Temple’s eye fell upon them, and abruptly7 brought his mind round from the topic of West Africa. “And you—” said Temple. “While I have been wandering I suppose you have been going on steadily8.”
“Drumming along,” said Findlay.
“To the Royal Society and fame and all the things we used to dream about—How long is it?”
“Five years—since our student days.”
206Temple glanced round the room, and his eye rested for a moment on a round greyish-drab object that lay in the corner near the door. “The same fat books and folios, only more of them, the same smell of old bones, and a dissection—is it the same one?—in the window. Fame is your mistress?”
“Fame,” said Findlay. “But it’s hardly fame. The herd10 outside say, ‘Eminence in comparative anatomy11.’”
“None,” said Findlay, glancing askance at him.
“I suppose it’s the happiest way of living. But it wouldn’t be the thing for me. Excitement—but, I say!”—his eye had fallen again on that fungoid shape of drabbish-grey—“there’s a limit to scientific inhumanity. You really mustn’t keep your door open with a human brainpan.”
He went across the room as he spoke and picked the thing up. “Brainpan!” said Findlay. “Oh, that! Man alive, that’s not a brainpan. Where’s your science?”
“No. I see it’s not,” said Temple, carrying the object in his hand as he came back to his former position and scrutinising it curiously13. “But what the devil is it?”
“Don’t you know?” said Findlay.
The thing was about thrice the size of a man’s hand, like a rough watch-pocket of thick bone.
207Findlay laughed almost naturally. “You have a bad memory—It’s a whale’s ear-bone.”
“Of course,” said Temple, his appearance of interest vanishing. “The bulla of a whale. I’ve forgotten a lot of these things.”
He half turned, and put the thing on the top of the cabinet beside Findlay’s dumb-bells.
“If you are serious in your music-hall proposal,” he said, reverting14 to a jovial15 suggestion of Findlay’s, “I am at your service. I’m afraid—I may find myself a little old for that sort of thing—I haven’t tried one for ages.”
“But we are meeting to commemorate16 youth,” said Findlay.
“And bury our early manhood,” said Temple. “Well, well—yes, let us go to the music hall, by all means, if you desire it. It is trivial—and appropriate. We want no tragic17 issues.”
When the men returned to Findlay’s study the little clock in the dimness on the mantel-shelf was pointing to half-past one. After the departure the little brown room, with its books and bones, was undisturbed, save for the two visits Findlay’s attentive18 servant paid, to see to the fire and to pull down the blinds and draw the curtains. The ticking of the clock was the only sound in the quiet. Now and then the fire flickered19 and stirred, sending blood-red reflections chasing the shadows across the ceiling, and 208bringing into ghostly transitory prominence20 some grotesque21 grouping of animals’ bones or skulls upon the shelves. At last the stillness was broken by the unlatching and slamming of the heavy street door and the sound of unsteady footsteps approaching along the passage. Then the door opened, and the two men came into the warm firelight.
Temple came in first, his brown face flushed with drink, his coat unbuttoned, his hands deep in his trousers’ pockets. His Christmas resolution had long since dissolved in alcohol. He was a little puzzled to find himself in Findlay’s company. And his fuddled brain insisted upon inopportune reminiscence. He walked straight to the fire and stood before it, an exaggerated black figure, staring down into the red glow. “After all,” he said, “we are fools to quarrel—fools to quarrel about a little thing like that. Damned fools!”
Findlay went to the writing-table and felt about for the matches with quivering hands.
“It wasn’t my doing,” he said.
“It wasn’t your doing,” said Temple. “Nothing ever was your doing. You are always in the right—Findlay the all-right.”
Findlay’s attention was concentrated upon the lamp. His hand was unsteady, and he had some difficulty in turning up the wicks; one got jammed down and the other flared22 furiously. When at 209last it was lit and turned up, he came up to Temple. “Take your coat off, old man, and have some more whiskey,” he said. “That was a ripping little girl in the skirt dance.”
“Fools to quarrel,” said Temple, slowly, and then woke up to Findlay’s words. “Heigh?”
“Take off your coat and sit down,” said Findlay, moving up the little metal table and producing cigars and a syphon and whiskey. “That lamp gives an infernally bad light, but it is all I have. Something wrong with the oil. Did you notice the drudge23 of that stone-smashing trick?”
Temple remained erect24 and gloomy, staring into the fire. “Fools to quarrel,” he said. Findlay was now half drunk, and his finesse25 began to leave him. Temple had been drinking heavily, and was now in a curious rambling26 stage. And Findlay’s one idea now was to close this curious reunion.
“There’s no woman worth a man’s friendship,” said Temple, abruptly.
He sat down in an easy chair, poured out and drank a dose of whiskey and lithia. The idea of friendship took possession of him, and he became reminiscent of student days and student adventures. For some time it was, “Do you remember” this, and “Do you remember” that. And Findlay grew cheerful again.
“They were glorious times,” said Findlay, pouring whiskey into Temple’s glass.
210Then Temple startled him by abruptly reverting to that bitter quarrel. “No woman in the world,” he said. “Curse them!”
He began to laugh stupidly. “After all—” he said, “in the end.”
“Oh, damn!” said Findlay.
“All very well for you to swear,” said Temple, “but you forget about me. ’Tain’t your place to swear. If only you’d left things alone—”
“I thought the pass-word was forget,” said Findlay.
Temple stared into the fire for a space, “Forget,” he said, and then with a curious return to a clarity of speech, “Findlay, I’m getting drunk.”
“Nonsense, man, take some more.”
Temple rose out of his chair with the look of one awakening27. “There’s no reason why I should get drunk, because—”
“Drink,” said Findlay, “and forget it.”
“Faugh! I want to stick my head in water. I want to think. What the deuce am I doing here, with you of all people.”
“Nonsense! Talk and forget it, if you won’t drink. Do you remember old Jason and the boxing-gloves? I wonder whether you could put up your fives now.”
Temple stood with his back to the fire, his brain spinning with drink, and the old hatred28 of Findlay came back in flood. He sought in his 211mind for some offensive thing to say, and his face grew dark. Findlay saw that a crisis was upon him and he cursed under his breath. His air of conviviality29, his pose of hearty30 comforter, grew more and more difficult. But what else was there to do?
“Old Jason—full of science and as slow as an elephant!—but he made boxers32 of us. Do you remember our little set-to—at that place in Gower Street?”
To show his innocent liveliness, his freedom from preoccupation, Findlay pushed his chair aside, and stepped out into the middle of the room. There he began to pose in imitation of Jason, and to give a colourable travesty33 of the old prize-fighter’s instructions. He picked up his boxing-gloves from the shelf in the recess34, and slipped them on. Temple, lowering there, on the brink35 of an explosion, was almost too much for his nerves. He felt his display of high spirits was a mistake, but he must go through with it now.
“Don’t stand glooming there, man. You’re in just that state when the world looks black as ink. Drink yourself merry again. There’s no woman in the world worth a man’s friendship—that’s agreed upon. Come and have a bout9 with these gloves of mine—four-ounce gloves. There’s nothing sets the blood and spirits stirring like that.”
212“All right,” said Temple, quite mechanically. And then, waking up to what he was doing, “Where are the other gloves?”
“Over there in the corner. On the top of the mineral cabinet. By Jove! Temple, this is like old times!”
Temple, quivering strangely, went to the corner. He meant to thrash Findlay, and knew that in spite of his lighter36 weight he would do it. Yet it seemed puerile37 and inadequate38 to the pitch of absurdity39 for the wrong Findlay had done him was great. And, putting his hand on something pale in the shadow, he touched the bulla of the whale. The temptation was like a lightning flash. He slipped one glove on his left hand, and thrust the fingers of his right into the cavity of the bulla. It took all his fingers, and covered his knuckles40 and all the back of his hand. And it was so oddly like a thumbless boxing-glove! Just the very shape of the padded part. His spirits rose abruptly at the sudden prospect41 of a savage42 joke,—how savage it could be, he did not know. Meanwhile Findlay, with a nervous alacrity43, moved the lamp into the corner behind the armchair, and thrust his writing-desk into the window bay.
“Come on,” said Findlay, behind him, and abruptly he turned.
Findlay looked straight into his eyes, on guard, his hands half open. He did not see the strange 213substitute for a glove that covered Temple’s right hand. Both men were gone so far towards drunkenness that their power of observation was obscured. For a moment they stood squaring at one another, the host smiling, and his guest smiling also, but with his teeth set; two dark figures swaying in the firelight and the dim lamplight. Then Findlay struck at his opponent’s face with his left hand. As he did so Temple ducked slightly to the left, and struck savagely44 over Findlay’s shoulder at his temple with the bone-covered fist. The blow was given with such tremendous force that it sent Findlay reeling sideways, half stunned45, and overcome with astonishment46. The thing struck his ear, and the side of his face went white at the blow. He struggled to keep his footing, and as he did so Temple’s gloved right hand took him in the chest and sent him spinning to the foot of the cigar cabinet.
Findlay’s eyes were wide open with astonishment. Temple was a lighter man by a stone or more than himself, and he did not understand how he had been felled. He was not stunned, although he was so dulled by the blow as not to notice the blood running down his cheek from his ear. He laughed insincerely, and, almost pulling the cigar cabinet over, scrambled47 to his feet, made as if he would speak, and put up his hand instinctively48 as Temple struck out at him again, a feint with the left hand. Findlay was an expert boxer31, 214and, anticipating another right-hand blow over the ear, struck sharply at once with his own left hand in Temple’s face, throwing his full weight into the blow, and dodging49 Temple’s reply.
Temple’s upper lip was cut against his teeth, and the taste of blood and the sight of it trickling50 down Findlay’s cheek destroyed the last vestiges51 of restraint that drink had left him, stripped off all that education had ever done for him. There remained now only the savage man-animal, the creature that thirsts for blood. With a half bestial52 cry, he flung himself upon Findlay as he jumped back, and with a sudden sweep of his right arm cut down the defence, breaking Findlay’s arm just above the wrist, and following with three rapid blows of the bulla upon the face. Findlay gave an inarticulate cry of astonishment, countered weakly once, and then went down like a felled ox. As he fell, Temple fell kneeling upon the top of him. There was a smash as the lamp went reeling.
The lamp was extinguished as it fell, and left the room red and black. Findlay struck heavily at Temple’s ribs53, and Temple, with his left elbow at Findlay’s neck, swung up his right arm and struck down a sledge-hammer blow upon the face, and again and yet again, until the body beneath his knees had ceased to writhe54.
Then suddenly his frenzy55 left him at the voice of a woman shrieking56 so that it filled the room. 215He looked up and crouched57 motionless as he heard and saw the study door closing and heard the patter of feet retreating in panic. Then he looked down and saw the thing that had once been the face of Findlay. For an awful minute he remained kneeling agape.
Then he staggered to his feet and stood over Findlay’s body in the glow of the dying fire, like a man awakening from a nightmare. Suddenly he perceived the bulla on his hand, covered with blood and hair, and began to understand what had happened. In a sudden horror he flung the diabolical58 thing from him. It struck the floor near the cigar cabinet, rolled for a yard or so on its edge, and came to rest in almost the position it had occupied when he had first set eyes on it. To Temple’s excited imagination it seemed to be lying at exactly the same spot, the sole and sufficient cause of Findlay’s death and his own.
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1
resentments
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| （因受虐待而）愤恨，不满，怨恨( resentment的名词复数 ) | |
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2
sham
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| n./adj.假冒(的)，虚伪(的) | |
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reconciliation
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| n.和解，和谐，一致 | |
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4
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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5
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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6
skulls
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| 颅骨( skull的名词复数 )； 脑袋； 脑子； 脑瓜 | |
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7
abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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bout
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| n.侵袭，发作；一次(阵，回)；拳击等比赛 | |
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herd
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| n.兽群，牧群；vt.使集中，把…赶在一起 | |
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11
anatomy
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| n.解剖学，解剖；功能，结构，组织 | |
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12
avarice
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| n.贪婪；贪心 | |
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13
curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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14
reverting
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| 恢复( revert的现在分词 )； 重提； 回到…上； 归还 | |
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15
jovial
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| adj.快乐的，好交际的 | |
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16
commemorate
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| vt.纪念，庆祝 | |
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17
tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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18
attentive
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| adj.注意的，专心的；关心(别人)的，殷勤的 | |
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19
flickered
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| （通常指灯光）闪烁，摇曳( flicker的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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20
prominence
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| n.突出；显著；杰出；重要 | |
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21
grotesque
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| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
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22
Flared
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| adj. 端部张开的, 爆发的, 加宽的, 漏斗式的 动词flare的过去式和过去分词 | |
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23
drudge
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| n.劳碌的人；v.做苦工，操劳 | |
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24
erect
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| n./v.树立，建立，使竖立；adj.直立的，垂直的 | |
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finesse
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| n.精密技巧，灵巧，手腕 | |
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26
rambling
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| adj.[建]凌乱的，杂乱的 | |
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27
awakening
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| n.觉醒，醒悟 adj.觉醒中的；唤醒的 | |
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28
hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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29
conviviality
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| n.欢宴，高兴，欢乐 | |
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30
hearty
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| adj.热情友好的；衷心的；尽情的，纵情的 | |
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31
boxer
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| n.制箱者，拳击手 | |
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32
boxers
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| n.拳击短裤；（尤指职业）拳击手( boxer的名词复数 )；拳师狗 | |
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33
travesty
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| n.歪曲，嘲弄，滑稽化 | |
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34
recess
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| n.短期休息，壁凹（墙上装架子，柜子等凹处） | |
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35
brink
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| n.(悬崖、河流等的)边缘，边沿 | |
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36
lighter
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| n.打火机，点火器；驳船；v.用驳船运送；light的比较级 | |
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37
puerile
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| adj.幼稚的，儿童的 | |
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38
inadequate
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| adj.(for,to)不充足的，不适当的 | |
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39
absurdity
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| n.荒谬，愚蠢；谬论 | |
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40
knuckles
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| n.（指人）指关节( knuckle的名词复数 )；（指动物）膝关节，踝v.（指人）指关节( knuckle的第三人称单数 )；（指动物）膝关节，踝 | |
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41
prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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42
savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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43
alacrity
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| n.敏捷，轻快，乐意 | |
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44
savagely
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| adv. 野蛮地，残酷地 | |
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45
stunned
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| adj. 震惊的，惊讶的 动词stun的过去式和过去分词 | |
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46
astonishment
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| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
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47
scrambled
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| v.快速爬行( scramble的过去式和过去分词 )；攀登；争夺；（军事飞机）紧急起飞 | |
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48
instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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49
dodging
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| n.避开，闪过，音调改变v.闪躲( dodge的现在分词 )；回避 | |
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50
trickling
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| n.油画底色含油太多而成泡沫状突起v.滴( trickle的现在分词 )；淌；使)慢慢走；缓慢移动 | |
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51
vestiges
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| 残余部分( vestige的名词复数 )； 遗迹； 痕迹； 毫不 | |
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52
bestial
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| adj.残忍的；野蛮的 | |
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53
ribs
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| n.肋骨( rib的名词复数 )；（船或屋顶等的）肋拱；肋骨状的东西；（织物的）凸条花纹 | |
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54
writhe
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| vt.挣扎，痛苦地扭曲；vi.扭曲，翻腾，受苦；n.翻腾，苦恼 | |
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55
frenzy
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| n.疯狂，狂热，极度的激动 | |
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56
shrieking
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| v.尖叫( shriek的现在分词 ) | |
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57
crouched
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| v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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58
diabolical
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| adj.恶魔似的，凶暴的 | |
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