The public office of Utopia would of course contain a few surprises for two men from terrestrial England. You imagine us entering, the botanist lagging a little behind me, and my first attempts to be offhand6 and commonplace in a demand for work.
The office is in charge of a quick-eyed little woman of six and thirty perhaps, and she regards us with a certain keenness of scrutiny7.
“Where are your papers?” she asks.
I think for a moment of the documents in my pocket, my passport chequered with visas and addressed in my commendation and in the name of her late Majesty8 by We, Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoigne Cecil, Marquess of Salisbury, Earl of Salisbury, Viscount Cranborne, Baron9 Cecil, and so forth5, to all whom it may concern, my Carte d’Identite (useful on minor10 occasions) of the Touring Club de France, my green ticket to the Reading Room of the British Museum, and my Lettre d’Indication from the London and County Bank. A foolish humour prompts me to unfold all these, hand them to her and take the consequences, but I resist.
“Lost,” I say, briefly12.
“Both lost?” she asks, looking at my friend.
“Both,” I answer.
“How?”
I astonish myself by the readiness of my answer.
“I fell down a snow slope and they came out of my pocket.”
“And exactly the same thing happened to both of you?”
“No. He’d given me his to put with my own.” She raised her eyebrows13. “His pocket is defective,” I add, a little hastily.
Her manners are too Utopian for her to follow that up. She seems to reflect on procedure.
“What are your numbers?” she asks, abruptly14.
A vision of that confounded visitors’ book at the inn above comes into my mind. “Let me see,” I say, and pat my forehead and reflect, refraining from the official eye before me. “Let me see.”
“What is yours?” she asks the botanist.
“A. B.,” he says, slowly, “little a, nine four seven, I think ——”
“Don’t you know?”
“Not exactly,” says the botanist, very agreeably. “No.”
“Do you mean to say neither of you know your own numbers?” says the little post-mistress, with a rising note.
“Yes,” I say, with an engaging smile and trying to keep up a good social tone. “It’s queer, isn’t it? We’ve both forgotten.”
“You’re joking,” she suggests.
“Well,” I temporise.
“I suppose you’ve got your thumbs?”
“The fact is ——” I say and hesitate. “We’ve got our thumbs, of course.”
“Then I shall have to send a thumb-print down to the office and get your number from that. But are you sure you haven’t your papers or numbers? It’s very queer.”
We admit rather sheepishly that it’s queer, and question one another silently.
She turns thoughtfully for the thumb-marking slab15, and as she does so, a man enters the office. At the sight of him she asks with a note of relief, “What am I to do, sir, here?”
He looks from her to us gravely, and his eye lights to curiosity at our dress. “What is the matter, madam?” he asks, in a courteous16 voice.
She explains.
So far the impression we have had of our Utopia is one of a quite unearthly sanity17, of good management and comprehensive design in every material thing, and it has seemed to us a little incongruous that all the Utopians we have talked to, our host of last night, the post-mistress and our garrulous18 tramp, have been of the most commonplace type. But suddenly there looks out from this man’s pose and regard a different quality, a quality altogether nearer that of the beautiful tramway and of the gracious order of the mountain houses. He is a well-built man of perhaps five and thirty, with the easy movement that comes with perfect physical condition, his face is clean shaven and shows the firm mouth of a disciplined man, and his grey eyes are clear and steady. His legs are clad in some woven stuff deep-red in colour, and over this he wears a white shirt fitting pretty closely, and with a woven purple hem11. His general effect reminds me somehow of the Knights19 Templars. On his head is a cap of thin leather and still thinner steel, and with the vestiges20 of ear-guards — rather like an attenuated21 version of the caps that were worn by Cromwell’s Ironsides.
He looks at us and we interpolate a word or so as she explains and feel a good deal of embarrassment22 at the foolish position we have made for ourselves. I determine to cut my way out of this entanglement23 before it complicates24 itself further.
“The fact is ——” I say.
“Yes?” he says, with a faint smile.
“We’ve perhaps been disingenuous25. Our position is so entirely26 exceptional, so difficult to explain ——”
“What have you been doing?”
“No,” I say, with decision; “it can’t be explained like that.”
He looks down at his feet. “Go on,” he says.
I try to give the thing a quiet, matter-of-fact air. “You see,” I say, in the tone one adopts for really lucid27 explanations, “we come from another world. Consequently, whatever thumb-mark registration28 or numbering you have in this planet doesn’t apply to us, and we don’t know our numbers because we haven’t got any. We are really, you know, explorers, strangers ——”
“But what world do you mean?”
“It’s a different planet — a long way away. Practically at an infinite distance.”
He looks up in my face with the patient expression of a man who listens to nonsense.
“I know it sounds impossible,” I say, “but here is the simple fact — we appear in your world. We appeared suddenly upon the neck of Lucendro — the Passo Lucendro — yesterday afternoon, and I defy you to discover the faintest trace of us before that time. Down we marched into the San Gotthard road and here we are! That’s our fact. And as for papers ——! Where in your world have you seen papers like this?”
I produce my pocket-book, extract my passport, and present it to him.
His expression has changed. He takes the document and examines it, turns it over, looks at me, and smiles that faint smile of his again.
“Have some more,” I say, and proffer29 the card of the T.C.F.
I follow up that blow with my green British Museum ticket, as tattered30 as a flag in a knight’s chapel31.
“You’ll get found out,” he says, with my documents in his hand. “You’ve got your thumbs. You’ll be measured. They’ll refer to the central registers, and there you’ll be!”
“That’s just it,” I say, “we sha’n’t be.”
He reflects. “It’s a queer sort of joke for you two men to play,” he decides, handing me back my documents.
“It’s no joke at all,” I say, replacing them in my pocket-book.
The post-mistress intervenes. “What would you advise me to do?”
“No money?” he asks.
“No.”
He makes some suggestions. “Frankly,” he says, “I think you have escaped from some island. How you got so far as here I can’t imagine, or what you think you’ll do. . . . But anyhow, there’s the stuff for your thumbs.”
He points to the thumb-marking apparatus32 and turns to attend to his own business.
Presently we emerge from the office in a state between discomfiture33 and amusement, each with a tramway ticket for Lucerne in his hand and with sufficient money to pay our expenses until the morrow. We are to go to Lucerne because there there is a demand for comparatively unskilled labour in carving34 wood, which seems to us a sort of work within our range and a sort that will not compel our separation.
点击收听单词发音
1 botanist | |
n.植物学家 | |
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2 copper | |
n.铜;铜币;铜器;adj.铜(制)的;(紫)铜色的 | |
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3 ornamental | |
adj.装饰的;作装饰用的;n.装饰品;观赏植物 | |
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4 reassuring | |
a.使人消除恐惧和疑虑的,使人放心的 | |
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5 forth | |
adv.向前;向外,往外 | |
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6 offhand | |
adj.临时,无准备的;随便,马虎的 | |
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7 scrutiny | |
n.详细检查,仔细观察 | |
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8 majesty | |
n.雄伟,壮丽,庄严,威严;最高权威,王权 | |
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9 baron | |
n.男爵;(商业界等)巨头,大王 | |
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10 minor | |
adj.较小(少)的,较次要的;n.辅修学科;vi.辅修 | |
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11 hem | |
n.贴边,镶边;vt.缝贴边;(in)包围,限制 | |
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12 briefly | |
adv.简单地,简短地 | |
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13 eyebrows | |
眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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14 abruptly | |
adv.突然地,出其不意地 | |
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15 slab | |
n.平板,厚的切片;v.切成厚板,以平板盖上 | |
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16 courteous | |
adj.彬彬有礼的,客气的 | |
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17 sanity | |
n.心智健全,神智正常,判断正确 | |
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18 garrulous | |
adj.唠叨的,多话的 | |
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19 knights | |
骑士; (中古时代的)武士( knight的名词复数 ); 骑士; 爵士; (国际象棋中)马 | |
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20 vestiges | |
残余部分( vestige的名词复数 ); 遗迹; 痕迹; 毫不 | |
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21 attenuated | |
v.(使)变细( attenuate的过去式和过去分词 );(使)变薄;(使)变小;减弱 | |
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22 embarrassment | |
n.尴尬;使人为难的人(事物);障碍;窘迫 | |
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23 entanglement | |
n.纠缠,牵累 | |
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24 complicates | |
使复杂化( complicate的第三人称单数 ) | |
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25 disingenuous | |
adj.不诚恳的,虚伪的 | |
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26 entirely | |
ad.全部地,完整地;完全地,彻底地 | |
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27 lucid | |
adj.明白易懂的,清晰的,头脑清楚的 | |
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28 registration | |
n.登记,注册,挂号 | |
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29 proffer | |
v.献出,赠送;n.提议,建议 | |
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30 tattered | |
adj.破旧的,衣衫破的 | |
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31 chapel | |
n.小教堂,殡仪馆 | |
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32 apparatus | |
n.装置,器械;器具,设备 | |
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33 discomfiture | |
n.崩溃;大败;挫败;困惑 | |
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34 carving | |
n.雕刻品,雕花 | |
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