，路灯照在树上，在马路上投下影影绰绰的影子。抬头望去，白帆似的云朵，在黑色河流般的天空上乘着风儿疾驰而过，从风中我们嗅出一种时代变迁的味道。马车渐渐看不见了，风儿仍然把缓慢的车轮声传到我们耳际，这声音渐行渐远，直到完全消失。
（余苏凌 译）
