Having satisfied a polyglot1 door-keeper as to his nationality, and the fact that he was not a minor2, the Professor found himself in the gambling3-rooms. They were not particularly crowded for people were beginning to go out for dinner, and he was able to draw fairly near to the first roulette table he encountered.
As he stood looking over the shoulders of the players he understood that no study of abstract theories could be worth the experience acquired by thus observing the humours of the goddess in her very temple. Her caprices, so ably seconded by the inconceivable stupidity, timidity or rashness of her votaries4, first amused and finally exasperated5 the Professor; he began to feel toward her something of the annoyance6 excited in him by the sight of a pretty woman, or any other vain superfluity, combined with the secret sense that if he chose he could make her dance to his tune7, and that it might be mildly amusing to do so. He had felt the same once or twice — but only for a fugitive8 instant — about pretty women.
None, however, had ever attracted him as strongly as this veiled divinity. The longing10 to twitch11 the veil from her cryptic12 features became violent, irresistible13. “Not one of these fools has any idea of the theory of chance,” he muttered to himself, elbowing his way to a seat near one of the croupiers. As he did so, he put his hand into his pocket, and found to his disgust that it contained only a single five franc piece and a few sous. All the rest of his money — a matter of four or five hundred francs — lay locked up in his suit-case at Arcadie. He anathematized his luck in expurgated language, and was about to rise from the table when the croupier called out: “Faites vos jeux, Messieurs.”
The Professor, with a murmured expletive which was to a real oath what Postum is to coffee, dropped back into his place and flung his five franc piece on the last three numbers. He lost.
Of course — in his excitement he had gone exactly contrary to his own theory! It was on the first three that he had meant to stake his paltry14 bet. Well; now it was too late. But stay —
Diving into another pocket, he came with surprise on a hundred franc note. Could it really be his? But no; he had an exact memorandum15 of his funds, and he knew this banknote was not to be thus accounted for. He made a violent effort to shake off his abstraction, and finally recalled that the note in question had been pressed into his hand that very afternoon as he left the train. But by whom —?
“Messieurs, faites vos jeux! Faites vos jeux! Le jeu est fait. Rien ne va plus.”
The hundred francs, escaping from his hand, had fluttered of themselves to a number in the middle of the table. That number came up. Across the green board thirty-six other hundred franc notes flew swiftly back in the direction of the Professor. Should he put them all back on the same number? “Yes,” he nodded calmly to the croupier’s question; and the three-thousand seven hundred francs were guided to their place by the croupier’s rake.
The number came up again, and another argosy of notes sailed into the haven16 of the happy gambler’s pocket. This time he knew he ought to settle down quietly to his theory; and he did so. He staked a thousand and tripled it, then let the three thousand lie, and won again. He doubled that stake, and began to feel his neighbours watching him with mingled17 interest and envy as the winnings once more flowed his way. But to whom did this mounting pile really belong?
No time to think of that now; he was fast in the clutches of his theory. It seemed to guide him like some superior being seated at the helm of his intelligence: his private daemon pitted against the veiled goddess! It was exciting, undoubtedly18; considerably19 more so, for example, than taking tea with the President’s wife at Purewater. He was beginning to feel like Napoleon, disposing his battalions20 to right and left, advancing, retreating, reinforcing or redistributing his troops. Ah, the veiled goddess was getting what she deserved for once!
At a late hour of the evening, when the Professor had become the centre of an ever-thickening crowd of fascinated observers, it suddenly came back to him that a woman had given him that original hundred franc note. A woman in the train that afternoon . . . But what did he care for that? He was playing the limit at every stake; and his mind had never worked more clearly and with a more exquisite21 sense of complete detachment. He was in his own particular seventh heaven of lucidity22. He even recalled, at the precise moment when cognizance of the fact became useful, that the doors of Arcadie closed at midnight, and that he had only just time to get back if he wished to sleep with a roof over his head.
As he did wish to, he pocketed his gains quietly and composedly, rose from the table and walked out of the rooms. He felt hungry, cheerful and alert. Perhaps, after all, excitement had been what he needed — pleasurable excitement, that is, not the kind occasioned by the small daily irritations23 of life, such as the presence of that woman in the train whose name he was still unable to remember. What he would have liked best of all would have been to sit down in one of the brightly lit cafés he was passing, before a bottle of beer and a ham sandwich; or perhaps what he had heard spoken of as a Welsh rabbit. But he did not want to sleep on a bench, for the night air was sharp; so he continued self-denyingly on his way to Arcadie.
A sleepy boy in a dirty apron24 let him in, locked up after him, and led him to a small bare room on the second floor. The stairs creaked and rattled25 as they mounted, and the rumblings of sleep sounded through the doors of the rooms they passed. Arcadie was a cramped26 and ramshackle construction, and the Professor hoped to heaven that his pension in the hills would be more solidly built and less densely27 inhabited. However, for one night it didn’t matter — or so he imagined.
His guide left him, and he turned on the electric light, threw down on the table the notes with which all his pockets were bulging28, and began to unstrap his portmanteaux.
Though he had so little luggage he always found the process of unpacking29 a long and laborious30 one; for he never could remember where he had put anything, and invariably passed through all the successive phases of apprehension31 and despair before he finally discovered his bedroom slippers32 in his spongebag, and the sponge itself (still dripping) rolled up inside his pyjamas33.
But tonight he sought for neither sponge not pyjamas, for as he opened his first suitcase his hand lit on a ream of spotless foolscap — the kind he always used for his literary work. The table on which he had tossed his winnings held a crusty hotel inkstand, and was directly overhung by a vacillating electric bulb. Before it was a chair; through the open window flowed the silence of the night, interwoven with the murmurs34 of a sleeping sea and hardly disturbed by the occasional far-off hoot35 of a motor horn. In his own brain was the same nocturnal quiet and serenity36. A curious thing had happened to him. His bout9 with the veiled goddess had sharpened his wits and dragged him suddenly and completely out of the intellectual apathy37 into which he had been gradually immersed by his illness and the harassing38 discomforts39 of the last few weeks. He was no longer thinking now about the gambling tables or the theory of chance; but with all the strength of his freshly stimulated40 faculties41 was grappling the mighty42 monster with whom he meant to try a fall.
“Einstein!” he cried, as a Crusader might have shouted his battle-cry. He sat down at the table, shoved aside the banknotes, plunged43 his pen into the blue mud of the inkstand, and began.
The silence was delicious, mysterious. Link by link the chain of his argument unrolled itself, travelling across his pages with the unending flow of a trail of migratory44 caterpillars45. Not a break; not a hesitation46. It was years since his mental machinery47 had worked with that smooth consecutiveness48. He began to wonder whether, after all, it might not be better to give up the idea of a remote and doubtful pension in the hills, and settle himself for the winter in a place apparently49 so propitious50 to his intellectual activities.
It was then that the noises in the next room suddenly began. First there was the brutal51 slam of the door, followed by a silly bad-tempered52 struggle with a reluctant lock. Then a pair of shoes were flung down on the tiled floor. Water was next poured into an unsteady basin, and a water-jug set down with a hideous53 clatter54 on a rickety washstand which seemed to be placed against the communicating door between the two rooms. Turbulent ablutions ensued. These over, there succeeded a moment of deceptive55 calm, almost immediately succeeded by a series of whistled scales, emitted just above the whistler’s breath, and merging56 into the exact though subdued57 reproduction of various barn-yard gutturals, ending up with the raucous58 yelp59 of a parrot proclaiming again and again: “I’m stony60 broke, I am!”
All the while Professor Hibbart’s brain continued to marshal its arguments, and try to press them into the hard mould of words. But the struggle became more and more unequal as the repressed cacophony61 next door increased. At last he jumped up, rummaged62 in every pocket for his ear-pads and snapped them furiously over his ears. But this measure, instead of silencing the tenuous63 insistent64 noises from the next room, only made him strain for them more attentively65 through the protecting pads, giving them the supernatural shrillness66 of sounds heard at midnight in a sleeping house, the secret crackings and creakings against which heaped-up pillows and drawn-up bedclothes are a vain defence.
Finally the Professor noticed that there was a wide crack under the communicating door. Not till that crack was filled would work be possible. He jumped up again and dived at the washstand for towels. But he found that in the hasty preparation of the room the towels had been forgotten. A newspaper, then — but no; he cast about him in vain for a newspaper . . .
The noises had now sunk to a whisper, broken by irritating intervals67 of silence; but in the exasperated state of the Professor’s nerves these irregular lulls68, and the tension of watching for the sounds that broke them, were more trying than what had gone before. He sent a despairing glance about him, and his eye lit on the pile of banknotes on the table. He sprang up again, seized the notes, and crammed69 them into the crack.
After that the silence became suddenly and almost miraculously70 complete, and he went on with his writing.
收听单词发音 |
1
polyglot
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| adj.通晓数种语言的；n.通晓多种语言的人 | |
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minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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gambling
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| n.赌博；投机 | |
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votaries
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| n.信徒( votary的名词复数 )；追随者；（天主教）修士；修女 | |
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exasperated
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| adj.恼怒的 | |
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annoyance
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| n.恼怒，生气，烦恼 | |
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tune
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| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
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fugitive
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| adj.逃亡的，易逝的；n.逃犯，逃亡者 | |
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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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longing
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| n.（for）渴望 | |
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twitch
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| v.急拉，抽动，痉挛，抽搐；n.扯，阵痛，痉挛 | |
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cryptic
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| adj.秘密的，神秘的，含义模糊的 | |
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irresistible
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| adj.非常诱人的，无法拒绝的，无法抗拒的 | |
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paltry
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| adj.无价值的，微不足道的 | |
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memorandum
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| n.备忘录，便笺 | |
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haven
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| n.安全的地方，避难所，庇护所 | |
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mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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considerably
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| adv.极大地；相当大地；在很大程度上 | |
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battalions
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| n.（陆军的）一营（大约有一千兵士）( battalion的名词复数 )；协同作战的部队；军队；（组织在一起工作的）队伍 | |
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exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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lucidity
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| n.明朗，清晰，透明 | |
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irritations
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| n.激怒( irritation的名词复数 )；恼怒；生气；令人恼火的事 | |
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apron
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| n.围裙；工作裙 | |
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rattled
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| 慌乱的，恼火的 | |
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cramped
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| a.狭窄的 | |
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densely
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| ad.密集地；浓厚地 | |
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bulging
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| 膨胀； 凸出（部）； 打气； 折皱 | |
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unpacking
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| n.取出货物，拆包[箱]v.从（包裹等）中取出（所装的东西），打开行李取出( unpack的现在分词 )；拆包；解除…的负担；吐露（心事等） | |
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laborious
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| adj.吃力的，努力的，不流畅 | |
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apprehension
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| n.理解，领悟；逮捕，拘捕；忧虑 | |
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32
slippers
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| n. 拖鞋 | |
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pyjamas
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| n.（宽大的）睡衣裤 | |
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murmurs
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| n.低沉、连续而不清的声音( murmur的名词复数 )；低语声；怨言；嘀咕 | |
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hoot
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| n.鸟叫声，汽车的喇叭声； v.使汽车鸣喇叭 | |
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serenity
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| n.宁静，沉着，晴朗 | |
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apathy
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| n.漠不关心，无动于衷；冷淡 | |
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harassing
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| v.侵扰，骚扰( harass的现在分词 )；不断攻击（敌人） | |
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discomforts
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| n.不舒适( discomfort的名词复数 )；不愉快，苦恼 | |
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stimulated
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| a.刺激的 | |
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faculties
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| n.能力( faculty的名词复数 )；全体教职员；技巧；院 | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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plunged
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| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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migratory
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| n.候鸟，迁移 | |
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caterpillars
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| n.毛虫( caterpillar的名词复数 )；履带 | |
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hesitation
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| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
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machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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48
consecutiveness
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| Consecutiveness | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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propitious
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| adj.吉利的；顺利的 | |
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51
brutal
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| adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的 | |
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52
bad-tempered
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| adj.脾气坏的 | |
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53
hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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54
clatter
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| v./n.(使)发出连续而清脆的撞击声 | |
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deceptive
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| adj.骗人的，造成假象的，靠不住的 | |
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56
merging
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| 合并（分类） | |
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57
subdued
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| adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
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raucous
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| adj.(声音)沙哑的，粗糙的 | |
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59
yelp
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| vi.狗吠 | |
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60
stony
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| adj.石头的，多石头的，冷酷的，无情的 | |
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cacophony
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| n.刺耳的声音 | |
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rummaged
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| 翻找，搜寻( rummage的过去式和过去分词 )； 已经海关检查 | |
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tenuous
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| adj.细薄的，稀薄的，空洞的 | |
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insistent
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| adj.迫切的，坚持的 | |
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attentively
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| adv.聚精会神地；周到地；谛；凝神 | |
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shrillness
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| 尖锐刺耳 | |
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67
intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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lulls
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| n.间歇期（lull的复数形式）vt.使镇静，使安静（lull的第三人称单数形式） | |
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69
crammed
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| adj.塞满的，挤满的；大口地吃；快速贪婪地吃v.把…塞满；填入；临时抱佛脚( cram的过去式) | |
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miraculously
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| ad.奇迹般地 | |
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