In the biggest arm-chair by the empty grate, a young man with a flute6 paused for a moment, irresolute7. He was a handsome young man, expressive8 eyes, and a neatly-cut brown beard—for all the world like Cyril Waring’s. Indeed, if Elma Clifford could that moment have been transported from her gloomy prison in the Lavington tunnel to that cosy room at Staple Inn, Holborn, she would have started with surprise to find the young man who sat in the arm-chair was to all outer appearance the self-same person as the painter she had just left at the scene of the accident. For the two Warings were truly “as like as two peas”; a photograph of one might almost have done duty for the photograph of the other.
The other occupant of the room, who leaned carelessly against the mantelshelf, was taller and older; though he, too, was handsome, but with the somewhat cynical9 and unprepossessing handsomeness of a man of the world. His forehead was high; his lips were thin; his nose inclined toward the Roman pattern; his black moustache was carefully curled and twisted at the extremities10. Moreover, he was musical; for he held in one hand the bow of a violin, having just laid down the instrument itself on the sofa after a plaintive11 duet with Guy Waring.
“Seen this evening’s paper, by the way, Guy?” he asked, after a pause, in a voice that was all honeyed charm and seductiveness. “I brought the St. James’s Gazette for you, but forgot to give you it; I was so full of this new piece of mine. Been an accident this morning, I see, on the Great Southern line. Somewhere down Cyril’s way, too; he’s painting near Chetwood; wonder whether he could possibly, by any chance, have been in it?”
He drew the paper carelessly from his pocket as he spoke12, and handed it with a graceful13 air of inborn14 courtesy to his younger companion. Everything that Montague Nevitt did, indeed, was naturally graceful and courteous15.
Guy Waring took the printed sheet from his hands without attaching much importance to his words, and glanced over it lightly.
“At ten o’clock this morning,” the telegram said, “a singular catastrophe16 occurred in a portion of the Lavington tunnel on the Great Southern Railway. As the 9.15 way-train from Tilgate Junction17 to Guildford was passing through, a segment of the roof of the tunnel collapsed18, under pressure of the dislocated rock on top, and bore down with enormous weight upon the carriages beneath it. The engine, tender, and four front waggons19 escaped unhurt; but the two hindmost, it is feared, were crushed by the falling mass of earth. It is not yet known how many passengers, if any, may have been occupying the wrecked20 compartments21; but every effort is now being made to dig out the débris.”
Guy read the paragraph through unmoved, to the outer eye, though with a whitening face, and then took up the dog-eared “Bradshaw” that lay close by upon the little oak writing-table. His hand trembled. One glance at the map, however, set his mind at rest.
“I thought so,” he said quietly. “Cyril wouldn’t be there. It’s beyond his beat. Lavington’s the fourth station this way on the up-line from Chetwood. Cyril’s stopping at Tilgate town, you know—I heard from him on Saturday—and the bit he’s now working at’s in Chetwood Forest. He couldn’t get lodgings22 at Chetwood itself, so he’s put up for the present at the White Lion, at Tilgate, and runs over by train every day to Warnworth. It’s three stations away—four off Lavington. He’d have been daubing for an hour in the wood by that time.”
“Well, I didn’t attach any great importance to it myself,” Nevitt went on, unconcerned. “I thought most likely Cyril wouldn’t be there. But still I felt you’d like, at any rate, to know about it.”
“Oh, of course,” Guy answered, still scanning the map in “Bradshaw” close. “He couldn’t have been there; but one likes to know. I think, indeed, to make sure, I’ll telegraph to Tilgate. Naturally, when a man’s got only one relation in the whole wide world—without being a sentimentalist—that one relation means a good deal in life to him. And Cyril and I are more to one another, of course, than most ordinary brothers.” He bit his thumb. “Still, I can’t imagine how he could possibly be there,” he went on, glancing at “Bradshaw” once more. “You see, if he went to work, he’d have got out at Warnworth; and if he meant to come to town to consult his dentist, he’d have taken the 9.30 express straight through from Tilgate, which gets up to London twenty-five minutes earlier.”
“Well, but why to consult his dentist in particular?” Nevitt asked with a smile. He had very white teeth, and he smiled accordingly perhaps a little oftener than was quite inevitable23. “You Warings are so absolute. I never knew any such fellows in my life as you are. You decide things so beforehand. Why mightn’t he have been coming up to town, for example, to see a friend, or get himself fresh colours?”
“Oh, I said ‘to consult his dentist,’” Guy answered, in the most matter-of-fact voice on earth, suppressing a tremor24, “because you know I’ve had toothache off and on myself, one day with another, for the whole last fortnight. And it’s a tooth that never ached with either of us before-this one, you see”—he lifted his lip with his forefinger—“the second on the left after the one we’ve lost. If Cyril was coming up to town at all, I’m pretty sure it’d be his tooth he was coming up to see about. I went to Eskell about mine myself last Wednesday.”
The elder man seated himself and leaned back in his chair, with his violin in his lap; then he surveyed his friend long and curiously25.
“It must be awfully26 odd, Guy,” he said at last, after a good hard stare, “to lead such a queer sort of duplicate life as Cyril and you do! Just fancy being the counterfoil27 to some other man’s cheque! Just fancy being bound to do, and think, and speak, and wish as he does! Just fancy having to get a toothache, in the very same tooth and on the very same day! Just fancy having to consult the identical dentist that he consults simultaneously28! It’d drive ME mad. Why, it’s clean rideeklous!”
Guy Waring looked up hastily from the telegraph form he was already filling in, and answered, with some warmth—
“No, no; not quite so. It isn’t like that. You mistake the situation. We’re both cheques equally, and neither is a counterfoil. Cyril and I depend for our characters, as everybody else does, upon our father and mother and our remoter progenitors29. Only being twins, and twins cast in very much the same sort of mould, we’re naturally the product of the same two parents, at the same precise point in their joint30 life history; and therefore we’re practically all but identical.”
As he rose from his desk, with the telegram in his hand, the porter appeared at the door with letters. Guy seized them at once, with some little impatience31. The first was from Cyril. He tore it open in haste, and skimmed it through rapidly. Montague Nevitt meanwhile sat languid in his chair, striking a pensive32 note now and again on his violin, with his eyes half closed and his lips parted. Guy drew a sigh of relief as he skimmed his note.
“Just what I expected,” he said slowly. “Cyril couldn’t have been there. He writes last night—the letter’s marked ‘Delayed in transmission’; no doubt by the accident—‘I shall come up to town on Friday or Saturday morning to see the dentist. One of my teeth is troublesome; I suppose you’ve had the same; the second on the left from the one we’ve lost; been aching a fortnight. I want it stopped. But to-morrow I really CAN’T leave work. I’ve got well into the swing of such a lovely bit of fern, with Sardanapalus just gleaming like gold in the foreground.’ So that settles matters somewhat. He can’t have been there. Though, I think, even so, I’ll just telegraph for safety’s sake and make things certain.”
Nevitt struck a chord twice with a sweep of his hand, listened to it dreamily for a minute with far-away eyes, and then remarked once more, without even looking up, “The same tooth lost, he says? You both had it drawn33! And now another one aches in both of you alike! How very remarkable34! How very, very curious!”
“Well, that WAS queer,” Guy replied, relaxing into a smile, “queer even for us; I won’t deny it; for it happened this way. I was over in Brussels at the time, as correspondent for the Sphere at the International Workmen’s Congress, and Cyril was away by himself just then on his holiday in the Orkneys. We both got toothache in the self-same tooth on the self-same night; and we both lay awake for hours in misery35. Early in the morning we each of us got up—five hundred miles away from one another, remember—and as soon as we were dressed I went into a dentist’s in the Montagne de la Cour, and Cyril to a local doctor’s at Larwick; and we each of us had it out, instanter. The dentists both declared they could save them if we wished; but we each preferred the loss of a tooth to another such night of abject36 misery.”
Nevitt stroked his moustache with a reflective air. This was almost miraculous37. “Well, I should think,” he said at last, after close reflection, “where such sympathy as that exists between two brothers, if Cyril had really been hurt in this accident, you must surely in some way have been dimly conscious of it.”
Guy Waring, standing38 there, telegram in hand, looked down at his companion with a somewhat contemptuous smile.
“Oh dear, no,” he answered, with common-sense confidence; for he loved not mysteries. “You don’t believe any nonsense of that sort, do you? There’s nothing in the least mystical in the kind of sympathy that exists between Cyril and myself. It’s all purely39 physical. We’re very like one another. But that’s all. There’s none of the Corsican Brothers sort of hocus-pocus about us in any way. The whole thing is a simple caste of natural causation.”
“Then you don’t believe in brain-waves?” Nevitt suggested, with a gracefully40 appropriate undulation of his small white hand.
Guy laughed incredulously. “All rubbish, my dear fellow,” he answered, “all utter rubbish. If any man knows, it’s myself and Cyril. We’re as near one another as any two men on earth could possibly be; but when we want to communicate our ideas, each to each, we have to speak or write, just like the rest of you. Every man is like a clock wound up to strike certain hours. Accidents may happen, events may intervene, the clock may get smashed, and all may be prevented. But, bar accidents, it’ll strike all right, under ordinary circumstances, when the hour arrives for it. Well, Cyril and I, as I always say, are like two clocks wound up at the same time to strike together, and we strike with very unusual regularity41. But that’s the whole mystery. If I get smashed by accident, there’s no reason on earth why Cyril shouldn’t run on for years yet as usual; and if Cyril got smashed, there’s no reason on earth why I should ever know anything about it except from the newspapers.”
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1
sitting-room
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| n.（BrE）客厅，起居室 | |
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2
staple
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| n.主要产物，常用品，主要要素，原料，订书钉，钩环；adj.主要的，重要的；vt.分类 | |
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3
cosy
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| adj.温暖而舒适的，安逸的 | |
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4
radius
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| n.半径，半径范围；有效航程，范围，界限 | |
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artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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6
flute
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| n.长笛；v.吹笛 | |
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7
irresolute
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| adj.无决断的，优柔寡断的，踌躇不定的 | |
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8
expressive
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| adj.表现的，表达…的，富于表情的 | |
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9
cynical
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| adj.(对人性或动机)怀疑的，不信世道向善的 | |
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10
extremities
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| n.端点( extremity的名词复数 )；尽头；手和足；极窘迫的境地 | |
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11
plaintive
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| adj.可怜的，伤心的 | |
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12
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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13
graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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14
inborn
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| adj.天生的，生来的，先天的 | |
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15
courteous
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| adj.彬彬有礼的，客气的 | |
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16
catastrophe
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| n.大灾难，大祸 | |
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17
junction
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| n.连接，接合；交叉点，接合处，枢纽站 | |
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18
collapsed
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| adj.倒塌的 | |
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19
waggons
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| 四轮的运货马车( waggon的名词复数 )； 铁路货车； 小手推车 | |
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wrecked
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| adj.失事的，遇难的 | |
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compartments
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| n.间隔( compartment的名词复数 )；（列车车厢的）隔间；（家具或设备等的）分隔间；隔层 | |
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lodgings
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| n. 出租的房舍, 寄宿舍 | |
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23
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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24
tremor
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| n.震动，颤动，战栗，兴奋，地震 | |
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curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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awfully
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| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
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27
counterfoil
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| n.(支票、邮局汇款单、收据等的)存根，票根 | |
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simultaneously
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| adv.同时发生地，同时进行地 | |
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progenitors
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| n.祖先( progenitor的名词复数 )；先驱；前辈；原本 | |
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30
joint
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| adj.联合的，共同的；n.关节，接合处；v.连接，贴合 | |
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31
impatience
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| n.不耐烦，急躁 | |
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32
pensive
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| a.沉思的,哀思的,忧沉的 | |
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33
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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34
remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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abject
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| adj.极可怜的，卑屈的 | |
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miraculous
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| adj.像奇迹一样的，不可思议的 | |
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38
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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40
gracefully
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| ad.大大方方地；优美地 | |
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41
regularity
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| n.规律性，规则性；匀称，整齐 | |
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