WHEN Drayton and his friends walked through the Ulithian “moon,” none of them were either quite unconscious nor entirely1 devoid2 of sense. Drayton for instance, knew that Viola extended her hand to him; that he took it and that her other hand was held by some one else, an indistinct personality whose identity was of not the slightest interest or importance.
They all knew that with the dizzying fragrance3 of a million blossoms in their nostrils4; with blinding radiance before them; with behind them only silence and the silver plain, they three joined hands and so passed beneath the black arch which had seemed a moon.
This dim apprehension6, however, was wholly dreamlike, and unmingled with thought or foreboding. They possessed7 no faint curiosity, even, as to what might lie beyond that incredible archway.
Active consciousness returned like the shock of a thunderbolt.
They had emerged upon the sidewalk of a wide, paved street. They were but three of a jostling, hurrying throng8 of very ordinary and solid-looking mortals.
For several moments they experienced a bewilderment even greater than had come upon them in passing from a prosaic9 house on Walnut10 Street into the uncanny romance land which they knew as “Ulithia.” The roar and rattle11 which now assailed12 their ears deafened13 and dazed them. Ulithia had been so silent, so unhuman and divorced from all familiar associations, that in this abrupt14 escape from it they felt helpless; unpoised as countryfolk who have never seen a city, and to whom its crowds are confusing and vaguely15 hostile.
In this new place there was none of that bright, dazzling mist which had filled the archway. Instead, it was well and more satisfactorily illuminated16 by numerous arc lamps. With a thundering clatter17 an electric train rushed past almost directly overhead.
Before them, the street was a tangle18 of dodging19 pedestrians20, heavy motor trucks loaded with freight and baggage, arriving and departing autos, and desperately21 clanging street cars. Above, iron pillars and girders supported an elevated railway system. Close to where they stood a narrow moving stairway carried upward its perpetual stream of passengers, bound for that upper level of traffic where the electric train had passed.
Turning, the dazed wanderers saw behind them, not any vast expanse of silver light, but the wall of a long, low building, pierced with many windows and several doors. From one of those doors, apparently23, they had just emerged.
With some difficulty the three extricated24 themselves from the throng. Finding a comparatively quiet spot by the wall of the building they stood there, very close together.
Suddenly Viola gave a sharp exclamation25.
“But this-this is Philadelphia! This is the entrance to the Market Street Ferry in Philadelphia!”
Her brother slapped his thigh26.
“And to think I did not recognize a place I’ve been at myself at least three times! But who would have thought we’d get home so easy—or at the other end of the city from where we started?”
Suddenly the melancholy27 ex-lawyer chuckled28 aloud.
“I never thought,” he said, “that Philadelphia, city of homes or not, would seem homelike to me. By George, I realize now what a charming old place it is! Terry, couldn’t you resign wandering and settle down here for the rest of your life—right on this spot, if necessary?”
The Irishman grinned cheerfully.
“I could that, so be there were not a few better spots to be got at. Viola, I’m fair dead of hunger and so must you both be. Is there a cafe in this elegant station building? Or shall we go home and trust Martin? Heaven bless the boy! I never thought to see him again—trust Martin to throw us together some sort of sustaining meal?”
“I’m hungry,” confessed Viola frankly29, “but it seems to me we should go straight to Cousin Jim’s house, rather than to a restaurant. You know that gray powder was left there—”
Trenmore gave a great start and his smile faded.
“That devil dust!” he burst forth30. “And all this time it’s been laying open and unguarded! Faith, after all we may not find poor Martin to welcome us home!”
“My fault again,” said Drayton grimly. “If anything has happened to Martin, I am entirely to blame. In common justice I shall have to follow him—”
Trenmore turned with a growl31. “You will not follow him! Is it an endless chain you would establish between this world and that heathenish outland we’ve escaped from? You after Martin, and myself after you, and Viola after me, I suppose—and there we’ll all be again, with nothing to eat and no one but spooks to converse32 with! No; if Martin is in Ulithia this minute, may his wits and his luck bring him out of it. At least, he’s the same chance we had.”
“Call a taxi,” suggested Viola practically. “It’s just possible that Martin hasn’t yet fallen into the trap.”
“A very sensible suggestion, my dear,” commended her brother.
By the curb33 stood an empty taxicab, its driver loafing near by. The latter was a thin, underfed-looking fellow, clad in a rather startlingly brilliant livery of pale blue and lemon yellow, with a small gilt34 insignia on the sleeve. A languid cigarette drooped35 from his lips. Beside his gaudy36 attire37 he wore that air of infinite leisure, combined with an eye scornfully alert, with which all true taxi drivers are born.
“Seventeen hundred Walnut Street, my man,” directed Trenmore, “and get up what speed you’re able.”
Drayton had started to open the cab door, since the chauffeur38 made no move to do so. To his surprise, however, the latter sprang forward and pushed his hand aside.
“You wait a minute, gentlemen!”
“Is this cab engaged? You have the ‘Empty’ sign out.”
“No, we ain’t engaged; but wait a minute!”
The fellow was eying them with a curiosity oddly like suspicion. Surely there was little out of the way in their appearance. Viola’s attire was the picture of modern propriety39. In crossing that ghostly plain nothing had occurred to destroy the respectable appearance with which they had all begun the journey.
“Wait!” ejaculated Trenmore. “And what for? Isn’t this a public cab?”
“Yes; it’s a public cab, right enough. There ain’t nothing the matter with me nor my cab either. The trouble’s with you. Why ain’t you wearin’ your buttons?”
“Wearing our buttons?”
Terence glanced frantically40 down over himself. Had the rapid transition from one world to another actually removed those necessary adornments from his garments? Everything looked in order. He glanced up angrily.
“Not wearing our buttons, is it? And what in the devil do you mean by that, you fool? Is it fuddled with drink you are?”
The chauffeur’s alert eye measured the Irishman. It’s owner shrank back against the cab.
“Don’t you!” he cried. “Don’t you hit me! I don’t care who you are, you haven’t any right to go about that way. You hit me, and you’ll go to the pit for it! I’ve drove more than one of the Service itself, and they won’t stand fer nobody beatin’ me up!”
Drayton caught the half-raised arm of his friend.
“Don’t, Terry,” he cautioned softly. “Why start a row with a lunatic?”
Trenmore shook him off. He was doubly annoyed by Drayton’s assumption that he would attack a man of less than half his weight. For an instant he felt inclined to quarrel with his friend on the spot. Then the petty childishness of his irritation41 struck him, and catching42 Viola’s appealing and astonished glance, he laughed shamefacedly.
“I left my temper behind the moon, Bobby,” he grinned, as the three started off down the sidewalk in search of another vehicle. “Somewhere along here there’s a bit of an office booth of the taxicab company’s. Isn’t that it, beyond the escalator?”
“Yes,” contributed Viola. “I remember there’s a sign over it. ‘Quaker City’—Why, but they’ve changed it to ‘Penn Service!’ Last week it was the Quaker City Company.”
Whether “Penn Service,” however, meant taxi service or something different they were not to learn just then. Before they reached the wooden booth beneath that white-lettered signboard, a heavy hand had grasped Drayton’s arm from behind, whirling him about. The two others also turned and found themselves confronted by a police officer. At a safe distance in the rear their eccentric acquaintance, the chauffeur, looked on with a satisfied grin.
“And what is this?” demanded Trenmore sternly.
Drayton said nothing at all. With the policeman’s hand clutching his arm, fear had him in a yet firmer grip. Was this another phase of the persecution43 to which he had been recently subjected? Was he about to suffer arrest, here in the presence of Viola Trenmore, upon some such trumped-up charge as had sent his partner to prison and death?
In the bitter grasp of this thought, it was a moment before he comprehended what the officer was replying to Trenmore’s question.
“-and if you’ve lost your buttons, for why have you not reported yourselves at the proper quarters? Sure, ’tis me duty to run ye in without further argument; but ’tis a fair-spoken, soft-hearted man I am. If you’ve a reason, give it me quick, now!”
Drayton grasped the fact that it was not himself alone who was involved. Equally, it seemed, Trenmore and his sister were objects of the man’s absurd though apparently official attention. The lawyer in him leaped to the fore5. Here might be some curious local civic44 ruling of which he, a stranger to the city, had heard nothing.
“What about the buttons, officer?” he queried45. “Do you mean that we should be wearing some sort of button as an insignia?”
“Is it crazy ye are all after being? What buttons, d’ye say? Why, what should I be meaning, savin’ yer identification buttons? What are yer numbers now? At least ye can tell me that! Or are ye the connections of a family?”
There was a moment’s silence. Then Trenmore said heavily, as if in some deep discouragement. “Faith, I myself was born in County Kerry, but till this living minute I never knew the meaning of the words ‘a crazy Irishman!’ Micky, or Pat, or whatever your name may be, we are connected with families so good that your ignorance never heard tell of them!
“And as for numbers, I do not doubt that you yourself have a number! I do not doubt that the driver of the poor little jitney bus yonder has a number! In jails men have numbers, and perhaps in the lunatic asylum46 you both came from they have numbers and wear buttons with those same numbers on them; but myself and my friend here and my sister, we have no numbers!
“We have names, my lad, names. And ’tis my own name I’ll send in to the poor, unfortunate chief that has charge of you, and you’ll find that it is not needful for Terence Trenmore to be given a number in order to have such as you discharged from the force your low intelligence is now disgracing!”
As Trenmore delivered this harangue47 his voice gradually grew in volume as his sentences grew longer, until it boomed out like the blast of a foghorn48. The two or three idlers who had already gathered were reinforced by a rapidly increasing crowd. His last words were delivered to an exceedingly curious and numerous audience.
The policeman, a man of no very powerful physique, quailed49 before Trenmore’s just wrath50 much as had the taxi driver. He, too, however, had another resource than his unaided strength. His only reply to the threat was a sharp blast on his whistle.
“You’ve done it now, Terry,” groaned51 Drayton. “Never mind me. Get your sister away from here, if you can—quick!”
The young lady mentioned set her lips.
“Terry shall do not such thing, Mr. Drayton. Officer, surely you won’t arrest three harmless people because of some foolish little misunderstanding that could be set right in the twinkle of an eye?”
The policeman eyed her admiringly—too admiringly, in Drayton’s estimation.
“Sure, miss,” he declared, “’tis myself is most reluctant to place inconvenience on so pretty a lass; but what can I do? Ye know the regulations.”
“But indeed we do not,” protested the girl truthfully.
Before more could be said on either side, there came an eddy52 and swirl53 in the crowd, and two more policemen burst into view. One of them, a sergeant54 by the stripes on his sleeve, came bustling55 forward with an air of petty arrogance56 which Drayton prayed might not collide with his huge friend’s rising temper.
“What’s this? What’s all this, Forty-seven? What have these people been up to? What? No buttons? What do you mean by going about without your buttons? This is a very serious and peculiar57 offense58, Forty-seven! The first I’ve ever met in this ward22, I am glad to say. Under arrest? Certainly you are under arrest! The wagon59 will be here directly. What did you expect? What are your numbers? What have you done with your buttons, anyway?”
How long the sergeant could have continued this interlocutory monologue60, which he delivered at extraordinary speed and without pause for answer or comment, it is impossible to say. He was interrupted by a clanging gong and again the crowd swirled61 and broke. A motor patrol drew up. Three more officers leaped down and stood at attention.
The accession of numbers drove from Drayton’s brain any lingering hope that Trenmore might pick his sister up under his arm and bear her bodily from the shadow of this open disgrace.
That the exasperated62 Irishman had not acted was due partly to reluctance63 to leave his friend in the clutches of the law; partly to a rapidly increasing bewilderment. He could now observe that every person in the front ranks of the staring crowd did indeed wear a large yellow button, pinned below the left shoulder, and each bearing a perfectly64 legible number in black.
He could also see that these numbers ran mostly into five, six and even seven figures; but what those figures represented, or why the wearers should be so adorned65, or what bearing the ornamentation might have upon their own liberty, was a puzzle before which the recent mysteries of Ulithia faded.
“Button, button, who’s got the button?” he muttered. “Faith, ’tis a wild and barbarous land, this Philadelphia! Sergeant, are you really going to run us in, just for not knowing what you and the rest are talking of?”
The sergeant looked him up and down appreciatively.
“You know very well that I must. But Lord, man, you’ve nothing to worry over with the contests coming off in a couple of days. Or haven’t you any muscle back of that size of yours?”
Distractedly, Trenmore clutched at his black, wild hair.
“Take us to the station, man!” he snarled66. “And be quick, as you value your poor, worthless life! Muscle? I’ve the muscle to pull you to bits, and by all the powers I’ll be driven to that act if you do not take me to speak with some sane67 man this living minute!”
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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devoid
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| adj.全无的，缺乏的 | |
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fragrance
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| n.芬芳，香味，香气 | |
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nostrils
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| 鼻孔( nostril的名词复数 ) | |
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fore
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| adv.在前面；adj.先前的；在前部的；n.前部 | |
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apprehension
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| n.理解，领悟；逮捕，拘捕；忧虑 | |
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possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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throng
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| n.人群，群众；v.拥挤，群集 | |
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prosaic
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| adj.单调的，无趣的 | |
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walnut
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| n.胡桃，胡桃木，胡桃色，茶色 | |
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rattle
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| v.飞奔，碰响；激怒；n.碰撞声；拨浪鼓 | |
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assailed
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| v.攻击( assail的过去式和过去分词 )；困扰；质问；毅然应对 | |
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deafened
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| 使聋( deafen的过去式和过去分词 )； 使隔音 | |
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abrupt
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| adj.突然的，意外的；唐突的，鲁莽的 | |
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vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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illuminated
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| adj.被照明的；受启迪的 | |
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clatter
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| v./n.(使)发出连续而清脆的撞击声 | |
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tangle
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| n.纠缠；缠结；混乱；v.(使)缠绕；变乱 | |
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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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pedestrians
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| n.步行者( pedestrian的名词复数 ) | |
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desperately
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| adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地 | |
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ward
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| n.守卫，监护，病房，行政区，由监护人或法院保护的人（尤指儿童）；vt.守护，躲开 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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extricated
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| v.使摆脱困难，脱身( extricate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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exclamation
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thigh
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| n.大腿；股骨 | |
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melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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chuckled
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| 轻声地笑( chuckle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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growl
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| v.（狗等）嗥叫，（炮等）轰鸣；n.嗥叫，轰鸣 | |
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converse
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| vi.谈话，谈天，闲聊；adv.相反的，相反 | |
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curb
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| n.场外证券市场，场外交易；vt.制止，抑制 | |
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gilt
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| adj.镀金的；n.金边证券 | |
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drooped
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| 弯曲或下垂，发蔫( droop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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gaudy
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| adj.华而不实的；俗丽的 | |
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attire
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| v.穿衣，装扮[同]array；n.衣着；盛装 | |
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chauffeur
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| n.(受雇于私人或公司的)司机；v.为…开车 | |
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propriety
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| n.正当行为；正当；适当 | |
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frantically
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| ad.发狂地, 发疯地 | |
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irritation
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| n.激怒，恼怒，生气 | |
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catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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persecution
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| n. 迫害,烦扰 | |
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civic
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| adj.城市的，都市的，市民的，公民的 | |
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queried
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| v.质疑，对…表示疑问( query的过去式和过去分词 )；询问 | |
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asylum
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| n.避难所，庇护所，避难 | |
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harangue
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| n.慷慨冗长的训话，言辞激烈的讲话 | |
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foghorn
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| n..雾号（浓雾信号） | |
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quailed
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| 害怕，发抖，畏缩( quail的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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wrath
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| n.愤怒，愤慨，暴怒 | |
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groaned
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| v.呻吟( groan的过去式和过去分词 )；发牢骚；抱怨；受苦 | |
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eddy
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| n.漩涡，涡流 | |
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swirl
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| v.(使)打漩，(使)涡卷；n.漩涡，螺旋形 | |
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sergeant
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| n.警官，中士 | |
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bustling
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| adj.喧闹的 | |
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arrogance
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| n.傲慢，自大 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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offense
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| n.犯规，违法行为；冒犯，得罪 | |
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wagon
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| n.四轮马车，手推车，面包车；无盖运货列车 | |
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monologue
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| n.长篇大论，（戏剧等中的）独白 | |
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swirled
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| v.旋转，打旋( swirl的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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exasperated
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| adj.恼怒的 | |
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reluctance
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| n.厌恶，讨厌，勉强，不情愿 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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adorned
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| [计]被修饰的 | |
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snarled
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| v.（指狗）吠，嗥叫， （人）咆哮( snarl的过去式和过去分词 )；咆哮着说，厉声地说 | |
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sane
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| adj.心智健全的，神志清醒的，明智的，稳健的 | |
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