The pale-faced man peered down the microscope. He was evidently not accustomed to that kind of thing, and held a limp white hand over his disengaged eye. “I see very little,” he said.
“Touch this screw,” said the Bacteriologist; “perhaps the microscope is out of focus for you. Eyes vary so much. Just the fraction of a turn this way or that.”
“Ah! now I see,” said the visitor. “Not so very much to see after all. Little streaks3 and shreds4 of pink. And yet those little particles, those mere5 atomies, might multiply and devastate6 a city! Wonderful!”
He stood up, and releasing the glass slip from the microscope, held it in his hand towards the window. “Scarcely visible,” he said, scrutinising the preparation. He hesitated. “Are these—alive? Are they dangerous now?”
“Those have been stained and killed,” said the Bacteriologist. “I wish, for my own part, we could kill and stain every one of them in the universe.”
“I suppose,” the pale man said with a slight smile, “that you scarcely care to have such things about you in the living—in the active state?”
“On the contrary, we are obliged to,” said the Bacteriologist. “Here, for instance—” He walked across the room and took up one of several sealed tubes. “Here is the living thing. This is a cultivation7 of the actual living disease bacteria.” He hesitated, “Bottled cholera, so to speak.”
A slight gleam of satisfaction appeared momentarily in the face of the pale man.
“It’s a deadly thing to have in your possession,” he said, devouring8 the little tube with his eyes. The Bacteriologist watched the morbid9 pleasure in his visitor’s expression. This man, who had visited him that afternoon with a note of introduction from an old friend, interested him from the very contrast of their dispositions10. The lank11 black hair and deep grey eyes, the haggard expression and nervous manner, the fitful yet keen interest of his visitor were a novel change from the phlegmatic12 deliberations of the ordinary scientific worker with whom the Bacteriologist chiefly associated. It was perhaps natural, with a hearer evidently so impressionable to the lethal13 nature of his topic, to take the most effective aspect of the matter.
He held the tube in his hand thoughtfully. “Yes, here is the pestilence14 imprisoned15. Only break such a little tube as this into a supply of drinking-water, say to these minute particles of life that one must needs stain and examine with the highest powers of the microscope even to see, and that one can neither smell nor taste—say to them, ‘Go forth16, increase and multiply, and replenish17 the cisterns,’ and death—mysterious, untraceable death, death swift and terrible, death full of pain and indignity—would be released upon this city, and go hither and thither18 seeking his victims. Here he would take the husband from the wife, here the child from its mother, here the statesman from his duty, and here the toiler19 from his trouble. He would follow the water-mains, creeping along streets, picking out and punishing a house here and a house there where they did not boil their drinking-water, creeping into the wells of the mineral-water makers20, getting washed into salad, and lying dormant21 in ices. He would wait ready to be drunk in the horse-troughs, and by unwary children in the public fountains. He would soak into the soil, to reappear in springs and wells at a thousand unexpected places. Once start him at the water supply, and before we could ring him in, and catch him again, he would have decimated the metropolis22.”
“But he is quite safe here, you know—quite safe.”
The pale-faced man nodded. His eyes shone. He cleared his throat. “These Anarchist25—rascals,” said he, “are fools, blind fools—to use bombs when this kind of thing is attainable26. I think—”
A gentle rap, a mere light touch of the finger-nails was heard at the door. The Bacteriologist opened it. “Just a minute, dear,” whispered his wife.
When he re-entered the laboratory his visitor was looking at his watch. “I had no idea I had wasted an hour of your time,” he said. “Twelve minutes to four. I ought to have left here by half-past three. But your things were really too interesting. No, positively27 I cannot stop a moment longer. I have an engagement at four.”
He passed out of the room reiterating28 his thanks, and the Bacteriologist accompanied him to the door, and then returned thoughtfully along the passage to his laboratory. He was musing29 on the ethnology of his visitor. Certainly the man was not a Teutonic type nor a common Latin one. “A morbid product, anyhow, I am afraid,” said the Bacteriologist to himself. “How he gloated on those cultivations of disease-germs!” A disturbing thought struck him. He turned to the bench by the vapour-bath, and then very quickly to his writing-table. Then he felt hastily in his pockets, and then rushed to the door. “I may have put it down on the hall table,” he said.
“Yes, dear,” came a remote voice.
Pause.
“Nothing, dear, because I remember—”
“Blue ruin!” cried the Bacteriologist, and incontinently ran to the front door and down the steps of his house to the street.
Minnie, hearing the door slam violently, ran in alarm to the window. Down the street a slender man was getting into a cab. The Bacteriologist, hatless, and in his carpet slippers33, was running and gesticulating wildly towards this group. One slipper32 came off, but he did not wait for it. “He has gone mad!” said Minnie; “it’s that horrid34 science of his”; and, opening the window, would have called after him. The slender man, suddenly glancing round, seemed struck with the same idea of mental disorder35. He pointed36 hastily to the Bacteriologist, said something to the cabman, the apron37 of the cab slammed, the whip swished, the horse’s feet clattered38, and in a moment cab, and Bacteriologist hotly in pursuit, had receded39 up the vista40 of the roadway and disappeared round the corner.
Minnie remained straining out of the window for a minute. Then she drew her head back into the room again. She was dumbfounded. “Of course he is eccentric,” she meditated41. “But running about London—in the height of the season, too—in his socks!” A happy thought struck her. She hastily put her bonnet42 on, seized his shoes, went into the hall, took down his hat and light overcoat from the pegs43, emerged upon the doorstep, and hailed a cab that opportunely44 crawled by. “Drive me up the road and round Havelock Crescent, and see if we can find a gentleman running about in a velveteen coat and no hat.”
“Velveteen coat, ma’am, and no ‘at. Very good, ma’am.” And the cabman whipped up at once in the most matter-of-fact way, as if he drove to this address every day in his life.
Some few minutes later the little group of cabmen and loafers that collects round the cabmen’s shelter at Haverstock Hill were startled by the passing of a cab with a ginger-coloured screw of a horse, driven furiously.
They were silent as it went by, and then as it receded—“That’s ‘Arry Icks. Wot’s he got?” said the stout45 gentleman known as Old Tootles.
“He’s a-using his whip, he is, to rights,” said the ostler boy.
“Hullo!” said poor old Tommy Byles; “here’s another bloomin’ loonatic. Blowed if there aint.”
“It’s old George,” said old Tootles, “and he’s drivin’ a loonatic, as you say. Aint he a-clawin’ out of the keb? Wonder if he’s after Arry ‘Icks?”
The group round the cabmen’s shelter became animated46. Chorus: “Go it, George!” “It’s a race.” “You’ll ketch ’em!” “Whip up!”
“She’s a goer, she is!” said the ostler boy.
“Strike me giddy!” cried old Tootles. “Here! I’m a-goin’ to begin in a minute. Here’s another comin’. If all the kebs in Hampstead aint gone mad this morning!”
“It’s a fieldmale this time,” said the ostler boy.
“She’s a followin’ him,” said old Tootles. “Usually the other way about.”
“What’s she got in her ‘and?”
“Looks like a ‘igh ‘at.”
Minnie went by in a perfect roar of applause. She did not like it but she felt that she was doing her duty, and whirled on down Haverstock Hill and Camden Town High Street with her eyes ever intent on the animated back view of old George, who was driving her vagrant48 husband so incomprehensibly away from her.
The man in the foremost cab sat crouched49 in the corner, his arms tightly folded, and the little tube that contained such vast possibilities of destruction gripped in his hand. His mood was a singular mixture of fear and exultation50. Chiefly he was afraid of being caught before he could accomplish his purpose, but behind this was a vaguer but larger fear of the awfulness of his crime. But his exultation far exceeded his fear. No Anarchist before him had ever approached this conception of his. Ravachol, Vaillant, all those distinguished51 persons whose fame he had envied dwindled52 into insignificance53 beside him. He had only to make sure of the water supply, and break the little tube into a reservoir. How brilliantly he had planned it, forged the letter of introduction and got into the laboratory, and how brilliantly he had seized his opportunity! The world should hear of him at last. All those people who had sneered54 at him, neglected him, preferred other people to him, found his company undesirable55, should consider him at last. Death, death, death! They had always treated him as a man of no importance. All the world had been in a conspiracy56 to keep him under. He would teach them yet what it is to isolate57 a man. What was this familiar street? Great Saint Andrew’s Street, of course! How fared the chase? He craned out of the cab. The Bacteriologist was scarcely fifty yards behind. That was bad. He would be caught and stopped yet. He felt in his pocket for money, and found half-a-sovereign. This he thrust up through the trap in the top of the cab into the man’s face. “More,” he shouted, “if only we get away.”
The money was snatched out of his hand. “Right you are,” said the cabman, and the trap slammed, and the lash58 lay along the glistening59 side of the horse. The cab swayed, and the Anarchist, half-standing under the trap, put the hand containing the little glass tube upon the apron to preserve his balance. He felt the brittle60 thing crack, and the broken half of it rang upon the floor of the cab. He fell back into the seat with a curse, and stared dismally61 at the two or three drops of moisture on the apron.
“Well! I suppose I shall be the first. Phew! Anyhow, I shall be a Martyr63. That’s something. But it is a filthy64 death, nevertheless. I wonder if it hurts as much as they say.”
Presently a thought occurred to him—he groped between his feet. A little drop was still in the broken end of the tube, and he drank that to make sure. It was better to make sure. At any rate, he would not fail.
Then it dawned upon him that there was no further need to escape the Bacteriologist. In Wellington Street he told the cabman to stop, and got out. He slipped on the step, and his head felt queer. It was rapid stuff this cholera poison. He waved his cabman out of existence, so to speak, and stood on the pavement with his arms folded upon his breast awaiting the arrival of the Bacteriologist. There was something tragic65 in his pose. The sense of imminent66 death gave him a certain dignity. He greeted his pursuer with a defiant67 laugh.
“Vive l’Anarchie! You are too late, my friend. I have drunk it. The cholera is abroad!”
The Bacteriologist from his cab beamed curiously68 at him through his spectacles. “You have drunk it! An Anarchist! I see now.” He was about to say something more, and then checked himself. A smile hung in the corner of his mouth. He opened the apron of his cab as if to descend69, at which the Anarchist waved him a dramatic farewell and strode off towards Waterloo Bridge, carefully jostling his infected body against as many people as possible. The Bacteriologist was so preoccupied70 with the vision of him that he scarcely manifested the slightest surprise at the appearance of Minnie upon the pavement with his hat and shoes and overcoat. “Very good of you to bring my things,” he said, and remained lost in contemplation of the receding71 figure of the Anarchist.
“You had better get in,” he said, still staring. Minnie felt absolutely convinced now that he was mad, and directed the cabman home on her own responsibility. “Put on my shoes? Certainly dear,” said he, as the cab began to turn, and hid the strutting72 black figure, now small in the distance, from his eyes. Then suddenly something grotesque73 struck him, and he laughed. Then he remarked, “It is really very serious, though.”
“You see, that man came to my house to see me, and he is an Anarchist. No—don’t faint, or I cannot possibly tell you the rest. And I wanted to astonish him, not knowing he was an Anarchist, and took up a cultivation of that new species of Bacterium74 I was telling you of, that infest75, and I think cause, the blue patches upon various monkeys; and like a fool, I said it was Asiatic cholera. And he ran away with it to poison the water of London, and he certainly might have made things look blue for this civilised city. And now he has swallowed it. Of course, I cannot say what will happen, but you know it turned that kitten blue, and the three puppies—in patches, and the sparrow—bright blue. But the bother is, I shall have all the trouble and expense of preparing some more.
“Put on my coat on this hot day! Why? Because we might meet Mrs Jabber76. My dear, Mrs Jabber is not a draught77. But why should I wear a coat on a hot day because of Mrs—. Oh! very well.”
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1
celebrated
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| adj.有名的，声誉卓著的 | |
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cholera
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| n.霍乱 | |
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streaks
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| n.（与周围有所不同的）条纹( streak的名词复数 )；（通常指不好的）特征（倾向）；（不断经历成功或失败的）一段时期v.快速移动( streak的第三人称单数 )；使布满条纹 | |
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shreds
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| v.撕碎，切碎( shred的第三人称单数 )；用撕毁机撕毁（文件） | |
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5
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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devastate
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| v.使荒芜，破坏，压倒 | |
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7
cultivation
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| n.耕作，培养，栽培（法），养成 | |
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devouring
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| 吞没( devour的现在分词 )； 耗尽； 津津有味地看； 狼吞虎咽地吃光 | |
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morbid
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| adj.病的；致病的；病态的；可怕的 | |
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dispositions
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| 安排( disposition的名词复数 )； 倾向； （财产、金钱的）处置； 气质 | |
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lank
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| adj.瘦削的；稀疏的 | |
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12
phlegmatic
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| adj.冷静的，冷淡的，冷漠的，无活力的 | |
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13
lethal
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| adj.致死的；毁灭性的 | |
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14
pestilence
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| n.瘟疫 | |
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15
imprisoned
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| 下狱，监禁( imprison的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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replenish
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| vt.补充；(把…)装满；(再)填满 | |
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18
thither
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| adv.向那里；adj.在那边的，对岸的 | |
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toiler
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| 辛劳者，勤劳者 | |
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makers
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| n.制造者，制造商（maker的复数形式） | |
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dormant
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| adj.暂停活动的；休眠的；潜伏的 | |
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metropolis
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| n.首府；大城市 | |
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abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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rhetoric
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| n.修辞学，浮夸之言语 | |
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anarchist
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| n.无政府主义者 | |
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attainable
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| a.可达到的，可获得的 | |
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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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28
reiterating
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| 反复地说，重申( reiterate的现在分词 ) | |
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musing
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| n. 沉思，冥想 adj. 沉思的, 冥想的 动词muse的现在分词形式 | |
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hoarsely
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| adv.嘶哑地 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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32
slipper
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| n.拖鞋 | |
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slippers
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| n. 拖鞋 | |
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horrid
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| adj.可怕的；令人惊恐的；恐怖的；极讨厌的 | |
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disorder
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| n.紊乱，混乱；骚动，骚乱；疾病，失调 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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apron
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| n.围裙；工作裙 | |
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clattered
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| 发出咔哒声（clatter的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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receded
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| v.逐渐远离( recede的过去式和过去分词 )；向后倾斜；自原处后退或避开别人的注视；尤指问题 | |
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40
vista
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| n.远景，深景，展望，回想 | |
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meditated
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| 深思，沉思，冥想( meditate的过去式和过去分词 )； 内心策划，考虑 | |
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bonnet
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| n.无边女帽；童帽 | |
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43
pegs
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| n.衣夹( peg的名词复数 )；挂钉；系帐篷的桩；弦钮v.用夹子或钉子固定( peg的第三人称单数 )；使固定在某水平 | |
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44
opportunely
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| adv.恰好地，适时地 | |
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animated
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| adj.生气勃勃的，活跃的，愉快的 | |
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lark
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| n.云雀，百灵鸟；n.嬉戏，玩笑；vi.嬉戏 | |
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48
vagrant
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| n.流浪者，游民；adj.流浪的，漂泊不定的 | |
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49
crouched
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| v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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50
exultation
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| n.狂喜，得意 | |
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51
distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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52
dwindled
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| v.逐渐变少或变小( dwindle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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53
insignificance
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| n.不重要；无价值；无意义 | |
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54
sneered
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| 讥笑，冷笑( sneer的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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55
undesirable
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| adj.不受欢迎的，不良的，不合意的，讨厌的；n.不受欢迎的人，不良分子 | |
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56
conspiracy
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| n.阴谋，密谋，共谋 | |
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57
isolate
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| vt.使孤立，隔离 | |
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58
lash
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| v.系牢；鞭打；猛烈抨击；n.鞭打；眼睫毛 | |
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59
glistening
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| adj.闪耀的，反光的v.湿物闪耀，闪亮( glisten的现在分词 ) | |
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60
brittle
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| adj.易碎的；脆弱的；冷淡的；(声音)尖利的 | |
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dismally
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| adv.阴暗地，沉闷地 | |
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shuddered
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| v.战栗( shudder的过去式和过去分词 )；发抖；（机器、车辆等）突然震动；颤动 | |
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63
martyr
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| n.烈士，殉难者；vt.杀害，折磨，牺牲 | |
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64
filthy
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| adj.卑劣的；恶劣的，肮脏的 | |
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65
tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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imminent
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| adj.即将发生的，临近的，逼近的 | |
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defiant
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| adj.无礼的，挑战的 | |
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68
curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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69
descend
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| vt./vi.传下来，下来，下降 | |
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70
preoccupied
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| adj.全神贯注的，入神的；被抢先占有的；心事重重的v.占据（某人）思想，使对…全神贯注，使专心于( preoccupy的过去式) | |
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71
receding
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| v.逐渐远离( recede的现在分词 )；向后倾斜；自原处后退或避开别人的注视；尤指问题 | |
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72
strutting
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| 加固，支撑物 | |
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73
grotesque
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| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
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bacterium
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| n.(pl.)bacteria 细菌 | |
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75
infest
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| v.大批出没于；侵扰；寄生于 | |
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76
jabber
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| v.快而不清楚地说；n.吱吱喳喳 | |
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77
draught
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| n.拉，牵引，拖；一网（饮，吸，阵)；顿服药量，通风；v.起草，设计 | |
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