Suppose you should be walking down Broadway after dinner, with ten minutes allotted1 to the consummation of your cigar while you are choosing between a diverting tragedy and something serious in the way of vaudeville2. Suddenly a hand is laid upon your arm. You turn to look into the thrilling eyes of a beautiful woman, wonderful in diamonds and Russian sables3. She thrusts hurriedly into your hand an extremely hot buttered roll, flashes out a tiny pair of scissors, snips4 off the second button of your overcoat, meaningly ejaculates the one word, "parallelogram!" and swiftly flies down a cross street, looking back fearfully over her shoulder.
That would be pure adventure. Would you accept it? Not you. You would flush with embarrassment5; you would sheepishly drop the roll and continue down Broadway, fumbling6 feebly for the missing button. This you would do unless you are one of the blessed few in whom the pure spirit of adventure is not dead.
True adventurers have never been plentiful7. They who are set down in print as such have been mostly business men with newly invented methods. They have been out after the things they wanted--golden fleeces, holy grails, lady loves, treasure, crowns and fame. The true adventurer goes forth9 aimless and uncalculating to meet and greet unknown fate. A fine example was the Prodigal10 Son--when he started back home.
Half-adventurers--brave and splendid figures--have been numerous. From the Crusades to the Palisades they have enriched the arts of history and fiction and the trade of historical fiction. But each of them had a prize to win, a goal to kick, an axe11 to grind, a race to run, a new thrust in tierce to deliver, a name to carve, a crow to pick--so they were not followers12 of true adventure.
In the big city the twin spirits Romance and Adventure are always abroad seeking worthy14 wooers. As we roam the streets they slyly peep at us and challenge us in twenty different guises15. Without knowing why, we look up suddenly to see in a window a face that seems to belong to our gallery of intimate portraits; in a sleeping thoroughfare we hear a cry of agony and fear coming from an empty and shuttered house; instead of at our familiar curb16, a cab-driver deposits us before a strange door, which one, with a smile, opens for us and bids us enter; a slip of paper, written upon, flutters down to our feet from the high lattices of Chance; we exchange glances of instantaneous hate, affection and fear with hurrying strangers in the passing crowds; a sudden douse17 of rain--and our umbrella may be sheltering the daughter of the Full Moon and first cousin of the Sidereal18 System; at every corner handkerchiefs drop, fingers beckon19, eyes besiege20, and the lost, the lonely, the rapturous, the mysterious, the perilous21, changing clues of adventure are slipped into our fingers. But few of us are willing to hold and follow them. We are grown stiff with the ramrod of convention down our backs. We pass on; and some day we come, at the end of a very dull life, to reflect that our romance has been a pallid22 thing of a marriage or two, a satin rosette kept in a safe-deposit drawer, and a lifelong feud23 with a steam radiator24.
Rudolf Steiner was a true adventurer. Few were the evenings on which he did not go forth from his hall bedchamber in search of the unexpected and the egregious25. The most interesting thing in life seemed to him to be what might lie just around the next corner. Sometimes his willingness to tempt26 fate led him into strange paths. Twice he had spent the night in a station-house; again and again he had found himself the dupe of ingenious and mercenary tricksters; his watch and money had been the price of one flattering allurement27. But with undiminished ardour he picked up every glove cast before him into the merry lists of adventure.
One evening Rudolf was strolling along a crosstown street in the older central part of the city. Two streams of people filled the sidewalks--the home-hurrying, and that restless contingent28 that abandons home for the specious29 welcome of the thousand-candle-power table d'hote.
The young adventurer was of pleasing presence, and moved serenely30 and watchfully31. By daylight he was a salesman in a piano store. He wore his tie drawn32 through a topaz ring instead of fastened with a stick pin; and once he had written to the editor of a magazine that "Junie's Love Test" by Miss Libbey, had been the book that had most influenced his life.
During his walk a violent chattering33 of teeth in a glass case on the sidewalk seemed at first to draw his attention (with a qualm), to a restaurant before which it was set; but a second glance revealed the electric letters of a dentist's sign high above the next door. A giant negro, fantastically dressed in a red embroidered34 coat, yellow trousers and a military cap, discreetly35 distributed cards to those of the passing crowd who consented to take them.
This mode of dentistic advertising36 was a common sight to Rudolf. Usually he passed the dispenser of the dentist's cards without reducing his store; but tonight the African slipped one into his hand so deftly37 that he retained it there smiling a little at the successful feat38.
When he had travelled a few yards further he glanced at the card indifferently. Surprised, he turned it over and looked again with interest. One side of the card was blank; on the other was written in ink three words, "The Green Door." And then Rudolf saw, three steps in front of him, a man throw down the card the negro had given him as he passed. Rudolf picked it up. It was printed with the dentist's name and address and the usual schedule of "plate work" and "bridge work" and specious promises of "painless" operations.
The adventurous39 piano salesman halted at the corner and considered. Then he crossed the street, walked down a block, recrossed and joined the upward current of people again. Without seeming to notice the negro as he passed the second time, he carelessly took the card that was handed him. Ten steps away he inspected it. In the same handwriting that appeared on the first card "The Green Door" was inscribed40 upon it. Three or four cards were tossed to the pavement by pedestrians41 both following and leading him. These fell blank side up. Rudolf turned them over. Every one bore the printed legend of the dental "parlours."
Rarely did the arch sprite Adventure need to beckon twice to Rudolf Steiner, his true follower13. But twice it had been done, and the quest was on.
Rudolf walked slowly back to where the giant negro stood by the case of rattling42 teeth. This time as he passed he received no card. In spite of his gaudy43 and ridiculous garb44, the Ethiopian displayed a natural barbaric dignity as he stood, offering the cards suavely45 to some, allowing others to pass unmolested. Every half minute he chanted a harsh, unintelligible46 phrase akin47 to the jabber48 of car conductors and grand opera. And not only did he withhold49 a card this time, but it seemed to Rudolf that he received from the shining and massive black countenance50 a look of cold, almost contemptuous disdain51.
The look stung the adventurer. He read in it a silent accusation52 that he had been found wanting. Whatever the mysterious written words on the cards might mean, the black had selected him twice from the throng53 for their recipient54; and now seemed to have condemned55 him as deficient56 in the wit and spirit to engage the enigma57.
Standing58 aside from the rush, the young man made a rapid estimate of the building in which he conceived that his adventure must lie. Five stories high it rose. A small restaurant occupied the basement.
The first floor, now closed, seemed to house millinery or furs. The second floor, by the winking59 electric letters, was the dentist's. Above this a polyglot60 babel of signs struggled to indicate the abodes61 of palmists, dressmakers, musicians and doctors. Still higher up draped curtains and milk bottles white on the window sills proclaimed the regions of domesticity.
After concluding his survey Rudolf walked briskly up the high flight of stone steps into the house. Up two flights of the carpeted stairway he continued; and at its top paused. The hallway there was dimly lighted by two pale jets of gas one--far to his right, the other nearer, to his left. He looked toward the nearer light and saw, within its wan8 halo, a green door. For one moment he hesitated; then he seemed to see the contumelious sneer62 of the African juggler63 of cards; and then he walked straight to the green door and knocked against it.
Moments like those that passed before his knock was answered measure the quick breath of true adventure. What might not be behind those green panels! Gamesters at play; cunning rogues64 baiting their traps with subtle skill; beauty in love with courage, and thus planning to be sought by it; danger, death, love, disappointment, ridicule--any of these might respond to that temerarious rap.
A faint rustle65 was heard inside, and the door slowly opened. A girl not yet twenty stood there, white-faced and tottering66. She loosed the knob and swayed weakly, groping with one hand. Rudolf caught her and laid her on a faded couch that stood against the wall. He closed the door and took a swift glance around the room by the light of a flickering67 gas jet. Neat, but extreme poverty was the story that he read.
The girl lay still, as if in a faint. Rudolf looked around the room excitedly for a barrel. People must be rolled upon a barrel who--no, no; that was for drowned persons. He began to fan her with his hat. That was successful, for he struck her nose with the brim of his derby and she opened her eyes. And then the young man saw that hers, indeed, was the one missing face from his heart's gallery of intimate portraits. The frank, grey eyes, the little nose, turning pertly outward; the chestnut68 hair, curling like the tendrils of a pea vine, seemed the right end and reward of all his wonderful adventures. But the face was wofully thin and pale.
The girl looked at him calmly, and then smiled.
"Fainted, didn't I?" she asked, weakly. "Well, who wouldn't? You try going without anything to eat for three days and see!"
"Himmel!" exclaimed Rudolf, jumping up. "Wait till I come back."
He dashed out the green door and down the stairs. In twenty minutes he was back again, kicking at the door with his toe for her to open it. With both arms he hugged an array of wares69 from the grocery and the restaurant. On the table he laid them--bread and butter, cold meats, cakes, pies, pickles70, oysters72, a roasted chicken, a bottle of milk and one of redhot tea.
"This is ridiculous," said Rudolf, blusteringly, "to go without eating. You must quit making election bets of this kind. Supper is ready." He helped her to a chair at the table and asked: "Is there a cup for the tea?" "On the shelf by the window," she answered. When he turned again with the cup he saw her, with eyes shining rapturously, beginning upon a huge Dill pickle71 that she had rooted out from the paper bags with a woman's unerring instinct. He took it from her, laughingly, and poured the cup full of milk. "Drink that first" he ordered, "and then you shall have some tea, and then a chicken wing. If you are very good you shall have a pickle to-morrow. And now, if you'll allow me to be your guest we'll have supper."
He drew up the other chair. The tea brightened the girl's eyes and brought back some of her colour. She began to eat with a sort of dainty ferocity like some starved wild animal. She seemcd to regard the young man's presence and the aid he had rendered her as a natural thing--not as though she undervalued the conventions; but as one whose great stress gave her the right to put aside the artificial for the human. But gradually, with the return of strength and comfort, came also a sense of the little conventions that belong; and she began to tell him her little story. It was one of a thousand such as the city yawns at every day--the shop girl's story of insufficient73 wages, further reduced by "fines" that go to swell74 the store's profits; of time lost through illness; and then of lost positions, lost hope, and--the knock of the adventurer upon the green door.
But to Rudolf the history sounded as big as the Iliad or the crisis in "Junie's Love Test."
"To think of you going through all that," he exclaimed.
"It was something fierce," said the girl, solemnly.
"And you have no relatives or friends in the city?"
"None whatever."
"I am all alone in the world, too," said Rudolf, after a pause.
"I am glad of that," said the girl, promptly75; and somehow it pleased the young man to hear that she approved of his bereft76 condition.
Very suddenly her eyelids77 dropped and she sighed deeply.
"I'm awfully78 sleepy," she said, "and I feel so good."
Then Rudolf rose and took his hat. "I'll say good-night. A long night's sleep will be fine for you."
He held out his hand, and she took it and said "good-night." But her eyes asked a question so eloquently79, so frankly80 and pathetically that he answered it with words.
"Oh, I'm coming back to-morrow to see how you are getting along. You can't get rid of me so easily."
Then, at the door, as though the way of his coming had been so much less important than the fact that he had come, she asked: "How did you come to knock at my door?"
He looked at her for a moment, remembering the cards, and felt a sudden jealous pain. What if they had fallen into other hands as adventurous as his? Quickly he decided81 that she must never know the truth. He would never let her know that he was aware of the strange expedient82 to which she had been driven by her great distress83.
"One of our piano tuners lives in this house," he said. "I knocked at your door by mistake."
The last thing he saw in the room before the green door closed was her smile.
At the head of the stairway he paused and looked curiously84 about him. And then he went along the hallway to its other end; and, coming back, ascended85 to the floor above and continued his puzzled explorations. Every door that he found in the house was painted green.
Wondering, he descended86 to the sidewalk. The fantastic African was still there. Rudolf confronted him with his two cards in his hand.
"Will you tell me why you gave me these cards and what they mean?" he asked.
In a broad, good-natured grin the negro exhibited a splendid advertisement of his master's profession.
"Dar it is, boss," he said, pointing down the street. "But I 'spect you is a little late for de fust act."
Looking the way he pointed87 Rudolf saw above the entrance to a theatre the blazing electric sign of its new play, "The Green Door."
"I'm informed dat it's a fust-rate show, sah," said the negro. "De agent what represents it pussented me with a dollar, sah, to distribute a few of his cards along with de doctah's. May I offer you one of de doctah's cards, sah?"
At the corner of the block in which he lived Rudolf stopped for a glass of beer and a cigar. When he had come out with his lighted weed he buttoned his coat, pushed back his hat and said, stoutly88, to the lamp post on the corner:
"All the same, I believe it was the hand of Fate that doped out the way for me to find her."
Which conclusion, under the circumstances, certainly admits Rudolf Steiner to the ranks of the true followers of Romance and Adventure.
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allotted
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| 分配，拨给，摊派( allot的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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vaudeville
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| n.歌舞杂耍表演 | |
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sables
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| n.紫貂( sable的名词复数 )；紫貂皮；阴暗的；暗夜 | |
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snips
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| n.（剪金属板的）铁剪，铁铗；剪下之物( snip的名词复数 )；一点点；零星v.剪( snip的第三人称单数 ) | |
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embarrassment
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| n.尴尬；使人为难的人(事物)；障碍；窘迫 | |
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fumbling
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| n. 摸索,漏接 v. 摸索,摸弄,笨拙的处理 | |
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plentiful
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| adj.富裕的，丰富的 | |
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wan
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| (wide area network)广域网 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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prodigal
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| adj.浪费的，挥霍的，放荡的 | |
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axe
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| n.斧子；v.用斧头砍，削减 | |
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followers
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| 追随者( follower的名词复数 )； 用户； 契据的附面； 从动件 | |
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follower
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| n.跟随者；随员；门徒；信徒 | |
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worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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guises
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| n.外观，伪装( guise的名词复数 )v.外观，伪装( guise的第三人称单数 ) | |
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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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douse
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| v.把…浸入水中，用水泼；n.泼洒 | |
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sidereal
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| adj.恒星的 | |
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beckon
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| v.(以点头或打手势)向...示意，召唤 | |
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besiege
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| vt.包围，围攻，拥在...周围 | |
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perilous
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| adj.危险的，冒险的 | |
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pallid
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| adj.苍白的，呆板的 | |
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feud
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| n.长期不和；世仇；v.长期争斗；世代结仇 | |
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radiator
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| n.暖气片，散热器 | |
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egregious
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| adj.非常的，过分的 | |
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tempt
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| vt.引诱，勾引，吸引，引起…的兴趣 | |
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allurement
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| n.诱惑物 | |
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contingent
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| adj.视条件而定的；n.一组，代表团，分遣队 | |
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specious
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| adj.似是而非的；adv.似是而非地 | |
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serenely
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| adv.安详地，宁静地，平静地 | |
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watchfully
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| 警惕地，留心地 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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chattering
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| n. （机器振动发出的）咔嗒声，(鸟等)鸣，啁啾 adj. 喋喋不休的，啾啾声的 动词chatter的现在分词形式 | |
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embroidered
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| adj．绣花的 | |
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discreetly
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| ad.(言行)审慎地，慎重地 | |
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advertising
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| n.广告业；广告活动 a.广告的；广告业务的 | |
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deftly
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| adv.灵巧地，熟练地，敏捷地 | |
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feat
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| n.功绩；武艺，技艺；adj.灵巧的，漂亮的，合适的 | |
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adventurous
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| adj.爱冒险的；惊心动魄的，惊险的，刺激的 | |
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inscribed
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| v.写，刻( inscribe的过去式和过去分词 )；内接 | |
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pedestrians
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| n.步行者( pedestrian的名词复数 ) | |
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rattling
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| adj. 格格作响的, 活泼的, 很好的 adv. 极其, 很, 非常 动词rattle的现在分词 | |
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gaudy
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| adj.华而不实的；俗丽的 | |
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garb
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| n.服装，装束 | |
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suavely
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unintelligible
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| adj.无法了解的，难解的，莫明其妙的 | |
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akin
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| adj.同族的，类似的 | |
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jabber
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| v.快而不清楚地说；n.吱吱喳喳 | |
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withhold
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| v.拒绝，不给；使停止，阻挡 | |
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50
countenance
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| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
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51
disdain
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| n.鄙视，轻视；v.轻视，鄙视，不屑 | |
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accusation
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| n.控告，指责，谴责 | |
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throng
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| n.人群，群众；v.拥挤，群集 | |
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recipient
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| a.接受的,感受性强的 n.接受者,感受者,容器 | |
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55
condemned
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| adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
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deficient
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| adj.不足的，不充份的，有缺陷的 | |
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enigma
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| n.谜，谜一样的人或事 | |
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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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59
winking
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| n.瞬眼，目语v.使眼色( wink的现在分词 )；递眼色（表示友好或高兴等）；（指光）闪烁；闪亮 | |
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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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abodes
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| 住所( abode的名词复数 )； 公寓； （在某地的）暂住； 逗留 | |
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62
sneer
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| v.轻蔑；嘲笑；n.嘲笑，讥讽的言语 | |
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juggler
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| n. 变戏法者, 行骗者 | |
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rogues
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| n.流氓( rogue的名词复数 )；无赖；调皮捣蛋的人；离群的野兽 | |
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rustle
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| v.沙沙作响；偷盗(牛、马等)；n.沙沙声声 | |
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66
tottering
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| adj.蹒跚的，动摇的v.走得或动得不稳( totter的现在分词 )；踉跄；蹒跚；摇摇欲坠 | |
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flickering
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| adj.闪烁的，摇曳的，一闪一闪的 | |
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chestnut
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| n.栗树，栗子 | |
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69
wares
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| n. 货物, 商品 | |
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70
pickles
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| n.腌菜( pickle的名词复数 )；处于困境；遇到麻烦；菜酱 | |
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71
pickle
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| n.腌汁，泡菜；v.腌，泡 | |
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72
oysters
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| 牡蛎( oyster的名词复数 ) | |
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73
insufficient
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| adj.(for，of)不足的，不够的 | |
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74
swell
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| vi.膨胀，肿胀；增长，增强 | |
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75
promptly
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| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
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bereft
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| adj.被剥夺的 | |
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77
eyelids
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| n.眼睑( eyelid的名词复数 )；眼睛也不眨一下；不露声色；面不改色 | |
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78
awfully
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| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
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eloquently
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| adv. 雄辩地(有口才地, 富于表情地) | |
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80
frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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81
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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82
expedient
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| adj.有用的，有利的；n.紧急的办法，权宜之计 | |
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83
distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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85
ascended
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| v.上升，攀登( ascend的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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86
descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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87
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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88
stoutly
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| adv.牢固地，粗壮的 | |
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