I find the botanist sitting at a table in the hotel courtyard.
“Well?” I say, standing7 before him.
“I’ve been in the gardens on the river terrace,” he answers, “hoping I might see her again.”
“Nothing better to do?”
“Nothing in the world.”
“You’ll have your double back from India to-morrow. Then you’ll have conversation.”
“I don’t want it,” he replies, compactly.
I shrug9 my shoulders, and he adds, “At least with him.”
I let myself down into a seat beside him.
For a time I sit restfully enjoying his companionable silence, and thinking fragmentarily of those samurai and their Rules. I entertain something of the satisfaction of a man who has finished building a bridge; I feel that I have joined together things that I had never joined before. My Utopia seems real to me, very real, I can believe in it, until the metal chair-back gives to my shoulder blades, and Utopian sparrows twitter and hop8 before my feet. I have a pleasant moment of unhesitating self-satisfaction; I feel a shameless exultation10 to be there. For a moment I forget the consideration the botanist demands; the mere11 pleasure of completeness, of holding and controlling all the threads possesses me.
“You will persist in believing,” I say, with an aggressive expository note, “that if you meet this lady she will be a person with the memories and sentiments of her double on earth. You think she will understand and pity, and perhaps love you. Nothing of the sort is the case.” I repeat with confident rudeness, “Nothing of the sort is the case. Things are different altogether here; you can hardly tell even now how different are ——”
I discover he is not listening to me.
“What is the matter?” I ask abruptly12.
He makes no answer, but his expression startles me.
“What is the matter?” and then I follow his eyes.
A woman and a man are coming through the great archway — and instantly I guess what has happened. She it is arrests my attention first — long ago I knew she was a sweetly beautiful woman. She is fair, with frank blue eyes, that look with a sort of tender receptivity into her companion’s face. For a moment or so they remain, greyish figures in the cool shadow, against the sunlit greenery of the gardens beyond.
“It is Mary,” the botanist whispers with white lips, but he stares at the form of the man. His face whitens, it becomes so transfigured with emotion that for a moment it does not look weak. Then I see that his thin hand is clenched13.
I realise how little I understand his emotions.
A sudden fear of what he will do takes hold of me. He sits white and tense as the two come into the clearer light of the courtyard. The man, I see, is one of the samurai, a dark, strong-faced man, a man I have never seen before, and she is wearing the robe that shows her a follower14 of the Lesser15 Rule.
Some glimmering16 of the botanist’s feelings strikes through to my slow sympathies. Of course — a strange man! I put out a restraining hand towards his arm. “I told you,” I say, “that very probably, most probably, she would have met some other. I tried to prepare you.”
“Nonsense,” he whispers, without looking at me. “It isn’t that. It’s — that scoundrel ——”
He has an impulse to rise. “That scoundrel,” he repeats.
“He isn’t a scoundrel,” I say. “How do you know? Keep still! Why are you standing up?”
He and I stand up quickly, I as soon as he. But now the full meaning of the group has reached me. I grip his arm. “Be sensible,” I say, speaking very quickly, and with my back to the approaching couple. “He’s not a scoundrel here. This world is different from that. It’s caught his pride somehow and made a man of him. Whatever troubled them there ——”
He turns a face of white wrath17 on me, of accusation18, and for the moment of unexpected force. “This is your doing,” he says. “You have done this to mock me. He — of all men!” For a moment speech fails him, then; “You — you have done this to mock me.”
I try to explain very quickly. My tone is almost propitiatory19.
“I never thought of it until now. But he’s —— How did I know he was the sort of man a disciplined world has a use for?”
He makes no answer, but he looks at me with eyes that are positively20 baleful, and in the instant I read his mute but mulish resolve that Utopia must end.
“Don’t let that old quarrel poison all this,” I say almost entreatingly21. “It happened all differently here — everything is different here. Your double will be back to-morrow. Wait for him. Perhaps then you will understand ——”
He shakes his head, and then bursts out with, “What do I want with a double? Double! What do I care if things have been different here? This ——”
He thrusts me weakly back with his long, white hand. “My God!” he says almost forcibly, “what nonsense all this is! All these dreams! All Utopias! There she is ——! Oh, but I have dreamt of her! And now ——”
A sob22 catches him. I am really frightened by this time. I still try to keep between him and these Utopians, and to hide his gestures from them.
“It’s different here,” I persist. “It’s different here. The emotion you feel has no place in it. It’s a scar from the earth — the sore scar of your past ——”
“And what are we all but scars? What is life but a scarring? It’s you — you who don’t understand! Of course we are covered with scars, we live to be scarred, we are scars! We are the scars of the past! These dreams, these childish dreams ——!”
He does not need to finish his sentence, he waves an unteachable destructive arm.
My Utopia rocks about me.
For a moment the vision of that great courtyard hangs real. There the Utopians live real about me, going to and fro, and the great archway blazes with sunlight from the green gardens by the riverside. The man who is one of the samurai, and his lady, whom the botanist loved on earth, pass out of sight behind the marble flower-set Triton that spouts23 coolness in the middle of the place. For a moment I see two working men in green tunics24 sitting on a marble seat in the shadow of the colonnade25, and a sweet little silver-haired old lady, clad all in violet, and carrying a book, comes towards us, and lifts a curious eye at the botanist’s gestures. And then ——
“Scars of the past! Scars of the past! These fanciful, useless dreams!”
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1
botanist
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| n.植物学家 | |
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tenure
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| n.终身职位；任期；(土地)保有权，保有期 | |
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precarious
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| adj.不安定的，靠不住的；根据不足的 | |
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4
anticipations
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| 预期( anticipation的名词复数 )； 预测； （信托财产收益的）预支； 预期的事物 | |
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organisation
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| n.组织，安排，团体，有机休 | |
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opacity
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| n.不透明；难懂 | |
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7
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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8
hop
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| n.单脚跳，跳跃；vi.单脚跳，跳跃；着手做某事；vt.跳跃，跃过 | |
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9
shrug
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| v.耸肩(表示怀疑、冷漠、不知等) | |
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exultation
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| n.狂喜，得意 | |
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11
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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12
abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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13
clenched
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| v.紧握，抓紧，咬紧( clench的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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14
follower
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| n.跟随者；随员；门徒；信徒 | |
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15
lesser
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| adj.次要的，较小的；adv.较小地，较少地 | |
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16
glimmering
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| n.微光，隐约的一瞥adj.薄弱地发光的v.发闪光，发微光( glimmer的现在分词 ) | |
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17
wrath
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| n.愤怒，愤慨，暴怒 | |
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accusation
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| n.控告，指责，谴责 | |
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propitiatory
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| adj.劝解的；抚慰的；谋求好感的；哄人息怒的 | |
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positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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entreatingly
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| 哀求地，乞求地 | |
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sob
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| n.空间轨道的轰炸机；呜咽，哭泣 | |
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23
spouts
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| n.管口( spout的名词复数 )；（喷出的）水柱；（容器的）嘴；在困难中v.（指液体）喷出( spout的第三人称单数 )；滔滔不绝地讲；喋喋不休地说；喷水 | |
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24
tunics
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| n.（动植物的）膜皮( tunic的名词复数 )；束腰宽松外衣；一套制服的短上衣；（天主教主教等穿的）短祭袍 | |
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colonnade
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| n.柱廊 | |
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